"Uselessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one's eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher, and "Shady Hollow," as Andrew called it, had surely never been more glorious ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... found out nearly as much on his own account, but he had long since learned the uselessness of trying to teach his father anything, however well he might succeed with ordinary people, and so he had ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world and the uselessness of high endeavor ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... one were poor, one ought to be deserving Look of challenge, of interrogation, almost of reproof Malevolent agitators Meet here to the purpose of a common ostentation Neatness that brings despair Noble uselessness Openly depraved by shows of wealth People have never had ideals, but only moods and fashions People of wealth and fashion always dissemble their joy Plagiarism carries inevitable detection with it Refused to see us as we see ourselves So many millionaires and so many tramps Superiority one ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... is this to me? Useless is not the question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must be noxious—one or other. I grant you the whole thing, prince and principality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that a banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties. But now, when I have washed my hands of it three years, and left ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the slimy stones, whilst long swelling billows dashed into the harbour, broke under the Custom House, and rolled great names and gloomy memories over the stocks round the fleet's anchorage, where lay the old dismantled wooden frigates in all their imposing uselessness. ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the man suddenly started off across the grounds, waving his arms and shaking his fists in wild gestures as he continued his tirade against his old fellow workman. Mrs. Ward knew from experience the uselessness of trying to interfere until ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... limits of Egypt he was able to judge of the difficulty, and indeed the uselessness, of trying to hold any part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there was less than the cost of the troops required to collect it. He therefore made a new treaty with the Nobatae, as the people between the first ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... on speaking of his late confinement, and its comfortless circumstances, in very strong terms, dwelling on its solitude and its uselessness, as if those only formed its disagreeability, and the pain went for nothing. Social and kind is his heart, and finely touched to the most exquisite sensations of sympathy; and, as I told Colonel Gwynn, I must needs wish he may yet find some second gentle ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... conceive, and in answer to my prayer my own doctor was permitted to visit me in prison. He announced that he found my case extremely grave, and that I must perish unless I were relieved. As a consequence, and considering my weakness and the uselessness just then of both my arms, one of which was broken, first a page of my own, then other servants, and lastly my wife were allowed to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... absence of a suggestion of the second sedan. There were witnesses to tell of the gorgeous chair, and its flitting here and yonder through the twilight; none saw the other. This seems to have sufficed him, and he suddenly gave up the chase; appearing in the garden of the Bucoleon, he declared the uselessness of further effort. The Jewess, he said, was not in Byzantium; she had been carried off by the Bulgarians, and was then on the road to some Turkish harem. From that moment the search began to fall off, and by evening it was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... been founded as a place where sundry "clerks" should pray for the souls of those killed at the battle of Crecy, had, as Sir William Anson, its present head, showed me, begun at last doing good work after four hundred years of uselessness. In the chapel was shown me the restored reredos, which was of great size, extending from floor to ceiling, taking the place of the chancel window usual in churches, and made up of niches filled with statues of saints. As the heads of all the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to Fairfax and the New Model army was the siege of Oxford. The utter uselessness of such an enterprise, whilst Charles was free to roam the country and deal blows wherever opportunity offered, failed to make itself apparent to the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which still governed the movements of the parliamentary army. The siege being resolved upon, a deputation ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... affairs as they attended theirs. Sometimes the great striped tiger prowled about the base of the tree, sharpened his claws on the bark, but he never attempted to ascend to the platform. Perhaps he realized the uselessness of investigation, since the platform made it impossible for him to see what was up there. But always now, to and from the truce water, he paused, looked up, circled the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... cliffs of the Blue Mountain Ridge, That frightfully hang o'er the trestle-built bridge, Juts out into space a huge rocky bluff, Which the elements rudely left broken and rough. Near this, stands a bust so exquisitely fair, That the chisel of art would be uselessness there! For nature wrought well till the model was done— An impress on ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... "practical man," often has under him a beginner fresh from the schools, who is glib and confident in repeating bookish theories, but is not yet skillful in applying them. If the practical man is thoughtless, he sniffs at theory and points to his clumsy assistant as proof of the uselessness of what is to be got from books. If he is wise, the practical man realizes how much better off he would be, how much farther his hard work and experience might have carried him, if he had had the advantage of ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... whispered Terry, in some excitement, pointing his finger toward the camp, and with no thought of the uselessness of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... by telling them of the strange and wonderful things which transpired in the world beyond the mountains; telling them of the wonderful discoveries of science; the fame of many brilliant men and women, telling them of the advantages of communication with the outer world, of the uselessness and folly of spending their lives in so simple a manner, ridiculing their simplicity, telling them that the mere youths of his country could teach the venerable grandsires of the valley things of which they had never dreamed, ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... but it is a delightfully interesting one. It does not wear its antiquity as an excuse for sinking into mouldering uselessness. It presents, rather, a strange mingling of the quaint, romantic and historic with the beautiful, progressive and modern. Though it clings reverently to honored traditions it is ever mindful of the fact that the welfare ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... could, taking a steady aim, and the dark figures which dotted the ice behind the advancing Indians showed that the fire was an effectual one. The Indians did not return a shot. Their chief had, no doubt, impressed upon them the uselessness of firing against men lying in shelter, and had urged them to hurry at the top of their speed to the island and crush the whites in ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... to which the Austro-Hungarian representative refers, nullified even the right of general suffrage by an artificial creation of an over-representation of the German minority in the Reichsrat, and its utter uselessness for the liberty of nations was clearly demonstrated during the three years of unscrupulous military absolutism during this war. Every reference to this constitution, therefore, means in reality only a repudiation of the right of self-determination ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... that would be orders! It's the uselessness that hurts. There was nothing to do or to gain. He didn't want to go. Oh, daddy dear, I made fun of his shooting,—I did! I laughed at his way with firearms. Wretched fool and snob that I was! As if I cared! I thought of what ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... extreme to say that a child should never be allowed to express a dislike of any thing which cannot be helped; but I think it is true. I do not mean that it should be positively forbidden or punished, but that it should never pass unnoticed; his attention should be invariably called to its uselessness, and to the annoyance it gives to other people. Children begin by being good-natured little grumblers at every thing which goes wrong, simply from the outspokenness of their natures. All they think they say and act. The rudiments of good behavior have to be chiefly negative at the outset, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... night, must have gone about at this time, and probably for this reason. She was able thus to fetch into the wake of the crippled vessel, which a frigate had already gallantly attacked, taking advantage of the uselessness of the Frenchman's lee batteries, encumbered with the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... you are going to do this: to spend the best and most vigorous portion of your days in idleness—in uselessness—in the gratification of self—in the contamination of others. And then weakness, the relics, and the miserable dregs of life;—you are going to give that sorry offering to God, because His mercy endureth for ever! Shame—shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... up two additional rifles, and a heavy ulster. The rifles I loaded, and laid alongside my other; as I intended to make things warm for any of the creatures who might show, during the night. I had plenty of ammunition, and I thought to give the brutes such a lesson, as should show them the uselessness of attempting ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... herself, in real, actual life, unskilled and unfit to minister to the wants and sorrows of those dearest to her, without a secret sense of degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, describes a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and crafts which are supposed to make up fine gentlewomen, who is stranded in a rude German inn, with her father writhing in the anguish of a severe attack ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tait un bonnet rouge!' 'Non, non,' said Ivan Matveitch, smiling and rolling together a pinch of snuff: 'des fleurs, des jeunes vierges, le culte de la Nature... ils out eu du bon, ils out eu du bon!'...I was always surprised at the extent of Ivan Matveitch's knowledge, and at the uselessness of his ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... that it can be cut into with a knife, and is utterly unfit for firewood, for when cut up it refuses to dry, but simply rots away like a ripe water-melon. It also grows slowly, and its leaves, which are large, glossy and deep green, like laurel leaves, are poisonous; and because of its uselessness it will probably become extinct, like the graceful pampas grass in the same region. In this exceedingly practical age men quickly lay the axe at the root of things which, in their view, only cumber the ground; but before other trees had been ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... her. She was thinking of the time when she had been as impatient of her daily life as this, and of how powerless words, better than she could hope to speak, had been to help her; and though she smiled and shook her head at the young girl's impetuous protest against the uselessness of her life, her eyes, quite unconsciously, met her sister's with a look of wistful pity, that Rose, in her youthful impatience and jealousy, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... desire of seeing this fratricidal war at an end, is so great, so ardent, so general, that convinced as we are of the uselessness of their efforts, we admire and encourage those who undertake the almost hopeless task of pacification with persistent courage. True Paris has now but one flag, which is neither the crimson rag nor the tricolour standard, but the white flag ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... to Francesco de' Medici, he taunts them with lacking the spirit to extinguish tyranny when he had slain the tyrant. He summons plausible excuses to his aid—the impossibility of taking persons of importance into his confidence, the loss of blood he suffered from his wound, the uselessness of rousing citizens whom events proved over-indolent for action. He declares that he has nothing to regret. Having proved by deeds his will to serve his country, he has saved his life in order to spend it for her when ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... organs impose, and submits to the imperfections of his organization. The naturalist studies the play of his apparatus, and if he has the right of admiring most of its parts, he has likewise that of showing the imperfection of other parts, and the practical uselessness of those which fulfill no functions."[268] And it is further claimed that there are a great many structures which are clearly useless; that is, they fulfill no purpose at all. Thus there are monkeys, which have no thumbs for use, but only ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... beyond, and Madocks, a few moments later, charged again. Accompanied this time by but three men, he closed to within a few feet of the more distant sangar. Two of the men with him were here killed, and Madocks, seeing the uselessness of remaining, made his way back again to the sangar in rear with his sole companion, called together the rest of the Yorkshire detachment, and began hurriedly to strengthen the wall under a searching fire. At this moment ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... sense of uselessness made his eyes sting. "I couldn't get along without you," he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the manager pleaded in vain with the boy, and then recognizing the uselessness of his arguments, left the building in ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... Earth and Water but worthlesse and unactive; for Elements being call'd so in relation to the constituting of mixt Bodies, it should be upon the account of its Ingrediency, not of its use, that any thing should be affirmed or denyed to be an Element: and as for the pretended uselessness of Earth and Water, it would be consider'd that usefulnesse, or the want of it, denotes only a Respect or Relation to us; and therefore the presence, or absence of it, alters not the Intrinsick nature of the thing. The hurtful Teeth of Vipers ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... in the public-houses. You may see them sitting together on doorsteps as well as promenading the pavement. If there is any way of spending the evenings more destructive of every good gift and useful quality of manhood and womanhood than this, I know not what it is. The idleness and uselessness of it, the precocious abuse of tobacco, the premature and forced development of the emotions which should belong to love at a later period, the loss of such intellectual attainments as had already been acquired, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... saw the uselessness of trying to get any Non-Conformist taken on by a royal colony in Virginia just then. "'Tis a hard case," he said sympathetically, "but we may meet again some day. There's room enough in the Americas, the Lord knows, for all the honest ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... shield if others draw the sword." Applause rang out from a hundred thousand throats. Crassus followed to the same purpose, and was received with the same wild delight. A few senators, who retained their senses, saw the uselessness of the opposition, and retired. Bibulus was of duller and tougher metal. As the vote was about to be taken, he and his tribunes rushed to the rostra. The tribunes pronounced their veto. Bibulus said that he had consulted the sky; the gods forbade further action being taken that day, and he ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... desire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any exception. They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will permit themselves in ugliness;—but they will never permit themselves in uselessness or ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... gude-for-naethin' tyke," he said to Bobby, in transparent pretense of his uselessness. "Get to wark, or I'll hae a young dog in to gie ye a lift, an' syne whaur'll ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... England itself. With a faltering tongue and a hanging head the nominal head of the firm told to those nearly concerned what was coming on them. Nobody reproached him; either no man had the heart, or all felt the uselessness of reproaches. Certainly these shareholders' silence was his ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... have been killed, I consoled Martha and hastened to the kitchen. Evidently a shell had exploded just outside, sending three or four pieces through. When order was restored I endeavored to impress on Martha's mind the uselessness of such excitement. Looking round at the close of the lecture, there stood a group of Confederate soldiers laughing heartily at my sermon and the promising audience I had. They chimed in with a ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... return to Gabriele, whose lively wit and joyous temper, united to her affectionate and innocent heart, make her deservedly the favourite of her parents, and the joy of every one. She asserts continually her own good-for-nothingness, her uselessness, and incorrigible love to a sweet 'far niente;' but nobody is of her opinion in this respect, for nobody can do without her, and one sees that when it is necessary, she can be as decided and as able as any one need be. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... then held; when, knowing the uselessness of trying to signalize the frigate, they first thought to weigh anchor and try to escape to her protection; but a little reflection told them the enemy would be down upon them before this could be effected, and they ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... was able for no such work now, though she might think so herself; and Shenac knew that to try and fail would make the mother miserable. What was to be done? Over this question she pondered with an earnestness, and, alas! with a uselessness, that gave impatience to her hand and sharpness ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... better thing for her, and for the community, than to make her a good cook? They're rare enough, Heaven knows. What's the use of letting her grow up with ideas of gentility, which in her case would mean nothing but uselessness? She must support herself, sooner or later, and it won't be with her brains. I've seriously thought of making that suggestion to Mrs. Abbott. Ten years hence, a sensible woman cook will demand her own price, and be a good ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... don't want a crowd round her: she wants air—all the air she can git. If you please, gents— [Malone and Ramsden allow him to drive them gently past Ann and up the lawn towards the garden, where Octavius, who has already become conscious of his uselessness, joins them. Straker, following them up, pauses for a moment to instruct Tanner]. Don't lift er ed, Mr Tanner: let it go flat so's the blood can run ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... hands, pulled with all the energy of despair. He could scarcely cause even the slightest movement of the corpse. His terror increased; he sought his knife, in the mad idea of cutting up the body of the sailor. He saw soon the uselessness of this attempt. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... repeated in saying half a new one. They cannot do with the lumber, wastepaper, shavings, sawdust, rubbish necessary for packing and conveying objects of value; now most of talk, and much of life, is exactly of that indispensable useful uselessness. They are silent for the same reason that they are frequently inactive, recognizing that words and actions are so often mere litter and encumbrance. One feels frozen occasionally by their unspoken criticism; one's small ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... with a broad basis; clay in the latter condition only is meant when we say 'The jar has gone to pieces.' There, sixthly, is a numerical difference: the threads are many, the piece of cloth is one only. In the seventh place, there is the uselessness of the activity of the producing agent (which would result from cause and effect being identical); for if the effect were nothing but the cause, what could be effected by the activity of the agent?—Let ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Israel and the people with the impious inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he prophesied the downfall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. (102) The prophet offered no explanation. He was convinced of the uselessness of defending himself, and he preferred Manasseh should act from ignorance rather than from wickedness. However, he fled for safety. When he heard the royal bailiffs in pursuit of him, he pronounced the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... streaming in numbers along the familiar Kentish road, when, on the very vigil of the feast, one of their companies was accidentally met by the Bishop of London. They demanded his blessing; but to their astonishment and indignation he seized the occasion to read a lesson to the crowd on the uselessness to unrepentant sinners of the plenary indulgences, for the sake of which they were wending their way to the Martyr's shrine. The rage of the multitude found a mouthpiece in a soldier, who loudly upbraided the Bishop for stirring up the people against ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... will come," he threatened, "when some younger man will want my professorship—and will deserve it. I shall either be put out or I shall go out; and then—decrepitude, uselessness, penury, unless something has been hoarded. So, Anna, out of the frail uncertain little basketful of the apples of life which the college authorities present to me once a year, we must save a few for what may prove a long ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... on made him weep with regret, produced upon him at that moment an impression of fear rather than love or pity. When at length he broke the cruel silence, the sound of his voice revealed to the unhappy girl the uselessness of that supreme appeal addressed ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... You will not have misinterpreted my silence. I could not answer your letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for prayer. When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am doing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you. Yet I must write. . . . It is strange that God should have made us thus. To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for love, and therefore largest capacity for suffering. It is still more strange ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... more was expressed in the affectionate gesture with which he now raised the yellow envelope above Mrs. Fetherel's clutch; and knowing the uselessness of begging him not to be silly, she said, with a dry despair, "You're boring the ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... tried hard to make his companion eat something, to take at least some soup and a glass of old Bordeaux; but he soon saw the uselessness of his efforts and went on with his dinner as if he were alone. He was very thoughtful, but any uncertainty of the result of his plans never entered his head. He drank much and often, and soon emptied his bottle of Leoville. Night having now come on the waiters began to light the chandeliers, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... or bad impression upon the lives of his descendants. The creature who passes his life without adding to the knowledge and goodness of the world has lived for naught, and he who fails to improve his own worth morally, mentally or physically has spent a life of uselessness for which his descendants must suffer; for to misuse oneself is to commit a crime against posterity. Each generation should be an improvement upon the preceding one. Having been entrusted with a piece of living machinery, it is the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the driving-wheel! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of pistols, and then, tiring of the load, began to chaffer and bargain for their sale. Governor Wise was called on to interfere and preserve the Government property; he came into the little inclosure of the works, and began an eloquent address, but seeing its uselessness, broke off and put his Richmond Grays on guard; and then the distribution of public property was made through the regular channels,—that is, the men inside brought guns and pistols to the men on guard, and they passed them out to their friends beyond, so that the trade went on almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... guardians than they should have been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in their presence compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn Kunigunde and her rude women without them. A few sneers on her daintiness and uselessness had led her to make an offer of assisting in the grand chopping of sausage meat and preparation of winter stores, and she had been answered with contempt that my young lord would not have her soil her delicate hands, when one of the maids ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But having seen the uselessness of their fusillade against the cliff they had allowed their matches to go out, so that I was for the moment safe from musket shot. When I fired and brought down the first man, the rest hesitated, and seeing my companions clambering ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... else)—and find my mother aged and bewildered and sad, my sister a painted little hussy—and you—a strange creature I despise.... And all, everybody, everything changed—changed in some horrible way which proves my sacrifice in vain.... It is not death that is dreadful, but the uselessness, the hopelessness of the ideal ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... have maintained among them a certain unity of doctrine, the Waldenses rapidly underwent a change according to their environment; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments.[19] Hence that multiplicity of differing and even hostile branches which seemed ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... hillsides. We separated here, he said, looking round, and then remembering that they had been pursued for several miles into the hills and that the enemy's scouts might be lurking in the neighbourhood, he turned back and descended the path, convinced of the uselessness of his search. We parted at that rock, Timothy keeping to the left and myself turning to the right, and if anything has befallen he must be sought for by shepherds, aided by dogs. Only with the help of dogs can he be traced, he said, and returning slowly ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... tribunal, even though it had—and could and should have—no authority to enforce its decisions. At present, however, all this is Utopian, and perhaps it always will be so. We will return, therefore, to our immediate object, which is to point out the utter uselessness of Christianity in the midst of class antagonisms. It cannot control the rich, it cannot assist the poor. Its chief idea is to stand between the two, not as an ambassador of justice, but as a dispenser of charity. And this ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... display of Verey lights. A telephone message from our front line informed us that a considerable party of the enemy had crept quietly up, and were now prowling round our wire and trying to pick a way through. A hot fire from rifles, Lewis guns and machine guns, soon convinced the enemy of the uselessness of attempting, without artillery preparation, a raid against an alert enemy well entrenched with wire intact. They were beaten off, and withdrew to a fold in the ground a couple of hundred yards out in No Man's Land, where they were fired upon by ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... morbid longing, to share his knowledge. She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the uselessness, of their present search. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... been more to each other! Did he go about with a lonely spirit, Fred wondered, feeling the uselessness and insufficiency of the life he was leading? Had he been glad to lay ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the bole of the tree for a short time; but finally, either realizing the uselessness of her vigil, or prompted by the pangs of hunger, she stalked majestically away and disappeared in the brush that hid her lord, who had not once ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... captain, the men on board, also, had discovered the perfect uselessness of the signals of distress which had excited their sympathy; and their indignation was great at what they considered a stupid mystification. They surrounded the sailor with a threatening air, while he struggled in the captain's hand, and cried in ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... over this suggestion. He hated gloves and seldom wore them, but out of consideration for his friend—and Baltimore—he extracted a pair of irreproachable ones, fresh from Berlin, and donned them, with only a derisive word for the uselessness of externals as ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... face, never moved in his arms, never petitioned for mercy. She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned at regular intervals in piteous accents:—'He has forgotten and abandoned me!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, her acknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge for ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Strange that the people should have submitted to such monstrous usurpations, although decently veiled under the names of the old offices of the republic. But they had become degenerate. They wished for peace and leisure. They felt the uselessness of any independent authority, and resigned themselves to a condition which the Romans two centuries earlier would ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... has been stated by some authors, and I believe with truth, are apt to be highly variable. We shall have to recur to the general subject of rudimentary and aborted organs; and I will here only add that their variability seems to be owing to their uselessness, and therefore to natural selection having no power to check deviations in their structure. Thus {150} rudimentary parts are left to the free play of the various laws of growth, to the effects of long-continued disuse, and to the tendency ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... wondered why they were so patient of constraint? Why had they not risen long ago and obliterated the pretensions of those arrogant, indolent larvae peopling the angular apertures of the honey cells—those larvae of whom, by birth and wealth, sinfulness and uselessness, he was himself ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... ill, are adapted to the purposes to be effected, as from their slowness, the enemy has an opportunity to force an action under any circumstances, however disadvantageous to this undisciplined squadron. The Real is no better, and her total uselessness as a ship of war, has determined me to prepare her as a fireship, there appearing no ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... officers and counselors in the family and court of Darius. One of them, named Charidemus, offended the king very much by the free opinion which he expressed of the uselessness of all his pomp and parade in preparing for an encounter with such an enemy as Alexander. "Perhaps," said Charidemus, "you may not be pleased with my speaking to you plainly, but if I do not do it now, it will be too late hereafter. This great parade and pomp, and ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... minute, he hung suspended over the dark and working water, expecting to see the student return; and, when hope was reluctantly abandoned, he arose to his feet, a startled and admonished man. Still discretion did not desert him. He saw the uselessness, and even the danger, of distracting the attention of the workmen, and the ill-fated scholar was permitted to pass away without a word of regret or a comment on his fate. None knew of his loss but the wary mariner, nor was his person missed by any of those ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Ottoviani had been arrested, and he had only escaped himself by jumping into the sea. Murat's first idea was to go to the rescue of Ottoviani; but Luidgi made the king realise the danger and uselessness of such an attempt; nevertheless, Joachim remained agitated and irresolute until ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "Your uselessness?" she echoed, and now it was her eyes that expressed a grave wonder. "But you were Governor of the Islands; and you are Governor ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... oratorios, they are supposed to show themselves very advanced. But what purpose, musical or other, is subserved by arbitrarily allying a musical phrase to a personage or an idea and blaring it out whenever that personage or idea comes to the front? Wagner early realized the uselessness of the proceeding, and, as I pointed out, in Tannhaeuser there are no leit-motifs, though passages and parts of passages are repeated. In Lohengrin it is used rather for a dramatic than a musical purpose. By ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... that rang true, he would give them both a thrashing that they would never forget. He would welcome a chance to meet them singly or as a pair. He began to struggle at his bonds and was soon dripping with perspiration from his efforts. After a time he saw the uselessness of it and, almost exhausted, lay breathing deeply the close atmosphere of ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... conscious that she could not go on living at home as she was doing, without place or meaning or worth. The very children that went to school held her uselessness in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... squarely upon him. A realization of the uselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money to his pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmed lamp of his temper. "What's this," he demanded, "I hear about driving stage? about Buck boasting around that he ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that any man that is not cursed to uselessness, poverty, and misery, will be content with L20 or L30 a year? For though, in the bulk, it looks, at first, like a bountiful estate; yet, if we think of it a little better, we shall find that an ordinary bricklayer or carpenter (I mean not your great undertakers [contractors] ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... character, which is essential to the useful or elevating observation of foreign countries. The commercial and middle classes of society, educated at the London university, or any of the numerous academies which have sprung up in all parts of the country, have gone into the other extreme. Struck with the uselessness, to the great bulk of students, of the classical minutiae required at one of the universities, and the mathematical depth deemed indispensable at the other, they have turned education into an entirely different channel. Nothing was deemed worthy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... uselessness of any words, knowing that in this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations of life could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... sun's rays; and though matter, in the shape of mastodons and whales, with an instinct of its antagonistic destination, had frequently invaded their precincts, it was only to leave the remains of the first embedded in fields of ice, memorials of the uselessness of struggling against destiny, and to furnish proofs of the same great truth in the instance of the others; who, if they did enter the polar basins as masters of the great deep, either left their bones ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... size, and equal uselessness. He sits in the hall, and always rises and salutes when you pass. If you want anything, he waits till you have got it, and then offers to procure it for you. If you ask to be called early, he chalks something ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... as, feeling the uselessness of protest or resistance, Julian moved towards the plank. "I am very sorry for you, but there is nothing else to do, and you will be as well there as anywhere, for you couldn't show your face in Weymouth. I will keep my promise, never fear; and some day or other everyone shall know that you ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... from which the heart was often absent, there were many signs of a general longing for deeper and more spiritual religion than that of which we have been speaking. The new art of printing was used to increase the number of religious manuals. These all emphasized the uselessness of outward acts without true contrition and sorrow for sin, and urged the sinner to rely upon the love and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... work to cultivate it, this luckless personality! Receiving no definite guidance from without, with no real respect for anything, no strong belief in anything, we are free to make what we choose of ourselves ... one can't expect every one to understand on the spot the uselessness of intellect 'seething in vain activity' ... and so we get again one monster the more in the world, one more of those worthless creatures in whom habits of self-ccnsciousness distort the very striving for truth, and a ludicrous simplicity exists side by side with a pitiful ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why—why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... become, said he, a mere rhetorician and theorist, dreaming of dictatorship. Meantime Janzen, still erect, his face frigid and his lips curling ironically, listened to all three of them, and vented a few trenchant words to express his own Anarchist faith; the uselessness of drawing distinctions, and the necessity of destroying everything in order that everything might be rebuilt on ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... liberal sentiments. On many points the Realists were more tolerant, or at least more enlightened, than the Nominalists. They counted among themselves better scholars than the adherents of Ockam. They were the first and foremost to point out the uselessness of the dry scholastic system of teaching grammar and logic, and nothing else. And though they cherished their own ideas as to the supreme authority of the Pope, the divine right of the Emperor, or the immaculate conception of the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... nothing surprising in the fact that he never inquired for mail. Who was there to write? Besides, he sought only the obscure hotels, where he was not likely to meet any of his erstwhile fellow passengers. The mockery and uselessness of his home-going became more and more apparent as the days slipped by. Often he longed to fly back to the jungles, to James, and leave matters as they were. Here and there, along the way, he had tried a bit of luxury; but the years of economy and frugality had robbed him ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... juggle with human life and limb were unable in their ignorance and inexperience to stop the flow of blood. Vital, life-loving, happy-go-lucky Billy Duncan lay limp on his narrow bed in the bare, white room, filled with a great heart-sickness at the uselessness of it, the helpless ignominy of dying like a stuck pig! With a last effort he turned his head upon his pillow and through the window by his bedside watched the colors of the distant foothills change ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... courage, she took the horn with which her husband summoned his men, and, opening a window, blew through the brass tube feeble notes that died away upon the vast expanse of water, like a bubble blown into the air by a child. She felt the uselessness of that moan unheard of men, and turned to hasten through the apartments, hoping that all the issues were not closed upon her. Reaching the library she sought in vain for some secret passage; then, passing between the long rows of books, she reached a window which looked upon the courtyard. Again ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... off and sogged down in deep water, but her bow hung to the reef, and in smoke and flame he had fought the cattle over it. They clustered now in the false water-hole, silent, listless, as if they knew the uselessness of the urge of life on ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... reckoning, Germany will judge how he has done it, and it is to be hoped that Germany will give him his just reward, for no punishment could be more fitting. The rest of the world already knows his vacuity, his utter uselessness, his criminal decadence. As his father was stripped of the Garter, so is he here shown stripped of the attributes to which, in earlier days, he made false claim. There remains a foolish knave posturing—and that is the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... talk begins with the uselessness of wristers, shifts from that to democratic inefficiency, and from that to the probability of Deutschland ueber Alles, you may be certain of the diagnosis. The disease ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Fogg left. This noble lord, who was fastened to his chair, would have given his fortune to be able to make the tour of the world, if it took ten years; and he bet five thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg. When the folly as well as the uselessness of the adventure was pointed out to him, he contented himself with replying, "If the thing is feasible, the first to do it ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... type of woman that must have men about her; she would get her "rights", as she called them, somehow, by fair means or foul. Deb was sufficiently a woman of the world herself to recognise this, and the uselessness of thinking she could alter it. Well, money is a consolatory thing—she knew its value now; and there was that additional comfort, which, of course, she did not own to—the thought of where Mr Ewing would be when Mrs Ewing ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... wretchedly constructed, long-neglected building of a type common to those old river towns that in their many years of uselessness have lost all civic pride, and in their own resultant squalor and filth have buried their self-respect. A dingy, scarcely legible sign over the treacherous board walk, in front, by the sickly light of a smoke-grimed kerosene ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... night on the shore and watched 'the waves come up and crumble on the shingle. I remembered the verse Sadler used to chant to me in the Hebe Maitland days, when I was acting more gay than he thought becoming to the uselessness of me. "Oh, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... than it is to eat a fish of a Sunday. I go altogether by faith, in my religion, general, for they talked so much to me of the uselessness of works, that I've got to be very unparticular as to what I do. Your people who have been converted four or five times, are like so many pickerel, which ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... great, as it was easy to perceive, from its outward appearance, that the fort could possess few points worthy of observation; and, indeed, we attributed the reluctance evinced in admitting strangers to its utter uselessness as a ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... persuade her of its uselessness, covering the leg in which gangrene was far advanced, and telling her death was at hand. But her despair insisted on action, her own suffering made her remorseless. The clamor of their arguing voices ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... realize his hopes of freedom, any more than he ever came to realize the uselessness of paint for his angels when he had no eyes for applying it. He whittled on, in melancholy dejection, ring upon ring in his endless chains of rings, forging in bitter irony the emblems of bondage, when his old heart so longed to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... will kill him," he shrieked, springing like a wildcat at LeNoir. But his uncle wound his arms around him and held him fast. For a minute and more he struggled fiercely, crying to be set free, till recognizing the uselessness of his efforts he grew calm, and said quietly, "Let me loose, uncle; I will be quiet." And his uncle set him free. The boy shook himself, and then standing up before LeNoir said, in a high, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... most interesting points in the case are: the age of the patient, the enormous size of the tumor, and the advice given by the surgeon who first attended the patient (insisting that no operation should be performed). This case shows anew the uselessness of tapping ovarian cysts. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the same theory of government with which the constitutionalists tormented the late Louis Philippe,—Le roi regne et ne gouverne pas. He was unwilling to accept such a position, and so am I. I cannot take a pride in insignificance and uselessness, although I confess with shame that most women do,—the result of which is, that we have not the kind of influence we ought to have, and that a real, hearty, genuine respect for women does not exist. In every man's heart there lurks a mild contempt for us, because of our ignorance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... tell the difference between a dromedary and a camel without any previous instruction, strikes me as evidence of a more or less remarkable intuition, the like of which we do not often find to-day, and his dubbing that long-eared, four-footed piece of resistant uselessness the Ass an ass, always seemed to me to be a master stroke, although my father used to say that his greatest achievement lay in correctly designating ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... street below. But his room was in the attic, and the broad stone cornice of the palace cut off the view effectually. At last he began to pull the furniture away from the entrance, slowly at first, as he merely thought of its uselessness, then with feverish haste, as he realised that the fact of his trying to entrench himself in his quarters would seem suspicious. In a few seconds he had restored everything to its place. The brandy ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Russian's words about a family—the uselessness of its going on for generations, piling up possessions and narrowing its interests. What had the aims been of all these handsome men? She knew the earlier history a little, for even though she was of a distant branch they had been proud of the connection, and treasured ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... and seeds of the earth, and giving themselves up to visions and dreams. What else have your canonised Saints done? Yet they are worshipped by a vast community of apparently sensible beings, as holy. It only shows that there are certain minds capable of penetrating the uselessness of a purely worldly existence, and finding it too hard to live a double life, that is to say, spiritual and material (a life only possible to the modern clergy), they seek refuge in seclusion and leave that outer life to those whom it ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... of man. In all ages of the world men have dreamed of a state of perfection, which has been, and is to be, but never is, and seems to disappear under the necessary conditions of human society. The uselessness, the danger, the true value of such political ideals have often been discussed; youth is too ready to believe in them; age to disparage them. Plato's 'prudens quaestio' respecting the comparative happiness of men in this and in a former cycle of existence is ...
— Statesman • Plato
... that vision of languishing and loveliness to the old man whose eyes are fixed in grief upon it? "Thou seest, O Christian! the uselessness of laying up thy treasures here. Where are now the hopes of half thy lifetime, where the consummation of all thy anxious plans? She who has been like an angel by thy side, how wearily throbs her young ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... too well aware of the uselessness of trying to direct the conversation to make any attempt to continue the talk, which, moreover, had taken a turn not at all to his liking. He settled himself in his chair, in an attitude ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... people are prejudiced against an interior life. Some are afraid of it, and look upon it as a life of bondage, sacrifice, and restraint: others despise it, as nothing but a multiplicity of trifling rules, tending only to narrow-mindedness and uselessness, and fit only for weak minds. In consequence they are on their guard against it, and avoid the books ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... can least afford it just now. It may be true that some of these hold diplomas indicating completion of courses of higher studies, but they are not really the educated ones, and the fact of their existence does not prove the uselessness of the educated Negro or the failure of higher education for the race. It is to our credit that comparatively few, who have struggled through the long years that lead to culture and scholarship, can be found to give enemies of the race an opportunity for assault from that quarter. Figures ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... they would present her case for "discipline," and even, perhaps, "set her back." But all the while that she tried to fight back the enemy of her soul, who thus subtly beset her with temptation to sin, she felt the utter uselessness of her struggle with herself. For even when she did succeed in forcing her attention upon some of the hymns, it was in whimsical and persistent terms of the teacher that she considered them. How was it possible, she wondered, for him, or any unconverted soul, to hear, without being moved ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... "At times I have had a feeling of the uselessness of all voluntary effort, and also that the matter was working itself clear in my mind. It has many times seemed to me that I was really a passive instrument in the hands of a person not myself. In view of having to wait for the results of these unconscious processes, I have proved the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the very few to be found in Southern Morocco. It has nearly thirty arches, all dilapidated as the city walls themselves, yet possessing their curious gift of endurance. Even the natives realise that their bridge is crumbling into uselessness, after nearly eight centuries of service, but they do no more than shrug their shoulders, as though to cast off the burden of responsibility and give it to destiny. On the outskirts of the town, where gardens ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Veal, drew great crowds to the church at which he preached, and who at thirty-five, being a good deal tamed and sobered, and in the judgment of competent judges vastly improved, attracted no more than a respectable congregation. A very great and eloquent preacher lately lamented to me the uselessness of his store of early discourses. If he could but get rid of his present standard of what is right and good in thought and language, and preach them with the enchaining fire with which he preached them once! For many hearers remain immature, though the preacher ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... promise; I offered to double, nay, treble the sum that I had named, but no; he turned from me, almost with disdain, (the low-born menial!) and requested me to retire, as I must be aware of the impropriety of such a visit, at such an hour. Perceiving the uselessness of attempting to bribe him to secrecy, I left him, cursing him for his obstinacy, and came direct to you. Heavens!' added her ladyship, drawing her robe over her partially denuded bosom, 'how desperate the fear of exposure has made me, that ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... that he would have fallen had they not supported him. His guards drew back, the axe, already lifted, was about to descend, when, the poor limp figure slipped and fell with a thud to the floor, unable to save itself by reason of the uselessness of the arms. Again he was lifted; once more the axe was raised, and even in that moment they heard him whisper the name ever upon ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... psychal, and social health. Reference is made to his employment of it in the 'Characteristics'—itself one of the most authentic and veracious pieces of philosophy that it has been our lot to meet with for a long time; yet wherein he proves the impossibility of any, and the uselessness of all philosophies. Listen while he discourses thereon: 'So long as the several elements of life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is melody and unison: life, from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that she would find some illuminating truth as to the uselessness of sacrificing young men in the glory and prime of their lives. To her war appeared a matter of human nature rather than politics. Hate really was an effect of war. In her judgment future wars could be avoided only in two ways—by men becoming ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... recalled that at the sight of a wide open window, which was not protected by bars, or of the sky, I had usually experienced a desire to fly, which was painful because of its uselessness and absurdity—I suddenly began to experience a feeling of tenderness for the bars; tender gratitude, even love. Forged by hand, by the weak human hand of some ignorant blacksmith, who did not even give himself ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev |
