"Valueless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the most perfect expressions of our intentions," replied Mr. Lane. "You were deceived in your purchase of the cotton; the article proved so near valueless, as not to be really worth three cents a pound. You discovered this, as I have the best reasons for knowing, almost as soon as it came into your possession; and yet you offered it to Peterson, who, not suspecting for a moment ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... scientific sociology at the back of them. The unscientific thing is, they say, to assume the contrary; and here, they proceed, we have the fundamental error which renders most of the conclusions of the ordinary economists valueless. Economic science, in its generally accepted form, bases all its reasonings on the behaviour of the so-called "economic man"—that is to say, a being from whom those who reason about him exclude all operative desires ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... money, when the captain, to punish him, seized his old jacket, and insisted upon retaining it for payment. The Irishman suffered it to be taken off, expecting, it is to be presumed, that it would be returned to him as valueless, when the captain jerked it overboard. "Oh! murder!— captain, drop the boat," cried Paddy; "pick my jacket up, or I'm a ruined man. All my money's in it." The jacket was fortunately picked up before it sank, and, on ripping it up, it was found to contain, sewed up ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... full of poverty, anxiety, and pain, still she knew that inwardly it owned many things, one thing especially, which no money could buy, and without which fine houses, fine furniture, and fine clothes—indeed, all the comforts and splendors of existence, would be worse that valueless, actual torment. So as she looked around her she felt not the slightest envy of ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... with laurel, but his eyes are sad, as though he felt how poor a thing is fame; how valueless the garland which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. He looks with a yearning glance, as though searching for something not yet found. Even like the great poet Dante, who, when asked in exile by the ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... is absurd, and knowledge where knowledge is shame, and what is worse, this distressing criticism has been forced upon him, and he has arrived at the conclusion that beauty without intelligence is the most valueless attribute of a woman. Alas, the world is an argus-eyed, many-headed, sleepless, heartless monster. The independent man, if he would retain his independence, must retire with his wife to his own home, and it would be a pity if in thinking of his defeat he was to ask himself, Was my pretty ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... its genial influence—and of which, each member, albeit bowed down by sympathetic grief, attempts to lift his drooping head, and to others open some source of comfort, which to the kind speaker, is inefficient and valueless indeed! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... cross swords with you and tap you on the arm almost in the same movement. If he does you may think it rather sharp practice, but you will find that it scores one to him nevertheless. As no word of practical advice founded on experience should be valueless, let me add one here to would-be competitors. Do not rely upon other people for masks, aprons, or other necessaries of the game. You cannot expect a gymnasium to which you do not belong to furnish such things for you, and even if they were provided they probably ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... can see that you are about to do something for which, in all the years to come, you will never be able to get your own forgiveness. Oh, I know," she went on bitterly. "You will tell me that I am a woman, with only a woman's standards, which are valueless when they get mixed up with the emotions. But I can tell you that I know your father better than you do—much better. And I believe in him, utterly, absolutely. Won't you give him a chance, Evan? Won't you show him those dreadful papers ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... great strength. Every child has a tendency to approach, grasp, and carry off any object not too large which attracts his attention, and to be satisfied by its mere possession. Blind hoarding and collecting of objects sometimes valueless in themselves results. This instinct is very much influenced in its manifestation by others which are present at the same time, such as the food-getting instinct, rivalry, love of approval, etc. The time at which the tendency to collect seems strongest is at ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... the child's time and preparation should be wisely directed. Each recitation should perform its full measure of usefulness, in testing, drilling, and teaching. There will be no time for valueless note-taking, duplication of map-book work, ambiguous or foolish questioning, aimless ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... di Johannes Ambrosius de Bolate. He who lets time pass and does not grow in virtue, the more I think of it the more I grieve. No man has it in him to be virtuous who will give up honour for gain. Good fortune is valueless to him who knows not toil. The man becomes happy who follows Christ. There is no perfect gift without great suffering. Our glories and our triumphs pass away. Foul lust, and dreams, and luxury, and sloth have banished every virtue from the world; so that our Nature, wandering ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Prince-bishop of Trier to exercise his influence upon von Hontheim, the latter consented to make a retractation in 1778, but his followers alleged that the retractation having been secured by threats was valueless. This contention was supported by a commentary published by Hontheim in explanation of his retractation, in which he showed clearly enough that he had not receded an inch from his original position. Before his death in 1790 he expressed regret for the doctrine he put forward, and ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... for the time to come when her friends, the rector and his wife, might help in the task of comforting this poor sister. Detestation of the idea of love made her sympathy almost deficient, and when there was no active work to do in aid, she was nearly valueless, knowing that she also stood guilty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... valueless for any other service," says Amory, "the canal property was sold for $130,000. After the final dividends, little more than the original assessments had been returned to the stockholders." Oct. 3, 1859, the Supreme Court ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... walked rapidly about the roads, her eyes full of despair, her heart heavy, her brain active and contemptuous. She knew her own cleverness. She knew it too well. And it was smarting now at being proved such an ignominiously valueless possession. She might be clever, she might have brains enough to despise May Pearcey; but she had not the power to make a living. She must still pinch and starve beside ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... evidence, we might spare ourselves the laborious examination of all the dialectical arguments which a transcendent reason adduces in support of its pretensions; for we should know with the most complete certainty that, however honest such professions might be, they are null and valueless, because they relate to a kind of knowledge to which no man can by any possibility attain. But, as there is no end to discussion, if we cannot discover the true cause of the illusions by which even the wisest are deceived, and as the analysis of all our transcendent cognition into its elements ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Form of Wealth.—Land is the original gift of nature to humanity, and wherever there are people enough to make the possession of a particular piece of it important, it becomes a form of wealth. It can be valueless only when population is very sparse; and then an increase in the number of people dwelling on it gives to it early the attribute of specific importance. The land that is accessible to a growing population cannot ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... attributes to her, on the slightest evidence, if any, the anonymous Memoires sur la Vie de Henriette Sylvie de Moliere, and, what is more, accepts them as autobiographic; quotes a good deal of her very valueless verse and that of others, and relates the whole in a most marvellous style, the smallest and most modest effervescences of which are things like this: "La religion arrose son ame d'une eau parfumee, et les fleurs noirs du repentir eclosent" or "Soixante ans pesaient sur son crane ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... or mind of your own; but the time has gone by to treat you thus, you are old enough to assume the prerogatives of a man. The day has come when you must show that you are a man in action as well as word. A promise wrung from one is valueless; tear asunder this invisible chain by which you are held, and set ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... sterility when all the time the fault was elsewhere! The microscope has proven that even though a man may seemingly be healthy and capable of sustaining the marriage relation, yet his efforts are valueless; for the spermatozoa, the life-giving element, are dead, due usually to an inflammation which accompanied an attack of this ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... frankly ask him this question: Why must we go out? any more than the others: Why is it proper that I should go to mass to be seen? Why should I wear gowns that ruin us? Why do you accept decorations that are valueless in your eyes? Why do you seek the society of men who have no merit but what they derive from their official position or from their fortune? Why do we take upon ourselves social duties that weary both of us, instead of remaining together ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... Instead of that, for literary effect, he cast them into European metre and rhyme, with various expressions, like "bless" and "caress," which of course are utterly beyond an Australian's mental horizon. This absurd procedure, which has made so many documents of travellers valueless for scientific purposes, is like filling an ethnological museum with pictures of Australians, Africans, etc., all clothed in swallow-tail coats and silk hats. Cf. Grosse (B.A., 236), and Semon (224). Real Australian "poems" are like ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... prohibition agitation, he believed that a gentleman always knew where to stop in the matter of wine. What right had a few temperance fanatics to vote that seven hundred acres of his, Clifford Frost's property, should be made valueless because they happened to be ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... foods are also valueless as infant foods. In certain illnesses, when we want a mild stimulant, a teaspoonful or two in hot water may have a certain value, but that is all. The beef juice of home manufacture ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... considered cowards causes them to plunge into it blindly without taking the trouble to reflect. They always overshoot the mark, exposing themselves quite uselessly and achieving a result that is entirely valueless to themselves or ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... in full uniform, his breast bright with all his medals and orders—and it was observable that everybody else had adorned himself with every decoration he possessed, even those that had become illegal and valueless, forbidden even, after the fall of the Empire—entered the room, acknowledged the salutes and bowed ceremoniously to the officers assembled. He was followed by a tall slender young man on this occasion dressed again in the uniform of ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... it, and Basil let the boy time it by his watch. "Now," said Tom, when five minutes were gone, "we are under the very centre of the mountain." But the tunnel was like all accomplished facts, all hopes fulfilled, valueless to the soul, and scarcely appreciable to the sense; and the children emerged at North Adams with but a mean opinion of that great feat of engineering. Basil drew a pretty moral from their experience. "If you rode upon a comet you would be disappointed. Take my advice, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not be affected. Left to themselves, and assisted by their own methods, they knew that blows struck across the immense roadless spaces were so diminished in strength, by the time they reached the spot aimed at, that they became a mere mockery of force; and, just because they were so valueless, paved the way to effective compromises. Being adepts in the art which modern surgeons have adopted, of leaving wounds as far as possible to heal themselves, they trusted to time and to nature to solve political differences which western countries boldly attacked ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... began. I am just getting my equipment lined up, in preparation for the beginnings of the swing, and will be unable to give you figures of any accuracy for some hours yet. Any reading I could give you now would be accurate only to within two minutes of arc—relatively valueless." The voice was cheerful, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... to produce sugar in Jamaica; and they declare that the example the English have set them of sudden emancipation in that island is by no means encouraging. They say that that magnificent colony, formerly so wealthy and prosperous, is now nearly valueless—the land going out of cultivation—the Whites ruined—the Blacks idle, slothful, and supposed to be in a great measure relapsing into ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... have the most minute knowledge of the scientific aspect of music, dating from more than five hundred years before the Christian era. This knowledge, however, is worse than valueless, for it is misleading. For instance, it would be a very difficult thing for posterity to form any idea as to what our music was like if all the actual music in the world at the present time were destroyed, and ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... now began to fail her in the terrors of the moment, quietly obeyed the calm instructions of her young friend. The other residents in the hotel had almost all already fled; only a few unhappy women, who had completely lost their heads, wandered about the lower rooms holding all manner of valueless objects, from which they would not part, in their hands. Heideck called to them to follow him. But they hardly understood him, and he had no more time to trouble ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... my lord. And since you will, let us discourse of that subject. First, I lay it down for an indubitable maxim, that in itself all posthumous renown, which is the only renown, is valueless. Be not offended, my lord. To the nobly ambitious, renown hereafter may be something to anticipate. But analyzed, that feverish typhoid feeling of theirs may be nothing more than a flickering fancy, that now, while living, they are recognized ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... near relationship and constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of me should make my assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some opportunity of putting this letter in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... early explorers, passing beyond the valley of the Missouri, found valueless the region of the Plains and the foothills, not so the wild creatures or the savage men who had lived there longer than science records. The buffalo then ranged from the Rio Grande to the Athabaska, from the Missouri to the Rockies, and beyond. No one seems to ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... proper expression of ideas depends upon the observance of two essentials: first, you should say what you mean; and second, you should say it clearly. Without these, what you say may be not only valueless, but positively misleading. If you wish your hearer to understand what occurred at a certain time and place, you must first of all know yourself exactly what did occur. Then you must express it in language that shall make him understand ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... taken right from the heart of the Valdes grant. It includes all the springs, the valleys, the irrigable land; takes in everything but the hilly pasture land in the mountains, which, in itself, is valueless." ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... The only indigenous tree is the ombu, and the ombu makes itself conspicuous by its rarity. Nature must have fashioned this tree with her tongue in cheek, for the wood is a mere pith, and a walking-stick can be driven right into the tree. Not only is the wood useless as timber, but it is equally valueless as fuel, for the pith rots before it can be dried. The leaves are poisonous, and in spite of its being mere pith, it is one of the slowest-growing trees known, so that, take it all round, the solitary indigenous tree of Buenos Ayres is about the most useless arboreal product ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... had become his. He did not toss it from him then as a thing that was valueless. With the truest, noblest observance, he made me understand how much it might be to him, and then surrendered it without a word of ill humour, because he told himself that in truth my heart was within your keeping. If you will keep ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... the copying of texts for sale became common. Then arose the practice of erasing as much of the writing from old books as could be done, and writing the new book crosswise of the page. In this way the expense for parchment was reduced, and in the process many valueless and a few valuable books were destroyed. Still, the cost for books during the days of parchment must have been high. Walsh estimates that "an ordinary folio volume probably cost from 400 to 500 francs in our [1914] values, that is, between $80 ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... heredity as a cause. From our own experience we know of equine families in which this condition has been transmitted from generation to generation, and animals otherwise of excellent conformation have been rendered valueless by the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... in that Scott expressed his thankfulness that he did not yield to its allurements. 'Surrounded as we should have been by steep and lofty hills, we could have obtained only the most local records of climatic conditions, and our meteorological observations would have been comparatively valueless; but the greatest drawback would have been that we should be completely cut off from traveling over the sea-ice beyond the mouth of our harbor.... It is when one remembers how naturally a decision to return to this place might have been made, that one sees how ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... are worked into the narrative of supposed Japanese events, and Japanese emperors or empresses are (admittedly) fitted with posthumous names mostly copied from imperial Chinese posthumous names. By themselves they are almost valueless, so far as the fixing of specific dates and the identification of political events are concerned; and even when taken as ancillary to contemporary Chinese evidence, except in so far as a few Chinese misprints ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... organisms not in kind so much as in the degree of development. Mr. Darwin himself was troubled about the value of his own convictions, on the ground that his mind was evolved from that of lower animals. That is to say, he reckoned his own mental actions as valueless and untrustworthy, because of the essential identity between his mind and that of the lowest creatures that live in the mud of our swamps. Thus we see the legitimate tendency of this theory to degrade the mental dignity of man. And it also degrades the ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... necessary practical laws are by degrees attached to those of imaginary value, and all alike are held in esteem as of equal moral worth. By this means a ficticious standard of right and wrong becomes established, and a weakening of confidence in the valueless part results in damage to that portion which was originally the result ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... the river, enough remained to keep up a galling fire, and hold Reno strictly on the defensive. These reds skulked in ravines, or lined the banks of the river, their long-range rifles rendering the lighter carbines of the cavalrymen almost valueless. A few crouched along the edge of higher eminences, their shots crashing ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Examination, and to present the subject in as short and simple a form as possible. Hence the Theory of Incommensurable Magnitudes was omitted, though, as the author himself said in the Preface, to do so rendered the work incomplete, and, from a logical point of view, valueless. He hinted pretty plainly his own preference for an equivalent amount of Algebra, which would be complete in itself. It is easy to understand this preference in a mind ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... house is valued at about 60 pesos, which is less than it usually costs to build, and a granary is valued at about 10 or 15 pesos. It is constructed with great care, is valueless unless rodent proof, and costs much ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... until the beer was spent. The salt meat was as bad as the beer, or worse. Often enough the casks were filled with lumps of bone and fat which were quite uneatable, and often the meat was so lean, old, dry and shrivelled that it was valueless as food. The victuallers often killed their animals in the heat of the summer, when the meat would not take salt, so that many casks must have been unfit for food after lying for a week in store. Anti-scorbutics were supplied, or not supplied, at the discretion of the captains. It ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... trees, and death if fire were used. There is a paper in the Journal de Physique of 1789,[96] on the disappearance of the forests of Dauphine, pointing out that when the woods are removed from the sides of mountains, the soil soon follows, and the district becomes utterly valueless. The writer traced the mischief to the emancipation of serfs, and the consequent formation of communes, where each man could do that which was right ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... imprisonment for life. They instigated murders, and clamoured because the murderers were not regarded as heroes; or if they were hung, canonised them as martyrs. They attempted to prostitute the law to their own base standard of political morality. They assiduously laboured to render life valueless in Ireland and property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... a revolution in agriculture. The primitive cultivation of the Malays was carried on by clearing and burning the hill-sides (a system still largely adopted in native states where land is plentiful and timber valueless), and the cultivation of the wet ricefields of the plains, which necessitates the use of the plough, would thus seem to have been resorted to only after ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... away, they are valueless," exclaimed his chum somewhat testily, for his disappointment was almost more than he ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... any of the native princes along the river. Should they be overhauled the Houssas were told to open the cases and show that these contained nothing but birds' skins and insects, which would be absolutely valueless in the ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... of old soldiers tell of the amount of greenback money they saw and picked up on the battlefield of Shiloh, but they thought it valueless and did not trouble themselves with bringing ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... of some of the South American railways command a high premium, but of the whole number quoted in the official list the large majority show a heavy decline on the original value, many indeed being valueless. These stocks are highly speculative and subject to be affected by political convulsions and other contingencies, which make them undesirable ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... of the sort that Governors spend and are spent to clear away. Farag's uncle, now Sheikh of the village, spoke: "It is written in this book, Excellency, that the beatings whereby we hold our lands are all valueless. It is written that every man who received such a beating from the Father of Waterwheels who slow the Emirs, should instantly begin a lawsuit, because the title to his land is ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the scheme would be utterly valueless, I would propose that a certain number of competent transcribers be appointed for each county, either at a given salary, or at a remuneration of so much per entry, to copy the registers of those parishes ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... girl is once induced to sacrifice her virtue she is treated as a slave and outcast by the very man who brought her ruin upon her. Her self-respect is gone. Her life becomes valueless to her, and she is swept downward, ever downward, into the bottomless pit of prostitution, and becomes ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... scheme for leaving those high and dry," the solicitor explained. "You see, the drainage and lighting will be largely influenced by the purchaser of the whole estate. If Dowling gets it, he means to treat your plots so that they will become practically valueless. It's rather a mean sort of thing, but then he's a mean ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... same extent, in the writings have got the man. Letters are the most personal form of literature. A man may write a treatise or a history or even a poem and hide his personality behind it; but letters are valueless unless the writer shows himself. Paul is constantly visible in his letters. You can feel his heart throbbing in every chapter he ever wrote. He has painted his own portrait—not only that of the outward man, but of his innermost feelings—as no one else could have painted ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... woman who used to sell tapers and other Popish trickeries in front of the cathedral. If so, as she had frequently seen us, I had no doubt that from the first she knew who we were. I immediately guessed that, finding her old calling valueless, she had betaken herself to her present mode of life, in the hopes of preying on the superstition and credulity of her fellow-creatures. And I found that I was correct ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... the busy, jocular, combatant, pleasure-seeking community only from behind the bars of the house of rest that they had chosen. It was a noble object-lesson of the spiritual life; and though the symbols used to express it may have become valueless, the truth that they taught remains yet, that if a man or woman seeks the highest good, there must be for such an isolation of the soul from the ordinary course of life and thought in the world around us; we must afford ourselves facilities for a ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... crews unexpectedly, and, their natural ferocity being inflamed by covetousness, they spared not even those who offered no resistance, but slew them all, and carried off a splendid booty with no more trouble than if it had been valueless. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... rob them of all control over what they are thinking and saying!... And, in the midst of this confusion, in the storm that tosses them to and fro, to catch sight of the tiny spark which will flash forth somewhere or other!... Look at him! Look at the fellow! A hundred thousand francs for a valueless pebble ... if not, prison: it's enough to turn ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... little, if any, careful investigation as to the real needs of the case. The result of it all has been that the testimony of those who knew far more than was possible for any outsider, the southern whites, has gone unheeded, not to say that it has been spurned as hostile and valueless. The blame, of course, is not always on one side, and as will be shown later, there are many southern whites who have as little to do with the Negro, and consequently know as little about him, as the average New ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... there lay a broken, useless mass of flesh and bone that in the sight of the Bureau Arabe was only a worn-out machine that had paid its due toll to the wars of the Second Empire, and was now valueless; only fit to be cast in to rot, unmourned, in the devouring African soil. But to him that lifeless, useless mass was dear still; was the wreck of the bravest, tenderest, and best-loved friend that he had ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... gladiatorial games and acrobatic or dramatic entertainments, at which there were scrambled various objects, articles of food, coins or tickets entitling the holder to some gift which might be valuable, valueless, or comical. Similarly there was a holiday on New Year's Day, when presents were again interchanged, regularly including a small piece of money "for good luck." The gifts on this day frequently bore the inscription "a Happy and Prosperous New Year to you." Presents ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Mechanics' is a great illustration of your power to grasp, to connect, and to apply the definite principles of exact science with the less definite known elements of practical problems. Abstract principles are valueless, except in application to the wants of man, and this work occupies that field with great eminence. Your work on the 'Steam Engine and other Prime Movers' deals with the principles involved in that important ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... proved in the case of every woman who has attained to fame. And there is another point. The women who have succeeded in bursting these bonds have, in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy and fighting, that their work is rendered crude and often valueless. Self-assertion can never be the best preparation for achievement. All this narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results gained superficial and unenduring. We have here the explanation of much that has been, and still is, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... time to concert matters with the sister university) it had come from Oxford only, and added that they hoped shortly to give something more substantial than parchment. "What they could offer was a slight thing, it was true, yet one which their old Headmaster and his coadjutors would not think valueless." He proceeded to read ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... first experience of the present currency,—the valueless circulating medium of Cuba. When one has occasion to visit the island it is best to take American funds, either in bank-bills or gold, sufficient to meet all ordinary expenses. Our bank-bills and our gold are both ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Chew over the cud of his misfortune Daily association sustains the interest of the veriest trifles Dear, dirty Dublin—Io te salute Delectable modes of getting over the ground through life Devilish hot work, this, said the colonel Disputing "one brandy too much" in his bill Empty, valueless, heartless flirtation Ending—I never yet met the man who could tell when it ended Enjoy the name without the gain Enough is as good as a feast Escaped shot and shell to fall less gloriously beneath champagne Every ...
— Quotes and Images From The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer • Charles James Lever
... Fertilizers. The demand for lime is leading some men to state a lime content for their goods that is designed to mislead. Such lime is not in a form to combine with soil acids, and is as valueless as the very large amount of lime in acid soils that is in compounds having no power to ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... situated at present, they are as good as valueless to their owners, who are scattered about the neighbourhood; they have therefore been sold comparatively cheap. If the purchaser had waited till the branch line began to be talked of, the proprietors would have ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... to sunlight a severe storm arose and the experiments had to be abandoned for the time being. At the end of several days work was again resumed, but the plates had been lying so long in the darkroom that they were deemed almost valueless and it was thought that there would not be much use in trying to use them. Becquerel was about to throw them away, but on second consideration thinking that some action might have possibly taken place in the dark, he resolved to try ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... about what you deal. We're told, that 'Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul.' Avoid taverns and bad company, and you may yet do well. You promise to become a first-rate workman. But you want one quality, without which all others are valueless. You want industry—you want steadiness. Idleness is the key of beggary, Jack. If you don't conquer this disgraceful propensity in time, you'll soon come to want; and then nothing can save you. Be warned by your father's fate. As you brew so must you drink. I've engaged to watch over ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... this piece for our use. She works nicely enough, but no two people work exactly alike, so no one else could now take this and complete the corner. So, you see the piece is valueless, and we must charge for it. Moreover, I should have to deduct fifty cents if it had been finished, because long stitches show ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... the duty of middle-aged married couples in Norway. It cannot be too much insisted upon that at least three-quarters of the blame and criticism commonly directed against artists and authors falls under this general objection, and is essentially valueless. Authors both great and small are, like everything else in existence, upon the whole greatly under-rated. They are blamed for not doing, not only what they have failed to do to reach their own ideal, but what they have never tried to do to reach every other writer's ideal. If ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... part of the nation which had been growing steadily more exasperated felt that now the issue must be faced. The President was the personal conductor of the foreign policy of the Administration; Mr. Bryan's sole interest in foreign affairs seemed to be the conclusion of a large number of polite and valueless treaties of arbitration, and it was certain that with Germany, as with Mexico, the President would deal in person. In the few days after the sinking of the Lusitania the nation waited confidently for the ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... his own desire he was buried in the dress of a Franciscan Tertiary. Yet there is evidence that he felt the inefficacy of any external bond. Experience taught him that the serge robe and the binding cord might only be the concealment of the hypocrite; and that they were worse than valueless without the purification of the heart. In the eighth Bolgia of the eighth circle of the "Inferno" he sees the givers of evil counsel, and among them Guido da Montefeltro, who, toward the close of his life had become a Cordelier or Franciscan Friar, hoping to make atonement ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time as a tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could be used in the Hole. That would account for the seeming devotion and self-sacrifice by which she had saved him from the Gila monster poison, from death by thirst, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... foundations wherever a woman might take his fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers carry about with them. Any part of it which was not portable or could not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless, however enviable it might appear to others. How often had his credit with a duchess, built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to do him some favour for which she had never found an opportunity, been squandered in a moment by his calling upon her, in an indiscreetly worded message, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... shop, with a roof that any man standing in it could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief or two, an old peacoat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a jar of tobacco and two crossed pipes, a bottle of walnut ketchup, and some horrible sweets these creature discomforts serving as a blind to the main business of the Leaving Shop—was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was approved by the President July 17. It was a very comprehensive measure; so much so, that Mr. Blaine has said of it: "Even if the war had ended without a formal and effective system of emancipation, it is believed that this statute would have so operated as to render the slave system practically valueless." ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between labour and capital ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... secondary sulphide enrichment was first recognized there was a tendency to magnify its effectiveness, and to assume that in most cases the values were due to this process; that the primary zones would be found to be valueless. In recent years the emphasis is being somewhat changed because of the recognizing in many camps of rich primary zones. While some chalcocite is clearly the result of secondary enrichment from above, other chalcocite seems to ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... one sentence she tagged my forest work as being valueless. Had I been the boy who rode through the May sunshine frantically to announce his poverty, I might have accepted her verdict as a just sentence. Now there was a calculating light in her dark blue eyes that put me on my mettle. She was ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... In the Sacramento valley this usually occurs about the first week of July. Full-grown trees require about a pound of sulphur which should be thoroughly distributed throughout the foliage. The old method of throwing a handful of sulphur in the branches of the tree or on the ground under the tree is valueless. The use of a blower is economical in large orchards, but a can with perforated bottom is frequently used on young trees or small orchards with good results. In normal seasons the spider is easily, controlled by dry sulphuring. When the pest does not ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Germany was using her good offices in Vienna, this is as valuable a bit of evidence as the reprint of a dispatch in the "White Paper," unless we wish to impugn his veracity, and in that case the copy of a dispatch would be valueless, for he might have forged it. The entire argument, therefore, against Germany and Austria, based on what Mr. Beck calls the "suppression of vitally important documents," is void, unless you will apply it equally to Great Britain ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of the whole mystery consisted in the simple fact that the people, the nation, had steadily refused to sanction the act of their leaders; and all the pretensions of English kings, statesmen, and lawyers, were valueless. Those Irishmen who subsequently entered into the various Geraldine and Ulster confederacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid, were neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independent state, possessing their international rights ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... that he had sympathy with a gentleman: he would neither allow Cosmo to eat with the labourers—to which Cosmo himself had no objection, nor would hear of his sleeping anywhere but in the best bedroom they had in the house. Also, from respect to the heir of a decayed family and valueless inheritance, he modified even his own habits so far as almost to cease swearing in his presence. Appreciating this genuine kindness, Cosmo in his turn tried to be agreeable to those around him, and in their short evenings, for, being weary, they retired early, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... testimony will never secure the freedmen justice before the courts of this State as long as that testimony is considered valueless by the judges and juries who hear it. It is of no consequence what the law may be if the majority be not inclined to have it executed. A negro might bring a suit before a magistrate and have colored witnesses examined in his behalf, according to provisions ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... from me. Come, my friend, how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai, the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself, is a supposition—a valueless, windy, uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think, an animula, vagula, blandula—bah! there is no use beating about the bush—I mean A SOUL. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it some other way, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to pause right yere to observe that Doc Peets is the best- eddicated sharp I ever encounters in my life. An' what he don't know about squaws is valueless as information. But to go on ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... able to obtain everything free of charge, money became valueless, all the evils of the financial system eliminated, and the preponderance of labor expended in upholding this unnatural system was used for productive purposes, thus doing away with such occupations as money making, money lending, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... welfare of the Commonwealth. If all the knaves upon this continent Can make appeal to England, and so thwart The ends of truth and justice by delay, Our power is gone forever. We are nothing But ciphers, valueless save when we follow Some unit; and our unit is the King! 'T is he that gives ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... engine and glided on to the warehouse and Denver stood staring down the road. Then he raised his sample, tied up in his handkerchief, and slammed it into the dirt. His mine was valueless unless he had money, and Murray had abandoned the district. More than ever Denver realized how much it had meant to him, merely to have that diamond drilling running and a big man like Murray behind it. It was indicative of big values and great expectations; ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... flavor and preventing its development and full growth. It is insidious in its deterioration and omnivorous in its appetite. It tends to habits that undermine and to the appropriation of a preponderating share of the valueless things of life. The danger is in the unrestrained appetite, in intemperance that becomes habit. Pleasure is exhausting of both purse and mind. We naturally crave pleasant experiences, and we need a certain amount of relaxation. The danger is in overindulgence and indigestion resulting in spiritual ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... but not out of his life. She had come here with the deliberate intention of wrecking that, and she would succeed probably, for she would have the blind, hideous force of conventional morality on her side. She would destroy his life—that life till lately so valueless to him; that dreary stretch made barren so many years by her hateful influence, but which, in spite of it, at Saidie's touch, had now bloomed into a garden of flowers. The thought of Saidie strengthened him. It was true that his wife ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the mastery of one helps to the mastery of others. Things which may at first sight appear comparatively valueless in education—such as the study of the dead languages, and the relations of lines and surfaces which we call mathematics—are really of the greatest practical value, not so much because of the information which they yield, as because of the development ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... not mistake my purpose. If this young lady, of her own free will, desires the restoration of this contract, as her letter would seem to imply, there is not a withered leaf which this autumn wind strews on the heath that is more valueless in my eyes. But I must and will hear the truth from her own mouth; without this satisfaction I will not leave this spot. Murder me by numbers you possibly may; but I am an armed man—I am a desperate man, and I will nto die without ample vengeance. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... sassafras tree, or of the wintergreen vine, after being bruised in the hand and applied to the nose or the mouth, makes instant impression upon the senses of taste and small, and at once informs us of its distinctive qualities. Not so with the tea leaf; a hundred valueless plants impress those senses more vividly than the leaf which is worth them all. Infuse the green leaf of the Tea plant and the prized properties of "Tea" are still wanting, but in their stead, positively deleterious qualities are said to appear in the infusion. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... been appointed and the court organized. It is now possible to give early relief to communities long repressed in their development by unsettled land titles and to establish the possession and right of settlers whose lands have been rendered valueless by adverse ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison |
