"Profitless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray, Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain; And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis copied, George Vasari ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... course, profitless. John could only return again and again to his assertion that Reardon must get 'a decent berth.' At length Amy left the room in weariness ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... in Mexico were very successful up to the breaking out of the civil war consequent on revolt from Spain. Society was so utterly disturbed by this catastrophe that residence in Mexico became alike unsafe and profitless, and the Spanish musician resolved to return to Europe. He turned his money into ingots of gold and silver, and started, with his little family, across the mountains interposing between the capital and the seaport ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... hear as the Pharisees and Herodians tried to hear Christ, "that they might catch him in his talk;" and like the scribes and Pharisees, "laying in wait for him, to catch something out of his mouth" with which to accuse him. But these are not the only profitless hearings which the God-loving and soul-loving minister of the Gospel has to mourn over. The lives of some prove that they hear mainly from a desire to make others think that they have great respect for religion and the Word of God. They go to church and hear, but heed nothing. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... ordered; what of that? Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray Placid, and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain, 100 And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... afterwards at Bethhoron was defeated by Judas, and almost annihilated in the subsequent flight, Nicanor himself being among the slain (13th Adar Nicanor's day). Judas was now at the acme of his prosperity; about this time he concluded his (profitless) treaty with the Romans. But disaster was impending. In the month of Nisan, barely a month after the defeat of Nicanor, a new Syrian army under Bacchides entered Judaea from the north; near Elasa, southward from Jerusalem, a decisive battle ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... awaited us in the grandest display of quartz that we had yet seen. The descent of the Wady el-Kurr seemed to be as flat, stale, and profitless as possible, when "Mar" appeared on the left side in mounds, veins, and strews. Presently we turned south, and passed the brackish well, El-Hufayrah ("the Little Pit"), in a bay of the left bank, distant about eight ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity. But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... visible a still profounder and blacker abyss of crime than that disclosed by the evidence for the crown. Young as I then was in the profession, no marvel that I felt oppressed by the weight of the responsibility cast upon me; or that, when wearied with thinking, and dizzy with profitless conjecture, I threw myself into bed, perplexing images and shapes of guilt and terror pursued me through my troubled sleep! Happily the next day was not that of trial; for I awoke with a throbbing pulse ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... he was concerned, the meeting between Cis and Mr. Perkins proved utterly profitless. To begin with, in his pride and excitement, he forgot to follow out her instructions regarding the introduction. Instead of pronouncing the two names politely, he ran to Cis, and "Here he is!" he cried. "This is him! ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... at length reaped their reward.'[32] The Radical version of the history is different. The great men, it said, who had left the cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming, shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough in detail; but they had ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... wild-horse hunters for the sake of trades and occasional sales. But Lin Slone never traded nor sold a horse he had captured. The excitement of the game, and the lure of the desert, and the love of a horse were what kept him at the profitless work. His type was rare in ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Grove, I think, four or five years, a barren, profitless time. I remember scarcely one gleam of interest which pierced for more than a few moments the thick gloom of it. The cruel, dull, false gods of English convention (for thought it is not) held me fast; masters and pupils alike were jailers to me. I ate and drank of their provision and can ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... that pass; and let no opponent of the Bill be tempted to compliment his own foresight, by exaggerating the mischiefs and dangers that have sprung from it: let not time be wasted in profitless regrets; and let those party distinctions vanish to their very names that have separated men who, whatever course they may have pursued, have ever had a bond of union in the wish to save the limited monarchy, and those ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... I trust you will not forget that I have lived a very lonely and you might say profitless life," he said, rubbing his hands together, and allowing his smile to broaden into a pleased grin. "As you may know in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,—and so on. A man is as old as he feels. I can't say that I ever felt ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the favours she did show. For know that her blows fall sudden and swift and unawares, though long The time of forbearance be and halt the coming of fate and slow. So look to thyself, lest life in the world pass idle and profitless by, And see that thou fail not of taking thought to the end of all below. Cast loose from the chains of the love and the wish of the world and thou shalt find Guidance and help unto righteousness and peace of heart, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... were the women-atheists,—creatures who had voluntarily crushed all the sweetness of the sex within them—foolish human flowers without fragrance, that persistently turned away their faces from the sunlight and denied its existence, preferring to wither, profitless, on the dry stalk of their own theory;—there were the "platform-women," unnatural products of an unnatural age,—there were the great ladies of the aristocracy who turned with scorn from a case of real necessity, and yet spent hundreds of pounds on private theatricals wherein they might have the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... quick—all that laboriously constructed edifice of art and chicane which yesterday had seemed so substantial, so impregnable a wall between the Lone Wolf and the World, to-day rent, torn asunder, and cast down in ruins about his feet—Lanyard wasted time neither in profitless lamentation or ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Ripton had obeyed him and looked up to him in the heroic time, he loved him tenfold now. He told his friend how much Lucy's mere womanly sweetness and excellence had done for him, and Richard contrasted his own profitless extravagance with the patient beauty of his dear home angel. He was not one to take her on the easy terms that offered. There was that to do which made his cheek burn as he thought of it, but he was going to do it, even ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... deceptive appearance of truth to nature; understood, as far as it went, in a moment, but conveying no accurate knowledge of anything, and, in all its operations on the mind, unhealthy, hopeless, and profitless. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... thoughtfully. For a single moment the words trembled upon his lips which would have brought things to an instant and profitless climax. Then he remembered the million or so of people of Miller's own class and way of thinking, to whom he was a leading light, and he choked ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... object of remaining hidden from him. If only she could be safely married before he heard of her again—all, she thought, might yet be well with her. Of what use, then, would be his vengeance? for she did not think it likely he could be so cruel as to wreak an idle and profitless revenge upon her after she herself and her fortune were ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... in the stars themselves, but in our eyes. And at this our immeasurable distance from these souls who are nighest unto the throne of the Most High, it is not for me, the worm, as I stand before you, to presume to measure which is the greater, which is the less. Rather than spending our time in profitless weighing and measuring, let me beseech you to bow your heads in awe and gratitude, praising God for the mercy which sendeth now and then unto men the living voice, the ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... room as he had left it, and, seating himself by the window, was soon plunged in deep thought. The arrival of one of the attendants with his luncheon some two hours later woke him from a maze of profitless scheming. The problem was as ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Terry, intent upon discovery of some way out of their predicament, left for a long walk. Alone in the little house, the Major brooded half the morning over the plight in which the old chief's dictum had placed them, then dismissed the profitless forebodings and went out to the village to study ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... eident, fleet time rushes on, Be eident, be eident, bricht day will be gone; To stand idle by is a profitless sin: The mair that ye work, aye the mair ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... bends o'er Yarrow Vale, Save where that pearly whiteness Is round the rising sun diffused, A tender hazy brightness; Mild dawn of promise! that excludes All profitless dejection; Though not unwilling here to admit A ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... to convert the natives to the faith, and even, if they should not receive baptism, to make peace and alliance with them. This did not succeed. It is probable that the captains found negotiation of any kind exceedingly tame and apparently profitless in comparison with the pleasant forays made by their predecessors. The attempt, however, shows much intelligence and humanity on the part of those in power in Portugal. That the instructions were sincere is proved by the fact of this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Paraguayan territory, but that of the Argentine Republic, on the opposite side of the river. There settled down, he did not give his hours to idleness; nor yet altogether to his favourite pursuit, the pleasant though somewhat profitless one of natural history. Instead, he devoted himself to cultivation, the chief object of his culture being the "yerba de Paraguay," which yields the well-known mate, or Paraguayan tea. In this industry he was eminently ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... exist. A man's first duty is to his family. My advice to you would be to miss a few meetings and go and try to find something to do. Think how we have denied ourselves in order to have a place of our own, and now it's all to be taken from us, and all because of this senseless and profitless strike." ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... thence. It did not, however, trouble her that she had heard of this through a servant; she never looked for anything else. Had she been addicted (which, fortunately for her, she was not) to that most profitless of all manufactures, grievance-making,—she might have wept over this little incident. But except for one reason, the news of her sister's approaching marriage was rather agreeable to Philippa. She would ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... afterwards; but for many weeks it occupied Hamilton's mind. All this time he was harassed with cares of business, and his brow became more darkly shrouded in gloom as his perplexities thickened. At last the crisis came! Mr. Burgess saw the utter impossibility of longer continuing his almost profitless trade, under heavy expenses, which not only absorbed his small capital, but actually plunged him into debt. But one honest course was left for him to pursue; and he resolved to close up his affairs, and sell off what stock he had to pay ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... fascination enveloped the world in which Gerty lived, and the old familiar atmosphere through which she herself had moved so tranquilly was troubled suddenly as if by an approaching storm. The things which she had once loved now showed stale and profitless to her eyes, while those external objects of fortune, to which she had always believed herself to be indifferent, were endowed at the moment with an extraordinary and unreal value. It was as if her whole nature had undergone some powerful physical convulsion, which had altered not only ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... woods, catching only now and then a view of the golden plain through the dark green oaks and pines. For full three hours our brilliant little party dashed up hill and down dale, through the most majestic forests, delightful to the gaze but unrelieved by a patch of cultivation, and miserably profitless to the commonwealth, till we came to a height covered with loose rocks and pasture. "There is Tronosha," said the Natchalnik, pulling up, and pointing to a tapering white spire and slender column of ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... disregarding all precedent in Virginian campaigns, and saying that the promptness with which reinforcements had been forwarded had contributed largely to the promising situation! But almost immediately after this the North shuddered at the enormous and profitless carnage at Cold Harbor. Concurrently with all this bloodshed, there also took place the famous and ill-starred movement of General Butler upon Richmond, which ended in securely shutting up him and his forces at Bermuda Hundred, "as ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... tactical merits, the battle had the important strategic effect of putting the Dutch out of the war. The remnants of their fleet were destroyed in harbor during an otherwise profitless expedition into Holland led by the Duke of York in 1799. By this time, when naval requirements and expanding trade had exhausted England's supply of seamen, and forced her to relax her navigation laws, it is estimated that no less than 20,000 Dutch sailors had left ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... heart and trust Him, as Janet said. He has been good to us all I will not be afraid even of the days that look so dull and profitless to me. God will accept the little I can do, and I ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... be to delude ourselves with the mere idea of doing something; which would be injurious to the natives, as interfering with other and more advantageous arrangements, and unjust to the colony, as continuing an unnecessary and profitless expenditure. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned. [Cecily starts.] I use the word in the sense of lost or mislaid. To your work, child, these speculations are profitless. ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... curbed his tendency to profitless and hurtful "skylarking," he had far too much of the Berserker blood of his ancestors—those rough old vikings who "despised mail and helmet and went into battle unharnessed"—to become altogether gentle ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... then, Lord Lovel, what knew I of rank, living under his father's wing? They told me I was the Lady Anna, and the children scouted me. My mother was a countess. So she swore, and I at least believed her. But if ever rank and title were a profitless burden, they were to her. Do you think that I had learned then to ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... implies that the author (i.e. Leigh Hunt) would be better qualified to "catch the manners" of Lisson Grove than of May Fair. It is possible that this was the "last straw," and that the reception of The Blues hastened Byron's determination to part company with the profitless and ill-omened Liberal. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... and naked of everything, and I fling myself out of myself into the merciful arms of my Father in heaven! There is all the difference in the world between searching for evidence of my sonship, and seeking to get the conviction of God's Fatherhood. The one is an endless, profitless, self-tormenting task; the other is the light and liberty, the glorious liberty, of the children ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... stirring watchwords of endeavour. We are told that no word spoken ever dies, but goes reverberating through space for ever. It is my fancy that only evil words escape into the outer void, which eternally engulfs their profitless message, while words of hope and helpfulness are not thus lightly sundered from the world that needs them, but hover still near above us, descending with every lull of the tumult into those ears which are strained towards them. The laden air of towns carries ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... her mother or by her virtuous, bigoted, amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose steps have never crossed the home threshold without being surrounded by chaperons, whose laborious childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeit they were profitless, to whom in short everything is a mystery, even the Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are met with, here and there in the world, like woodland flowers surrounded by brambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them. The man who owns a flower so sweet and pure as this, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... you for your chivalrous and courteous letter. Believe me, I would as lief judge of the strength and splendour of sun and sea by the dust that dances in the beam and the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take the petty and profitless vulgarity of one or two insignificant towns as any test or standard of the real spirit of a sane, strong and simple people, or allow it to affect my respect for the many noble men or women whom it has been my privilege in this ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... was part of his nature. He had been early prepossessed with Clarence through a kinsman at El Refugio, where the young American's generosity had left a romantic record among the common people. He had been pleased to approve of his follies before the knowledge of his profitless and lordly land purchase had commended itself to him as corroborative testimony. "Of true hidalgo blood, mark you," he had said oracularly. "Wherefore was his father sacrificed by mongrels! As to the ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... notes each emotional clew. Many unspoken queries find vocal reply. Delicate points are cleared by suggestive indirection. Neither completely yields to profitless ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... next thing to a country tavern, the principal difference consisting in the fact that all the guests were transients, never requiring bedchambers, securing their rest on the tops of sugar and flour barrels and codfish boxes, and their refreshment from stray nibblings at the stock in trade, to the profitless deplenishment of raisins and loaf sugar and ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... the country the confidence which for a time had been most evidently shaken. Proofs and evidences had been often dinned into careless ears without much visible effect, and often before weary listeners, to whom the great bulk of what they heard was unintelligible and profitless. Very often in the hands of well-intentioned, but uninstructed and narrow-minded men, fallacious or thoroughly inconclusive arguments had been confidently used, to the detriment rather than to the advantage of the cause they had ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... one has had in a dream the exasperating, profitless experience of seeking something urgently desired at the moment, and the aching, weary sensation that follows each failure to track the thing to its hiding-place. Sometimes with a singing dizziness in my head I climb and climb, I know not where or why. Yet I cannot quit the torturing, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Street close packed with the stuff of human life, homespun and drab enough, but not altogether profitless, may be, to turn over and examine. So close packed was it that there was scarce breathing space. It was only at immemorial intervals that our pauper alien made a pun, but one day he flashed upon the world the pregnant remark that England was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... adherents. Depend upon it, therefore, your promotion is safe enough, even if there were not a field open for every man who seeks the path to eminence. The great point, however, is to get service with the army of Italy. These campaigns here are as barren and profitless as the soil they are fought over; but, in the south, Maurice, in the land of dark eyes and tresses, under the blue skies, or beneath the trelliced vines, there are rewards of victory more glorious than a grateful ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... his vessels to profitless danger, the Vice-Admiral ordered the torpedo-boats to retire from the front, and the whole line of them proceeded to a point north of the fleet, where ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... whereat I cursed him for meddlesome fool and turning my back went on with my labour, though my pleasure in it was gone. Howbeit I wrought this, rather than sit with idle hands, wasting myself in profitless repining. And presently, being intent on the business, I forgot all else and seeing this little bower was turning out much better than I had hoped, I fell a-whistling, until, hearing a step, I turned to find Joanna leaning upon Resolution's arm and in her eyes such ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... condition of indifference which made conversation extremely difficult as well as profitless, he began to consider her physical condition. I knew him well enough to gather from his manner alone as he went on that what had seemed at the start to be merely a curious case, because it concerned the Athertons, was looming up in his mind as unusual in itself, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the question which her father had suggested as an example of a subject of profitless discussion. She remembered this, and asked herself if it was likely that she, having at her command fewer data than her father bearing upon this case, should make a better attempt than he made at its solution. Her father had seen Herbert Courtland ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... gallant bearing, these pleaded against the evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a man of spirit, a gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odium of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought this profitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind. Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in some snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow in his face, poignant remembrance would stab her with recollection of the difference between what ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Lost hours, lost friends, lost pleasures; and the bad Are racked by throes of impotent remorse, Dark, fierce, and bitter; for themselves are lost, And still neglecting what remains of life, They strive by backward reachings to redeem The irredeemable. Why pass the hours, The fleeting hours, in profitless regrets, When each regret but lops another bough, Full of green promise, from the tree of life? You, who in your bereavement truly feel This truth, expressed so sadly and so well: 'Joy's recollection is no longer joy, While ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... lady, would I not give For the wonderful world in which you live! What have I garnered one-half as true As the tales Titania whispers you? Ah, late we learn that the only truth Was that which we found in the Book of Youth. Profitless others, and stale, and flat;— There are no more books in the world ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... was another perversity—an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they WERE or not was a subordinate and almost always a profitless question. There were other considerations, the first of which was that I already had two or three recruits in use, notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations and with whom I was still—perhaps ignobly—satisfied. ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... be noticed that abstruse as are many of his discourses they generally go straight to the heart of some contemporary interest. Here he says that self-indulgence is low and self-mortification crazy: that both are profitless and neither is the religious life. That consists in walking in the middle path, or noble eightfold path defined in a celebrated formula as right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right rapture. He then ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... But it takes very little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is easily blown out, and then come smouldering and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round it. The one Reader's hand may shelter the flame; the one blessed ministering spirit with the vessel of oil may keep it bright in spite ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... day with him. The gold he handled stung him to hatred and envy, and every feeling which he had resolved to combat as worse than profitless. He could not speak to his fellow-workmen. From morning to night it had rained. St. John's Arch looked more broken-spirited than ever, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... but by degrees remembrance grew blunted and the images less clear, and even these sweet, sad visions of the night came to me less often. Thus life became a weary round, in which month followed month, season followed season, year followed year, and brought always the same eternal profitless-work. And yet the work was merciful, for it dulled the biting edge of thought, and the unchanging evenness of life ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... shall we proceed to study the brain? All must admit the necessity of a thorough study of its anatomy; yet, unless we learn something of its functions, this anatomy is profitless and uninteresting; hence cerebral anatomy was crude and erroneous until, revolutionized by Gall and Spurzheim, it assumed a philosophical character and became connected with a doctrine ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... no doubt that the Homeric poems were written before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly prehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by those scholars who have not attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion might have been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must be learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in the absence ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... those imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the mines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the general value, the operation became more profitless still; and at length both Spain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money, which they had no means to pay—in other words, were bankrupt. And this is the true solution of the problem—why have the gold and silver mines of the Peninsula ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Newspaper section pleased no one, from the confined limits to which the editor was restricted, independently of which, nearly all the subscribers had seen the Debates in their length, through other mediums; and yet this profitless part of the work gave most trouble to the compiler. Its dulness, I know, fretted Mr. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the barkentine was weighing anchor and giving a line for a tow out to sea. The Malay was a valuable sailor; to replace him adequately was clearly so impossible a task that Freeman decided, after a profitless and delaying search of hours, to leave port without him or another in his place. It was with a heavy heart, somewhat lightened by a confident assumption that the amulet was safe in his possession, that Freeman headed down the channel for ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... as making a famine where abundance lies; he tells him that he beguiles the world, unblesses some mother; that he is his mother's glass and calls back the April of her prime; asks him why he abuses the bounteous largess given him to give; calls him a profitless usurer; tells him that the hours that have made him fair will unfair him; that he should not let winter's rugged hand deface ere he has begotten a child, though it were a greater happiness should he beget ten. He asks if his failure to marry is because he might wet a widow's eye, and then in ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the Hippo. Transvaal law protects, because it rarely does harm, and is growing rarer year by year. I ventured therefore to tell these Colonials that their sportsmanship was as bad as their marksmanship, and that the pleasure which springs from inflicting profitless pain was an unsoldierly pursuit; but I preached to deaf ears, and when soon after our camp was broken up that Hippo. was still ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... purposes of our existence. Yet men in this material age speak as if houses and lands, food and raiment, were alone useful; as if the open eye and loving appreciation of all that He hath made were quite profitless; as if the meat were more than the life, the raiment than the body. They look upon the earth as a stable, its fruit as mere fodder, loving the corn they grind and the grapes they crush better than the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and so thoroughly stained with tar and grease that it was difficult to say what that original colour had been, but was therefore so much the better suited to the purpose of a disguise—a pair of equally faded dungaree trousers, and a knitted worsted cap. But his delay had not been profitless, for happening to find in the forecastle two of the crew of the Bangalore, who had been compelled to join the Francesca, and who, from their dejected appearance, he conjectured were not altogether pleased or satisfied with the arrangement, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... within his grasp; yet here the reward is of infinitely greater value, a prize compared with which riches are as dross in comparison with gold. It is Health, without which the acquisition of Wealth, is well-nigh impossible, and its possession as profitless to the possessor ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... of the father whom she had always passionately admired, when she made the mistake of her life. Urged by her father, she accepted a position at court as Second Keeper of the Queen's Robes. There she spent five pleasureless and worse than profitless years. In her 'Diary and Letters,' the most readable to-day of all her works, she has told the story of wretched discomfort, of stupidly uncongenial companionship, of arduous tasks made worse by the selfish thoughtlessness of her superiors. She has also ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... many of the little school histories there is but a tedious, bare narrative of apparently unconnected facts, and there is a profitless rigmarole of dates and names: but when the sequence of cause and effect is not obscured, and form and life are given to the actors, and the development of events and institutions is traced, the story of the United States becomes, as it should become, the most, fascinating ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... were unworthy The name of man, if an apology So gracious came off profitless, and from A lady! Will you take me, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... influence among us, is to be found in the ill-begotten, round-headed calves, not infrequently dropped by cows of the common mixed kind, which, if killed early, make very blue veal, and if allowed to grow up, become exceedingly profitless and unsatisfactory beasts; the heifers being often barren, the cows poor milkers, the oxen dull, mulish beasts, yielding flesh of very dark color, of ill flavor and destitute ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... works that rest upon it make demands—perhaps extraordinary ones—upon the reader or the beholder. We regard mere surface glitter, or mere verbal sweetness, in a mood entirely passive, and with a pleasure entirely profitless. The beauty of excellent stage scenery seems much more obvious and easy of apprehension than the beauty of trees and hills themselves, inasmuch as the act of association in the mind is much easier and cheaper than the act of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... set out to walk over to Southlook, realising that he should have to spend an hour in profitless gossip with the lodge-keeper before presenting himself at the villa, but somehow relishing the thought that even so he would be nearer to Hetty than if he ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the rugs and moving the furniture about he made a careful survey of the flooring, seeking to find some panel that might conceal a hiding place. Once or twice in corners he went so far as to make soundings but apparently the whole floor was intact. His search in the bath room was equally profitless, and at last he turned to the clothes press. As he opened the door an exclamation of ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... gay doings, which were all very well for a time, but rather profitless on the whole, an extremely favourable opening for promotion suddenly occurred. The late Sir Samuel Hood, on being appointed commander-in-chief of the East India station, was applied to by my friends, and agreed to take me with him as one of his lieutenants. His list of proteges, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... sorely against my will) I have been thrust by force of circumstances into many imminent and prodigious perils; much time that I gladly would have devoted to peaceful, fruitful study I have been compelled to employ in rude and profitless (except that my life was saved by it) battling with savages; and—what most of all has pained me—many curious and interesting skulls that I gladly would have added entire to my collection of crania, I have been driven in self-defence to ruin ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... been a sanguinary, fruitless, cruel campaign; it had availed nothing except to drive the Arabs away from some hundred leagues of useless and profitless soil; hundreds of French soldiers had fallen by disease, and drought, and dysentery, as well as by shot and sabre, and were unrecorded save on the books of the bureaus, unlamented save, perhaps, in some little nestling ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... love when he first knew her. If the secret of Jane's origin still remained locked up in her heart, the effort would be an easy one. He learned enough of David Cable, however, to know that if he shared the secret, the plan would be profitless ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... really put into operation. The supporters of the new regime were far from agreed as to the kind of republic, federal or (p. 610) centralized, that should be established;[843] the republican leaders were mutually jealous and prone to profitless theorizing; the nation was lacking in the experience which is a prerequisite of self-government.[844] At home the republic was opposed by the monarchists of the various groups, by the clergy, and by the extreme particularists, and abroad it won the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... speak in this working age, when they speak from their hearts, as if houses, and lands, and food, and raiment were alone useful, and as if sight, thought, and admiration,[2] were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves Utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and their race into vegetables; men who think, as far as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the life, and the raiment than the body, who ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but to leave. Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last party of whites, to visit this profitless locality." Yet Ives enjoyed the Canyon, and wrote some truly eloquent descriptions of it. How surprised he would be could he come back now, approach it from the north, cross the river in a steel cage, and find at El Tovar such an hotel as ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... perfect confidence in Maignan, and did not doubt that Bruhl would soon weary, if he had not already wearied, of a profitless siege. In an hour at most—and it was not yet midnight—the king would be free to go home; and with that would end, as far as he was concerned, the mission with which M. de Rosny had honoured me. The ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... not the word given: "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God?" How broad that word was, "whatsoever." Why that covered every movement—yes, and every word. How could life have seemed to her dull and uninteresting and profitless? ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... business in hand. But in this business of life you fire, and if some distraction, some momentary influence or folly sends your aim wild, the shot is gone and you are left with all the years that follow to think about it. You can do nothing but think about it—the most profitless ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... he felt that he had been altogether remiss in his duty as guide, philosopher, and friend. There were old sorrows, too, on this score. In the main Sir Thomas had discharged well a most troublesome, thankless, and profitless duty towards the son of a man who had not been related to him, and with whom an accidental intimacy had been ripened into friendship by letter rather than by social intercourse. Ralph Newton's father had been the younger brother ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... the King." These, being of stone, and Government property, had not been kindled. The storehouses and stables were, however, empty. Not a horse nor a mule nor an ass was in its stall. "They had not left behind them any beast whatsoever, either alive or dead." Venta Cruz was as profitless a booty as all the other stations. A few pariah dogs and cats were in the street, as was perhaps natural, even at that date, in a Central-American town. These were at once killed, and eaten half raw, "with great appetite." Before they were despatched, a pirate lighted on a treasure in a ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... but my activity is vague, profitless, capricious. No lucrative or noble purpose impels me. I aim at nothing but selfish gratification. I have no relish, indeed, for sensual indulgences. It is the intellectual taste that calls for ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... they carried desolation. The fields through which the river ran were useless to the farmer. Are there not some whom we know who might be thus described—perhaps someone who reads these lines among the number? First the schoolboy, then the youth, and now the man, profitless and sour, so that all cultivation has been wasted. ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... all of which were old campaigners; and Poker especially, although not old in years, was a practical fighter, having been trained not to attack but to harass. The systematic and steady way in which they advanced before the bear, and retired, right and left, leading her into a profitless pursuit, was very interesting to witness. Another volley from the hunters caused them to make off more rapidly, and wounded the cub severely, so much so that in a few minutes it began to flag. Seeing this, the mother placed it in front of her, and urged it forward with her snout so ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... most of the leaders returned to the service of the State, the pirate crews remained at their old trade. The contagion spread, especially in the western counties, and great numbers of fishermen who found their old employment profitless were recruited into this new calling.[37] At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign we find these Anglo-Irish pirates venturing farther south, plundering treasure galleons off the coast of Spain, and cutting vessels out of the very ports of the Spanish king. Such outrages of course ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... It sets me thinking. As for such girls as we wined, I don't care a rap for them. If I could find any other and better amusement, they might go hang for all I care. What you say of them is true enough, and I agree with you they are a profitless lot of trash, but what is a fellow going to do to kill time? I try tennis and golf with fellows and girls in our set, but that is tame sport. I go to 'functions' once in a while, and if I dance twice with a pretty girl who has no dot, mother glares at me, and says I've no family pride. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... as much as they please every evening. How grateful, then, ought you to be, that you have parents who are so kind and faithful that they will preserve you from these occasions of sin and sorrow! They love you too well to be willing to see you preparing for an unhappy and profitless life. ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell's factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has picked ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Russian American Company attempted to control it early in the present century, and drove many competitors from the fields. It received the most determined opposition from American merchants, and in 1860 it abandoned Petropavlovsk, its business there being profitless. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... one day I opened a book on duelling. I remember only these words: "Conservons-la, cette noble institution." I had never before seen duelling called a noble institution, and I wish I had taken the name of the book. Book-tasting is not necessarily profitless, but it is very stimulating, and makes one hungry for more than he needs for the nourishment of his thinking-marrow. To feed this insatiable hunger, the abstracts, the reviews, do their best. But these, again, have grown so numerous and so crowded with matter that it is hard to find time ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the United States is like those exquisite productions of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their inventors, but which are profitless in any other hands. This truth is exemplified by the condition of Mexico at the present time. The Mexicans were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the federal constitution of their neighbors the Anglo-Americans as their model, and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... profitless business sitting there alone in the mill, listening to the fall the whole night through. Isak had done no wrong; he had no cause to hide himself away. He left the mill, went up over the fields, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... alike tributary the Ethiop Maharaj and the Roman Kaysar. He was distinguished above all monarchs for his virtue clemency, and justice. But although he was the refuge of the Khalifate, he was not blessed with an heir: life and the world appeared profitless to him, because he had no fruit of the heart in the garden of his soul. One night, while reclining on his couch, sad and thoughtful, consumed with grief like a morning taper, he heaved a deep sigh upon which one of his favourite ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Dark rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game They burst their manacles and wear the name Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain! O Liberty! with profitless endeavor Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee (Nor prayer, nor boastful name ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... away Torquilstone, and those thousands of profitless acres," Lady Merrenden went on; "but, unfortunately, all the London property is at his disposition. Oh, I must go and ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... Busby's son and servant, Doll the dairymaid, and the like. When it comes to a question of profit, one is an amusement involving a good deal of healthy, mental exertion, while the other is about as silly and profitless a way of spending an evening as can well be imagined. Youth must not dance, but they may march to music in company, and go through calisthenic exercises, involving a good deal more motion than dancing. But ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... Gratton? If she had not lifted her desperate eyes and seen Mark King reflected at the window, how would she have answered that one final question the "judge" propounded? Would she have said "Yes"? Or would it have been "No"? She did not know; she would never know. She had been on the verge, dizzy with profitless speculation. And now, only the extent of one little word stood between her and an unthinkable condition. That a whole life should be steered down one channel or another—oh, what immeasurably separated channels!—by one's breath ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... can be argued, for and against, from half a dozen different points of view—and most things that men argue over can be—and anything that has been argued about for thousands of years (as most things have) is worse than profitless; it wastes the world's time and ours, and often wrecks old mateships. Seems to me the deeper you read, think, talk, or write about things that end in ism, the less satisfactory the result; the more likely you are to get bushed and dissatisfied with the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... of West Point" was, like most cubs, irritable when thwarted. And having been balked of his prey, the deserter, and possibly chaffed by his comrades for his profitless invasion of Wynyard's Bar, he had persuaded his commanding officer to give him permission to effect a recapture. Thus it came about that at dawn, filing along the ridge, on the outskirts of the fire, his heart was gladdened by the sight of the half-breed—with ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... might like to be merry, but she could sooner laugh with the north wind than with one of those vapid faces, or with any face that she could not trust. Conversation might be pleasant, but it must be something different from the noisy cross-fire of nonsense that was going on in one quarter, or the profitless barter of nothings that was kept up on the other side of her. Rather Queechy and silence, by far, than ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... greatest pride. The fortnight in Copse Hill was the first relief from toil that had come to him since death and fire and defeat had done their worst upon him. His biographer says, "He was as eager as ever to pass the night in profitless, though pleasant, discussions when he should have been trying to regain his strength through sleep." To a later visitor Paul Hayne showed a cherished pine log on which were inscribed the names of Simms ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... as we were in expectation every day of falling in with whales, and the men were on the look-out from the mastheads from dawn until dark, in the hopes of seeing them. I longed to see a whale caught, for as yet the voyage had been profitless, and every one was out of spirits. The captain, who still remained perfectly blind, notwithstanding the assurances of Dr Cockle that he would recover, was so especially. He seemed like a heartbroken man; his countenance gloomy, as if troubled ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... out, and on looking timidly through an open door she found a sleeping apartment, evidently intended for the expected prisoner. She was too excited as yet to take either food or rest, and sat down to meditate on the prospect before her. It would, however, be as painful as it would be profitless to follow her through the long hours that ensued; let us see, then, what in the ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... us in our ignorance that we confided all things to The Jupiter? Would it not be wise in us to abandon useless talking, idle thinking, and profitless labour? Away with majorities in the House of Commons, with verdicts from judicial bench given after much delay, with doubtful laws, and the fallible attempts of humanity! Does not The Jupiter, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... with curiosity. Its natural impassivity was so greatly increased by the presence of the colored spectacles that my study was as profitless as if I had scrutinized the face of a carven Buddha. The mulatto had withdrawn, and in an atmosphere of gloom and tobacco smoke, Smith and I sat staring, perhaps rather rudely, at the object of our visit ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... had bought lands, and engaged in trade, and made sundry efforts in various and honorable ways, but without success. Vocation after vocation had with him a common and certain termination, and after many years of profitless experiment, the ways of prosperity were as far remote from his knowledge and as perplexing to his pursuit, as at the first hour of his enterprise. In worldly concerns he stood just where he had started fifteen years before; with this difference for the worse, however, that he had grown older ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Cilissa, Orestes' Nurse, bidden to seek Aegisthus, as the stranger looks like one meaning to cook some ill. She is in tears at the death of her boy, and details all the petty cares she had over his helpless infancy, and how they are now all profitless. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... purchased at the times at which they may be useful; the black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as well as in the prime of manhood, in his profitless infancy as well as in the productive years of youth. Payment must equally be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men: the free workman receives his wages in money, the slave in education, in food, in care, and in clothing. The money which a master spends in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... from men, who address, for the most part, a Buncombe either in this world or the next. As for their audiences, it may be truly said of our people, that they enjoy one political institution in common with the ancient Athenians: I mean a certain profitless kind of, ostracism, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem hitherto well enough content. For in Presidential elections, and other affairs of the sort, whereas I observe that the oysters fall to the lot of comparatively few, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... arisen a profitless discussion as to which of these two phases came first. No evidence can possibly exist upon either side, but one may take it that with the first traditions and records, as at the present time, the two systems existed side by side, and that either was determined ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... the dismal disaster that overtook us at the very opening of the campaign I cannot say. Some ascribe it to the rashness of the Prince, who was certainly a very impetuous leader; but it is ill work buffeting the dead, and profitless also. And if his fiery temper did, indeed, bring about the mischance, he exerted himself as a gallant gentleman to ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... hilarity and an odor of gayety about them, in consequence of which short-sighted critics extend the tongue of animadversion, saying: It is not the occupation of sensible men to solicit marrow from a shrivelled brain, or to digest the smoke of a profitless lamp. Nevertheless it cannot be concealed from the enlightened judgment of the holy and good, to whom these discourses are specially addressed, that the pearls of salutary admonition are threaded on the cord of an elegance of language, and the bitter potion of instruction sweetened ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... strange the absolute lethargy which had come upon us as a reaction after our tremendous emotions of the last twenty-four hours. It was both mental and physical, a deep-lying feeling that nothing mattered and that everything was a weariness and a profitless exertion. Even Challenger had succumbed to it, and sat in his chair, with his great head leaning upon his hands and his thoughts far away, until Lord John and I, catching him by each arm, fairly lifted him on to his feet, receiving only the glare and growl of an angry mastiff for our trouble. ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stubbornly refused to have her hat and cloak removed from the nail. There, figuratively speaking, they had hung ever since, the inventor reasoning that life without this paragon of capability was a wretched and profitless adventure. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Army! Good-bye, Lost Cause! I am young. I must 'look forward and not backward—up and not down.' Henceforth I shall live and breathe and act for the future, not for the past! Repining is about the most senseless and profitless occupation that ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... him not. I have learned it by looking from my own chamber window and marking these poor monks of the priory, their weary life, their profitless round. I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked will still wander free, then alas ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of this traffic. The most crying injustice, the most revolting immorality, the ruin of families, settlements devastated by drunkenness, agriculture abandoned, the robust portion of the population ruining its health in profitless expeditions: such were some of the most horrible fruits of alcohol. And what do we find as a compensation for so many evils? A few dozen rascals enriched, returning to squander in France a fortune ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... consequent increase of interest must be the decrease of the import trade. In lieu of the comforts which it now brings us we might have our. gigantic banking institutions and splendid, but in many instances profitless, railroads and canals absorbing to a great extent in interest upon the capital borrowed to construct them the surplus fruits of national industry for years to come, and securing to posterity no adequate return for the comforts ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... a straining after novelty and "an affectation of quaintness so marked as to be often unpleasant." He objects to long abstract disquisitions on metaphysics and music. He commends it, however, for being "unmarred by the bad taste of its contemporaries in fanning a senseless and profitless ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... years, her beauty, and the wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank, and ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... single ringing, soul-stirring cheer, as they sprang into view, and then were silent, the exertion of pressing up that steep acclivity leaving them no breath to waste in profitless noise. The distance to be traversed was not more than 200 yards—no great matter upon level ground—but the hill rose so abruptly that, after the first fifty yards, our pace was reduced to something ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... of this profitless drudgery, my father bought an old run-down farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of R——, mortgaging all, and our souls and bodies besides, for its payment. We hoped we had rounded the cape of storms which sooner or later looms up before every ship which sails the sea ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... room, whither her duties had called her, the thrifty aunt was shocked to find her nephew engaged in so profitless an occupation, and soundly scolded him for what she called his trifling. The good lady little dreamed that James Watt was even then unconsciously studying the germ of the science by which he "transformed the steam engine from a mere toy ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... bursts belt after belt? Where might they have gone? Francine!—Francine must be twenty-two. Married, of course. Her husband, no doubt, has dragged her off to some other department. Her parents have followed. March, volunteer, and disentangle yourself from these profitless speculations! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... continuous note like the sound of a spinning wheel. The idea of its sucking goats, or any other milky creature, has long been set at rest; and science, intolerant of legends in which there is any use or beauty, cannot be allowed to ratify in its dog or pig-Latin those which are eternally vulgar and profitless. I had first thought of calling it Hirundo Nocturna; but this would be too broad massing; for although the creature is more swallow than owl, living wholly on insects, it must be properly held as a distinct species from both. Owls cannot gape like constrictors; nor have swallows whiskers ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... incident did not interfere with the kindly relations between the President and General Grant, as was shown by General Grant's acceptance of the War Office ten months after the Mexican Mission had come to its profitless conclusion. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... did not end here; for the session, knowing that it was profitless to speak to the daft mother and daughter, who had been the instruments, gave orders to Willy Howking, the betheral, not to let them again so far into the kirk; and Willy, having scarcely more sense than them both, thought proper ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... sight of an almost universal forest of dark-green trees. I took much delight in examining the structure of these mountains. The complicated and lofty ranges bore a noble aspect of durability — equally profitless, however, to man and to all other animals. Granite to the geologist is classic ground: from its widespread limits, and its beautiful and compact texture, few rocks have been more anciently recognised. Granite ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... vividly before he could expound his subject; and that effort and strain cost him sleepless nights and days of concentrated thought. Nor was he an easier companion when his work was finished and he could take his ease. Then life seemed empty and profitless; and in its emptiness his voice echoed all the louder. The ill was within him, and outward circumstances were powerless to ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... heard the heavy footsteps on the path to the door, the thump, thump with the fist (there was neither knocker nor bell, country fashion); more thumping, and then her mother's excuses, so oft repeated, so wearisome, so profitless. "But where is he?" the creditor would persist. "He's up at the Hayes," or "He's gone to Green Hills." "Well, when will he be in?" "Don't know." "But I wants to know when this yer little account is going to be settled." Then a long narration of his wrongs, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... and other kind hearts exist, thank God, on both sides.[68] To enquire on which side there are most would (even if we could do so without bias) probably be profitless. The important point is that the kind hearts on the other side are there, and that a brotherhood of blessing will help the world more than a brotherhood of revenge—if, indeed, this last could be any brotherhood ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the table sat a man of perhaps forty years of age. An agreeable face, for all of the tired droop about the mouth and the deep lines in the forehead; it could light up, too, upon occasion, as I was soon to discover. For the present I did not bother myself with profitless conjectures; that entrancing filet, displayed in a massive silver cover, stood before him; I could not take my ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... long been a vital question to the success of the slaveholder, to know how he could render the labor of his slaves the most profitable. The grain growing States had to emancipate their slaves, to rid themselves of a profitless system. The cotton-growing States, ever after the invention of the cotton gin, had found the production of that staple highly remunerative. The logical conclusion, from these different results, was, that ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain, And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis copied, George ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... "om-m-mjects." Sad enough; for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide unintelligible deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Engrossed in his own tasks, he should be content to leave his nurse to move in and out of the room without protest. If this fault has appeared and the child cannot be left alone, our whole educational system is undermined, and play will be profitless and over-exciting, because it demands the constant participation of grown-up people. As a preliminary to all improvement in the management of a nervous child, we must see to it that he becomes accustomed to being alone. We must so arrange his nursery that he can do no damage to himself. Scissors ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... were diverted from a trend of profitless conjecture when shortly after breakfast time my 'phone bell rang. It was the editor of the Planet, to whom I had been indebted for a number of special commissions—including my fascinating quest of the Giant Gnu, which, generally supposed to be extinct, was reported ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... great deeds by great sorrows. Solitude is 'the mother- country of the strong,' and the wilderness, with its savage crags, its awful silence, and the unbroken round of its blue heaven, was a better place to meet God than in the heavy air of a palace, or the profitless splendours of a court. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the time would come, and come quickly, when the unnatural hardness of the man would yield to the genial influence of friendship, of pleasure, of the subtle joys of freedom. Those past days of hideous monotony, of profitless, debasing toil, the long, sleepless nights, the very nightmare of life to a man of Wingrave's culture and habits, might well have poisoned his soul, have filled him with ideas such as these. But everything was different now! The history of the world could show no epoch when pleasures ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... year! This is a goodly estate. Think what ten thousand pounds a year might do, well administered! Think of the terrible and criminal waste in suffering all that money, which belongs to East London, to be given away—year after year—in profitless alms to ladies and gentlemen in return for no services rendered or even pretended. Ten thousand pounds a year would run a magnificent school of industrial education; it would teach thousands of lads and girls how to use their heads and hands; it would ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... asked McNorton, who invariably found the stories of the P.V. Department fascinating but profitless. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... ministry had been when in opposition the constant advocates of an accommodation with the colonies or of an honorable peace after all hopes of retaining them in their allegiance had ceased. They showed on coming into power a laudable anxiety to put an end to the profitless effusion of human blood, and they wisely saw that it would be of more profit to their country to convert the new nation into friends by the free grant of terms which sooner or later must have been yielded than to widen the breach of kindred ties by an irritating ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... could see them apparently engaged in the silly and quite profitless occupation of putting down a post-hole where it wasn't in the least needed, and then clustering about this hole like a bunch of professorial bigwigs about a new specimen on a microscope slide. Then they moved on and made another hole, and still another, until I got tired of watching ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... that return journey which made the record appear to me novel, unusual, and at times exciting. But now, six little months again on Earth have made the more than three Martian years (equalling six years of Earth) seem slow, tame, and profitless. If they were pregnant with adventure, they lacked the real experiences of life which have been crowded into the half-year ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... below the level of the freeholder, and by destroying the system of having landlords and tenants, two great evils are created—the one preventing men of large fortunes from investing in lands, as no man will place his money where it will be insecure or profitless, thereby cutting off real estate generally from the benefits that might be and would be conferred by their capital, as well as cutting it off from the benefits of the increased price which arise from having such buyers in the market; and the other is, to prevent any man from being a husbandman ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... to mine inmost heart, But never yet did I endure such pain. All else I bore with set soul patiently; But now—alack, alack!—Orestes dear, The day and night-long travail of my soul! Whom from his mother's womb, a new-born child, I clasped and cherished! Many a time and oft Toilsome and profitless my service was, When his shrill outcry called me from my couch! For the young child, before the sense is born, Hath but a dumb thing's life, must needs be nursed As its own nature bids. The swaddled thing Hath nought of speech, whate'er discomfort ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... but by the cooeperation of the industrial forces of the continent. Finally, says Cramb, we see the characteristic thought of the twentieth century in the position that war is bad because it is contrary to social well-being and is economically profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... when he shut his eyes upon them, it was only to travel in fancy down the steep mountain side that he had trodden so often to the dreary claim on the overflowed river, to the heaps of "tailings" that encumbered it, like empty shells of the hollow, profitless days spent there, which they were always waiting for the stroke of good fortune to clear away. He saw again the rotten "sluicing," through whose hopeless rifts and holes even their scant daily earnings had become scantier. At last ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte |
