"Worthlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if any of them do, it will be such a proof of their own absolute worthlessness, that you will be well ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of him that "whilst he was commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way, being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputatious and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... do this? Could you bring yourself to stay just long enough to see that I am not trying to do you good? Fancy how I should feel to have you go away looking upon me as an officious philanthropist! Isn't it only square to give me a chance to demonstrate the honor of my worthlessness?" ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... supplies, had slumped into a hole and suffered a "general giving-way." While in Suez the Judge had paid Cornelius off, written a note to be given by him to Major Garnet, and agreed, in recognition of his abundant worthlessness, to part with him ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... of distinction gives this instance of the worthlessness of all attempts to flee from the Power of ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... author vindicates the usefulness of writing; in the second he discusses the usefulness—it would be more exact to say the harmfulness—of criticism; in the third he expatiates upon the qualifications of authors. One may admit at once the comparative worthlessness of the pamphlet as a contribution to criticism or critical theory. Defoe's comments upon specific writers are thoroughly conventional and commonplace, as may be seen from a glance at his remarks about Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... tenderness, and undertake the difficult task of separating Micheline from the man whom she adored. It was quite a feat of strategy to plan. To bring out the husband's faults and to make his errors known, and give her the opportunity of proving his worthlessness. In a word, to make the young wife understand that she had married an elegant manikin, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... come? To show you what sort of a heart I have sold for money? Why, you know, little Margaret. You can reckon up its deformity, its worthlessness, on your cool fingers. You could tell the serene and gracious lady who is chaffering for it what a bargain she has made,—that there is not in it one spark of manly honor or true love. Don't venture too near it in your coldness and prudence. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... saved a hundred and twenty-five years I could not go anywhere; for I had nothing to save. The worthlessness of civilization rushed over me. When I was an Indian the boundless world was mine. I could build a shelter, and take food and clothes by my strength and skill. My boat or my strong legs carried me ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... certain conspicuous and characteristic features which serve to distinguish it and make its lessons peculiarly important and memorable. For example, the first period is that of the lost days of sin, in which the great lesson taught is the bitterness and worthlessness of a disobedient life. In the second period may be traced the remarkable steps of preparation for the great work of his life. The third period embraces the actual working out of the divine mission committed to him. Then for seventeen or eighteen years we find him bearing ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the world's stupendous hour - The supreme moment for the race To see the emptiness of power, The worthlessness of wealth and place, To see the purpose and the plan Conceived by God ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... conquered, and enslave him for his own use, shunting the toil and burden of life upon his bowed shoulders. Through long ages he had to work out this wrong premiss in disaster to empires through the laziness and worthlessness of their ruling classes engendered by slave labor, in the dumb suffering and bitter wrongs of millions of enslaved men and women. Through centuries the Church protested against these wrongs in vain, since the evil root, in the face of all ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... (Fig. 5) is an aspen of Constable's, on the left in the frontispiece to Mr. Leslie's life of him. Here we have arrived at the point of total worthlessness, the tree being as flat as the old purist one, but, besides, wholly false in ramification, idle, and undefined in every respect; it being, however, just possible still to discern what the tree is meant for, and therefore, the type of the worst ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... upon her, she had not been called upon to state any objections to it. Her poor mother had seen, with the clearness of a mother's love, that the marriage would never tend to her child's happiness: she had observed both characters narrowly, and was perfectly convinced of Burrell's worthlessness. She could not impress this conviction on Sir Robert's mind; but in her last moments she extorted from him the promise that he would never urge the union. This was, as we have seen, all she could obtain; and Sir Robert was content to "keep ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... also, who imagined himself to be ornamental, but laid no claim to usefulness of any sort. Lady Wentworth concurred heartily and proudly in her son's opinion of himself and encouraged his uselessness to a point where it became worthlessness. But Sir William took no pains to conceal his disappointment and disgust. Young William held a small post at court, and, being supplied with money by his mother, was one of the evil spirits of the set composed of Crofts, Berkeley, Little Jermyn, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... from this, that every necessary and useful regulation was suggested that could promote the convenience and advantage of these people, who being in possession of land that yielded the most ample returns, nothing but the greatest worthlessness on their part could have prevented their getting forward, and becoming men of property. That too many of them were of this description will appear evident, from its being notorious that their crops were no sooner gathered, than they were instantly disposed of for spirits, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... thought. Limerick knew nothing of Abbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone to Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma Jane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... orders to the gardener for decking the apartment with flowers—now to her cellaress, her precentrix, and the lay-sisters of the kitchen, for preparing a splendid banquet, mingling her commands on these worldly subjects with an occasional ejaculation on their vanity and worthlessness, and every now and then converting the busy and anxious looks which she threw upon her preparations into a solemn turning upward of eyes and folding of hands, as one who sighed over the mere earthly pomp which she took such ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... he wor allus a nipper; but he wor allus honest, an' it isn't ivery man yo meet i'th world 'at's honest; but aw doant think Tommy ud wrang ony body aght o'th' vally o' that;"—saying which, he snapped his finger and thumb together to denote its worthlessness. ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... old culture! which finds its only consolation in "being good" and in holding out the "helping hand," and turns away from all other consolations!—Does beauty, too, grow out of the ancient culture? I think that our ugliness arises from our metaphysical remnants . our confused morals, the worthlessness of our marriages, and so on, are the cause. The beautiful man, the healthy, moderate, and enterprising man, moulds the objects around him into beautiful shapes after ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his son's physical perfection had always blinded him to the fact that the private was constantly in trouble, and was known as a "bad egg." If any one had told him that he was an object of pity because of his boy's worthlessness, he would have sputtered with indignation. He never realized that Buff escaped many a "bawling out" because the officers respected the father's long years of faithful service and did not want to humiliate him. He ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... of God; (e) His own duty and oneness with the Father; (f) The work and power of the Holy Spirit; (g) The purpose and work of his kingdom and church; (h) The power and nature of prayer; (i) The value of spiritual and the worthlessness of formal worship; (j) The true way to greatness ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... for this, and once he dared to make a personal appeal to old Mr. Mellows to send Luke away to school. He was received with scant courtesy, and only tolerated because he gave the father a chance to void some of his bile at the worthlessness of Luke. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened to worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially: ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... it. There never was a truer saying than that the religion of a man is the chief fact concerning him.[185] By religion is meant not the creed to which a man will subscribe, or otherwise give his assent; not that necessarily; often not that at all—since we see men of all degrees of worth and worthlessness signing all kinds of creeds. No; the religion of a man is that which he practically believes, lays to heart, acts upon, and thereby knows concerning this mysterious universe and his duty and destiny in it. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... a guide. Strange preparations have been offered as pigments, and sometimes accepted, witness turbith mineral, iodine yellow, &c. In these days of chemistry there is less chance for them, but they are continually submitted to one's notice, their merits being enlarged upon in proportion to their worthlessness. Through an exceptional ignorance they may still gain a place, and it has been deemed, therefore, not superfluous to allude to them. At the same time we do not pretend to exhaust the list, any more ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... you," I answered, composedly. I had no wish to argue with him; I only sought to read his shallow soul through and through that I might be convinced of his utter worthlessness. "According to modern civilization there is really no special need to be virtuous unless it suits us. The only thing necessary for pleasant living is to avoid ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... in the process, and that rosy boyish face we love will be lined with the seams of the true statesman. Only you could contemplate imbuing these fossilized and commonplace intellects, composing our Congress of the Confederation—mark the ring of it!—with a belief in its own impotency and worthlessness. You are not mortal. I always said it. When Duane gave me your letter to read, I remarked: 'He withdrew to heaven, and wrote that letter on the knee of the Almighty; never on earth could he have found the courage and the optimism.' No, Hamilton, I would ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Idle and Industrious Apprentice; and there is something exceedingly Hogarthian in the view both of vulgar and of genteel life here displayed. The character of Gertrude, in particular, the heroine of the piece, is inimitably drawn. The mixture of vanity and meanness, the internal worthlessness and external pretence, the rustic ignorance and fine lady-like airs, the intoxication of novelty and infatuation of pride, appear like a dream or romance, rather than anything in real life. Cinderella and her glass slipper are ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... province, have greatly increased the fame of British scholarship; and Macaulay, brilliant and picturesque beyond any of his contemporaries, has an unprecedented popularity, which will last until the worthlessness of his opinions and the viciousness of his style are more justly appreciated than they are likely to be by the mobs of novel readers who in this generation have preferred him to James and Ainsworth. Lord Mahon is the most legitimate successor of the greatest ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has fixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourable opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly fought for a kindred mind, in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... way in which the national money was being wasted. It is said that one day, when the Commander-in-chief came to inspect the progress of the work, Gordon denounced the whole thing most vehemently, and exposed its worthlessness. It is characteristic of the man that he had the courage of his opinions at all times. He must have been carried away a good deal by his feelings, for when he got home that day he said that he might have been ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... spiritual powers could really be conferred instead of evolved! It is true that efforts toward the evolution of such powers may be enormously aided by teachers, but such instruction can not be bought, and the offer to furnish it for money is the best evidence of its worthlessness. Those who teach this ancient wisdom select their own pupils from the morally fit, and tuition can be paid only in devotion to truth and service to humanity. That is the only road that leads to instruction worth having, and until the aspirant is firmly ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... rather than by contract. This law of New Hampshire, which was destined to have a widespread influence, was hailed by the workmen everywhere with delight; mass meetings and processions proclaimed it as a great victory; and only the conservatives prophesied the worthlessness of such legislation. Horace Greeley sympathetically dissected the bill. He had little faith, it is true, in legislative interference with private contracts. "But," he asks, "who can seriously doubt that it is the duty of the Commonwealth to ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... dim, childish sense of her own smallness and inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not do anything, she was not enough. She could not be important to him. This knowledge deadened her from ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... bureaucratic State reinforced, by the self-glorifying dynasties, with the whole volume of the still existing and justly appreciated habit of obedience; and annihilated for a generation every aspiration for freedom by branding it with the stain of moral and social depravity. Our political worthlessness and immaturity came to its climax in the race of office-climbers in 1880, which in 1900 gave place to the battle-fleet patriotism of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... of men, ready to criticise, could but improve. The least exhibition of selfishness, cowardice, vulgarity, dishonesty, or meanness of any kind, brought down the dislike of every man upon him, and persistence in any one disreputable practice, or habitual laziness and worthlessness, resulted in complete ostracism, loneliness, and misery; while, on the other hand, he might, by good behavior and genuine generosity and courage, secure unbounded love ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... The lapidary might have some doubts; he might think that the stranger had, after all, only mocked him with the sight of a wonderful artificial gem, and that a close examination would have proved its worthlessness; but the naturalist can have no doubts: if he is an enthusiast, well acquainted with the fauna of his district, and has good eyesight, he knows that there is no mistake; for there it is, the new strange form, photographed ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... slightest hope that it would ever be redeemed at its nominal value, it would still buy everything that was to be sold,—provisions, goods, houses, lands, even hard money itself. Down to its last gasp there were speculations afoot to take advantage of the differences in the degree of its worthlessness at different places, and buy it up in one place to sell it at another,—to buy it in Philadelphia at two hundred and twenty-five for one, and sell it in Boston at seventy-five for one. It was possible, if the ball passed quickly from hand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Herz-manner, and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plotting against the State in favor of the Papacy, the accumulation of untold wealth by oppression and extortion for the satisfaction of laziness and lust, iniquity of the deepest dye allied to general worthlessness. Common sense goes a long way in this world. If it were only a less rare commodity, and if an effective tribunal could be erected for the suppression of mendacity, the religious would appear for the first time in history in their true colors before the world, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... infer from these their general ill usage? Suppose a person were to make a collection of the different abuses, which had happened for a series of years under our own happy constitution, and use these as an argument of its worthlessness; should we not say to him, that in the most perfect system which the human intellect could form, some defects would exist; and that it was unfair to draw inferences from such partial facts? In the same manner he ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... thirty-eight, this "traditionary testimony" has to be "ascertained and verified by appeal to antiquity." But "ascertainment and verification" are purely intellectual processes, which must be conducted according to the strict rules of scientific investigation, or be self-convicted of worthlessness. Moreover, before we can set about the appeal to "antiquity," the exact sense of that usefully vague term must be defined by similar means. "Antiquity" may include any number of centuries, great or small; and ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions, lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course, because he could not give up worthlessness ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... up with her and accept her bread. The people whom she had known had been either worthless,—as had been her own father, or cruel,—like Lady Linlithgow, or false,—as was Lady Eustace. Miss Macnulty knew that worthlessness, cruelty, and falseness had to be endured by such as she. And she could bear them without caring much about them;—not condemning them, even within her own heart, very heavily. But she was strangely deficient in this,—that she could not call these qualities by other ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... factor in history, but, if I may say so, as a frame of mind.[455] The feeling that there is an eternal highest good which lies beyond all outer experience and is not even the intelligible, this feeling, with which was united the conviction of the entire worthlessness of everything earthly, was produced and fostered by Neoplatonism. But it was unable to describe the contents of that highest being and highest good, and therefore it was here compelled to give itself entirely ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... an injured player was not allowed to leave the field of play without the consent of the opponents' captain. One can easily grasp the fact that your adversaries' captain was not apt to permit a player, battered almost to worthlessness, to go to the bench and to allow you to substitute a strong and fresh player. Therein lies the tale of ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... a money loaner he laughed and said he wouldn't give me one dollar for such a note, as he wouldn't care to buy a lawsuit. He said when the note came due it would be easier for the maker of it to prove the worthlessness of the patent than it would for him to ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... principle of right, by which they have been endowed by God; of those tempests which sometimes lie dormant in our systems, like the slumbering lake in the calm, but which excited, equal its fury when lashed by the winds; of the strength of prejudices; of the worthlessness and changeable character of the most cherished of our opinions, and of that strange, incomprehensible, and yet winning melange of contradictions, of fallacies, of truths, and of wrongs, which make up ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... progress of the sciences and the useful and useless accumulation of printed matter—nothing more than useful store-rooms and useless lumber-rooms. So that a librarian has cause, now far more than before, to be informed of the progress of science and of the value and worthlessness of writings, and a German librarian has to possess attainments which would be lost in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sign of much displeasure while Bragadin made his gold. And the next day Fra Paolo is commanded before the Signoria to meet the Provveditor of the Mint—being the only man who hath dared speak his mind before the Signoria had proved the worthlessness of Bragadin's promise. And our fine gold-maker exchangeth his palace for a prison; for the test of the crucible is all too easy for Fra Paolo, who speaketh naught ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... out and stood at the edge of his tobacco field. All about him the hail had wrought its destruction. Where yesterday broad, thick leaves of green tobacco had stood out strong and vigorous there hung only limp shreds, punctured and torn into worthlessness. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... saddled, awaited the Sahib's displeasure in the front verandah suffered accordingly. He bowed, trembling, to the ground, and let the storm sweep over his head; making no defence beyond a disarming reiteration of his own worthlessness, and of his everlasting devotion to the Protector of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... that it was in an article by a fellow-scribe, where, doubtless more in sorrow than in anger, that gentleman exposed the worthlessness of the productions of sundry of his brother authors, in which I read that whatever success I had met with as a writer of fiction was due to my literary friends and "nepotic criticism." This is scarcely the case, since when I began to write ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... thoughts had been his as he lay upon his bed, not knowing whether he should ever rise from it again. His life had been in many respects a more than ordinarily blameless one, and yet when he had little else to do save look back upon it, an almost overwhelming sense of his worthlessness came upon him, and he was filled with wonder that God could love him ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... Christian religion in a life: (a) Even a fugitive slave would confess his guilt, as, no doubt, Onesimus had done to Paul; (b) It will make one desire to correct any wrongs one has done, and willing, as was Onesimus, to go to the one wronged and make confession; (c) It often raises one from worthlessness to great usefulness (v 11); (d) It will not only make one useful to others in temporal matters, but will make one profitable in things spiritual (v 13). (3) Concerning a real Christian helper, we may learn that, like Paul: (a) He wilt not try to hide or cover up a man's past ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... Petronius by name— A cur of no degree, yet which the same Rejoiced him; because so worthless he That in his worthlessness remarkably He shone, th' example de luxe of how a cur May be the very limit of a slur Upon the honored name of dog; a joke He was, a satire blasphemous; he broke The records all for sheer insulting "bunk;" No dog had ever breathed ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... the solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, and a hundred times, and I trust I shall ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... work for himself as for Jim Weeks, for Jim was not the man to let the merit of his lieutenants go unrecognized. He felt sure that Jim would win the fight, even with C. & S.C. against him, and though he had not recognized the worthlessness of the contract Blaney held, he was confident that Jim could use his knowledge of the existence of such ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... with an intensity unfathomable by words, my utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for myself. I have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being, such as ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... but let us thank God it is no such play as that; let our common human nature rejoice that it has not been thus outraged in its chief and chosen one, that it has not been thus disgraced with the boundless human worthlessness of the creature on whom its choicest gifts were lavished. It is play, indeed; but it is no such Monster, with his idiotic stare of unconsciousness, that the opening of it will reveal to us. Let us all ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... worthlessness is often referred to as when it is said that "There is small choice in rotten apples," with which may be compared another which warns us of the contagious effects ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... estimating the merit of certain poems, whether they be Ossian's or Macpherson's can surely be of little consequence, yet, in order to prove their worthlessness, Mr. W. has expended many pages in the controversy. Tantaene animis? Can great minds descend to such absurdity? But worse still: that he may bear down every argument in favor of these poems, he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... directed them to fight against the Picts; and they did so; and obtained the victory wheresoever they came. They then sent to the Angles, and desired them to send more assistance. They described the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land. They then sent them greater support. Then came the men from three powers of Germany; the Old Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. From the Jutes are descended ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... been studied proudly, contemptuously, rather, from the point of view supposed to be authoritatively settled. The self-sufficiency of egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow-creatures given by the dogmatists who have "gone back," as the vulgar phrase is, on their race, their own flesh and blood. Did you ever read what Mr. Bancroft says about Calvin in his article on Jonathan Edwards?—and ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... much diversion in the company; he was however introduced again, and seated among them in his rags; Sir William being one of the few who pay a greater regard to the man than the dress, can discern and support merit under rags, and despise poverty of soul and worthlessness in embroidery; but, notwithstanding the success of this stratagem, our hero always looked upon it as one of the most unfortunate in his whole life; for, after he had been at Sir William's, as above-mentioned, coming to Stoke Gabriel, near Totness, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... should be left in sight when the building is finished. It is a sad pity that modern modes of building, like modern manners and fashions, conceal actual construction and character, making a mask that may hide great excellence or absolute worthlessness." ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... Greek artists, one on each of the figures; that the 'Antinous' is a bad Hermes; and so on to the end of the collection, it being an easy matter to demolish the more insignificant statues after proving the worthlessness of the principal ones. Much of this criticism comes to us from Germany. But a German can criticise and yet admire, whereas an Anglo-Saxon usually despises what he criticises at all. Isaac D'Israeli says somewhere that certain opinions, like ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Prince Vasili is her father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this (the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all he had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not as the daughter of Prince Vasili, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... his worthlessness, and Vashti, grown to be a slender slip of a girl with very bright eyes and a little nose, was loudest against him in public; though rumor said she had fallen afoul of her youngest brother and boxed his jaws for seconding something she had said ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... would gladly have gone with the boys in blue could he have faced the social ban which a misguided public has established against its most loyal servants, holding enlistment in the regular army as virtual admission of general worthlessness. And now the crowds still lingered under the glass roof of the big passenger shed, for word had gone out that another train coming across the bridge was loaded with more troops, and there was a fascination in watching these prospective victims of the stake and scalping-knife. It had been a fierce ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... pelted the dog with stones and sticks. Hedges and I, nearly bursting with our suppressed laughter, quietly exchanged glances across the table, and the situation became quite intense for us, as we strove to restrain our risibles while listening to the comments of the party on the utter worthlessness of "that dog Booby." Suddenly the camp was electrified by Gillette asking, "Who was on guard last night?" "That's it," said one. "That's where the birds went," said another. This denouement was too much for Hedges ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... may have been instrumental in the downfall of Necker—at least, she secured the appointment, as minister of finance, of the worthless Calonne, who, it will be remembered, brought about the ruin of France in a short period. In time, however, the queen recognized his worthlessness and would have nothing to do with him, thus making in him another ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... his shoulders] Strange! I attempted murder, and am not going to be arrested or brought to trial. That means they think me mad. [With a bitter laugh] Me! I am mad, and those who hide their worthlessness, their dullness, their crying heartlessness behind a professor's mask, are sane! Those who marry old men and then deceive them under the noses of all, are sane! I saw you kiss her; I saw ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... beauty, but because other women have things and she ought to have them. She has a taste for men, but none in them. Yet her creator has made her absolutely "real," and, scum of womanhood as she is, has actually evolved something very like tragedy out of her worthlessness, and has saved her from being detestable, because she is such a very woman. He has, indeed, subjected her to a kenosis, an evisceration, exantlation—or, in plain English, "emptying out"—of everything positively ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... was about to present himself before a certain great one, in the hope of patronage, and felt the need of Heaven's favour to support his worthlessness. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... indirectly, responsible. In the various wars a large amount of capital was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies. Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police, brigands and pirates swarmed every where. In Sardinia and the interior of Asia Minor brigandage was endemic; in Africa and Further Spain it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed outside of the city-enclosures with walls ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sort as those in the attic, close under the eaves, and shut in by a pattern of ironwork. All around the walls stood bookcases, filled with a large collection of books, the greater proportion of them of an age suggestive, to the inexperienced eye, of worthlessness, to the more discerning, of value. An antique desk and a few straight-backed chairs were all the other furnishings of the room, but of these it needed none. Even in its dust-covered condition it was a room ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... years of experience. At the same time, he had become sly, suspicious of his fellows, and absolutely non-communicative. He had conceived the idea of holding on to the mine, and at the same time spreading reports of its worthlessness until the term of contract had expired, when he hoped that, in default of other claims, the entire property would fall into his hands. Then he would proclaim its true value and reap ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people's blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Mr Wedgwood (Dictionary of English Etymology, 1872) from the old word trousse, signifying the clipping of trees. But in old Gipsy or in the German Gipsy of the present day, as in the Turkish Rommany, it means so directly "fear, mental weakness and worthlessness," that it may possibly have had a Rommany origin. Terror in Gipsy is trash, while thirst is trush, and both are to be found in the Hindustani. Tras, which means thirst ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... objected to every one of them, on the ground of formality. This was too long, and that was too short; one was too high, and another too low; a fifth was too broad, and a sixth too narrow; in short, there was no figure of speech of this nature to which he did not resort, in order to prove their worthlessness, with the exception that I do not remember he charged any of my ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her power, and despising every one they get the better of; never doubting themselves the most honourable of all the nations, and each man counting himself better than any other. The depth of their worthlessness and height of their vainglory no one can understand who has not been there to see, who has not learned to know the miserable misgoverned ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... warning. So great is God's mercy in Christ that even you are welcome when you come; the gate stands open; the Redeemer from within is calling chief sinners in, He has pledged himself to cast no comer out because of his worthlessness. Nor does the freeness of his grace prove that the prodigal's sins are small; it proves only that the forgiving ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... probable loss of the public, duty would have required him to examine their accounts and place all trust-moneys beyond their reach; but until the crash came, Lord Macclesfield knew neither the actual worthlessness of the South Sea Stock, nor the embarrassed circumstances of the defaulting masters, nor the peril of the persons committed to his care. The system which permitted the masters to speculate with money not their own was execrable, but ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... merely this, for he presently despatched Arthur into town after an excellent assortment of groceries. All the while, however, he neglected no opportunity to elaborate for Nellie's benefit his opinions concerning the handy-man's utter worthlessness. At length this good Samaritan paused from his labors, and regaling himself with a fresh chew of tobacco and a parting gibe at Joe, set briskly off for his ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... to describe in detail the ruin, misery, tumults, loss and confusion which attended the speedy descent of Law's paper and shares to entire worthlessness. Thousands of families were made paupers, and trade and commerce destroyed by the painful process. Law himself escaped out of France poor; and, after another obscure and disreputable career of gambling, died in ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Pierce agreed. "Poor little thing, she's lived in a world of bottles and splints and bandages. She's never had a chance to realize either the value or the worthlessness of things." ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... type of inefficiency—of utter worthlessness. The Chinese is the perfect type of industry. For sheer work no worker in the world can compare with him. Work is the breath of his nostrils. It is his solution of existence. It is to him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... be put into execution. The notion that intelligence was put in man only to be shattered, a will given him only to be forthwith distorted by passion or blinded by ignorance, and that "there is no health in us" unless we abase ourselves to the dust and proclaim our utter worthlessness, is to men and women of this time wholly inconceivable. That nothing ethically valuable can be accomplished except after instant prayer, or after copious outpourings of Divine grace, that the curse of absolute sterility is upon all our attempts to conform to the dictates ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... assured every word is true.[Footnote: He must, however, be careful to distinguish blame— however strongly expressed, of some special fault or error in a true painter,—from these general statements of inferiority or worthlessness. Thus he will find me continually laughing at Wilson's tree-painting; not because Wilson could not paint, but because he had never looked at a tree.] It is just because it so much offends him, that it was necessary: and knowing that it must offend him, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... work is just in accordance with ordinary human proportions, and appears gigantic only when we try to confine it to those unworthy conditions. When therefore we call our plan chimaeric and eccentric, we in reality flatter the actual worthlessness of our artistic publicity, and in a manner mark it as the just and rational measure. We should not give that wrong impression to people. Every one of your letters is worth to me gold, and more, but ANSWERS in the proper sense I scarcely ever receive from you, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the evil from every angle. It aroused the public by showing the actual contents of some of their pet medicines, or the absolute worthlessness of them. The Editor got the Women's Christian Temperance Union into action against the periodicals for publishing advertisements of medicines containing as high as forty per cent alcohol. He showed that the most confidential ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... kingdom of opposition and darkness; its hindrances within and without may seem to nullify everything else; they may contract and even seemingly destroy man and his spiritual potencies; all his acts may seem fruitless and vain, and his whole existence may seem to sink into nothingness and worthlessness. Yet, through the entrance of the new life and a new world, everything is transformed from within, and the clearness of the light appears all the more by contrast with all the depth of the darkness. Indeed, in the ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... where intemperance and ribaldry may season each other, if the pecuniary means for the former ingredient can be afforded, even at the cost of distress at home.—But without including depravity of this degree, the worthlessness of the communications of a number of grossly ignorant associates is easy to be imagined; besides that most of us have been made judges of their quality by numberless occasions of unavoidably ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... hear any excuse that No. 3, rear rank, had to offer, so that he would be able to remark upon its utter worthlessness. Now, No. 3. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... heads of thought; of which enumeration the kindest thing which can be said is that it betrays an utter want of intellectual perspective. To unravel even a part of this tangled web so as to expose its argumentative worthlessness, soon fills a page.... But there is another kind of fallacy which the same gentleman wields with immense effect, and in the use of which he is a great master; which, because it was absolutely impossible to handle it fitly in the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... a previous life in the sphere of Instinct, where they are brought to see the worthlessness of earthly treasures, to amass which they gave themselves such untold pains! Who can tell how many times the human being lives in the sphere of Instinct before he is prepared to enter the sphere of Abstractions, where thought expends itself on erring science, where mind wearies ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... persons accused, that several of them are members of the church in full communion, of blameless conversation, and "walking as becometh women professing godliness." They relate the methods by which they had been deluded and terrified into confession, and show the worthlessness of those confessions as evidences against them. They use this bold and significant language: "Our troubles we foresee are likely to continue and increase, if other methods be not taken than as yet have been; and we know not who can think himself safe, if the accusations of children ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... sources of happiness; the main stress of the problem lies in the contest with the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and of mental suffering—indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection. Poverty and Disease may be contracted in dimensions; and even vicissitudes of fortune are ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... second, in a social and effeminate form. Both, however, agreed in destroying individuality, inasmuch as the one degraded man into a will-less machine for executing the commands of others, and the other deadened him in cultivating the feeling of his sinful worthlessness. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... into a philosophizing strain, and opens his discourse with the ominous words, "Sed jam ad institutum revertamur, deque ipso vitae humanae genere aliquo dicamus." He begins with a disquisition on the worthlessness of life, and repeats somewhat tediously the story of his visit to Scotland. He gives a synopsis of all the sciences he had ever studied—Theology, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Music, Optics, Astronomy, Astrology, Geometry, Chiromancy, Agriculture, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... understood her niece thoroughly, and she knew there would be no danger of a relapse into the mistakes of the past; other faults, other temptations would assail her, but these were harmless. Having once seen and realized the falsity of worldliness when compared with religion, the worthlessness of mere money, when compared with true affection, Sibyl could never forget the lesson, for firm reason and resolve were ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... king. The executive and judicial were all the same: there was no appeal from one to the other. The only appeal from the ministers was to the king, and as the king shut himself up in his palace, and was practically inaccessible to all but high officials, the worthlessness of this appeal is evident. Outside Mandalay the country was governed by wuns or governors. These were appointed by the king, or by the council, or by both, and they obtained their position by bribery. Their tenure was exceedingly insecure, as any man ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... bride and groom on that memorable voyage of discovery of which the booty had till recently adorned her walls; and there was a dim consolation in the thought that those early "finds" in coral and Swiss wood-carving, in lava and alabaster, still lay behind the worn locks, in the security of worthlessness. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... of premeditated suicide, she saw in the established charge of murder a dreadful retribution. To make her peace with Heaven in the solitude of the prison cell, was now all that she desired. She had proved the worthlessness of life, and now she prepared herself to die. But her tortures were not ended. Julio, her lost lover, demanded an interview with her, and when, after listening to her sad tale, he renewed his vows of love, and expressed his firm belief in her ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... cried, in a gust of passion. "You shame my worthlessness with this mad honor of yours that drags you jesting to your death! For you must die a prisoner now, without any hope. You and Orleans and Bourbon are England's only hold on France, and Bedford dare not ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... should not be added to those of the illustrious pro-consuls and elegant peeresses and their following who form Anti-Suffrage Societies. Before we criticise sex-antagonism in women, let us be honest about it in men; and before we sneer at the type of women who most display it, let us realize fully the worthlessness of the types of men who display it. But if this be granted—and I have never heard it granted by the men who deplore sex-antagonism as if only women displayed it—we must none the less recognize that this spirit injures both sexes, and that it is ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby |
