"Gainful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard of casualties. Fingers had been mashed. A hand had been mashed. An arm had been dragged out. Unguarded machinery was, of course, a striking inconsistency, more inexcusable in the hospitals than in hotels or in commercial laundries. For hospitals are not engaged in a gainful pursuit, regardless of all humanitarian considerations. On the contrary, they are not only avowedly philanthropic in aim, but are carried on solely in the cause ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... found herself. "At a time when her floating bulwarks were her whole safeguard against slavery, she could not view without alarm and resentment the warriors who should have manned those bulwarks pursuing a more gainful occupation in American vessels. Our merchant ships were crowded with British seamen, most of them deserters from their ships of war, and all furnished with fraudulent protections to prove them Americans. To us they were not necessary." ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... more than harmlessly, that they are meritoriously employed. "Surely the thanks of mankind are justly paid to those more refined spirits who, superior alike to the seductions of ease, and the temptations of avarice, devote their time and talents to the less gainful labours of increasing the stores of learning or enlarging the boundaries of science; who are engaged in raising the character and condition of society, by improving the liberal arts, and adding to the innocent pleasures or elegant accomplishments of life." Let not the writer ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... covering the entire country and presenting the results of a careful investigation, will furnish our most complete source of information. Here[94] are reported in gainful occupations 12,678 deaf persons over ten years of age, or 38.1 per cent of the number of the deaf over this age.[95] This is somewhat less than the percentage for the general population, which is 50.2. Of the deaf twenty years of age and over, however, the percentage gainfully ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... was of the company that made the Strathcona Horse famous in South Africa—famous for such daring abandon in their charges that the men could hardly be held within bounds of official orders. He is of the very class of men who have forsaken gainful occupations in the West to clamor a hundred-thousand strong for the privilege of fighting to the last ditch for the empire under the rain of death ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... "Nu tekst umraedha at nyju um Vinlandsferdh, thviat su ferdh thikir baedhi godh til fjar ok virdhingar," i. e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for the voyage thither was both gainful ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... with her the warrior to content, Who in that conflict, on that fatal day, With his good hand most gainful succour lent, And slew most paynims in the martial fray. But counter to his hopes the battle went, And his thinned squadrons fled in disarray; Namus, with other Christian captains taken, And his pavilion in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... fat man is always up against it. His figure is half-masted in regretful memory of the proportions he had once, and he is made to mourn. Most sports and many gainful pursuits are closed against him. He cannot play lawn tennis, or, at least according to my observation, he cannot play lawn tennis oftener than once in two weeks. In between games he limps round, stiff ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... son, yea, this for the moment, This, to conquer their word by an oath and to rob, is more gainful. Swear, since the lot of death waits also for him who swears truly. But know thou that Oath has a son, one nameless and handless and footless, Yet without feet he pursues, without hands he seizes, and wholly He shall destroy the race and the house of the man who offendeth. But for the man who ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... so vile an excrement, But with his beams he will thenceforth exhale. The fens and quagmires tithe to him their filth: Forth purest mines he sucks a gainful dross. Green ivy-bushes at the vintner's doors He withers, and devoureth all ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... or even his own ministers. He may thus drag England into a war, and of course this country, against their will. But it is certain they will do everything they can to prevent it; and that in this at least they agree. Though such a war might be gainful to us, yet it is much to be deprecated by us at this time. In all probability, France would be unequal to such a war by sea and by land, and it is not our interest, or even safe for us, that she should be weakened. The great improvements in their constitution, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... hereof, being utterly dismayed, desired to know "What cause there might be, to move him to sink so good a bark of his own, new and strong; and that, by his means, who had been in two so rich and gainful voyages in her with himself heretofore: If his brother, the Master, and the rest of the company [numbering 26] should know of such his fact, he thought ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... I heard a successful young journalist say the other day to a very conscientious young reviewer. "Good work won't get you anything. Play politics, office politics all the while." Doubtless sound advice, this, for any gainful employment. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... able to make these Heathens sensible of the Happiness of a future State, except he now and then mentions some lively carnal Representation, which may quicken their Apprehensions, and make them thirst after such a gainful Exchange; for, were the best Lecture that ever was preach'd by Man, given to an ignorant sort of People, in a more learned Style, than their mean Capacities are able to understand, the Intent would prove ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... proposed, would admit of these itinerants seeing their children once in the year. But to extirpate Gypsey habits, education alone would not be sufficient. Yet as there is no reason to think this people are less susceptible than others, of gainful considerations, a fund might be provided, out of which, twenty pounds should be paid with each boy, on his apprenticeship to some handicraft business, in lieu of finding him with clothes during the term. And ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... A gainful trade, but yet make me great trouble Every body leads, and nobody follows Lady Castlemayne's nose out of joynt Make a man wonder at the good fortune of such a fool Mr. William Pen a Quaker again Run over ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... to strike at Clinton, Congress was busy making up its accounts. One circumstance told for them. There was no longer the same dearth of gold and silver which had embarrassed them so much at the beginning of the war. A gainful commerce was now opened with the West Indies. The French army and the French fleet were here, and hard money with them. Louis-d'ors and livres and Spanish dollars,—how welcome must their pleasant faces have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... this profession but only a rod and a ferula. Secondly, others who are able, use it only as a passage to better preferment to patch the rents in their present fortune, till they can provide a new one, and betake themselves to some more gainful calling. Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their best with the miserable reward which in some places they receive, being masters to their children and slaves to their parents. Fourthly, being grown rich, they grow ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... annual expense of food and raiment in rearing a child may be stated at about 8, 9, or 10 dollars; and the age at which it begins to be gainful to its owner about 9 or ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... mountings of his rifle. The fine days he professed to regard with keen suspicion as weather breeders, when it was imprudent to go far from home, especially in the direction of the Crenshaw timber lands, which for years had been the scene of all his gainful industry, and where he seemed to think nature ready to assume her most sinister aspect. Again in the early spring, when the young oak leaves were the size of squirrel's ears and the whippoorwills began calling ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Massachusetts stood where they could be battered from the water. They had a commerce which might be molested in every sea by English cruisers. Neither befriended nor interfered with, they might have been able to defend themselves against the corsairs of Barbary in the resorts of their most gainful trade; but England had given them notice, that if they were stubborn that commerce would be dismissed from her protection, and in the circumstances such a notice threatened more than a mere abstinence from aid. The Indian war had emptied ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... rudiments of which were first framed in 1650[e], with a narrow partial view: being intended to mortify the sugar islands, which were disaffected to the parliament and still held out for Charles II, by stopping the gainful trade which they then carried on with the Dutch[f]; and at the same time to clip the wings of those our opulent and aspiring neighbours. This prohibited all ships of foreign nations from trading with any English plantations without licence from the council of state. In 1651[g] the prohibition ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... career depended upon each task set for you. If you mean to go to college for the principal purpose of idling around, wearing a small cap and good clothes, and being the adoration of your mother and your sisters on your vacation, you had a good deal better be at work at some gainful occupation. College is not helping you if that is what you are doing. It is ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... ironworks. It was not yet the practice to employ coal for the purpose of smelting; and the manufacturers of Kent and Sussex had much difficulty in procuring timber at a reasonable price. The neighbourhood of Kenmare was then richly wooded; and Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore thither." He looked also for profit from the variegated marbles of adjacent islands. Distant two days' journey over the mountains from the nearest English, Petty's English settlement of Kenmare withstood all surrounding dangers, and in 1688, a year after ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... can not but wish that with his expressed desire for "fair play" and his policy of "a square deal" it had occurred to the President that, if five million American women are employed in gainful occupations, every principle of justice would demand that they should be enfranchised to enable them to secure legislation for their own protection. In all governments a subject class is always at a disadvantage and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... were suffered, without fear of punishment, to keep the numbers of their regiments incomplete, in order that they might appropriate the pay of the vacancies; while the men, independent and undisciplined, were allowed to spend their time in the pursuit of some gainful trade or peaceful occupation, instead of practising military exercises. The disputes concerning the appointment of a captain-general had impeded any fresh levies, the recruits refusing to take the oath to the States except in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... once, when she talked of the increase in his income. "He works in the dark, and he is in luck if he happens to do any good. In waging his battle with mysterious nature, he only unfits himself by seeking gain. In the same way, to a lesser degree, the law and the ministry should not be gainful professions. When the question of personal gain and advancement comes in, the frail human being succumbs to selfishness, and then to error. Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, the teacher should be content to minister to human needs. The professions ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sailors, however, fell into the snare so often fatal to the explorers of that age. In the words of a later writer, whose vigorous language seemed to have been borrowed from some contemporary chronicler, the captains, "being more intent on a gainful voyage than the relief of the colony, ran in chase of prizes; till at last one of them, meeting two ships of war, was, after a bloody fight, overcome, boarded and rifled. In this maimed, ransacked, and ragged condition she returned to England in a month's time; and ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Ordinary travel goes by steam; does it not seem a little hard that thought should have to journey still in the ancient fashion? And so far as the mass of readers is concerned, this appetite for fast thinking and reckless generalization is a cheerful token: it is a gainful substitute for that hiding away from the blaze of intellect, that terror of large results in thought, which has harbored in the Vatican since the days of Galileo, and even in Protestant lands may sometimes be found, like the graveyard, in the neighborhood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not be so hopeful as to call it a comfort yet," she said, "too vague is its shape for that. It is a faint plan which I have built on my knowledge of Gilli's nature. As well as I, you know that he cares for nothing but what is gainful for him. Now if I could manage to make myself so ugly that no chief would care to make offers for me... is it not likely that my father would cease to value me and be even glad to get rid of me, to you? I would disfigure myself in no such way ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... his force; he dreaded also that his adherents, being for the most part tradesmen and artisans, would become impatient of this interruption of their gainful occupations and disheartened by these continual scenes of carnage. He sent missives, therefore, in all haste to Don Fadrique de Toledo, who commanded the Christian forces on the frontier, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Bureau classes the gainful occupations of the people in four great divisions: (1) Agriculture. (2) Professional and Personal Service. (3) Trade and Transportation. (4) Manufacturing, Mining, and Mechanical Industries. The ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker |
