"Pointless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours about dairying, interspersed with pointless anecdotes of the man who had lived there before us. I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the very inaccessibility of President Wilson. He does not waste time on non-essentials, on useless polite conversation or pointless discussion. This may add to his ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Berrien, were an altogether higher and abler class of men than those with whom Mr. Adams had his frequent wrangles in the House. The weapons which he so successfully employed against the young "fire-eaters" would have proved pointless and valueless in a contest with any one of the eminent men who in that long period gave character to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the meaning of human life, he wondered? Were men and women created to suffer, to bear crosses which were not of their own making, to suffer injustices which seemed pointless?... ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... upon personal effect, upon our magnificence and our margins cannot be greatly less than forty-five thousand pounds. I walk about our house and gardens, I take one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some large pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds, and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don't laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the street tolerate us.... It has an effect of ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... particular version was sung to me by Capt. R.W. Robertson. It differs but slightly from the version which I originally learnt from Sir Walter Runciman. Very few of the words were printable, and old sailors who read my version will no doubt chuckle over the somewhat pointless continuation of the verses concerning Kitty Carson and Polly Riddle. They will, of course, see the point of my having supplied a Chopinesque accompaniment to ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... so thoroughly outlandish and so devoid of fine expressions that we are inclined to believe it more accurate than the poetic and musical dialects which it is the fashion to impose upon our credulity. But it must be confessed that, with only his own rude and pointless patois in which to express himself, the Southern cracker becomes painfully devoid of interest, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... that here in this tiny barren islet was brought the casual news of the death of Jesus Christ to the then ruler of the Roman world! Surely an historical incident such as this is of more value than all the hazy legends or pointless miracles of St Januarius or of San Costanzo, upon which the imagination of the islanders has been ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... a study. Unable to speak, and her hands trembling with rage, she gave the girl one glance of hatred, and then tried to eat; and Viveash, who had the sense to do so, at once began telling her some idiotic and pointless story about himself when he sang in a cathedral choir ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... as well get it straight, Stan. The government needs you and it's pointless for you to say that need is unconstitutional or anything. Bring it up and it won't be long. When survival is outside the rules, ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... of emotional dreaming, and if by chance we passed a girl in a governess cart, or some farmer's daughter walking to the station, we became alertly silent or obstreperously indifferent to her. For might she not be just that one exception to the banal decency, the sickly pointless conventionality, the sham modesty of the times ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... intimation at his bank that he was shortly to be made a cashier. He glowed with the prospect. His conversation that evening was of the brightest. The poisoned shafts of Miss Hallard's satire met the armoured resistance of his high spirits. They fell—pointless and unavailing—from his unbounded faith in himself. A man who, after a comparatively few years' service in a bank, is deemed fitted for the responsible duties of a cashier, is qualified to express an opinion, even on art. Mr. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... lighting up his face with his perfect teeth, I thought with an immense admiration of the unpolished and loose-hung Stires amid the eternal smell of tar and dust. It was a mere discussion of her hair, incoherent and pointless enough. No scandal, even from Schneider. There had been some sense, of a dirty sort, in his talk to me; but more ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... characteristic, in short, what was most human, and there is enough residuum for a horde of other miners. But I warn them that the dross is considerable. Ibn Khallikan's leniency to trivialities is incorrigible, and his pages are filled with pointless anecdotes, dull sayings, and poetry whose only recommendation is its richness in the laboured conceits that he loved. So much did he esteem them that were, say, all English intellectual effort in every direction at his disposal ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... tries when he wishes to reduce an unknown compound to its constituents. To the chemically uneducated, this may appear to be a fumbling, hit or miss, kind of procedure. The personnel man, too, has his series of techniques. It may appear to be no more than random, pointless conversation. ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... establishment at which the dreadful gras-double might have appeared at the table d'hote, as it had done at Narbonne. Nevertheless I was glad to get back to it; and nevertheless too—and this is the moral of my simple anecdote—my pointless little walk (I don't speak of the pavement) suffuses itself, as I look back upon it, with a romantic tone. And in relation to the inn I suppose I had better mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... his extreme anguish at our having come to terms with the celebrated Robert Cruikshank in the supplying the designs of the caricatures in 'Figaro.' Seymour has been venting his rage in a manner as pointless as it is splenetic, and we are sorry for him. He ought, however, to feel, that notwithstanding our friendly wish to bring him forward, which we have done in an eminent degree, we must engage first-rate ability when public patronage is bestowed ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... miles of the way, though each one manfully did his best to be lively, a sense of loss made their fun flat and pointless. Royal's tear-away tongue, his brothers' racket, Joe's racy talk, Uncle Eb's kind, dark face, and more than all, Doc's companionship, which was as tonic to the hearts of those who ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... ill-will. He was bruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness now the reasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool. Disdain, seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat still clinging to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitiful creature of pretence in all this clamant universe. Good heavens! what was there for him to despise ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... punishments for acts which he had himself done. The ground for believing that Neville had any such purpose when he wrote the book is too slight to be accepted. In 1668 the author had no call to convey a lesson in government to his countrymen by any means so frankly vulgar and pointless as the "Isle of Pines." If Neville had intended such a political object, a phrase would have sufficed to indicate it. No such key can be found in the text, and there is nothing to show that, politician as he was, he realized that such an intimation ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... the merciful interruption. "Your few-at-a-time proposal is pointless anyhow," he said. "In the course of those weeks, we would pass ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... you are!' I observed, with pointless cordiality, for I was bound I should do nothing to help him out. If he were, indeed, here running errands for my rival, he might have a fair field, but certainly ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the human mind. They give me the same pleasure as I derive from a good piece of reasoning or a mathematical problem or an achievement of engineering. Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and incomprehensible. I am at home with the works of man; if I choose to set my mind to it, I can understand anything that any man has made or thought. That is why I always travel by Tube, never by bus if I can possibly help it. For, travelling by bus, one can't avoid seeing, even in London, a few ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... calmness, and fixed a steady, menacing gaze upon the brute. The tiger sprang furiously upon his intended victim, who, with extraordinary boldness and rapidity, thrust his left fist into the gaping jaws, and at the same moment, with his keen, pointless dagger, ripped up the breast to the very heart. In less than a minute the tiger lay dead at his conqueror's feet. The ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... diffuse or vague or pointless, both his road and the end of it are always in view."—New York ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... authors who are as pointless as they are inexhaustible in their literary resources. They measure knowledge by bulk, as it lies in the rude block, without symmetry, without design. How many commentators are there on the classics, how many on Holy Scripture, from whom we rise up, wondering ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and ducked his head. Ah, the listless wit of the rich! It may be pointless, but how laughable is ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... perform'd, if still I thee adore, "Grant my sure weapon what I wish to touch." The god consented, what he could he gave,— The boar was struck, but struck without a wound: Diana from the flying weapon snatch'd The steely head, and pointless fell the wood. More chafes the beast, like lightening fierce he burns, Fire from his eyeballs flashes, from his chest Clouds of hot smoke through his wide nostrils roll. Forc'd from the close-drawn string as flies a stone, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the author of some of the most popular stage pieces of his day. Yet his extravaganzas have no wit but that of violence; his rhyming couplets are without polish, and decorated only by forced and often pointless puns. His sentiment had T.W. Robertson's insipidity without its freshness, and restored an element of vulgarity which his predecessor had laboured to eradicate from theatrical tradition. He could draw a "Cockney" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... that she believed and felt in her own heart that every word of her recital was heard by her Creator. Albert had heard prayers and religious exhortations without number; prayers that were incoherent, pointless, vague, or uttered to the hearers instead of God; prayers that contained advice to the Deity galore, but of supplication and thankfulness not a vestige; but never before one that reached his heart and touched his feelings as the strange and piteous supplication uttered by this weird ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... result, but was not conducted with the finesse that Mr. Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy, had intended. Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman, when the moment came for talk, and so palpably were his pointless remarks mere efforts to delay an unpleasant subject, that Blake, always direct bluntly though not ill-naturedly asked him, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the jury to the total want of any direct evidence of the prisoner's guilt. Harvey himself tried to point out the unlikelihood of his being guilty; but he was not a man gifted with dialectic qualities, and his harangue fell pointless on the understandings of the twelve common-place individuals who sat in the jury-box. The judge finally proceeded to sum the evidence, and this he did emphatically against the prisoner—dwelling with much force on the suspicious circumstance of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... epigram from the same book upon the Encomium Moriae, but it is too long and too pointless for your pages. He adds another thing which is more in your way, namely, that a former possessor of the copy of the work then before him had expressed his sense of the value of these "epigrammes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... The words were meaningless, pointless, perhaps, but they stabbed Ruth to the heart. She turned to him, saw him step forward slowly, looking very tall, older than she had ever known him. He had drawn within himself, and there manifested itself his inheritance from his ancestors. He was like his father, but with an even ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... often use, is, or may be, a silent but salutary moral teacher. They all know that however good the eye of a needle may be, if it were rusted and pointless, it would be of little use. Let them also recollect, that though it may posses the finest point and polish in the world, if destitute of the eye, it would be of no use at all. The lesson we wish them to derive from hence, is this; that as it is the eye which holds the ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... particular form of story which may be called, par excellence, the English Anecdote. It always deals with persons of rank and birth, and, except for the exalted nature of the subject itself, is, as far as I can see, absolutely pointless. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... middle-age in men and women; many of them seem to be variations upon the same theme of a love that comes by waiting. Mrs. DUDENEY can handle this situation with unfailing charm. Her confessed comedies are by far the weakest things in the book; there is one of them indeed that seemed to me amazingly pointless. But with this exception I can commend her volume whole-heartedly, and only hope that the author will continue to send out goods of such excellent workmanship, "as per" (whatever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... which was duly jotted down to be passed into the Tribune's archives; and the following morning Tom, doing guard duty with his father, the two Helgersons and a squad of the yard men at the threatened plant, read a pointless editorial in which misstatement of fact and sympathy for the absent and struggling Farleys ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... bad opera, in which her voice was so incongruously conjoined with Nick's and in which Biddy's sweet little pipe had not scrupled still more bewilderingly to mingle? Art might yield to damnation: what commission after all had he ever given it to better him or bother him? If the pointless groan in which Peter exhaled a part of his humiliation had been translated into words, these words would have been as heavily charged with a genuine British mistrust of the uncanny principle as if the poor fellow speaking them had never quitted his island. Several acquired ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... name) was but an indifferent humorist. He was of those who thought that fun could be imparted to a drawing by the simple expedient of grotesque exaggeration of expression; and as a great admirer of Seymour's "Cockney humour," he was frequently pointless and stilted. Personally he was highly popular with the Staff, for he was philosophically happy and jovial, and sang good songs, and was, moreover, greatly sought after at a time when comic artists were few. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... his sword, and standing near, Where furious Ajax plied his ashen spear, Full on the lance a stroke so justly sped, That the broad falchion lopp'd its brazen head; His pointless spear the warrior shakes in vain; The brazen head falls sounding on the plain. Great Ajax saw, and own'd the hand divine; Confessing Jove, and trembling at the sign, Warn'd he retreats. Then swift from all sides pour The hissing brands; ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... antipathy to duelling, made a vain effort to put some distance between them and the king's justice. They were arrested in their flight, brought back to Paris, and perished miserably on the scaffold by the pointless sword of the executioner. Each of these events proved in its degree that Monsieur de Richelieu had very little respect for tradition, and that if he disliked an institution, no matter how time-hallowed and admired by gentlemen, he did away with it in the most uncompromising and arbitrary manner. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... these, as I conceive, necessary digressions, because a discourse on Moses would be pointless without them; at best only a survey of that marvellous and favored legislator from the standpoint of secular history. I would not pull him down from the lofty pedestal whence he has given laws to all successive generations; a man, indeed, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... remember where in the blind pointless ring through which the steamer chugged and wallowed as though it were a superior sort of water beetle and the horizon a circle of its own making, he began to get sufficiently acquainted with his fellow passengers, to understand that they were most of them going abroad in the interest of unrealized ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... acutely ill, and for someone who started fasting while dangerously ill, loss of self control and impulsive eating could prove fatal. Even for those fasting to cure non-life-threatening illnesses it is pointless to go through the effort and discipline of a long fast without carefully establishing a correct diet after the fast ends, or the effort will ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... of submission on their part to their chief, was thought by some who heard it not to have been made in good taste. The joke was just such a joke as the Duchess would be sure to make,—meaning very little but still not altogether pointless. It was levelled rather at her husband than at her husband's colleagues who were present, and was so understood by those who really knew her,—as did Mrs. Finn, and Mr. Warburton, the private secretary. But Sir ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... with his companions for the next twenty minutes; the latter looked at him and he looked at them without knowing much who they were, while the talk went on without much telling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing in particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and short terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places—names which, for our friend, had no great power of evocation. It was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... Lucius, and they seemed as gay as ever, but I saw that she was sometimes puzzled. She said to me one day as we sat together, "I wish you would tell me what this is all about? I do not want to change it, and I am very happy, but isn't it all rather pointless? I believe you have some secret you are keeping from me." She was sitting close beside me, like a child, resting her head on my arm, and she took my ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... fell on the ships of the Achaians. Hector drew near, and the ashen spear of Aias he smote with his great sword, hard by the socket, behind the point, and shore it clean away, and the son of Telamon brandished in his hand no more than a pointless spear, and far from him the head of bronze fell ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... house was very full. I did not play well; I spoke too fast, and perceived it, and could not make myself speak slower—an unpleasant sort of nightmare sensation; besides, I was flat, and dull, and pointless—in short, bad was the sum total. How well Ward plays Joseph Surface! The audience were delightful; I never heard such pleasant shouts of laughter.... My father says perhaps they will bring out "The Star of Seville," which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a way of talking on the platform that is merely negatively good, a way that is fitting enough in general style, but weak. There should be breadth, and strength, and reach. But this does not mean any necessity of sending forth pointless successive sentences over the heads of an audience. A college president recently said, "Our boys declaim a good deal, though they're not so bad as they used to be. It seems to me," he added, "that the idea is to say something to your audience." ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... songs (Northern Oregon and adjacent country) made by Dr. Boas.[248] The majority of his poems, he says, "are songs of love and jealousy, such as are made by Indian women living in the cities, or by rejected lovers." These songs are rather pointless, and do not tell us much about the subject of our inquiry. Here are a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... will not insult her by indiscriminate panegyric or mawkish praise. Her comedy is by no means satisfactory to me. The disadvantage of a petite figure is not, in this department compensated by any high excellencies. Her comedy is generally speaking, rather meagre and unadorned, and in a degree pointless and ineffective.—But her tragedy merits every praise. In richness and variety of tone; in propriety and justness of action and gesture; in picturesque and impressive attitude, in a nervous mellowed modulation; in appropriate deportment—above all in the discriminating delicacy of taste, by which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... interruptions are wanting in the LXX, especially the first throwing of the javelin (xviii. 9-11) and the betrothal to Merab (xviii. 17-19). The insertions are most varied and confusing in the account of the outbreak of the hostility of Saul and of David's flight (chapters xix. xx). Chapter xix. 1-7, a pointless and artificial passage, betrays its later origin by its acquaintance with chapter xvii.; xviii. 29a (LXX) is continued at xix. 8. After Saul's spear-cast David takes flight for the first time, but at verse 11 he is still at home, and makes his escape the second time with the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the articles bearing the stamp of this American house are not equalled by those imported. There is a fine simplicity and boldness of outline about the forms produced here, together with an absence of useless and pointless ornament, which render them at once more pleasing and more useful than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... once, except Chantel, who eyed them leniently, and smiled as at so many absurd children. Kempner—a pale, dogged man, with a pompous white moustache which pouted and bristled while he spoke—rose and delivered a pointless oration. "Ignoring race and creed," he droned, "we ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... they gave her to us a virgin— They lie on her. A light lady! be sure, not alone 20 Clipp'd her an husband first; weak stalk from a garden, a pointless Falchion, a heart did ne'er fully to courage awake. No; to the son's own bed, 'tis said, that father ascended, Vilely; with act impure stain'd the facinorous house. Whether a blind fierce lust in his heart burnt sinfully flaming, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... than one place where whisky was sold; and when at last he drove out of the town, he had but just enough power of self-control to keep himself from swaying about visibly as he sat in his sleigh. He was in boisterous spirits, and greeted every acquaintance he met with some rough jest—pointless but noisy—singing snatches of songs, and flourishing his whip with an air of tipsy bravado. At a small tavern near the sawmill he dismounted for the ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the catalogue of human calamities. But evils take their rank, more from the temper of the mind that suffers them, than from their abstract nature. Upon a man of a hard and insensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often fall pointless and impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who, from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are continually prompted to look on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall, immediately rise again, to pursue ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... Wagner have won for themselves an acceptance that may be called world-wide. And whatever be the verdict on his own plots, there can be no question as to the superiority of the average libretto since his day. No composer dare face the public of the present day with one of the pointless, vapid sets of rhymes, strung together with intervals of bald recitative, that pleased our forefathers, and equally inconceivable is the re-setting of libretti that have served before, in the manner of the eighteenth century ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... idea is as nearly nude as our limited senses and our modern respectability permit. And the idea being what it is, it follows that the play, after the drama once commences, is not only immoral, but also dispiriting and boring, and, to my thinking, inconsequential and pointless. The first act, the exposition, is from beginning to end magnificent: never were the lines on which a drama was to develop more gorgeously, or in more masterly fashion, set forth. Had Wagner seen that Amfortas was ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... depression rested on the faces and the voices of Clan Ratcliffe that evening, as is not unusual with forces on the eve of battle. Their remarks came at longer intervals, and were more pointless and random than usual. There was a want of elasticity in their bearing and tone, partly coming from sympathy with the evident depression of their chief; partly from the portents of the time. The President ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... coronation; the royal sceptre (surmounted by a cross), which the archbishop places in the sovereign's right hand at coronation; the rod of equity (surmounted by a dove), which he places in the left hand; several other sceptres; the pointless sword of Mercy, the swords of Justice, and the sacred vessels used at coronation. Here is also the famous Koh-i-noor diamond, the "Mountain of Light," which was taken at Lahore in India. The ancient Martin or Jewel Tower, where ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... searching criticism were earliest in declaring this, I think that few of us can have read the poem without being vaguely and discomfortably aware of it. From the moment of the direct introduction of Bluphocks[68:1] (whose very name, with its dull and pointless punning, is an offence), that sense of over-ingenuity, of "tiresomeness," which is the prime stumbling-block to whole-hearted Browning worship, becomes perceptible, and acts increasingly upon our nerves until the Day is over, and Pippa re-enters her ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... superiority, of triumph over another. How much people were willing to put up with, how often the victim was satisfied with getting the laugh on his side by a retaliatory trick, cannot be said; there was much heartless and pointless malice mixed up with it all, and life in Florence was no doubt often made unpleasant enough from this cause. The inventors and retailers of jokes soon became inevitable figures, and among them there must have been some who were classical— far superior to all the mere court-jesters, to whom competition, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... a depressing sidelight on human nature that the achievement of eminence brings with it the malice and spite of petty minds and no one of prominence can avoid becoming the target of stupid and unscrupulous attack. It would be pointless now to go into those carping and unjust accusations directed at me by irresponsible newspaper columnists. Another man might have ignored these mean assaults, but I am naturally sensitive, and while it was beneath my dignity to reply personally I thought it perhaps one of the best investments ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... orator has said,"—and, quoting something from Deacon Pogue's pointless remarks, he made them also seem full of meaning; and so on through the list of "distinguished speakers," till each one felt that he himself had spoken ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... to, but no man can avoid his destiny. The natives of this island are a serious people, or if they are frivolous, it is generally a trifle vulgarly done. The diversions of the professedly gay-hooting over pointless badinage and speculating whose turn it is to get divorced next—become in time even more sobering than a scientific study with diagrams of how to breed pheasants or play golf. If some one would teach us the simple art of being light-hearted he would deserve to be placed ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Yet we derived no pleasure out of the things that make the Builders wish to continue to live. We did not sleep; we did not eat, and we were not able to reproduce ourselves. (And, besides, this latter, as I have indicated, would have been pointless with us.) ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns |
