"Aimlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he wandered on for close upon an hour, moving from one street to another with steps that were listless or rapid, as inclination prompted; then, still acting with vagrant aimlessness, he stopped in his wanderings and entered ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... purse and handed it to him. He touched his hat and drove off, leaving her alone in the long empty street. She wandered away westward, toward strange thoroughfares, where she was not likely to meet acquaintances. The feeling of aimlessness had returned. Once she found herself in the afternoon torrent of Broadway, swept past tawdry shops and flaming theatrical posters, with a succession of meaningless faces gliding by in the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... know that she is so soon to be a widow. Were she to know, the last months of my life would be miserable to both of us. I have noticed with some pain, or should I say amusement? perhaps that word would be the better—I have noticed, I say, that her life is one of complete aimlessness, and that, therefore, she is tempted to think too much about herself. She is also tempted to have longings for—well, for temptation. Ah, she is a woman and temptation is in the way of women. Qui parle d'amour, fait l'amour: temptation comes to the woman ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... them, and the most worthless man that walks the streets of an Ohio or Iowa town may be the father of an epigram that colours all the life of the men about him. In a mining town or deep in the entrails of one of our cities life is different. There the disorder and aimlessness of our American lives becomes a crime for which men pay heavily. Losing step with one another, men lose also a sense of their own individuality so that a thousand of them may be driven in a disorderly mass in at the door of a Chicago factory morning after morning and year after year ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... she got of London was its aimlessness. It reminded her irresistibly of an ant-hill she had seen disturbed once. Myriads of tiny creatures had scurried passionately, exhaustingly, after each other to and fro, no whence and no whither; the people ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Son tilted his head unobtrusively stableward when he caught Andy's eye, and as unobtrusively wandered away from the group. Andy stopped long enough to roll and light a cigarette and then strolled after him with apparent aimlessness, secretly curious over the summons. He found Miguel in the stable waiting for him, and Miguel led the way, rope in hand across the corral and into the little pasture where fed a horse he meant to ride. He did not say ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Brumley hastily. "The extraordinary thing is that, until you set me looking into these things with your questions, I've always taken this sort of thing for granted, as though it couldn't be otherwise. Now I seem to see with a kind of freshness. I'm astounded at the muddle of it, the waste and aimlessness of it. And here again it is, Lady Harman, that I think your opportunity comes in. With these Hostels as they might be projected now, you seem to have the possibility of a modernized, more collective and civilized family ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of real fineness and aspiration. Outside of that speech which is absolutely a man's duty to give out, one can tell almost to the ampere, the voltage of his inner being, or its vacantness and slavery, by the depth of his listening silences, or the aimlessness of his filling chatter. It is only those few who have come to know, through some annealing sorrow, sickness, or suffering, and draw away from the crowds and noises into the Silence, that ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... dry and gentle voice, which held a curious note of finality, of failure. For the first time, while he spoke, she let her eyes rest frankly upon him, and there came to her, as she did so, a vivid realization of the emptiness and aimlessness of his life. He looked handsomer than ever; he looked stately and formal and impressive; but he looked old—though he was only forty-five—he looked old and ineffectual and acquiescent. The fighting strength, such as it was, had gone out of him, and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... was nothing to do. I descended the staircase, and an utter sense of aimlessness drove me out through the big doors, which swung behind me without noise. I turned toward the river, and on the broad embankment the sunshine enveloped me, friendly, familiar, and warm like the care of an old friend. A black ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness by applying herself to some occupation whereby she may earn her own living, infallibly draws down on her the comments of her whole circle: 'Keeping school, is she? Isn't her father rich enough to support ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
