"Futility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this time, had no perception that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity. Deriving his idiosyncrasies from both sides of the Channel, he showed at such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the Englishman, together with that ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... public on April 11, 1915, a memorandum addressed to the United States Government on April 4, complaining of its attitude toward the shipment of war munitions to the Allies and the non-shipment of foodstuffs to Germany. After picturing the foreign policy of the United States Government as one of futility, Count von Bernstorff's memorandum says it must be "assumed that the United States Government has accepted England's violations of international law." Its full text appears below, followed by that of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... times an enigma which he who had often taken men's souls apart had not dared even to try to solve. Partly because of that, partly because his observation in other quarters had taught him the dangerous futility of it, he had lifted his voice neither in encouragement nor protest of Archibald Wickersham. The two had grown up from childhood together—Barbara and the man whom she was engaged to marry—and more than once her father had assured himself that ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... exigency of the situation, when, having exhausted the man-to-man arguments of common reason, he descended to the practice of a subterfuge to defeat the purpose of a man whose only object appeared to be to satisfy his own personal peace of mind? Yet we doubt if the senior was conscious of the futility of his direction. He had one object in view. He was possessed with the single desire to avoid disaster. In its limited sense his action was laudable enough; but what would the owner of a racehorse say to the jockey who, after having ridden a sound horse in a race, volunteered ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... hair, and crying, Aranyani, Aranyani: throwing himself to and fro, and striding wildly up and down, as if his heart, appalled by the blank horror of its own loneliness, were struggling to escape. And then, after a while, as if exhausted, and as it were overcome by the sense of the futility of his lamentation, he ceased, as suddenly as he began, and remained for a long time standing absolutely still, looking out through the open door into the wood, that lay silent, as if on purpose to sympathise with the other dead silence ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... prayer of a righteous man,' prayer that cometh from 'a pure heart fervently,' prayer that is made 'with the spirit and with the understanding also.' Prayer of this sort is not to be discredited by any abundance of statistical testimony to the futility of cold lip-worship, or by any number of fresh examples of the generally recognised fact that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. The recovery from the very jaws of death of King Hezekiah, of Louis XV. of France, while as yet undetected and bien-aime, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... in a minute consulting-room and his shirt-sleeves, a tall tumbler at his elbow; at least I caught sight of the tumbler on entering; thereafter he stood in front of it, with a futility which ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... how miserably he has failed in this attempt, he turns with exasperation on Buddhism, and affirms that it "can in no wise be looked upon as anything but an abnormal manifestation of the religious life of man." We believe that Professor Blackie himself must have already perceived the futility and absurdity of this. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... that followed there fell upon the people an overpowering sense of the futility of man's wisdom, and of the need of the might and wisdom that are ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... secret signal from the maternal hand. It was useless for me to refuse alms, to plead business, or affect inattention. She never moved; her position was always taken with an appearance of latent capabilities of endurance and experience in waiting which never failed to impress me with awe and the futility of any hope of escape. There was also something in the reproachful expression of her eye which plainly said to me, as I bent over my paper, "Go on with your mock sentimentalities and simulated pathos; portray the imaginary sufferings of your bodiless ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... enlightenment, have all contributed to this artistic progress. There appears to be more of the artistic and intellectual quality in the average architecture of the present time, on both sides of the Atlantic, than at any previous period in this century. The futility of the archological revival of extinct styles is generally recognized. New conditions are gradually procuring the solution of the very problems they raise. Historic precedent sits more lightly on the architect than formerly, and the essential unity of principle underlying all good design ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... of twelve Bjoernson was sent to the Latin school at Molde, where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature could brook no restraints, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... warfare, while music "wastes so much of a young man's time, to gain but a moderate skill in it, and engages often in such odd company, that many think it much better spared."[388] But the feature of travel which was most mercilessly analysed by Locke was the Governor. He exposed the futility of sending a boy abroad to gain experience and to mingle with good society while he was so young as to need a guardian. For at the age when most boys were abroad—that is, from sixteen to twenty-two—they thought themselves too much men to be governed by others, and yet had not experience and prudence ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... was the answer—"that is, on the Sedgwick;" and the gentleman baited lamely and glanced furtively and appealingly at his wife. There was that embarrassing, interrogative silence that makes one feel the futility of concealment. It was Miss Lawrence who quickly came to his relief and dispelled ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... definite dreams with a painful content, without the presence of any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be reckoned among dreams of dread; they have, however, always been used to prove the unimportance and the psychical futility of dreams. An analysis of such an example will show that it belongs to our second class of dreams—a perfectly concealed realization of repressed desires. Analysis will demonstrate at the same time how excellently adapted is the work of displacement to the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... affections are divided.... And in truth, being a servant of the public, I must wait till my master commands before I take seriously to singing." (Vol. I., p. 45.) Here is as good an example as one is likely to find of a first-class artist openly admitting the futility of writing what will not be immediately read, when he can write something else, less to his taste, that will be read. The same sentiment has actuated an immense number of first-class creative artists, including Shakspere, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... it will not be so unlike the many hours of idleness and vacuity to which he was accustomed as a boy. No help having been extended to him in the moment of his first irritable revolt against industry, his whole life has been given a twist toward idleness and futility. He has not had the chance of recovery which the school system gives a like rebellious ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... discredit the astronomical theory of these structures than has this ridiculous notion; because even those who are not astronomers and therefore little familiar with the requirements of a building intended for astronomical observation, perceive at once the futility of any such arrangement, and the enormous, one may almost say the infinite disproportion between the cost at which the raised small platform would have been obtained, and the small advantage which astronomers ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... a tight place, from which all his great dexterity and daring were needed to escape with credit and without loss. His plan was to pass between the fortifications and the river to Fair Oaks, moving thence to his destination. Its futility was demonstrated when Wilson's division attempted to move across the Mechanicsville road. It was found that all the ground was completely swept by the heavy guns of the defenses, while a strong force of ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in the way of futility might be expected after these ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... failed, and by that failure thoroughly demonstrated the futility of one part of humanity trying to rush ahead of the whole, and the absolute necessity for all mankind to work unitedly and harmoniously, and go forward as a unit to accomplish the greatest results ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... justice has dawned at last, they find, after a generation, a new tyranny and a new injustice. The movement of life makes it impossible for any plan to long endure. Hence the disillusion, the feeling of futility that so often poisons the triumphs of practical men. And without the spirit of art or of religion even love does not satisfy. For imagination creates the perfection of its object and, aside from institutional bonds fast loosening, a faith in the continued growth ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... finds it 'the sentimental servitude of a poor fool,' or that the Philadelphia Press sees fit to dub it 'futile Philip,' or that the Outlook feels that 'the author might have made his book true without making it so frequently distasteful'; or that the Dial cries 'a most depressing impression of the futility ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... yearly meeting he and his father had attended, the Friends had counseled against open rebellion and shown each other the futility of such a step. All acts of violence and bloodshed were deprecated, and Lexington and Concord pronounced a useless sacrifice, and displeasing to God. But in the little knots that had gathered afterward there had been more than one low, dissentient voice concerning ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Donald Murchison's proceedings and of Seaforth's vassals during his exile in France is abridged from an interesting and valuable work. [Chambers's "Domestic Annals of Scotland."] It brings out in a prominent light the state of the Highlands and the futility of the power of the Government during that period in the North. As regards several of the forfeited estates which lay in inaccessible situations in the Highlands, the commissioners had up to this time been entirely baffled, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... length of time that small spot evaded Isabel's questing handkerchief, and the futility of Gerard's directions. He was obliged to halt the car, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and sulked by turns. In the end, seeing the futility of trying to reason with a man who only laughed, and seeing further the disadvantage of being cut off from his source of easy money, Roger gave in, growling. So when the train drew into Indian Creek that afternoon there were three people who got ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the ambitions and the futility of the goat, and the present speaker's late advice is so obvious that only the illogicalness of woman can account for my cherishing a hope that I may be spared the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... and he helps on the good cause by the simple substitution of a nuance. He paints, as it were, and so do I!' His manifestations had a considerable variety, but a family likeness ran through them, which consisted mainly of their singular futility. It was this that made them offensive; they encumbered the field of conversation, took up valuable space, converted it into a sort of brilliant sun-shot fog. For a fib told under pressure a convenient ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to have known better. The simplest calculation, had she cared to make it, would have shown her the utter futility of hoping to live on the munificent wage which a grateful country allowed to M'Gugan, less certain deductions for M'Gugan's slops and contingent sick-benefit, in return for his aid in protecting it from its enemies; and almost any parish official ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... from the introduction within our borders {246} of an imperfectly assimilated foreign element which cherishes different views on the subject. Another deterrent cause is a cool common sense which has recognized the futility of trying to settle with blade or bullet differences which belong to the courts; to this may be added a keen sense of humor which has seen the absurdity and laughed the practice out of existence. The freedom of the press has also been a contributing factor. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that, if he was to do the thing he had undertaken to do, he must set stern limits, not only to the pleasures of study, but also to the delusive quest of unattainable perfection, which is the constant parent of futility. He realized, as so many men of letters have failed to realize, that "to deliberate whenever I doubted, to inquire whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without end and perhaps without much improvement"; and instead of attempting the impossible and achieving nothing, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... and more especially the vocal cords in tone-production. While the early discoveries regarding the mechanism of the voice were hopefully believed to have solved all problems concerning its cultivation, experience has shown the futility of attempting to formulate a set of rules for voice-culture based alone upon the incomplete data furnished by the laryngoscope. This instrument is a small, round mirror which is introduced into the throat at such an angle, that if horizontal rays of light are ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... can picture to yourselves their amazement at being asked such a question, and finding themselves actually confronted with such mysterious and terrible beings as spirits. They sprang to their feet, as one man, recognising the futility of any further attempt at concealment; and a chief named Lualamba came forward and modestly acknowledged himself to be the leader of the band. Forthwith he was invited to come up on deck and talk to us, a rope ladder being lowered ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... saw the futility of our first instinctive flare of suspicion. It was obvious that if Don Gaspar and Buck Barry had intended treachery they would never have returned to us. I think that, curiously enough, we were unreasonably a little sorry for this. It would have been satisfactory to have had something definite ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... political campaigns somewhat successful at first but soon succumbing to the inevitable fate of all amateurish attempts. Upon men of Strasser's practical mental grasp these petty tempests in the melting pot could only produce an impression of sheer futility, and he turned to trade unionism as the only activity worth his while. Strasser had been elected president of the Cigar Makers' International Union in 1877, in the midst of a great strike in New York against the ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... doing or being of something else; and, of course, when the latter thing is represented as past, the participle must correspond to the pluperfect tense of its verb; as, "Having explained her views, it was necessary she should expatiate on the vanity and futility of the enjoyments promised by Pleasure."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 181. Here having explained is exactly equivalent to when she had explained. Again: "I may say, He had commanded, and we obeyed; or, He having commanded, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... characters who illustrate them. Here is a melancholy case of a novelist, not only clever but sincere, undone by want of sympathy.... The author's want of sympathy prevents 'Mehalah's' rising to the highest art; for though we shudder at the end, there the effect of the story stops. It illustrates the futility of battling with fate, but the theme is not allowable to writers with the modern notion of a Supreme Power.... But 'Mehalah' is still one of the most powerful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the church bells, a sudden rush of memories from the past came over her, there was a tender ache in her heart, and her eyes brimmed over with tears; but this was only for a minute, and then came emptiness again and the sense of the futility of life. The black kitten, Briska, rubbed against her and purred softly, but Olenka was not touched by these feline caresses. That was not what she needed. She wanted a love that would absorb her whole being, her whole soul and reason—that would give her ideas and an object in life, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... laughs at ghosts that aren't experts in efficiency haunting, and he has a lot of fun out of mortals for being scared of specters. He loves to shake the lugubrious terrors of the past before you, exposing their hollow futility, and he contrives to create new fears for you magically while you ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... just then, perhaps by very reason of its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his increasing abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was gradually reducing existence to the naked business of keeping himself alive. It was the futility of his multiplied shifts and privations that made them seem unworthy of a high attitude; the sense that, however rapidly he eliminated the superfluous, his cleared horizon was likely to offer no nearer view ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... his last deliberate utterance, Keats expresses his sense of the futility of romance, and seems to condemn poetry itself. A condemnation of the expression of profound thought in beautiful forms would come very ill from Keats, but this much he surely had learned, that poetry, the real high poetry, ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... meet him with the trap at the same spot and at the same hour on Wednesday. Since receiving these instructions, however, Natt had, as we have seen, arrived at conclusions of his own respecting certain events. The futility of doing as he had been bidden began to present itself to his mind with peculiar force. What was the good of going to the station for a man who was not coming by the train? What was the use of pretending to bring home a person who had never ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... with us to the district attorney's office," went on Phillips. "There you may come to your senses and realize the futility of trying to cover up your crime—if you have committed one. If you have not, why do you not tell us where ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... from various quarters serves to strengthen the case against Lord Beaconsfield's policy in the years 1875-77. The letter written by Mr. White to Sir Robert Morier on January 16, 1877, and referred to above, shows that his diplomatic experience had convinced him of the futility of supporting Turkey against the Powers. In that letter he made use of these significant words:—"You know me well enough. I did not come here (Constantinople) to deceive Lord Salisbury or to defend ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... owing to the absence of every obstruction in the way of fence or shrubbery. Finding no means of entrance he returned again to the front door which he shook with an impatient hand that however produced no impression upon the trusty lock, and recognizing, doubtless, the futility of his endeavors, he drew back, and merely pausing to give one other look at its deserted front, turned his horse's head, and to my great amazement, proceeded with sombre mien and clouded brow to retake ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... engineer who had been trained in Pittsburg, a Frenchman of the new style, whose silky sweetness of manner was the mask of a steely tenacity of purpose. He had a little devilish black moustache, waxed at the points, like an earl of melodrama, and with it a narrow cheerless smile that jeered into futility Raleigh's effort to handle the subject on a basis of easy good fellowship. The heart-to-heart talk degenerated into a keen business controversy, involving the consultation of letter-files; it took more time than Raleigh had to spare; and in the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... worried to-day; anxious about her husband's health, and sorely grieved at the futility of all her efforts to interest or help him. Great tears gathered in her eyes, and were ready to fall, but they had to be forced back, for she was called ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... one of the first to discover the futility of the experiment. Early in the following year he wrote to Miss Sophia Peabody to whom he was then engaged: "It has become quite evident to me that our fortunes are not to be found in this place;" a conclusion which he no doubt arrived at from an examination ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... perchance, my own darkness and doubt." For which purpose a feeler he softly put out. It was snapp'd up at once. "What is truth? "jesting Pilate Ask'd, and pass'd from the question at once with a smile at Its utter futility. Had he address'd it To Ridley MacNab, he at least had confess'd it Admitted discussion! and certainly no man Could more promptly have answer'd the sceptical Roman Than Ridley. Hear some street astronomer talk! Grant him two or three hearers, a morsel of chalk, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... altruism. It was difficult in so mad a world not to indulge in personal eccentricity—to the neglect of due worship of the great goddess Conventionality. With death in visible form at every street corner, one's sense of humour, let alone one's higher faculties, rebelled against the futility of such worship. So many detestable sights and sounds were perpetually presented to one—not to mention broth of abominable things daily for dinner—that one turned, with thanksgiving, to beautiful form in art, to perfectly ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... low and musical; that of a cultured woman. She evidently recognized the futility of further ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... futility is proven by the war waged daily by the Turks as conquerors, during the last 400 years. And because the Balkan peoples have chosen the less evil of two kinds of war, and will use their victory to bring a system based on force and conquest ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... above taught Richard the futility of alcoholic things, and thereupon he cultivated a Puritan ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... being. She hated Rhett Sempland; per contra, at that moment, she loved Harry Lacy. For Harry Lacy was he about whom the difference began. Rhett Sempland, confident of his own affection and hopeful as to hers, had attempted, with masculine futility and obtuseness, to prohibit the further attentions ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... on the double revelation of the source of strength and the futility of opposition, the assurance of the successful completion of the work. The stone which is to crown the structure shall be brought forth and set in its place amid jubilant prayers not offered in vain, that 'grace'—that is, the protecting favour of God—may rest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... us not now. It is the hour at which the gods are accustomed to speak to the gods in the language of the gods, and if Man heard us he would guess the futility of his destiny, which were not well for Man. Begone! Begone! (Exeunt all but ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... riders. And they knew that he would catch Wildfire or die in the attempt. From that moment their attitude toward Slone changed as subtly as had come the knowledge of his feeling. The gravity and gloom left their faces. It seemed they might have regretted what they had said about the futility of catching Wildfire. They did not want Slone to see or feel the hopelessness ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... pray, and bowed his head upon his desk and waited in an agony of hope—waited while the darkness deepened and the splendid eternal song of the river proclaimed the futility and folly of man. A cricket sang with heart-piercing cheer, as if to say, "I die to-morrow, but I never despair." But no silken rustle, no whispering voice came to still the agony welling in bitter sighs from the lips of the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... anything. I remember that I had some half-intention of protesting, of begging to be allowed to remain. But I was no match for Semyonov. I could fancy the futility of my saying: "But really, Alexei Petrovitch, we don't want you here. It's much better to leave me. You'll upset them all. It's a nervous place, this." I said nothing, except: "All right. I'll go." He watched me. He watched us all. I fancy ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... and made wretched by a consciousness of movement, of varied life and activity, of adventure, of thrill, outside the groove, but invisible, unreachable.... He strove to clamber up the glassy sides, only to slip back, realizing the futility of ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... spend a little time and money in hunting for other witnesses among the Titan's crew, and in interviewing Captain Barry, to the end of improving his memory. A few stormy meetings with this huge obstructionist convinced them of the futility of further effort in his direction, and, after finding at the end of a week that every surviving member of the Titan's port watch, as well as a few of the other, had been induced to sign for Cape voyages, or had otherwise disappeared, they decided to give the story told by Rowland to the press ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... is always brought to recognize the futility of revenge," murmured Hippy with sad gentleness. "Let us agree to forget the bitter past, Reddy, and turn our faces toward the glorious future. I might also add that it doesn't pay to take up another's grievances. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... in the list of grand operas and not given were "Crispino e la Comare," "Siberia," "Lohengrin," "I Puritani," "Meistersinger," and "Le Prophte." Most of them were easily spared, especially the two Wagnerian operas, the futility of which in French must have been obvious after Mr. Hammerstein had admitted the failure of his French singers to ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... outlook on the world remained that of a genial pessimist, a type of man common enough in our day. He seemed to find a pleasure in urbanely mocking at his own futility. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... had come perilously near to the borderland beyond which are gibbering, moving things: that he had stood upon the frontier of insanity; and realizing the futility of such reflections, he struggled to banish them from his mind, for his mind was not yet healed—and he must be whole, be sane, if he would take part in the work, which, now, strangers were doing, whilst he—whilst ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... not, we who live in this world to-day find we must either devote a considerable amount of our attention to getting and keeping money, and shape our activities—or, if you will, distort them—with a constant reference to that process, or we must accept futility. Whatever powers men want to exercise, whatever service they wish to do, it is a preliminary condition for most of them that they must, by earning something or selling something, achieve opportunity. If they cannot turn their gift into some saleable thing or get some propertied man ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... consummation. Internally, the sublimity of space in the cupola had been superseded by another kind of infinity in the prolongation of the nave; externally, the spherical surface had been proved, by the futility of Arabian efforts, incapable of decoration; its majesty depended on its simplicity, and its simplicity and leading forms were alike discordant with the rich rigidity of the body of the building. The campanile became, therefore, principal and central; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that was to be the guiding motive for his life for the next few months, to fight the thing of his own creating to a finish. But with the resolution newly made he saw the futility of it. He might fight, would fight, but nothing could restore to Dick Livingstone the place he had made for himself in the world. He might be saved from his past, but he could not be given ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... saints are usually bitter. In her rival's missions Jeanne refused to see anything but folly and futility. Nevertheless it was not for her to deny the possibility of the white lady's visitations; for to Jeanne herself did there not descend every day as many saints, angels and archangels as were ever painted on ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of pity and remorse, he forgot all else save the stricken Beatrice, and what, in her anger, she had confessed to Patricia. The rapidly succeeding incidents of that day and night had unnerved him, also. He was suddenly convinced of the futility of winning the love and confidence of Patricia, and, with an impulse born, he could not have told when, or how, or why, he bent forward quickly and touched his ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to my great regret to agree with them on one point, and to admit that one of their victims at least gives an appearance of justice to their reprobation and to their calumnies. The angel of kindness himself would hide his face in presence of this complete specimen of dissipation, of turbulence, of futility, and finally of worldly extravagance that bears the name of Countess de Palme, and the nickname of the Little Countess; a rather ill-fitting nickname, by the way, for the lady is not small, but ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... turned to him, fighting back some things, taking on other things. He gazed at the care-worn, rugged face—face of a worker and a dreamer, reading in those lines the story of that life, seeing more clearly than he had ever seen before the beauty and futility of it. Here was the idealist, the man who would give his whole lifetime to a dream he had dreamed. He loved his father very tenderly as he looked at him, read ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... over an hour in which to contemplate your total extinction, an extinction which will remove from my path the one great obstacle to my domination of the world. I hope you will enjoy your remaining moments. In order to help you to enjoy them, and to realize the futility of human endeavor, I have placed the key of your shackles on the floor here in plain sight, but, alas, out of your reach. I would like to stay and watch your struggle, to see the self-control on which you pride yourself ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... figure of Greed looks back on the earth, the mass in his hands suggesting the futility of worldly possessions. Next is a group of Faith, wherein a patriarch holds forth to the woman the hope of immortality, with a scarab, ancient symbol of renewed life. Then comes a man of Sorrow, as the woman with him falls into her last Slumber. These are about to be drawn into oblivion by ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the Extremists saw their opportunity to pour ridicule on the new Councils and preach once more the futility of constitutional agitation. The Indian National Congress, overshadowed for a time by the new Councils, began to recover its popularity, and though the split which had taken place at Surat between ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images; it is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative truth to ink sketch, so that it might produce such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often been more successful in ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... making my own art seem inferior to hers. I talked so long about the insignificant part played by painting on the whole—talked so long about it, and invented so many reasons to prove what I said, that one fine day I found myself convinced of its futility. So all you had to do was to breathe on a ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... clean establishment of well-ordered life. She had lifted a lazy Chinaman into a reasonable specimen of comparative energy, and saw to it that meals were well and carefully served, and partaken of at regular hours by men who quickly discovered the futility ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Realizing the futility of these sporadic efforts at escape, Lieutenant McClure decided to wait until one o'clock for another supreme effort. It would be high tide at noon and he decided to make the great effort shortly thereafter on the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... around it. If it failed, would not they fail? Was not this angry beating rain, this dull spiritless drizzle, this wild war of air and earth, but foretaste and prophecy of ruin and discouragement, of the utter futility of striving? But if his own despair was great his pain at the plight of Zora made it almost unbearable. He did not see her in these seven days. He pictured her huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin with worse than no companions. Ah! the swamp, the cruel swamp! It was ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... out the extreme futility of his behaviour, lest he should miss the peculiar irony of it. For when her fright and the cause of her fright were gone Desmond resented Nicky's having married her. She didn't really want anybody to marry her, and nobody but Nicky would have ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... them had sought to bring their feud forcibly to an end in the Law Courts, the Anglo-Saxon peoples had had no cause to complain of any lack of effort on their part to be entertaining. The upshot of the law proceedings had been that the Court, with a futility almost fatuous, had ordered the duchess to return to her husband, and, what was far more important, had given the custody of their little daughter of twelve, Lady Marion Ricksborough, ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... lawyers do not share the belief that the outbreak of the World War and its, in many ways, lawless and atrocious conduct have proved the futility of the work of the Hague Conferences. Throughout these anxious years we have upheld the opinion that the progress initiated at the Hague has by no means been swept away by the attitude of lawlessness deliberately—'because necessity knows no law'—taken up ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. From the Latin mens, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... suggestions and innuendoes and hints. If ever any man wants to be anything in my life, he will speak plainly and say what he wants and thinks and hopes and intends and feels in not more than two-syllable English. I learned my lesson about the futility of building your house of dreams on a foundation of sand. Next time I erect a dream house, it is going to have a proper foundation of solid granite. And that may seem a queer thing for me to say when you know that ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... his craft. Insight into the physiological basis of his life-work can save the artist, it seems, from those periods of black despair which he once used to employ in running his head against a concrete wall, and raging impotently because he could not butt through. Now, instead of laying his futility to a mysteriously malignant fate, or to the persecution of secret enemies, he is likely to throw over stimulants and late hours and take to the open road, the closed squash-court, and the sleeping-porch. And presently armies cannot withhold ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Jack saw the futility of further pleading. The officer was unquestionably right. Such scenes as Rosedale had witnessed would end in the desertion of the rural regions of the Confederacy. At Mrs. Atterbury's urgent intercession ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... gesture was the turning-point of existence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden again in the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mien had fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... no hope of inducing Mrs. Lancaster to—to change?" he said at last. Knowing Mrs. Lancaster as he did, he recognised the futility of the question. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... to build a parallel railroad or another horse-car line on the next street, or to lay down another set of gas pipes in the same block. Almost from the first some students of the subject saw the wastefulness and futility of this kind of competition, and nearly a half century later the public reluctantly came to this view. Still, sad to relate, the same history had to be repeated in regard to the telegraph and telephone industry, and in some quarters the ultimate outcome is not yet recognized. The Interstate ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... voice replying to some inquiry, "No, he hain't been here." The question so answered, he guessed, had come from Brent seeking to locate him and confer with him as he came along the road between Coal City and Viper. He thought very grimly and with bitter futility of the force waiting so near and so eagerly keyed to action under O'Keefe, which one minute of private speech would launch into a hurricane effectiveness. In mad moments he had even tried to break the chain between the steel ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... and carve if we can, and give honors to those who do, and this is well. This commandment is founded on the fallacy that graven images are gods, whatever that is. The command adds nothing to our happiness, nor does it shape our conduct, nor influence our habits. Everybody knows and admits its futility, yet we are unable to eliminate it from our theological system. It is ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... and equally vehement special pleading on behalf of the claims of humanity and social reform, as I saw them. I find the thing provocative of smiles now, but I was terribly in earnest then, or thought so, and had realized nothing of the absolute futility of pitting temperament against temperament, reason against conviction, argument against ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... may be said to choose imperfect rimes deliberately, both as a fresh means of securing variety and avoiding the monotony of hackneyed rimes, and also as a means of subtly suggesting the imperfection and futility of life. A few famous examples, defensible and indefensible, are: Wordsworth's robin: sobbing, sullen: pulling; Tennyson's with her: together, valleys: lilies; Keats's youths: soothe, pulse: culls; Swinburne's lose him: bosom: blossom. Keats and Rossetti are noted ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Fort Yamhill. The men, inspired by the urgency of our situation, marched more than forty miles a day, accomplishing the whole distance in so short a period, that I doubt if the record has ever been beaten. When this reinforcement arrived, the Indians saw the futility of further demonstrations against their agent, who they seemed to think was responsible for the insufficiency of food, and managed to exist with the slender rations we could spare and such indifferent food as they could pick up, until the Indian Department succeeded in getting up its ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... also another pair of symbols describing the futility of the wicked. The wicked is "as a bowing wall." The wall is out of perpendicular, out of conformity with the truth of the plumb-line, and it will assuredly topple into ruin. So is it with the wicked: ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... XI. 15, 16, also undated, seems, like the last passage, best explained as delivered by Jeremiah while he watched during the close of Josiah's reign the hardening of the people's trust in their religious institutions and felt its futility; or alternatively when that futility was exposed by the defeat at Megiddo. It has, however, been woven by some hand or other into a passage reflecting the revival of the Baal-worship under Jehoiakim (verse 17; its connection ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Francis of Assisi nor Bacon of Verulam could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-century ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as seventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francis died in 1226 at Assisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino some two hundred kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had not begun. Four hundred years seem long for the human ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... thus apparent that when the Germans practically demanded, as a price of their abstention from indiscriminate submarine warfare, that Mr. Wilson should move against Great Britain in the matter of the blockade, they realized the futility of any such step, and that what they really expected to obtain was the presidential mediation for peace. President Wilson at once began to move in this direction. On May 27th, three weeks after the Sussex "pledge," he made an address in Washington before the League to Enforce ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... The war brought new visions of peace, and developed to a certain extent a recognition of the rights of nations and an interest in one another's welfare. There was an advance in the theory at least of international justice. Also the world was shocked with the terror of war as well as its futility and terrible waste. While national selfishness was not eradicated, it was in a measure subdued, and a feeling of co-operation started which eventually will result in unity of feeling, thought, and action. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... purchased, as the fair is growing, and they should not be governed solely by our present demands. Secretary Shaffer touched briefly on the weather of last summer, the acreage and yield of crops, the demonstration of the futility of trying to acclimatize Southern seed-corn in the North, and the appointment of a State entomologist. He thought the State should assist the society in distributing its publications. The improvement of the Mississippi river was briefly handled. The state of the corn during ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... inches, long, slender, beautifully sculptured, and forever reaching out in front for whatever long-armed beetles most desire. And his song, as he climbed over me, was squeaky and sawlike, and as he walked he doddered, head trembling as an old man's shakes in final acquiescence in the futility of life. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... our peoples from the catastrophe of a nuclear holocaust, free nations must maintain countervailing military power to persuade the Communists of the futility of seeking their ends through aggression. If Communist rulers understand that America's response to aggression will be swift and decisive—that never shall we buy peace at the expense of honor or faith—they will be powerfully deterred from launching ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... convinced Ned of the utter futility of breasting such a current. As he ceased struggling, and allowed himself to drift at will, he saw the log bearing down upon him. It had swung clear around after capsizing the canoe, and was shooting along at a rapid pace, as though to make up for ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... governed by what the Greeks called a sense of measure, instead of yielding to his native impetuosity and becoming an a-thousand-fold-greater-Blake; and illustrating, to the delight of active and short-winded intelligences, and the stupefaction of slow and dull ones, the futility of eccentricity and the frivolity of passion when unseconded by constancy of character and labour. For futile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... has often plundered the subjects. The oaths enabled them to deceive each other. Every absurdity in religion, and all tyrannical institutions, have been patched, buttressed, and reinforced by oaths; and yet the history of the world shows the utter futility of putting in the coffin of an oath the political and religious aspirations ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... and with an instinctive sense of the futility of theological controversies, the English people have long kept the enemy at bay by passive repugnance. To the well-conditioned English layman the religion in which he has been educated is part of the law of the land; the truth of it is assumed in the first principles ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the actual condition of the rural church in many parts of the country all show the futility of denominational competition in maintaining two or three churches where only one is needed or can be supported. Furthermore, the present generation of young married people who desire the best religious influences for their children ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... in the international peace propaganda illuminates this point. Not long ago a meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, to forward peace among nations broke up in great disorder. Thousands of people who hate the waste and futility of war as much as any of the orators of that evening were filled with an unholy glee. They chuckled with delight at the idea of a riot in a peace meeting. Though it would have seemed perverse to the ordinary pacificist, this sentiment sprang ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Rainscourt, who, stunned by the condition of his daughter, the futility and blindness of his measures, and the unexpected promulgation of his guilt, offered no resistance. "Had you made your communication yesterday, sir, this would not have happened. I surrender myself up to justice. You have no objection to ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... futility of attempting to smash through the German lines without an adequate supply of high-explosive shells with which to destroy the heavy wire entanglements. Moreover, in maintaining a curtain of fire between the German lines and potential reenforcements, it ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... it slid along the rough floor a little distance and overturned with a crash. Calumet cursed. He was minded to take the chair up and hurl it down again, so vengeful was the temper he was in, but his second sober sense urged upon him the futility of attacking inanimate things and he contented himself with snarling at it. He stood silent for a moment, a hope in his heart that his father, alarmed over the sudden commotion, would come to investigate, and a wave of sardonic ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that, Mr. Ford," was the unyielding reply. "But granting it to be the fact, don't you see the absolute futility of asking for thirty-five millions additional capital ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Was it then really God's own will, he asked himself, that he should become actually purged from sin and thereby be saved? Was not the way to hell or the way to heaven already fixed for him immutably in God's will and decree, by which everything is determined and preordained? And did not the very futility of his own endeavours hitherto prove that it was the former fate that hung over him? He was in danger of going utterly astray in his conception of such a God. Expressions in the Bible such as those which speak of serving Him with fear became to him intolerable and hateful. He was seized at times ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... and colossal ugliness of rudimentary animals, or of abortions, of everything hurried untimely into existence: machines, sheds, bridges, trams, motor-cars: not one line corrected, not one angle smoothed, for the sake of the eye, of the nerves of the spectator. And all of it, both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality (let alone the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant centuries) expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a scurry along the crowded ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... demonstration of futility," the gray man said, his hard voice becoming harder, "but I will permit no more foolishness. Now I will introduce myself. I am known as Roger. You probably have heard nothing of me yet but you will—if you live. Whether or not you two live depends solely upon yourselves. Being something of a ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... myself that I had not been seen distinctly; I attempted to deny it. A deep flush suffused my face and I felt the futility of ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... the hope of something 'turning up,' he was still working busily for Johnson's Museum, and still trying to bring Creech to make a settlement. At last, however, out of all patience with his publisher, and recognising the futility of his hopes of preferment, he had resolved early in December to leave Edinburgh, when he was compelled to stay against his will. A double accident befell him; he was introduced to a Mrs. Maclehose, and three days afterwards, through the carelessness of a drunken coachman, he was thrown ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Christianity is the only religion possible for twentieth century men. But the words of the text lend themselves to a wider application, and clothe in a picturesque garb the universal truth that the experience of godless men proves the futility of their objects of trust, when compared with that of him whose refuge is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... be raised for me; I had left behind me two who would prevent that,—in that, my worst foes were my best friends. If I had any relatives who cared for me enough to pursue me, I rejoiced in at least one sister on whose cunning, if not good sense, I could rely, to convince them of the futility of such efforts,—one friend whose fears would be ingenious and busy to put the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... creeping upon him. His disastrous want of vulgar common sense had utterly betrayed him. He had talked of war, he had talked of all the strength and irrational violence of men, of their insatiable aggressions, their tireless futility of conflict. He had filled the whole moon world with this impression of our race, and then I think it is plain that he made the most fatal admission that upon himself alone hung the possibility—at least for a long time—of any further men reaching the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... time, there flashed across me, the memory that the sun, with its system of planets, was, and had been, traveling through space at an incredible speed. Abruptly, the question rose—Where? For a very great time, I pondered this matter; but, finally, with a certain sense of the futility of my puzzlings, I let my thoughts wander to other things. I grew to wondering, how much longer the house would stand. Also, I queried, to myself, whether I should be doomed to stay, bodiless, upon the earth, through the dark-time that I knew was coming. From these thoughts, I ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... (p. ix), the author speaks of the futility of prose translations of poetry, and of the inadequacy of modern English media for translating the spirit of the poetry. Finally he adopts a line which he hopes will 'fulfil the needs and follow closely the ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... for creation is strikingly proved by the prolific output of the Arts. Year after year, as we whirl through space on our mysterious destiny, undeterred by apparent futility, the primal instinct for the visualization of dreams steadily persists. Good or bad, useful or useless, it must be satisfied. It amounts to a law, like the attraction of the sexes. Discouraged in ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... nothing human is perfect, and that to accomplish one thing is only to reveal another thing which needs to be done. There must be perpetual readjustment, and reconsideration. What was done yesterday must be done over again to-day in a somewhat different way. But all this does not prove the futility of effort. It only proves that the effort must be unceasing, and that it must be more and more ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... this restraint, according to Polybius, was, the unwillingness of the Carthaginians to let the Romans have any knowledge of the countries which lay more to the south, in order that this enterprising people might not hear of their futility. Polyb. l. iii. p. 247. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... were doomed to the double stigma of failure in accomplishment and futility in aim—but every Irish heart went out to them, for all that, for were they not our own ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... they could maintain themselves, without making any provision for implements of husbandry, mechanics' tools, &c. &c. without which they would all perish, even without the help of a pestiferous climate. But yet the table shows at one view the utter futility of the whole scheme of African Colonization. Slavery can no more be removed by these means than the waters of the Mississippi can be exhausted by steam engines. And the removal of slavery is the great consummation to which all benevolent efforts for benefitting the African race in this country, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... works, most of the characters are either altogether bad or worthless and the others very largely weak or absurd, so that the impression of human life which the reader apparently ought to carry away is that of a hopeless chaos of selfishness, hypocrisy, and futility. One word, which has often been applied to Thackeray, best expresses his attitude—disillusionment. The last sentences of 'Vanity Fair' are characteristic: 'Oh! Vanitas Vanitatum! which, of us is happy in this ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Baroness Nairn "stooped," the Shepherd stood up "to conquer." Both adhered to the dictates of nature, and in both cases the result was the same; nor could the most marked inconveniences which circumstances imposed hinder that result. A time comes when false things shew their futility, and things depending upon truth assert their supremacy. The difference between the authoress and the author lay in those external circumstances of station and position which could not long, much less always, be of avail. Their minds were directed by a power of nature to do essentially ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... efficiency. She became acquainted with some of the girls, and changed to a better boarding house. She still cried over the wooh-wooh and the little garments, but she did not cry so often, nor did she buy so many headache tablets. She was learning the futility of grief and the wisdom of turning her back upon sorrow when she could. The sight of a two-year-old baby boy would still bring tears to her eyes, and she could not sit through a picture show that had scenes of children ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... at his desk, and took up his pen to resume his manuscript. "All evils come from not following Right Reason and the Law of Nature." He wrote on for hours, pausing from time to time to select his Latin phrases. Suddenly a hollow sense of the futility of his words, of Reason, of Nature, of everything, overcame him. What was this dreadful void at his breast? He leaned his tired, aching head on his desk and sobbed, as little Daniel had never ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... defeat in the midst of success would be borne in upon them. The barbarians of trade would give way, as had the barbarians of feudal war. This heaving, moaning city, blessedly quiet tonight, would learn its lesson of futility. His eyes that had been long searching the dark were opened now, and he could bide his few years of life in peace. He had labored too long in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... one man's indifference to duty the report of the Consuls would have been published in London at a time when all England was shaken with the revelations made by Miss Hobhouse and the agitation of the pro-Boers was at its height, then one cannot help realising the futility of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... and Mrs. Bryce turned to her book, with a sense of irritated futility which her only child always aroused in her. But the party soon faded from her mind, save when shrill shouts from the lawn below ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... Lap and lead of the valve, meaning of. Large vessels have least proportionate resistance. Latent heat, definition of. Latta's steam fire engine. Lavagrian, expansion valve by. Lead and lap of the valve, meaning of. Lead of the valve, benefits of. Lever, futility of plans for deriving power from a lever. Lifting apparatus for screw propeller. Limits of elasticity. Links, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... but unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour better than himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may be remembered by those who knew him—and also a few future historians of the futility of things in general—as the man who first made known to Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Cezanne. An odd fish, indeed, was this same Julien ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... question, and I am sure that very many well-meaning people would make the wrong one. They would answer POVERTY, when they ought to answer SLAVERY. Face to face every day with the shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages, and painfully conscious of the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means of charity, private or public, they would answer unhesitatingly that they stand ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... University merely reflected the very practical character of the people. In contemplating the events of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their influence on English civilisation, we are reminded once more of the futility of certain modern aspirations. No amount of University Commissions, nor of well-meant reforms, will change the nature of Englishmen. It is impossible, by distributions of University prizes and professorships, to attract into the career of ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... sentinel who paced the hacienda road gave evidence that, despite their apparent carelessness, they had by no means relaxed their vigilance. A round of the premises convinced Alaire that the place was effectually guarded, and showed her the futility of trying to slip away. She realized, too, that even if she managed to do so, her plight would be little better. For how could she hope to cover the hundred miles between La Feria and the Rio Grande when every peon ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... flowing in the atmosphere of the generation that is still in possession. The talk of a political drawing-room is stale and shrill, an old man in his seclusion is a useless encumbrance, an easy-going and conventional couple are living without plan or purpose—all the futility of these people is obvious to an onlooker from the moment when their sons and daughters break in upon them. It was time for the new generation to appear—and behold it appearing in lively strength. Tolstoy, with ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... English," said he. "You'd understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can't even laugh at such an insignificant detail as a Papist's prejudices. But I wish I were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could create me a duke and ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... felt he had scored a point; when to his amazement he saw the man coming toward him, and now on snow-shoes. He plunged forward, and relentlessly "Scotty" followed. Hour after hour the chase continued, until Fisher realized, at length, the futility of it all; and thoroughly exhausted, crouched shivering in the snow, waiting for the punishment that lay in the coils of the long black ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... indomitable spirits some men have got. As well might they have attempted to stop the course of time! They succeeded, however, in causing vexatious delays, and, in July, had the audacity to fling a wreck in the very teeth of the builders, as if to taunt them with the futility of their labours. ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... a Heyst fattened by years of private and public rapines, the murderer of Morrison, the swindler of many shareholders, a wonderful mixture of craft and impudence, of deep purposes and simple wiles, of mystery and futility. In this exercise of his natural function Schomberg revived, the colour coming back to his face, loquacious, florid, eager, his manliness set off by ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... for destroyer and submarine attack. A possible exception is the island of Polillo, twenty miles east of the eastern coast of Luzon; and in many ways Polillo seems ideal. The practical difficulties are so great, however, the status of the islands in our national policy is so ill defined, and the futility of strengthening it, unless Guam be adequately strengthened also, is so apparent, that the question has been hardly even mooted. Polillo made impregnable, with Guam defenseless, supported by an undefended line of communications several thousand miles long to the main country, would in case ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Rathke, he strove to substitute for the then dominant fantastic doctrines of the homologies of the cranial elements advocated by Owen, sounder views based on embryological evidence. He exposed the futility of attempting to regard the skull as a series of segments, in each of which might be recognised all the several parts of a vertebra, and pointed out the errors of trusting to superficial resemblances of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... infuriated Shirley was the fact that she had been at some pains to inform Bryce Cardigan that she loathed him—whereat he had looked her over coolly, grinned a little, and declined to believe her! Then, seemingly as if fate had decreed that her futility should be impressed upon her still further, Bryce Cardigan had been granted an opportunity to save, in a strikingly calm, heroic, and painful manner, her and her uncle from certain and horrible death, thus placing upon Shirley an obligation ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... to rush to the boat, and rejoin his comrades, to set signals, burn bonfires—anything which might possibly call the attention of those on board. Then he considered the futility of such endeavors, and he ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... affection. Indeed, it seemed to me that I had been sitting at that table surrounded by the litter of a desperate fray for days and nights on end. It seemed so, because of the intense weariness of which that interruption had made me aware—the awful disenchantment of a mind realizing suddenly the futility of an enormous task, joined to a bodily fatigue such as no ordinary amount of fairly heavy physical labour could ever account for. I have carried bags of wheat on my back, bent almost double under a ship's deck-beams, from six in the morning till six in the evening ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... without at once interfering with Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general rule, we believe, in the Public Schools of the United States, and hence we have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility and barrenness of which must be evident to every one. Catholics, agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous Protestants, believe that secular education, administered without religion, is not only vain, but exceedingly pernicious; that it is fast undermining the Christian ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Moral Test or a School of Character bear a strong resemblance to the commonplaces of religious consolation which almost any good Christian will offer to the bereaved and afflicted. Any one who has seen an innocent friend slowly tortured to death by some vile disease will know the futility of the Christian defence (for these religious consolations amount theologically to a defence) that pain ennobles the character and "proves" the moral courage of the sufferer.[17] The leading fallacy of the defence that war, or pain, is valuable as a moral test is ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... accompanied, of course, by a falling-off in advertisement value, while a crop of special betting broadsheets sprang up to supply the newly-created want. Under their influence the betting habit became if anything rather wore widely diffused than before. The Duke had possibly overlooked the futility of koepenicking the leaders of the nation with excellently intentioned angel under-studies, while leaving the mass of the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... her for dinner and a little genuine human society much oftener than is convenient to poor Erskine. She has taken a patronizing fancy to her father, the Admiral, who accepts her condescension gratefully as age brings more and more home to him the futility of his social position. She has also, as might have been expected, become an extreme advocate of socialism; and indeed, being in a great hurry for the new order of things, looks on me as a lukewarm disciple because I do not propose to interfere with the slowly grinding mill of Evolution, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had not found that a daughter produced that result. On the contrary, Lesley had been for many years a sort of bone of contention between himself and his wife; and he had retained a cynical sense of the futility of such conventional utterances, which were every day ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... weeks at the academy I got my first lesson in the futility of non-resistance, so that all the lessons of my life in favour of this doctrine were, of a sudden, rendered vain. We were going home in the afternoon, gay and happy, Jack Warder to take supper with me, and to use a boat my aunt had ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... and the buried papers. In his troubled slumbers the Easterner dreamed of pacing along the track counting the ties, and eventually digging in the sand, digging until his very soul ached with the futility of his labor. Waking, he never lost faith in the certainty of finding the place. He now knew the tramp well enough to appreciate that the other had not risked his own life and nearly killed one of his pursuers through sheer bravado, or fear, or personal hatred. Something more potent was beneath ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... that she didn't seem quite sane about it. He understood it, of course. She was broken up by the long strain of her devotion, by his death and by the crash afterward, by the unbearable pathos of him, of his futility, and of the menacing oblivion. You could see that Antigone had parted with her sense of values and distinctions, that she had lost her bearings; she was a creature that drifted blindly on a boundless sea ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... endless spring of gall to me! I am all raw with it—I have to rush out on the street and walk away my passion. I never saw my situation so plainly—the horrible impotence of it! Just see what I struggle against, the utter insane futility of everything I do! Why, I beat my wings in a void, I hammer my ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Heaven knows, I might) I should have trembled, but still hoped and asked for her forgiveness; and yet mine had been a treason in the teeth of love. But let me tell you, madam,' he pursued, with rising irritation, 'where a husband by futility, facility, and ill-timed humours has outwearied his wife's patience, I will suffer neither man nor woman to misjudge her. She is free; the man ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... events, and become Bothwell's wife, it requires no strong effort of the imagination to perceive that the despair might well have come uppermost, and that Mary fully recognised, not only the horror, but the futility and wretched failure into which she had plunged. We do not pretend to believe that there was much to cause remorse in the mind of such a woman in such an age in the death, however brought about, of the miserable Darnley. Mary could have brushed him from ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Montagu-Stuart-Wortley was equally complimentary at the second inspection, and congratulated all ranks on their appearance and smartness, which, considering the state of the trenches, was very creditable. The demonstration was particularly interesting, and proved the futility of the famous German flame projector. As many men as possible were placed in a trench, while the demonstrator, standing at 30 feet away with the machine, turned on the flame. The wind was behind him, and the flame, with a tremendous roar, leapt out about 30 yards. But the noise was the worst ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... speech, however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... from the sitting room upon the side porch she could see the swelling tendrils of the vines that crawled about the trellis, heavy and beady with the gathering moisture. It was one of those cold, drizzly, early April rains that dares you by its seeming futility to come forth and do weaponless battle and then sends you back discomfited and drenched. A woman was coming up the walk bent in a huddle over a bundle which she carried in her arms. Mary Louise gazed searchingly for a moment and then, as the figure would have passed the door, on around to the rear ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... writing in The Sunday Pictorial, refers to the Ministry of Munitions as "a veritable monument of superfluous futility." For ourselves we don't mind futility so long ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various |
