"Fool's errand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... secured small sums on the promise of discovering lost articles, but he raised money to enable him to dig for larger treasure which he was to locate by means of the stone. A Palmyra man, for instance, paid seventy-five cents to be sent by him on a fool's errand to look ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... shield me from their sight, and my good friend, the skipper of the wood-schooner, did not volunteer much information as they stood upon his forecastle only a few feet above my head. He told them they were on a fool's errand, if they came there to ask questions about a man who was minding his own business. The sailors all backed him, and the cook grew so bold as to consign the whole crowd, without mercy, to a place too hot ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... that the Fort boat was huntin' MEN—deserters, I reckon," said Jim aggrievedly. "Wanted me to believe that he SAW one on the Marsh hidin'. On'y an Injin lie, I reckon, to git a little extra fire-water, for toting me out to the bresh on a fool's errand." ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... These patrols had been sent by General Goyon to keep the crowd in order; but, unfortunately, there was no crowd to keep in order; so that the soldiers looked and seemed to feel as if they were sent on a fool's errand. At St Agnese there were some 150 carriages collected, almost all hired ones, of the poorer sort. The private vehicles were very few indeed; not a quarter of the muster at most. The church itself was gaily filled, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... naturally, having called in all his powers of dissimulation to help him in his extremity, that the detective was favourably impressed. He had already felt a suspicion that he had been sent here on a fool's errand, and no one could have looked less like a daring criminal, and the trusted confederate of still more daring ruffians, than did ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... one-eyed Spaniard deceived my father, and sent him on a fool's errand from St. Jago down to the Isle of Pines, and afterward how the 'Scourge' chased the piratical schooner in a hurricane for ever so long, clear away to the coast of Darien, where they blew her out of water, and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... him like a child, with kindly despotism; and there was something childish in the old man's satisfaction at having cheated all their expectations. It struck him at once that Philip had been sent for, and he was amused that he had been brought on a fool's errand. If he could only avoid another of his heart attacks he would get well enough in a week or two; and he had had the attacks several times before; he always felt as if he were going to die, but he never did. They all talked of his ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... will be sure to marry, but he'll say now that his daughter disobeyed him; sae he'll get off giving her a bawbee o' her fortune, and he'll save a' the plenishing and the wedding expenses. Deacon, I'm ashamed o' you. Sending a love-sick lad on sic a fool's errand. And mair, I'm not going to hae Isabel Strang, or Isabel Callendar here. A young woman wi' bridish ways dawdling about the house, I canna, and I willna stand. You'll hae to choose atween Deacon Strang's daughter and your ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... friend. Meanwhile, you know, it is I who am going on the errand. If you do not make it clear to me it will be a fool's errand." ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... not be found.... Into what a dismal fiasco the play would turn. All his interest would have been thrown away. His solicitors would have been investigating a lost cause. Forest would have been sent packing back to Rome upon a fool's errand.... ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... himself together from the dreary absence into which he fell at first. "Young man," he began, "maybe I've come here on a fool's errand," and Beaton rather fancied ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you, citizeness," he said, with a sudden access of viciousness against her, "if you have brought us here on a fool's errand, it will go ill with you, remember. Do not leave the house until our return. I may have some questions ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... not yet saddled, and that spy Concho haunting the plains for the last half-hour. What an air of mystery! Something awful, something deliciously dreadful, has happened! Either my amiable drunkard has forgotten to despatch Concho on his usual fool's errand, or he is himself lying helpless in some ditch. Was there ever a girl so persecuted? With a father wrapped in mystery, a lover nameless and shrouded in the obscurity of some Olympian height, and her only confidant and messenger a Bacchus instead ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... to do with Venus? he asked himself. This was the world he knew. It was real; space was impenetrable; there were no men or beings of any sort that could travel through space. Blake was right: he was on a fool's errand. They couldn't tell him anything up here at the observatory; they would laugh at him ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... water's edge. If there is a man yonder, there are fourteen, and you have to climb their side from the boat. What chance would you have? Your boat stove and you in the water—there is the end of it. No man of mine goes on such a fool's errand, and so ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... finished her tremendous conjurations, wonder gives place to laughter, the apotheosis of the flesh to the spirit of comedy. The enchanter turns harlequin; and what the lovers ask is not the annihilation of time and space but only that the father be at his prayers, or the husband gone on a fool's errand, while they have leave to kiss each other's mouths, 'as a pigeon feedeth her young,' to touch the lute, strip language naked, and 'repeat the following verses' to a ring of laughing girls and amid all such comfits and delicates as a hungry audience ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... "It's a regular fool's errand," said Mrs. Masters. "It's not done with my consent, Mr. Twentyman. I don't think she ought to stir from home till ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... about the king, and all who saw Neoncapos, cried out, What a fool's errand is this! So that the saying remains even ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... "Endraght" had been equipped by a number of merchants at Amsterdam, of whom my master, De Decker, made one, and we realized how disappointed they would be if we returned empty-handed. Our crew, also, began to show signs of discontent, and to murmur at having been brought so far on a fool's errand. It was only Dirk Hartog's indomitable ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... not at all sure that I have not brought you up on rather a fool's errand, but you seemed rather mystified yourself about these Deloras. Here's the cable from Dicky. What do you make of it? Must have cost him something, extravagant ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for a beggarly English clown!' cried the King, aiming a blow at the lad with his whip, and pushing on his horse, so as almost to throw him back on the heath. 'Ho! ho! fit him out for a fool's errand!' ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Capper, somewhat snappishly. "Chief among them, why your tomfool brother—you call him your brother, I suppose?—brought me over here on a fool's errand." ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... at the hole I made. You don't think I have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?" ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... taking up his hat with a dismal sense of having got foolishly through a fool's errand. 'As I said to you before, what Rose's feeling is at this moment I cannot even guess. Very likely she would be the first to repudiate half of what I have been saying. And I see that you will not talk to me—you will not take me into your confidence ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on a fool's errand, Major Pierson," replied the captain. "We are alone now, and we may call ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... you may behold a pair of London gentlemen trotting along on as fine a fool's errand as ever was undertaken by nincompoops bearing a scaled letter, marked urgent, to a castle, and the request in it that the steward would immediately upon perusal down with their you-know-what and hoist them and birch them a jolly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... warm and crowded. Theodora saw Violet lodged on an ottoman, and then strayed away to her own friends. Mrs. Finch soon arrived, and attacked her for having let them go on a fool's errand. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it be enough? Do try to talk sense now, Jane. How can I go off blindly on a fool's errand—in her interest, but ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... fool's errand, I guess it is, and that's the very reason I'm going with you, Ned. You know I'm going, that I wouldn't miss going with you for the world and you haven't any right to ask me to be a sneak and crawl out of the trouble, for it is trouble and ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... greeted the alleged proposal to "uplift" a body of citizens who were told that they were already adorning the heights of American civilisation. The names of the men who volunteered for this unpaid service should have been a sufficient guarantee that theirs was no fool's errand.[2] ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... in which he had driven as far as the station, and was swinging on foot across Woolhanger Moor, that he realised fully why he had come, why he had schemed for these two days out of a life packed with multifarious tasks. Then he laughed at himself, heartily yet a little self-consciously. A fool's errand might yet be a pleasant one, even though his immediate surroundings seemed to mock the sound of his mirth. Woolhanger Moor in November was a drear enough sight. There were many patches of black mud and stagnant water, carpets of treacherous-looking green moss, bare clumps of bushes bent all ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... celebrated our new treaty of friendship with noble libations—but I must not talk about that to you. However, I got rid of them; quoted all the geographical lies I had ever heard, and a great many more; quickened their appetite for their fool's errand notably, and started them off again. So now the star of Venus is set, and that of Pallas in the ascendant. Wherefore tell me—what am I to do with ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... On hearing this intelligence we at once determined to follow Don Luis's example, and although there seemed a certain degree of absurdity in four people, all holding some position in society, going off on what might turn out to be only a fool's errand, still the evidence we had before us, of the gold which had actually been found, and the example of the multitudes who were daily hastening to the diggings, determined us to go with the rest. We therefore held ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... Hunter feels that way about it, there's nothing to do. I'm sorry to have brought you over on a fool's errand," he said suavely, "but it can't be helped now. We'll take the land later, however," and ushered his guest out of the house and helped him untie his team without any sign of the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... brought what reason he still possessed to bear upon his topic. It was Hermia, not De Folligny who was to blame—Hermia, the mad, the irrepressible, whom he had roused from her idyl in their happy valley and driven forth, tte baisse, upon this fool's errand—Hermia the tender, the tempestuous, the gentle, the precipitate, because of whose wild pranks he, John Markham, Dean of the College of Celibates, now stalked the highroads of France, the victim of his ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... mate," answered the lad, a sharp young mud-larker. "I should just like the feel of a little earnest-money, though, to show that I am not being sent on a fool's errand." ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... vivid account of the assassination is given in "A Fool's Errand," where John Walter Stephens is called "John Walters." Whether it is all true as therein narrated, I cannot say for certain; but the story, confessedly fiction, is no more monstrous than the reality. It was a ghastly murder. As those who know best about it (if still alive) ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... over. "I wonder," thought the colonel, "if such a thing could happen, that my cherished plan of retiring with millions, might possibly be frustrated by ship-wreck or any unlooked-for event?" Whereupon he pulled from his pocket a cablegram, to make himself doubly sure that his was not a fool's errand, and again read ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... out," said the man, apparently much perturbed. "He wired me to go to Madrid, and I went. But it seems that I've been on a fool's errand." ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... illaqueate[obs3], hocus, escamoter[obs3], practice on one's credulity; hum, humbug; gammon, stuff up*, sell; play a trick upon one, play a practical joke upon one, put something over on one, put one over on; balk, trip up, throw a tub to a whale; fool to the top of one's bent, send on a fool's errand; make game, make a fool of, make an April fool of[obs3], make an ass of; trifle with, cajole, flatter; come over &c. (influence) 615; gild the pill, make things pleasant, divert, put a good face upon; dissemble &c 544. cog, cog the dice, load the dice, stack the deck; live by one's wits, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... liberty of telephoning to you. It was well that I did it early in the evening. The wires are down now, I fear." He hesitated for a moment, staring at her as if trying to penetrate the thick, wet veil. "I may have brought you on a fool's errand. You see, I—I have seen Mr. Wrandall but once, in town somewhere, and I may be wrong. Still, the coroner,—and the sheriff,—seemed to think you should be notified,—I might say questioned. That is why I called you up. I trust, madam, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... curiosity a triumph or no. I will not write to you any cut-and-dried platitudes about good and evil, but I frankly assure you that one of the strongest reasons which induces me to go with you on this fool's errand is a belief that I can discover the absurdity and imposture, and cure you of a hallucination which is ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook him a sudden revulsion of feeling, depression of spirit, cold and sick distaste of the place. Tom and breathless, in very savagery over his defeated hope and fool's errand, he thrust with all his strength at the heart of this panoplied foe. His blade, piercing the swart curtain, met with no resistance. With an exclamation he threw himself against that thick-seeming barrier, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... away, and the young man waited minute after minute, pacing back and forth the length of the room, cutting nervous circles around the big office chairs, wiping his palms with his handkerchief and wondering if he had come on a fool's errand or whether— ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... delicate porcelain that he remembered in his father's factory at Limoges. All that beauty and luxury belonged to him by right; they might still have been his, if only he had not listened for years to the Voice. And now the Voice had led him on this fool's errand. Here he was, preaching to nobody, and looking at a cracked mug. Was his whole life a mistake? a delusion? 'Am I a fool after ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... one that Arbuthnot should admire," broke in Bickley, attempting to lighten matters with a joke. "But come on and let us be rid of this fool's errand. Certainly the world is a lovely place after all, and for my part I hope that we haven't seen the last of it," he added with ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... "Then it is a fool's errand," said the captain, "seeing that his Grace rode yesterday to his castle at Windsor to hunt and revel, and will be gone eight ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... length, was a woman such as, had he been a painter, he must have painted; a poet, he must have celebrated in silken verse. Three-and-thirty? No, he was only a lad this night. All his illusions had come back again. At a word from this mysterious woman, he would have started out on any fool's errand, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... fool's errand. Yet the pay is good—that cannot be doubted. It had been better, I think, for thee to have followed thy trade in Palmyra or Ctesiphon. Yet perhaps this may turn out well. The promised sum is large. Who can tell? 'Tis worth a risk. Yet ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... he saw it all now. At last! His gallant father had risked his life to come to them in the disguise of a Roundhead trooper, and the general must have been sent on a fool's errand so that the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... glitter of the Mediterranean. These are the occasions perhaps to remember most fondly, for they lead you to enchanting nooks, and the landscape has details of the highest refinement. Indeed when my sense reverts to the lingering impressions of so blest a time, it seems a fool's errand to have attempted to express them, and a waste of words to do more than recommend the reader to go citywards at twilight of the end of March, making for Porta Cavalleggieri, and note what he sees. At this hour the Campagna is to the last point its melancholy self, and I remember ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of the visitors' book till she found the names of Lord and Lady Northmoor, and then, growing more eager as obstructions came in her way, and not liking to turn back as if on a fool's errand, she suggested to Miss Gattoni that questions might be asked about their visit. The Tyrolean patois was far beyond her, and not too comprehensible to her friend, but there was a waiter who could speak French, and ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... canyon, dressed like we were and on a night like last night. If they thought we were alive and suffering, the whole male population would take a search party and come to our aid. Instead they know—or rather, they think they know—that we're dead. There won't be any horses, it will be a fool's errand, and mushing through those feet of soft snow is a job they ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... plow,—and those tutors teach him his true value, indulge him in no error, and provoke him to no vice. But take him up to London,—give him her papers to read, and her talk to hear,—and it is fifty to one you send him presently on a fool's errand over ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... favourable the wind is! You are on board; you land in a beautiful country, of which you become the Queen. Ah! what do I see? Look there—look at that hideous, crooked, lame man, who is pursuing you—but he is going on a fool's errand. I see a very great man, who supports you in his arms. Here, look! he is a kind of giant. There is a great deal of gold and silver—a few clouds here and there. But you have nothing to fear. The vessel will be sometimes tossed about, but it will not be lost. Dixi." Madame ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Lord Farquhart had cried. "If you must stay, if you must go on your fool's errand, at least take one or more of the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... seemed to prove beyond denial the existence of some serious danger; and if that were so, could he desert her? There was a choice of risks: the risk of behaving with extraordinary incivility and unhandsomeness to a lady, and the risk of going on a fool's errand. The story seemed false; but then the money was undeniable. The whole circumstances were questionable and obscure; but the lady was charming, and had the speech and manners of society. While he still hung in the wind, a recollection returned ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... every kind of idiot for venturing on such a fool's errand at such a time. But that did not warm his shivering limbs or infuse patience into his almost despairing heart. The cold was intense. He was obliged at last to move away from his shelter—such as it was—and in spite ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... was offered for any who would undertake this voyage, and so some jail-birds were added to the company. Queer stuff for such an undertaking! But beggars can not be choosers, and Cristoforo Colombo might be thankful that he could get anybody for his fool's errand! ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... wicked, ungrateful girl, to come home to me with such an invention, and cause me to start off on a fool's errand! Do you suppose I should have gone and humbled myself to those people, but for hoping to bring the parson to a sense of what he was doing in ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sheriff of the county, and also the officer in charge at the Gridley police station, giving the officials a hint of the joke at the second lake, so they wouldn't rush away on a fool's errand in case the wild story reached ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... to; neither threats nor persuasion brought it to light. What could Andros do? Clearly nothing, for the authorities had done all that could be asked; they had produced the charter in the presence of Andros, and now it had disappeared from his presence. He had come upon a fool's errand, and some sharp Yankee (Captain Wadsworth) had outwitted him. Where was the charter? Safely hidden in the heart of the great oak, at Hartford, on the grounds of Samuel Wyllys. There it remained beyond the reach ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... yet give an explicit and sufficient reason for? Those old-time Teuton liberals, masters of prose and verse—how would they feel at home in this modern Rhineland of hysterical spleen and arms provocative? Was it possible he had really come on a sort of fool's errand? ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry |
