"Unprofitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more embarrassing every day, had cut the knot of a difficult position by a piece of wilfulness and perversity which seemed to put her in the wrong. The necessity she would have been under of crushing such a girl, who was now eighteen, would have been distasteful and unprofitable; she was very glad to get rid of her stepdaughter, always provided it could be done decently and without scandal. Those two, who had once so loved each other and who were now sharers in the same sorrows, became enemies—two hostile parties, which only skilful strategy could ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... sentiment except the one of interest; and he had begun to realize that at the moments when he admired her most, it was often impossible for him to make conversation. It had never occurred to him to wonder if their association had become emotionally unprofitable to her also, for in accordance with the system under which he lived, he had assumed that woman's part in love was as heroically passive as it had been in religion. What he had asked himself again and again was why, since she was so perfectly desirable in every way, he had never fallen in love with ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... battle, and it resulted in no victory. The dingy shop in Little Britain was, of course, out of the question; and Mr. Brown assisted Robinson in preventing that insane attempt at aping the unprofitable glories of Regent Street. The matter ended in another compromise, and a house was taken in Bishopsgate Street, of which the frontage was extensive and commanding, but as to which it must certainly be confessed that the back part of the premises ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... becoming more crowded; while at the two patent theatres "a beggarly account of empty boxes," and an equally beggarly account of flat, stale, and unprofitable performances, greets me whenever I am rash enough to take my post of observation. Lady Romford has a private box, which she visits only in preference to staying at a still duller home, on a disengaged evening; and Bagot occasionally drags me to the play, to make my foreign ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... the noblest work, perhaps, in which one can be engaged; but it is necessary, not altogether unprofitable, and at times highly exciting. In the war time, the smugglers had large armed vessels, which set the king's cruisers at defiance, and seldom failed to show fight. When I was in the Serpent, they were frequently ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... unspeakable evil. Moses was the meekest of men, yet it was for one sudden transgression of the rule of meekness that he suffered, all his former gentleness, all his habitual humbleness of mind, availed him nothing. It was unprofitable, and without merit, because it was merely his duty. It could not make up for a single sin, however slight. Thus we see how it would be with us if God were extreme to mark what is done amiss: and thus, on the other hand, we see how supremely holy and pure that Saviour ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... use of this time and by creating the desire to devote a part of it to the reading of good books and especially to the reading of the American classics. How few resources most persons have in themselves and how flat and unprofitable their lives are. They devote their moments of leisure to killing time, when association with the right reading in early life would have taught them to cultivate that inward eye which has been called the bliss of solitude. He who has a love of reading, however limited his means or however ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... anywhere. So there is nothing left for it but the old and tried rule, that I decide and you obey. I am trustee of your life, and when you begin to be your own trustee, I must hand it over to you undiminished. But to throw in this Polish cousin I should regard as an unprofitable debiting of this capital ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... they acted with characteristic good sense. The price of bread was kept down, the mob was being systematized and taught to respect authority, and enough thieves had summarily been shot in San Francisco to render looting a dangerous and an unprofitable avocation. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... first of her shadows in New York, but had been called off when she proved unprofitable and before she met Easton. And now he found her at work in a shipyard where strange things were happening! He was all afire with the covey of spies he had flushed. His first impulse was to shoot off a wire in code to announce his discovery. Then he decided to work this gold-mine ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Rabbi anticipated the question—"and I will tell you plainly, for my heart has ever gone forth to you. For long years I found no favour in the eyes of the Church, and it seemed likely I would be rejected from the ministry as a man useless and unprofitable. How could I attempt to win the love of any maiden, since it did not appear to be the will of God that I should ever have a place of habitation? It consisted not with honour, for I do hold firmly that no man hath ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... have been reading, and such memories as we have been recalling, are, after all, unprofitable—a darkness without light. We closed our eyes upon the world, which, in our momentary bitterness, we likened to one great charnel-house, entombing all things glorious and bright. We walked to the window; the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... not at all. And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... suppose anything very wonderful will happen in them," said Felix pessimistically. To Felix, just then, life was flat, stale and unprofitable because it was his turn to go ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... destined to be worshipped in after ages as a demigod, showed his fellows how the wild calves, if taken young, might be trained into tractable slaves; and it is hopeless to expect that any record will now leap to light which will give us knowledge in place of speculation. But it might not be unprofitable to seek for some clue to the strange selection which the domesticating genius of man has made from among the multifarious material presented to it by the animal kingdom. If we do so we shall almost be forced to the conclusion that domesticability is a character, or ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the home should be undertaken in no light humor, for better no pictures at all than poor ones. Little, trivial, meaningless nothings are like small talk—uninspiring and devitalizing—and therefore unprofitable; battle and other exciting scenes wear on the nerves; the constant presence of many persons is tiring in pictures as well as out; small figures and fine detail which cannot be distinguished across the room cause visual cramp; and the rearing horse ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Pastorals tis not so easy to give an account: For as to the end of Poetry in General: The Enemies of Poets run out into a large common place, and loudly tell us that Poetry is frivolous and unprofitable. Excellent men! that love profit perchance, but have no regard for Honesty and Goodness; who do not know that all excellent Arts sprang from Poetry ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... fierce, Who thus made boast: 'A Jute devout am I! What raised that convent-pile on yonder rock? This hand! I wrenched the hillside from a foe By force, and gave it to thy Christian monks To spite yet more those Angles! Island Saint, Unprofitable have I found thy Faith! Behold, those priests, thy thralls, are savage men, Unrighteous, ruthless! For a sin of mine They laid on me a hundred days of fast! A man am I keen-witted: friend and liege I summoned, shewed my wrong, and ended thus: "Sirs, ye are ninety-nine, the hundredth I; ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... The influence most potent in shaping the rudimentary character of Alice Tarleton (called Roussillon) had been only such as a lonely frontier post could generate. Her associations with men and women had, with few exceptions, been unprofitable in an educational way, while her reading in M. Roussillon's little library could not have given her any practical knowledge ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle, only a few years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their interpretation. Under this new influence an army of young men took up every promising line of scientific investigation in every land. Epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations. Spencer, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... only had the wish, but the imperative need to so do. To stand like Ajax defying the lightning is magnificent, but as a continuous avocation it is wearisome and unprofitable, especially if carried on in a tiny bachelor suite, an eyrie of a place, at the top of a block of flats in Victoria Street. Indeed, if I did not add soon to the meagre remains of my fortune, I should not be able to afford the luxury of the bachelor suite. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... first steam vessel built in Cleveland, and her hull was made near the site of the Winslow warehouse. The engine, of sixty to seventy horse power, was brought from Pittsburgh. Johnson ran her between Buffalo and Detroit until 1828, when hard times coming on and business threatening to be unprofitable, he sold his interest in her, and left the lakes. In company with Goodman and Wilkeson, he built the Commodore, on the Chagrin river, in the year 1830, and that closed ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... eaters, and were on that account dreadful in all those parts. My companion and I being undeceived by this terrible relation, thought it would be the highest imprudence to expose ourselves both together to a death almost certain and unprofitable, and agreed that I should go with our Abyssin and a Portuguese to observe the country; that if I should prove so happy as to escape being killed by the inhabitants, and to discover a way, I should either return, or send back the Abyssin or ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... nothing interesting, absorbing, soul harrowing, in the form of financial ruin, highway robbery, murder, arson, fire, or flood. Everything in the world at the present brief hour seemed going on well, consequently the papers were very dull, flat, stale and unprofitable, and were soon laid aside by the host and his guest, and they ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... begins through the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable,—afterwards, that it is against the peace ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... determined that they will not fast, and that they may eat flesh, and herein are wrong. For these persons reject the Gospel also, and are unprofitable as well as the others; doing no more than contemn the Pope's command, unwilling to gird up their mind and spirit, as Peter says, leaving the body to its own caprice, that it may become corrupt and wanton. ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... out in time to meet their defeated and wounded fellow-countrymen, and give them the honors of an ovation on their return to the city. The war agitation was evidently nothing else than a weapon of offence against the Holy See. In its results it was most unprofitable, every day bringing news of fresh disasters. Circumstances now rendered the war-cry more inopportune than ever. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, had been driven from the Mincio to the Oglio, thence to the Adda, thence to Milan. He was now recrossing the Piedmontese frontier, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... offering candles to the saints. He maintained that baptism was only a sign, that holy water was nothing, that papal bulls and indulgences were an imposture of the devil, and that the mass was not only of no avail for the remission of sins, but utterly unprofitable to the hearer, while the Word ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... sermon ought to be nothing else than the proclamation of this testament. But who can hear it if no one preaches it? [Rom. 10:14] Now, they who ought to preach it, themselves do not know it. This is why the sermons ramble off into other unprofitable stories,[26] and thus Christ is forgotten, while we fare like the man in II. Kings vii: we see our riches but do not enjoy them. [2 Kings 7:19] Of which the Preacher also says, "This is a great evil, when God ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... contributors had no longer a common centre. The best of the young fellows whom I met there confessed, in a pleasant exchange of letters which we had afterwards, that he thought the pose a vain and unprofitable one; and when the Press was revived, after the war, it was without any of the old Bohemian characteristics except that of not paying for material. It could not last long upon these terms, and again it passed away, and still waits its ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... may seem like castle building and an unprofitable waste of time to indulge in theories and construct plans by which the rivalry among factorymen may be kept within a limit sufficiently circumscribed to prevent the fear of loss of patronage from interfering with, and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... only 3, as their purpose is only to convey information. Usually, however, a speech without an argument is like a gas engine without gas; it has no "go." The speech that does not aim to get people to do something is usually flat, stale, and unprofitable. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... enthusiastic admirer of Kalliope, and in perfect despair at her absence, mentioned that Mr. White had looked over all their work and had been immensely struck with Miss White's designs, and especially with the table inlaid with autumn leaves, which had been set aside as expensive, unprofitable, and not according to the public taste, and not shown to him on his first visit to the works with Mr. Stebbing. There were rumours in the air that he was not contented with the state of things, and might remain for some time to set them on a ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possession of it, nor if cut in pieces be served by its use? For we are told that when hot, they quenched it in vinegar, to make it brittle and unmalleable, and consequently unfit for any other service. In the next place, he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts: indeed, if he had not done this, most of them would have fallen of themselves, when the new money took place, as the manufactures could not be disposed of. Their iron coin would ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... education always begins through the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable—afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Had it been for Crime or Misconduct as a Magistrate, of course Trial and Conviction should have preceded my Removal. As it is, I feel, as I have publicly declar'd, no shame in the removal. I have held an office honorable because extensively useful; because unprofitable and burthensome to the individual; because independently and conscientiously exercis'd, with a devotion, such as it requir'd, of my time, my thoughts, and my best faculties, daily to its discharge. My Collegues,—and they are and have been, during a course of seventeen years, those of them ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... was the eldest daughter of the Earl of Lodway, a nobleman who had been considerably overweighted in the handicap of life, having nine children, seats in three counties, a huge old house in St. James's Square, and a small income—his three estates consisting of some of the barrenest and most unprofitable land in Great Britain. Of Lord Lodway's nine children, five were daughters, and of these Lady Jane was the eldest and the handsomest. Even in her nursery she had a very distinct notion that, for her, marriage meant promotion. She used to play at being married at St. George's, Hanover Square, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... however, the extrinsic observance of certain hours will not be unprofitable; those common hours, I mean, which mark the intervals of the day—the third, the sixth, the ninth—which we may find in Scripture to have been more ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the treasures of the Tolosan temples.(16) But their stories were not pure fictions. It may well be believed that in and near the rivers which flow from the Alps and the Pyrenees gold-washing and searches for gold, which are unprofitable at the present value of labour, were worked with profit and on a considerable scale in ruder times and with a system of slavery; besides, the commercial relations of Gaul may, as is not unfrequently the case with half-civilized peoples, have favoured the accumulation of a dead ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... last Sunday, before he got his hands on any money, because that money was going to talk long and loud to Jeff Hall next Sunday. Now that Bud had started running his horse for money, working for wages looked foolish and unprofitable. He was now working merely for healthful exercise and to pass the time away between Sundays. His real mission in life, he had discovered, was to teach Jeff's bunch that ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... Further, unbelief is an act of the understanding: whereas apostasy seems rather to consist in some outward deed or utterance, or even in some inward act of the will, for it is written (Prov. 6:12-14): "A man that is an apostate, an unprofitable man walketh with a perverse mouth. He winketh with the eyes, presseth with the foot, speaketh with the finger. With a wicked heart he deviseth evil, and at all times he soweth discord." Moreover if anyone were ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fervid, full of zeal, and who, like him, have slackened in their work; who were Sunday-school teachers, workers amongst the poor, I know not what, when they were young men and women, and who now are idle and unprofitable servants. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... New-street, and in itself was no mean structure, having been (it is said), erected about the year 1650, as the town house of John Jennens, or Jennings, one of the wealthy family, the claims to whose estates have been unending, as well as unprofitable, barring, of course, to the long-robed and bewigged fraternity. A narrow passage from the right of the entrance hall leads by a dark winding staircase to the cellars, now filled with merchandise, but which formerly ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and their powers of inspiration and expiration, can be tested by means of easily constructed apparatus which will interest most people who are introduced to it. The reduction of the capabilities of the lungs to figures affords a not unprofitable form of entertainment, as even among adults these figures will be found to ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... shoulders indicated imperceptible decline and gradual decay in health and fortune. There were many other ways of divining the fate and dispositions of man, such as by the hand, foot, hair, mouth, ears, tongue, eyes, chin, walk, conversation, and complexion; but as it would be unprofitable to treat all these separately, we pass them without further notice in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... terrible thing it might be possible that he should have to communicate. Could it be that he had got hold, or that Rubb and Mackenzie had got hold, of all her fortune, and turned it into unprofitable oilcloth? Could they in any way have made her responsible for their engagements? She wished to trust them; she tried to avoid suspicion; but she ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... for a moment forgetting the courtesy due to the rank and years of the countess, replied indignantly, "Madame, did she not make your dresses for three years? Have you not been one of her customers? An unprofitable customer? The profit was the only difference between what she did at the Chateau de Gramont and what she does in the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... he has done; and in the new Knight's Tale, we see Dryden, the great poet—we do not see Chaucer, the greater poet. But we see in it presumptive proof that the old poem worked from was great and interesting; and we must be lazy and unprofitable students if we do not, from the proud and splendid modernization, derive a yearning and a craving towards the unknown simple antique. Unknown to us, in our first studies, as we read upward from our own day into the past glories of our vernacular literature; but which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... case the wickedness of his object increased his guilt, because he did not act from a desire of personal aggrandisement, or from political rivalry, as did Alkibiades, but merely yielding to what Dion calls the unprofitable passion of anger, he threw a large part of Italy into confusion, and in his rage against his native country destroyed many innocent cities. On the other hand, the anger of Alkibiades caused great ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... German is very bad; go on with your singing, your sweet voice is very ignorant; read, make some study, however unprofitable, of the French Revolution, the Renaissance, the Conquest of Peru, anything, anything you like; or buy a sewing-machine at least, and make flannel petticoats for the poor; anything, Constantia, only don't for Heaven's sake sit there with your hands in your lap, listening to the ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... humiliating may be the embarrassments consequent upon such a condition. Another objection, scarcely less formidable, to the commencement of a new debt is its inevitable tendency to increase in magnitude and to foster national extravagance. He has been an unprofitable observer of events who needs at this day to be admonished of the difficulties which a government habitually dependent on loans to sustain its ordinary expenditures has to encounter in resisting the influences constantly exerted in favor of additional loans; by capitalists, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... slot will sound the most abstruse scores of Richard Strauss—then the popular and bewhistled music maker. And yet it is difficult for us, so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic immortality, to conjure up a day when the music of Chopin shall be stale and unprofitable to the hearing. For me the idea is inconceivable. Some of his music has lost interest for us, particularly the early works modeled after Hummel. Ehlert speaks of the twilight that is beginning to steal over certain of the nocturnes, valses, and fantasias. Now Hummel is quite perfect in his way. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the word "sleveless," in the sense of unprofitable, has defied the most careful research. It is frequently found allied to other substantives. Bishop Hall speaks of the "sleveless tale of transubstantiation," and Milton writes of a "sleveless reason." Chaucer uses it in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... point, of having exaggerated an expression, of having used a word out of place, while all the time I ought to have been thinking of essentials and aiming at breadth of treatment. I do not know how to sacrifice anything, how to give up anything whatever. Hurtful timidity, unprofitable ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the German universities have been regarded as the seats of patient, persevering, indefatigable, but also unprofitable, erudition. They have been the homes of men whose lives were one long day of toil—a continual course of labour, the sole reward of which was a secret consciousness of worth, and a fame, circumscribed it is true, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of this paper, finding so many inconveniences would arise, by his carrying the manuscripts and the public news to be supervised by the Secretary, as to render his carrying it on unprofitable, has entirely dropped ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... answered, "I am not his judge. Mr. Barrington," he added, "You must forgive me if I remind you that this is a somewhat unprofitable discussion." ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... men of phlegmatic temperament, over whom the wise monotony of discipline at The Retreat exercises a wholesome influence—I mean an influence which may be prolonged with advantage. You are not one of those persons. Protracted seclusion and monotony of life are morally and mentally unprofitable to a man of your ardent disposition. I abstained from mentioning these reasons, at the time, out of a feeling of regard for our excellent resident director, who believes unreservedly in the institution over which he presides. Very good! The Retreat has done all that it could usefully ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... of murmuring, which is unprofitable; and refrain your tongue from backbiting: for there is no word so secret, that shall go for nought: and the mouth ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... dinners, before coffee had been served, nearly all present used to rush off impatiently to the card-room, and sit there placidly from five o'clock in the afternoon till one or two o'clock in the morning! When I asked my friends why they devoted so much time to this unprofitable occupation, they always gave me pretty much the same answer: "What are we to do? We have been reading or writing official papers all day, and in the evening we like to have a little relaxation. When we come together we have very little to talk about, for we have all ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 5 Invulnerable nothings. We decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... of Congress, with its ten thousand followers, would hardly be considered as elevating anywhere. There is an odor of tobacco—of rum—of discredit—of anything but sanctity about the American politician that makes his vicinage unpleasant and unprofitable. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... and both voices were silent. Mary drew a soft sigh. She thought their talk had been unprofitable. But it had not. John laid hold of work from that day on in a better and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... putting it into cultivation. In fact, it was so poor he could not. The manure of the farm, if it had not been wanted there, was several miles distant—too far to haul; and so the land lay an uncultivated, unprofitable barren waste around his fine mansion; but it did not lay so very long after he discovered the renovating power of guano. It is now annually covered with broad fields of wheat, from which he has realized upwards ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... way to the ranch; I was busy wishing I'd been around in that part of the world thirty years before, and thinking what a lot of fun I had missed by not being as old as dad. A quarrel thirty years old is either mighty stale and unprofitable, or else, like wine, it improves with age. I meant to ride over to King's Highway some day, and see how he would have welcomed dad ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... increase in those ten States, while in the other twenty-four there was an actual decrease? I think this question can only be answered by ascribing that increase to emancipation. In Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, slavery is unprofitable and declining, and acts of emancipation frequently occur. Pennsylvania and New Jersey, before the passage of the fugitive slave law of 1850, were favorite resorts of fugitives, perhaps partly on account of the known sympathies of the Quakers. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as the discipline of the convent became more and more relaxed, and grace grew to be less and less among its inmates, the fishing became more and more unprofitable. The sturgeon, it is true, still made their appearance, but they were spent and thin, and altogether unlike those which had been wont of yore to visit the fishing-ground of the sisterhood. The abbess and the nuns, however, either ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... the situation resulting after the prolonged discussion. A majority of the members believed that slavery was an evil, but no one was willing to pay the cost of exterminating it. It was easily shown that because of unprofitable slave labor the commonwealth was lagging behind the free States and that the free labor essential to the rebuilding of the waste places in the State would never come to the commonwealth as long as there would be competition with slave labor. It was soon apparent, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... important sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which he divides all things are determined by his own ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... incense of sweet savour? What availeth kneeling before that grand altar of silver, surmounted by that figure with its silver hat and breast-plate, the emblem of one who, though an apostle and confessor, was at best an unprofitable servant? What availeth hoping for remission of sin by trusting in the merits of one who possessed none, or by paying homage to others who were born and nurtured in sin, and who alone, by the exercise of a lively faith granted ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... is giving suck the sow should be watered twice a day to promote the flow of milk. A sow should bear as many pigs as she has teats: if she has less it is considered that she is unprofitable, but if more, a prodigy. In this respect there is the ancient tradition that the sow of Aeneas bore thirty white (albos) pigs at Lavinium,[133] which portended that after thirty years the inhabitants of Lavinium would found the town of Alba: indeed, vestiges of this sow and ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... as to prevent further arguments of an unprofitable kind. "I was at Genoa with my yacht, and there stopped on shore at ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... the springs; but, even so, it is hard to keep clear of them in summer. Now the wind almost always blows from the west, dead against the little piece of gravelly shore at the eastern side, so that casting against it is hard work and unprofitable. On this day, by a rare chance, the wind blew from the east, though the sky at first was a brilliant blue, and the sun hot and fierce. I walked round to the east side, waded in, and caught two or ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the nurseryman or the propagator of nut trees to reduce the number of varieties it has been necessary to carry in the past. It is imperative that any growing business have a broad commercial base. The nurseryman is seeking information on the most desirable varieties because it is unprofitable for him to carry a huge inventory of varieties he feels are most desirable, yet are called for the least. It has been my experience that the nurserymen in Iowa are limiting the number of species for propagating purposes. They are making a selection of varieties based on their ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... his perplexities these days. His work for the "Courier" had gradually increased until he found that his time for study had diminished almost to the vanishing point. The home acres continued unprofitable, and he had, since leaving college, devoted a considerable part of his earnings to the relief of his father. His father's lack of success was an old story and the home-keeping sons were deficient ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... within herself before she resolved to write to him, and prevent the unprofitable journey he was about to take; and having heard, by madam d' Espargnes, the name of the village where he was obliged to wait, both for the recovery of his wounds and for remittances for his expences, she wrote to him in ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... had saved two hundred pounds in gold, kept it in the thatch of his roof. One day he appeared before Mr. Trench bearing his gold, and requesting him to be his depositee, expressing the comfort it would afford him. Mr. Trench declined the unprofitable duty, and pointed out to him the bank, which would accept his deposit and give him interest. The eye of Patrick flashed with intelligence and foresight as he warned Mr. Trench from the delusion of banks, which every year wasted the ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Burkina Faso has few natural resources, a fragile soil, and a highly unequal distribution of income. About 90% of the population is engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture, which is vulnerable to variations in rainfall. Cotton is the key crop. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations. Following the African franc currency devaluation in January 1994 the government updated its development program in conjunction with international agencies, and exports and economic growth have increased. Maintenance of macroeconomic ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... dread scenes they had already passed through, this feeling was the less intense, and gradually wore away. It was neither the time nor the place for any show of sentimentalism. Their own perilous situation was too strongly impressed on their minds to admit of unprofitable speculations; and instead of indulging in idle conjectures about the past, they directed their ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... body of literature, "made," "compiled," "translated," only such works as can claim to be called, in the modern sense of the word, "translations" would be a difficult and unprofitable task. Rather one must accept the situation as it stands and consider the whole mass of such writings as appear, either from the claims of their authors or on the authority of modern scholarship, to be of secondary origin. "Translations" of this sort are numerous. Chaucer in his own time ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... against Annexation; but they were denounced as {135} 'known monopolists and protectionists.' One speaker said: 'Were it necessary I might multiply citation on citation to prove that England considers, and has for years considered, our present relations to her both burdensome and unprofitable.' Another said: 'It is admitted, I may almost say, on all hands, that Canada must eventually form a portion of the Great American Republic—that it is a mere question of time.' There follows a list of some nine hundred names, beginning with John Torrance and ending with Andrew Stevenson. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... support the former without involving myself in debt and difficulties," This must be taken, however, to apply to a single period of heavy expense when foreign complications and other causes rendered farming unprofitable, rather than to his whole career. Furthermore, his landed investments from which he could draw no returns were so heavy that he had approached the condition of being land poor and it was only proper that he should cut loose from ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... addle; disable, inactivate. Adj. unproductive, acarpous[obs3], inoperative, barren, addled, infertile, unfertile, unprolific[obs3], arid, sterile, unfruitful, infecund[obs3]; sine prole; fallow; teemless[obs3], issueless[obs3], fruitless; unprofitable &c. (useless) 645; null ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with time upon your hands, O friends with postage-stamps in plenty, O poets out of many lands, O youths and maidens under twenty, Seek out some other wretch to bore, Or wreak yourselves upon your neighbours, And leave me to my dusty lore And my unprofitable labours! ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... of maintaining a much greater quantity of labour than that which had been employed about them. The success of this operation, therefore, without increasing in the smallest degree the capital of the country, would only have transferred a great part of it from prudent and profitable to imprudent and unprofitable undertakings. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... further than his eyes. The most part of the faculties of his soul lie fallow, or are like the restive jades that no spur can drive forward towards the pursuit of any worthy designs. One of the most unprofitable of God's creatures, being as he is a thing put clean beside the right use; made fit for the cart and the flail, and by mischance entangled amongst books and papers. A man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... themselves, and unite their energies against the Alleghans, the Adirondacks, the Eries, and other ancient and warlike tribes, who were their superiors in their isolated and divided condition. Already weary of their unprofitable conflicts, the proposal was received with favor, and Ato-tar-ho, an Onandaga chieftain, unequalled in valor, and the fame of whose skill and daring was known among all the tribes, became the leading spirit ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... fat Yeoman friend, who is at sea bathing in Sussex); and I go riding, at great lengths daily, over hill and dale: this I believe is really the main good I am doing,—if in this either there be much good. But it is a strange way of life to me, for the time; perhaps not unprofitable: To let Chaos say out its say, then, and one's Evil Genius give one the very worst language he has, for a while. It is still to last for a week or more. To day, for the first time, I ride back to Chelsea, but mean to return hither on Monday. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... assume the ancient spirit and freedom of your fathers if you would be your own soldiers and own commanders, confiding no longer your affairs in foreign or mercenary hands—if you would charge yourselves with your own defense, employing abroad, for the public, what you waste in unprofitable pleasures at home, the world might once more behold you making a figure worthy of Athenians. "You would have us, then, (you say,) do service in our armies in our own persons; and, for so doing, you would have the pensions we receive in time of peace, accepted as pay in time of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sometimes have a little leisure, that could be well filled up in this way. I have found it to increase the happiness of those under my care, to encourage a fondness for reading, and improving their minds; it tends to keep them from unprofitable company, and too much visiting, to ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... substantial loss than the unseasonable decease of one of its administrative agents; particularly when it is called to mind that such a decease will presumably follow only on such profligate excesses of naughtiness as are bound to be inexcusably unprofitable to the central authority. It may be left an open question how far a corrective of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable, in case of need, under the projected ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... flat, and unprofitable all this appeared to me at the time I will remember; but the obnoxious turns were shaken out, and the sail set again so as to please even the fastidious eye of the Lieutenant, who, seeing nothing more to find fault with, addressed me ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... next few days Aix seemed to be tame and colourless. In an inexplicable fashion, too, it had become unprofitable. Aristide no longer knew that he was going to win; and he did not win. He lost considerably. So much so that on the morning when he was to draw the cash for the cheque, at the Credit Lyonnais, he had ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... solid peace With Cassius, Rusticus, and good Hortensius, And many more, whose names will be rever'd When you, and I, and all the venal herd, Weigh'd in Nemesis, just impartial scale, Are mark'd with infamy, till time blot out And in oblivion sink our hated names. But 'twas a poor unprofitable path, Nought to be gain'd, save solid peace of mind, No pensions, place or title there I found; I saw Rapatio's arts had struck so deep And giv'n his country such a fatal wound, None but his foes promotion ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... to say, already old enough to go. As regards both persons, therefore, the assumed virtue of one burial robe above another should be merely a matter of speculative interest. Now if some arrangement should be suggested, not unprofitable to yourself, by which one robe might be imperceptibly substituted for another—and, after all, one burial robe is ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Might is Right, though it is true, is an unprofitable doctrine, for it is true only in so broad and simple a sense that no one would dream of denying it. If a single nation can conquer, depress, and destroy all the other nations of the earth and acquire for itself a sole dominion, there may be matter for question whether God ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... himself. After you have spent nine months in an unprofitable attempt to combine practical machine-gun tactics with a scrupulous respect for private property, the realisation that you may now gratify your destructive instincts to the full comes as a ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and horrors that he had witnessed there, had aroused in his superstitious mind a distaste for possessions and titles in that devastated Paradise. Instead, he accepted a measure of relief from the obligations incurred by his eighth share in the many unprofitable expeditions that had been sent out during the last three years, agreeing for the next three years to receive an eighth share of the gross income, and a tenth of the net profits, without contributing anything to the cost. His appointment of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the ellipse is among the conic sections! And yet—notwithstanding the repugnancy of the doctrine, in its unqualified sense, to Scripture, Reason, and Common Sense theoretically, while to all practical uses it is intractable, unmalleable, and altogether unprofitable—notwithstanding its irrationality, and in the face of your expostulation, grounded on the palpableness of its irrationality,—I must still avow my belief that, however fittingly and unsteadily, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with the "Minerva" continued for about five years, when he abandoned it as unprofitable; but his industry may be inferred from the fact that his writings upon the paper, inclusive of translations from foreign languages, would amount to ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... of an ancient class, now probably extinct; a sort of privileged order, supplying, or rather usurping, the place of the mendicant friars of former days. Their vocation was not of an unprofitable kind, inasmuch as alms were commonly rendered, though more from fear than favour. Woe betide the unlucky housewife who withheld her dole, her modicum of meal or money to these sturdy applicants! Mischief from some invisible hand was sure to follow, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... what is allowed, is not a dishonest man.' BOSWELL. 'So then, Sir, you do not think ill of a man who wins perhaps forty thousand pounds in a winter?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment to numbers, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... by the facts. She was a woman past the heyday of youth, but of considerable energy, and possessed of keen powers of observation. Whatever was feminine about her was of that plaintive variety which may be depended upon to tell the story of whole generations of narrow, toilsome, and unprofitable lives. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... unprofitable interruptions," said I. "Come, we will begin with the verb hntal, a verb of the first conjugation, which signifies rejoice. Come along. Hntam, I rejoice; hntas, thou rejoicest. Why don't you ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the ground in fervent supplication for a deliverance, and from that time the infernal serpent left Isaac to peace. Many others resorted to St. John for spiritual advice: but the devil excited some to jealousy, who censured him as one who, out of vanity, lost much time in unprofitable discourse. The saint took this accusation, which was a mere calumny, in good part, and as a charitable admonition; he therefore imposed on himself a rigorous silence for near a twelvemonth. This his humility and modesty so ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... must still add the pleasantest Insolence of all, which I have once or twice seen; to wit, That when a silly Rogue has thrown away one Part in three of his Life in unprofitable Attendance, it is taken wonderfully ill that he withdraws, and is resolved to employ the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... one or both must be wrong. The principal objector, Captain Waymouth, next gave his evidence; but he was able to say nothing to any purpose, except giving their lordships "a long, tedious discourse of proportions, measures, lines, and an infinite rabble of idle and unprofitable speeches, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... no means an idle or unprofitable member of the humble household. Partly by dint of Barnaby's tuition, and partly by pursuing a species of self-instruction common to his tribe, and exerting his powers of observation to the utmost, he had acquired a degree ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... am aware, to the accepted commonplaces,—perhaps to what William James used to call "the unprofitable delineation of the obvious." Everybody recognizes that literary gifts imply an exceptionally rich development of general human capacities, together with a professional aptitude and training of which but few men are capable. There is but one lumberman ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of charcoal in kilns was declared many years ago, after a series of experiments made in poorly constructed furnaces, to be unprofitable, and the subject is dismissed by most writers with the remark, that in order to use the method economically the products of distillation, both liquid and gaseous, must be collected. T. Egleston, Ph.D., of the School of Mines, New York, has read a paper on the subject before ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... an unprofitable crust, insufficiently steeped in savoury juices, is not, we can easily guess, intended for consumption. It is possible that, somewhat later, when the stomach becomes robust and is not repelled by coarse fare, the grub scrapes a little from the sides of its pasty walls; but, until ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... already so deeply indebted that you cannot take stock of yourself; but to whatever extent this may be the case, however long may be the account, however far you have strayed from the path, it is still better than to continue therein. A lie to other people is not alone unprofitable; every matter is settled more directly and more speedily by the truth than by a lie. A lie to others only entangles matters, and delays the settlement; but a lie to one's self, set forth as the truth, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... The heavy, costly machinery required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery required workers. The working people were forced to give up their small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres. These centres sprang up where the tools were most easily and cheaply obtained, and where lay the coal-beds and the iron ore to be worked ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Towards the hills, of which the first risings were at the distance of about two miles, the country looked extremely dreary; here and there, indeed, we saw a few trees, and small uncultivated spots, but they appeared to be lost on the great extent of barren and unprofitable country, which resembled our moors more ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... records, pages long, filed at Scotland Yard. The man to deal with that side of the business was Loudon the factor, and to him he was bound in the first place. He had made a clear picture in his head of this Loudon—a derelict old country writer, formal, pedantic, lazy, anxious only to get an unprofitable business off his hands with the least possible trouble, never going near the place himself, and ably supported in his lethargy by conceited Edinburgh Writers to the Signet. "Sich notions of business!" he murmured. "I wonder that there's ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... in operation which would ultimately render the system of Philip II. impossible in any part of the globe. Certainly, were it otherwise, the study of human history would be the most wearisome and unprofitable of all conceivable occupations. The festivities of courts, the magnificence of an aristocracy, the sayings and doings of monarchs and their servants, the dynastic wars, the solemn treaties; the Ossa ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... intelligent improvement of their condition), as that many of the present landholders would be ready and glad to alienate their impoverished estates by parcels, and sell the land which has become comparatively unprofitable to them, to its enfranchised cultivators. This, the future ownership of land by negroes, as well as their admission to those rights of citizenship which everywhere in America such ownership involves, would necessarily be future subjects of legislation; and either or both ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... wandered about all day, without any particular object in view, but only to lose myself for the sake of finding myself unexpectedly among things that I had always read and dreamed about. The plan was perfectly successful, for, besides vague and unprofitable wanderings, I saw, in the course of the day, Hyde Park, Regent's Park, Whitehall, the two new Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross, St. Paul's, the, Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside, Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, the Haymarket, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the world, and rather as a spectator than an actor on the broad stage of life, it has been no unprofitable task to trace the career of those with whom I formed an intimacy during the bustle and excitement of my boyhood. Not many months after my introduction into the mysteries of law, tidings reached my ears concerning Mr Clayton. He had left his chapel suddenly. His avarice had led him deeper and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you. Come—it is unprofitable to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been dust a thousand summers, But my dear unprofitable dreams Shall be part of all the good that thrills you In the oversoul's ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... most modern and efficient interest in education; and here are gathered what faint, faint beginnings or premonitions of such things as Art Canada can boast (except the French-Canadians, who, it is complained, produce disproportionately much literature, and waste their time on their own unprofitable songs). Most of those few who have begun to paint the landscape of Canada centre there, and a handful of people who know about books. In these things, as in all, this city is properly and cheerfully to the front. It can scarcely be doubted that the first Repertory Theatre in Canada ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... themselves this day. Another opportunity for good and what would come of it? Hotep knew the man with whom he dealt. Still it were a sin to slight even an unprofitable chance that seemed to offer alleviation for Egypt. He would proceed cautiously and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... last representatives of the old stock; and to the father's bitter disappointment neither boy would consent to settle down on the farm and carry out the tradition of the family. Fred, always a pushing, commercially-minded lad, found farming too slow and unprofitable to satisfy him, and he took service in a butcher's shop at York, as a first step towards his goal, London, in which city he eventually made his home, married a Cockney girl, and settled down for the rest ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... bad example of calling polytheists "superstitious atheists." It probably did not occur to him that, by a parity of reasoning, the Unitarians might justify the application of the same language to the Ultramontanes, and vice versa. But, to return from a digression which may not be wholly unprofitable, Hume proceeds to show in what manner polytheism incorporated physical and moral allegories, and naturally accepted hero-worship; and he sums up his views of the first stages of the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... inspiration, because the mail, I believe, starts to-morrow. The unwilling Minerva is at my elbow, and I feel that every sentence I write, were it pounded ten times in a mortar, would come out again unleavened and heavy. Braying some people in a mortar, you know, is but a weary and unprofitable process. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... thoughtless group. A single half hour consumed in this manner, is almost always fatal to the remaining hours of the day. It breaks into the circle, and impairs the method without which the passage of the sun becomes a very weary and always an unprofitable progress. If you would be a student or anything, you must plunge headlong into it at the beginning—bury yourself in your business, and work your way out of your toils, by sheer, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... perhaps permissible to speculate that electrons are small satellites, and that atoms of helium are larger ones. But to pursue the subject further, without more definite knowledge, which can be gained only by experiment, would be unprofitable. ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... protested, and temporary reforms ensued, only to be succeeded by more hopeless lapses; but it was not till all entreaties and threats failed that we began to think seriously it would be well to have done with Giovanna, as an unprofitable servant. I give the result, not all the nice causes from which it came. But the question was, How to get rid of a poor woman and a civil, and the mother of a family dependent in great part upon her ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... entrusted with living wealth, and, whilst we demand more, we go and bury much of it in the earth—whence, alas! it cannot be recovered. Not an increase of opportunity, thus wasted, was the reward of the unprofitable servant, but to be cast into outer darkness. Is there no ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... looked back now all that past life of his appeared to him fair and desirable. He remembered the early morning risings in his boyhood, and it seemed to him that he had enjoyed every one of them to its fullest—that it was only the present that showed stale and unprofitable in his eyes. A rosy haze obscured all that was harsh and unlovely in the past, and he thought of himself as always eager and enthusiastic then, as always finding happiness in the incidents that befell him. The year when he had gone away, and worked ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... himself one with the great Self, the Buddha had tried for six years; but he had given it up for a year when the hour of his enlightenment struck, and he explicitly condemns for others the path he had found unprofitable for himself. It is one of two extremes, both to be avoided, "The one extreme is a life devoted to pleasures and lusts; this is degrading, sensual, vulgar, profitless; the other is a life given to mortifications; this is painful, ignoble, and profitless. By avoiding these two extremes the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... describes rather the restlessness of a largely-gifted nature which, missing the guidance of the heart, plays experiments with life, trying knowledge, pleasure, dissipation, one after another, and hating them all; and then hating life itself as a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable mockery. The temper exhibited here will probably be perennial in the world. But the remedy for it will scarcely be more clear under other circumstances than it is at present, and lies in the disposition of the heart, and not in any ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... success of a high order. The highest prizes are always guarded from the facile hand; they exact patience, persistence, intelligence, and force. If they were easily secured they would be easily misused; it rarely happens, however, that a man of high artistic gifts degrades his talent. He may set it to unprofitable uses, but he rarely makes merchandise of it. A Rembrandt, Thackeray, or Lowell cannot do inferior work for personal ends without suffering that devouring remorse which accompanies the conscience of the artist, and turns all ignoble popular ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... enthusiasm was changed to mourning a few months later. Never were more brilliant fetes followed by more overwhelming misfortunes. Let us, then, dwell a little longer upon the rejoicings which preceded 1812. I feel that I need to be fortified before entering upon reminiscences of that time of unprofitable sacrifices, of bloodshed without preserving or conquering, and of glory without result. On the 25th of August, the Empress's fete was celebrated at Trianon; and from early in the morning the road from Paris to Trianon was covered with an immense number of carriages and people on foot, the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... was the attempt to settle, so far as the most patient investigation and the fullest exhibition of proofs could do it, the multitudinous and vexatious disputes which have hitherto divided the sentiments of teachers, and made the study of English grammar so uninviting, unsatisfactory, and unprofitable, to the student whose taste demands a reasonable degree ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... greatest philosopher is ignorant of all the virtues of a blade of grass, the purpose for which it exists, the changes that it undergoes every instant of time and from day to day. Those men, however, who have such unprofitable occupation for walking along the highest path (the path, that is, which leads to Brahma) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... deterring idleness and fraud from contracting debts which they were unable to discharge; but experience would dissipate this salutary terror by proving that no creditor could be found to exact this unprofitable penalty of life or limb. As the manners of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code of the decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses, and judges; and impunity became the consequence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Florida, with its unrivalled oranges, is beginning to furnish tons of strawberries, that begin ripening in our midwinter; and, with its quick, sandy soil and sunny skies, threatens to render the growing of this fruit under glass unprofitable. I saw last winter, at Mandarin, quite an extensive strawberry farm, under the care of Messrs. Bowen Brothers, and was shown their skilful appliances for shipping the fruit. At Jacksonville, also, Captain William James is succeeding finely in the culture ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe |
