"Profitless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adventurer still maintained its ancient aspect. He 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, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... render dimly 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 and burning brain, and should have ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... 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
... 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 ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... attitude may be to the outside world—simply stores up trouble for himself, and discomfort and much else. There are many phases of personal understanding of oneself that need not be put in the newspapers or proclaimed publicly. Still, for a man to gold-brick himself is a profitless undertaking, but ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... better we should not exist at all, than that we should guiltily disappoint the 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 gardens of the angels upon the slopes of Eden, so that the woe of the Preacher ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was just 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 since ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... practically, and it may 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 ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... the mixing up of that flour and water; for was 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)
... I believed he had seen and recognized me. Of course he might not be in Paris now; he might have gone elsewhere. I did not believe it, however. I believed he had crossed the Channel on the same errand as I. There was a possible chance. I might, if the other means proved profitless, discover at which hotel Bayliss was staying and question him. He might tell me nothing, even if he knew, but I could keep him in sight, I could follow him and discover where he went. It would be dishonorable, perhaps, but I was desperate ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... an expression of amused disdain. He could not understand why Dr Porhoet occupied his leisure with studies so profitless. He had read his book, recently published, on the more famous of the alchemists; and, though forced to admire the profound knowledge upon which it was based, he could not forgive the waste of time which his friend might have expended more usefully ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... the majority of those to whom you will read it. If you conclude that my letter will obstruct, and not facilitate the advancement of the cause you have so faithfully labored for these many years, you have my most cheerful consent to deliver it over to that general asylum of profitless productions—the waste-basket. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... must have drawn, however, from that source makes in any case, at the best, an odd educational connection, given the kind of concentration at which education, even such as ours, is supposed especially to aim: I speak of that direct promiscuity of insights which might easily have been pronounced profitless, with their attendant impressions and quickened sensibilities—yielding, as these last did, harvests of apparitions. I positively cherish at the present hour the fond fancy that we all soaked in some such sublime element as might still have hung about ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... It is profitless to discuss here which of them has been chiefly responsible for the disturbances whose recital occupies so large a space upon the pages of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... spirit of a young officer, but it was important in itself, and became, in Perry's hands, a step to future eminence. His course, at this time, illustrates a valuable truth, that no honorable employment is profitless to a man of genius. He will in some way turn it to account. Constructing gunboats, and recruiting men in port, were services not calculated to make any great blaze in a despatch, but they conducted Perry to his glorious bulletins of victory, and the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... barrenness had to our eyes a strange appearance, from having been so long accustomed to the 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. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... 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
... and the newspaper furnish exercise and growth; but we hold that exercise and growth without qualification are not our desire. We require that the growth shall be of a peculiar kind,—what we call scientific and symmetrical. This is vital. The education of chance would prove unbalanced, morbid, profitless. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... to the truth of all such life being hollow and profitless. If regard be had to the whole scope of our nature and necessities, and to the true aim of life as deduced therefrom, nothing is more certain than that no man will get the satisfaction that his ruling passions promise him, by indulging ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... is clearly evidenced by the present division and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian miracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are ready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also transitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear vision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning of a term so variously and vaguely used as miracle. ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... kingdoms of Rum and Abyssinia; and to whom were 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... coincidence, almost instantaneously as he fell, the firing ceased, a few desultory shots at long intervals serving rather to accentuate than break the silence. It was as if both sides had suddenly repented of their profitless crime. Four stretcher-bearers of ours, following a sergeant with a white flag, soon afterward moved unmolested into the field, and made straight for Brayle's body. Several Confederate officers and men came out to meet them, and with uncovered heads assisted them to take ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... save others from the trouble of seeking an answer, and being disappointed at their profitless labours. If I may venture a guess at its author, I should be inclined to ascribe it to some idle schoolboy, or perhaps schoolmaster, who deserved to be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... reinauguration must not be such as to give control of the State and its representation in Congress to the enemies of the Union, driving its friends there into political exile. The whole struggle for Tennessee will have been profitless to both State and nation if it so ends that Governor Johnson is put down and Governor Harris put up. It must not be so. You must have it otherwise. Let the reconstruction be the work of such men only as can be trusted for the Union. Exclude all others, and trust that your government so organized ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... MILLER,—I thank 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 ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the colony. It drew from husbandry the best blood of the land, the young men of strength, initiative, and perseverance. It wrecked the health and character of thousands. It drew the Church and the civil government into profitless quarrels. The bishop flayed the governor for letting this trade go on. The governor could not, dared not, and sometimes did not want to stop it. At any rate it was a great obstacle to agricultural progress. With it and other distractions ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... up, plainly hesitating between dignified retreat and another profitless argument with Mary V. Another, because his acquaintance with her had been one long series of arguments, it seemed to him; and profitless, because Mary V simply would not be logical, or ever stick to one contention, ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... treatment of accessories availed to save the highway from disrepute; indeed, it had become the profitless pursuit of braggarts and loafers, long before the abolition of the stage-coach destroyed its opportunity. In the meantime, however, the pickpocket was master of his trade. His strategy was perfect, his sleight of hand as delicate as long, lithe fingers and ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... were impressed and their hearts ached for Dan Higgins, his years of hope and work and his profitless mine. As for the girl, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... suspicion, and defeat her own 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 beyond ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... 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 ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit,—his memory, or combination-faculty rather—against another's; like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless.—She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance,—the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... they attained to considerable power; but the custom of the sovereigns to divide their dominions among their sons, broke up their territory into a multitude of petty principalities. The result was a monotonous series of fierce contests, without any substantial result. In the midst of the bloody and profitless civil wars occurred the great invasion of the Mongols, who destroyed the principality of Kiev, and made that of Vladimir tributary. For two centuries the Russians continued under the yoke of the "Golden Horde," which ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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
... no effort whatever to eat. She knew now why Arthur Morrison had fled away. She knew the cause of that paroxysm of fear in which he had sought her out. The horror of the whole thing had crept into her blood like poison. Life was once more a dreary, profitless struggle. All the wonderful dreams, which had made existence seem almost like a fairy-tale for this last week, had faded away. She was once more a mournful little waif ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... banks of the Rio Parana; not in 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 successful. His amiable ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... performances 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 of Vera Cruz, a region at that period terribly ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... present, many persons who sincerely love their country and mean to do their duty to her disappoint the hopes and expectations of those who are actively working in her cause. They seem to have lost whatever moral force they may have once possessed, and to go drifting about from one profitless discontent to another, at a time when every citizen is called upon for cheerful, ready service. It is because their minds are bewildered, and they are no longer truly themselves. Show them the path of duty, inspire them with hope for the future, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... objection is solid," Martinez ventured. "It would be a mean and profitless world without mystery. Dick sees ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... nothing more for him to do in Paris. His intended attempt in England was given up, for Kollontaj received a broad hint from the British representative in Saxony that Kosciuszko's presence would be both unwelcome to George III and profitless to the Polish cause. Kosciuszko may then have gone on from France to Brussels, but in the summer of 1793 he was back in Leipzig in close consultation with ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... have a dash of 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 ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn't have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... for a tract society, and was given as territory the towns on the east side of the Hudson River. Tract selling in this generation is probably the most thankless, profitless work that any human being could undertake. The poor old man was burdened with a heavy bundle of the worst literary trash of a religious kind ever put out of a publishing house. He was to get twenty-five per ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... holding and triumphant bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done, unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow after that, and as many ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... 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 in manners or occupation. He hated his fair skin, and sought in every ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... has gathered, was not afflicted with that weakness of the sense which is called imagination. Not his to dream dreams and see visions; nor, while he tenderly undressed himself and put himself into his bed, to dwell in profitless fancy over the message he had sent, bursting like a shell among the departments and administrations which are the body of Germany's official soul. Nor later either, when the spate of replies kept him busy ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... unenterprising domestic pleasure. The head of the family was a retired army officer, now past the prime of his years; tall, thin, grey, and grave; but a gentleman through and through. Everybody liked Colonel Gainsborough, although nobody could account for a man of his age leading what seemed such a profitless life. He was doing really nothing; staying at home with his wife and his books. Why had he come to Connecticut at all? If he lived for pleasure, surely his own country would have been a better place to seek it. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Lucullo"—no companion save my half-finished decanter of port. I had drawn my chair to the corner of the ample fire-place, and in a half dreamy state was reviewing the incidents of my early life, and like most men who, however young, have still to lament talents misapplied, opportunities neglected, profitless labour, and disastrous idleness. The dreary aspect of the large and ill-lighted room—the close-curtained boxes—the unsocial look of every thing and body about suited the habit of my soul, and I was ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... endure but a single day, or be deep and prolonged, Man's sorrow is always barren and profitless. It cannot restore to a disconsolate mother, bemoaning her untimely loss, the son for whom she weeps, or give him back to his friends.... Let the words written by Dujarier: 'I am about to fight a duel for the most absurd and futile ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Laurence in reply, "I would be indeed content, if he be a good master, and if in his house it snoweth wherewithal to eat and drink. But tell me what unfortunate may have the masterage of so profitless ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... selling them at a paying price; but the great majority neither bestow proper care upon the selection of animals for breeding, nor do they appreciate the dollars and cents difference between such as are profitable and such as are profitless. How many will hesitate or refuse to pay a dollar for the services of a good bull when some sort of a calf can be begotten for a "quarter?" and this too when one by the good male would be worth a dollar more for veal and ten or twenty dollars more when grown to ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... we can only say here that he was the first great ethical philosopher. The philosophers before him had sought to explain the mystery of the universe. He declared that all this was useless and profitless. Man's mind was superior to all matter, and he led men to look within, study their own souls, consider the question of human duty, the obligations of man to man, and all that leads towards virtue and the moral development of ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... notes each emotional clew. Many unspoken queries find vocal reply. Delicate points are cleared by suggestive indirection. Neither completely yields to profitless conjecture. They ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... westward to the mighty Mississippi, westward still to the Rocky Mountains, and yet westward to the Pacific, was one vast wilderness; interminable forests, standing in all their primeval grandeur and gloom; boundless prairies, covered with profitless verdure, over which the silence of the everlasting past brooded; and above all these, mountain peaks, covered with perpetual snows, upon which the eye of a white man had never looked, stood piercing ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... papal control and free thought; its industries, with their laissez faire methods, raise the few to enormous wealth and crush the many into a new serfdom worse than the old. For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from the profitless wrangling of Parliaments; her national Church sums up the beliefs and traditions of nobles and peasants; and at the base of her social system she possesses in the "Mir" a patriarchal communism against which the forces of the West will beat in vain. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the Dark rebel in vain, 85 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 endeavour Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; 90 But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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
... got ready, 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; ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... indirectness that 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 ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... was a poor club man. I did not smoke, and never used rum except as a hair tonic—and beer and tobacco were rather distasteful to me. I do not boast of this singularity, I merely state it. No doubt I was considered a dull and profitless companion even in "the Little Room," but in most of my sobrieties Taft and Browne upheld me, though they both possessed the redeeming virtue of being amusing, which I, most certainly, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... worth, and anything lasting? Why, then, do we desire it? A dismal resting place it provides, which costs so dear! Very often it obtains for us hell itself, fire everlasting, and torments without end. Oh, if all men would but regard it as profitless dross, how peaceful the world would be! how free from bargaining! How friendly all men would be one with another, if no regard were paid to honour and money! I believe it would ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... usually been servants, and still "go out to days' work," but, no matter how numerous the family, such life for any daughter is despised and discouraged from the beginning. Work in a bag-factory or any one of the thousand, but to the employes profitless, industries of a great city is eagerly sought, and hardships cheerfully endured which if enforced by a mistress would lead to a riot. To be a shop-girl seems the highest ambition. To have dress and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... day, And takes our autumn joys away; When short and scant the sunbeam throws, Upon the weary waste of snows, A cold and profitless regard, Like patron on a needy bard, When silvan occupation's done, And o'er the chimney rests the gun, And hang, in idle trophy, near, The game-pouch, fishing-rod, and spear; When wiry terrier, rough and grim, And greyhound, with his length of limb, And pointer, now employed no more, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... it would require a surgical operation to get a joke into some particular Scotchman's head. But we have some persons of the sort even in our own country. Many of the British humorists have been either Scotch or Irish, and it is rather profitless to attempt distinctions as to the humorous sense of these as contrasted with the English. Usually, stories of thrift and penuriousness are told of the Scotch without doing them much injustice, while bulls are designated Irish with sufficient reasonableness. In illustration of the Scotch character, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... agree on this point. Mr. Howells writes: "There are too many things brought together in which the reader can and should have no interest. The thousand and one petty incidents of the various casualties of life that are grouped together in newspaper columns are profitless expenditure of money ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... best and kindest of men, and she strove to show me how, in obeying him, every good would follow. He would receive my tardy submission with warm affection, and generous pardon would follow my repentance. Profitless words for a young and gentle daughter to use to a man accustomed to make his will law, and to feel in his own heart a despot so terrible and stern, that he could yield obedience to nought save his own imperious desires! My resentment grew with resistance; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... return to Greenfield after this delightful but profitless tour he became the local editor of his home paper and in a few months "strangled the little thing into a change of ownership." The new proprietor transferred him to the literary department and the latter, not knowing what else to put in the space allotted him, filled it ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... true life, and now you wish him out of the way, and have lost one of your best opportunities and perhaps your last; for he will not stay after Hunting comes;" and, self-condemned, she felt that she had spent a very selfish and profitless evening. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... bringing his materials, to describe which would be profitless, if it were possible. He had everything littered together in two battered deal candle-boxes, including the broken soup-plate containing the flour paste, a loathely, mouldering little mess that diffused a ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... found there was truth in what he said. My father was not angry, he was even half amused. "I don't think that plan of yours will hold water, Phil. I hear you have been paying rents and redeeming furniture,—that's an expensive game, and a very profitless one. Of course, so long as you are a benevolent gentleman acting for your own pleasure, it makes no difference to me. I am quite content if I get my money, even out of your pockets,—so long as it amuses you. ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... I mean by character. It is this easy-going readiness to permit small trespasses, because it would be troublesome or profitless or unpopular to oppose them, which leads to the habit of acquiescence in wrong, and the decay of free institutions. Free institutions can be maintained only by citizens, each of whom is instant to oppose every illegitimate act, every assumption of supremacy, every ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... reclaiming to their noble uses the perverted powers of human nature, there is nothing does one's heart so much good as the sight of waste and barren land reclaimed to the uses and wants of man; to see vegetation clothe the idle space, and the cursed and profitless soil teeming with the means of life and bringing forth abundant produce to requite the toil that fertilized it; to see the wilderness crowned with bounteous increase, and the blessing of God rising from the earth to reward the labor ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... come once more to a long and profitless interrogatory upon her saints, in which the crowd of judges forgot their dignity and overwhelmed her with a flood of often very foolish, and sometimes ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the imports, and in proportion to the enlargement of the foreign debt and the 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 which the labors of their hands might otherwise ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... will never find real and lasting pleasure at all. The question is not, What are the conditions in our lives? but, How do we meet the conditions that we find there? And whatever the conditions are, it is unwise and profitless to look upon them, even if they are conditions that we would have otherwise, in the attitude of complaint, for complaint will bring depression, and depression will weaken and possibly even kill the spirit that would engender the power that would enable us to bring into our lives an entirely ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... at all sure that this was the same man he had seen in the draw, and he was not sure that either was the man who had shot at him. But roosting on that heat-blistered pinnacle swearing about the things he didn't know struck him as a profitless performance, so he climbed down, got into the saddle again, and ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... time of Revolt and abrogation of all Law but Cannon Law, there should be such Unlawfulness? Intrepid Veto-of-Scoundrels, narrow-faithful, respectable, methodic man, work thou in that manner, since happily it is thy manner, and wear thyself away; though ineffectual, not profitless in it—then nor now!—The brave Dame Roland, bravest of all French women, begins to have misgivings: the figure of Danton has too much of the 'Sardanapalus character,' at a Republican Rolandin Dinner-table: Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, proses sad stuff about a Universal Republic, or union ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... time, this friendly advice pulled Dick up in his profitless career. The dread of being considered a "lout" by your senior is a motive which appeals forcibly to most boys; and for a week or so Dick made a feverish show of returning to his outdoor ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... shadowy, unsatisfying, baseless, idle, trifling, unserviceable, bootless, inconstant, trivial, unsubstantial, deceitful, ineffectual, unavailing, useless, delusive, nugatory, unimportant, vapid, empty, null, unprofitable, visionary, fruitless, profitless, unreal, worthless. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... on a methodical search through the intricacies of the apparatus. For a time Jack followed him about, but after a while wearied of so profitless an occupation, and so took to smoking on the window-ledge. Darrow extended his investigations to the bookcase, and to a drawer in the deal table. For over two hours he sorted notes, compared, and ruminated, his brows knit in concentration. Jack did ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... till the ground about it is all beaten into blinding dust, wherein no reasonable man can now desire to cloud his eyes and clog his lungs. It is, indeed, one of the cheerful signs of our times, that there is a growing relish for clear air and open skies, a growing indisposition to mingle in old and profitless controversies. It commonly happens in such controversies, as it undoubtedly has happened in the dispute about free-will, that both parties have been trying to pull up Life or Spirit by the roots, and make a show, a la Barnum, of all its secrets. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with us," went on Mr. Coddington ignoring the interruption and proceeding in the same earnest, deliberate tone. "He has worked hard and faithfully, and needs a good rest. The trip, however, is not to be an entirely profitless one, for while in England I shall take him to visit some of the finest tanneries, that he may observe other methods for doing the same things that ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... something of an achievement, attainable only by incessant halting to take breath—for ten or fifteen minutes—at embryo stations: a platform, a shelter, and a few unhappy-looking out-buildings set down in a land of death and silence—a profitless desert, hard as the nether millstone and unfruitful ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the best policy," he said. "Had I not restored to you your ship I would have missed this treasure, that will well repay me for my long voyage, which I had before thought profitless. I regret your decision not to accompany me to the West Indies, but since you have paid your ransom you are free to go whithersoever your fancy may lead ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... substances of which the earth's crust is composed; been with the dust of men that lived before Jerusalem was made for ever memorable; surveyed the spoils of Etruscan tombs; and lingered amid the varieties of household things from the barbarous nations of the present hour; and not wholly profitless have the journeys been, even if the scientific mysticism be not mastered, so that there remains in the mind a general impression of the time that has gone by, the great laws that govern the universe, and the humility that becomes man, when he sees his individuality, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... exactly registered, as in trench warfare, is one thing, but front and pick up distances smarly, is quite to trot into action, unlimber and form action another, and this is where many phophets anticipated our new Army would be found wanting, but prophecy is becoming a profitless business in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... an 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 ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... he replied; "and because it may serve to keep your mind busy during hours when otherwise it would be engaged with profitless sorrows, I invite you to puzzle out this business for yourself. You have nothing else to do until late to-night, and you can work ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... practical use. Philosophy, as ordinarily understood,—that is, metaphysics,—is most idle of all, since it does not pertain to mundane wants. Hence the old Grecian philosopher labored in vain; and still more profitless were the disquisitions of the scholastics of the Middle Ages, since they were chiefly used to prop up unintelligible creeds. Theology is not of much account, since it pertains to mysteries we cannot solve. It is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... uncomfortable houses in inconvenient suburbs, and in their failure to comprehend they became cavilers. But others—those who admire the genius which enables a man to make unproductive land productive, who hail as benefactor one who supplants a profitless oak of a thousand years' standing with a thriving butcher-shop—these people understood what was being done for Dumfries Corners, but wondered how the venture was to be made profitable. There were already more vacant houses in Dumfries Corners than could ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... it!" suggested Rufus Craig when he had set himself in the path of Ward Latisan, who was coming away from a last, and profitless, interview ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... would be profitless, and so Lawler did not answer her question. He stood, looking at the north window, which was a little to one side of her; while she sat staring past him, her lips ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sermon, and I rather enjoy it, too? 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
... at least you believe idleness and effeminacy and reckless negligence to be baseness. Then, too, there are other treacherous beldames giving themselves out to be innocent pleasures, to wit, dicings and profitless associations among men. [19] These in the fulness of time appear in all their nakedness even to them that are deceived, showing themselves that they are after all but pains tricked out and decked with pleasures. These are they who ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... right before the Russian business is straightened out," said an American commercial traveller at the hotel. He, for his part, was engaged in the profitless task of disposing of large margins of goods at fifty per cent below cost of production whilst the leisurely, crafty Greeks kept him waiting from day to day in the expectation of getting another ten ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... and foul; for so shall Love Climb to the Source of Virtue. God of Truth! All-Just! All-Mighty! I should ill deserve Thy noblest gift, the gift divine of song, If, so content with ear-deep melodies [2] To please all profitless, I did not pour Severer strains; of Truth—eternal Truth, Unchanging Justice, universal Love. Such strains awake the soul to loftiest thoughts, Such strains the Blessed Spirits of the Good Waft, grateful incense, to the ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... Princes secretly admired—obtain release from the Tower, and ere three more years were past his head fell as a forfeit to the stern demands of Spain. And Prince Charles often declared that naught indeed could come from meddling with luck saving burnt fingers, "even," he said, "as came to me that profitless night when I sought a boon for snatching the lucky raisin from good ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... 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. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... measure and set her to take her wreak 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
... to anybody. I told Sandy this ghastly news. We could imagine no explanation that would begin to explain. Had there been an invasion? an earthquake? a pestilence? Had the nation been swept out of existence? But guessing was profitless. I must go—at once. I borrowed the king's navy—a "ship" no bigger than a steam ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Royal 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 well named, for to the Jew it was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... years ago, to close them in a few hours, where and what is he now? Is he somewhere, anywhere? Does he know of the joy and sorrow he has brought into our lives? I would fain believe it . . . these are profitless thoughts, of one staring into the abyss. Somehow these bright weeks have been to me a dreary time. I am well in health; nothing ails me. It is six months since my last book was published, and I have taken a deliberate ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would not have devoted five minutes extra to his namesake in the way of social chat; regarding such conduct in business hours, and in the busy season, as worse than superfluous; but as a matter of business, though purely incidental and profitless, he would have given the whole day to Hiram's affair, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... their work in life that in so many cases they are discovered to be in effect living for the sake of their leisure and regarding their daily work as uninteresting drudgery, with the result that life as a whole comes to be for them dreary and profitless and stale. A Christian man's life-work ought not to have the character of drudgery, but of sheer delight ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... that old farm, from which you brought me in evil hour! It is poor, obscure, profitless, unsought, unseen: it will give me a shelter—it may bring me peace. I must have solitude for a season; ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the penitentiary, it's easy to say but hard to do. So much time, seemingly, has to be wasted in profitless study to find a few kernels amid much chaff. Napoleon said at one point that the trouble with books is that one must read so many bad ones to find something really good. True enough but, even so, there are perfectly practical ways to advance rapidly ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... urgency so great as to quicken his brain to this flawless ordering of the best words, and it is that ordering and that alone which communicates to us the ecstasy, and gives us the supreme delight of poetry. It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse. It is, perhaps, profitless to attempt any analysis of the emotional law that directs this choice, nor need it arbitrarily be said that poetry must of necessity be verse. But it is a fact, sufficiently founded on experience, that the intensity of vision that demands and achieves nothing less than ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... for compassion. The man's love, if it be possible so to call that force which mastered him, had come to be an incessant malady. It poisoned everything, caused him to find his statecraft tedious, his power profitless, and his vices gloomy. But chief of all he fretted over the standards by which the lives of Melicent and Perion were guided. Demetrios thought these criteria comely, he had discovered them to be unshakable, and he despairingly knew that as long as he trusted in ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... 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 any ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... a poorer man than ever. He had no heart to go about his daily concerns, which appeared so paltry and profitless; but sat all day long in the chimney-corner, picturing to himself ingots and heaps of gold in the fire. The next night his dream was repeated. He was again in his garden, digging, and laying open stores of hidden wealth. There was something ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... tested Him in each of these particulars, and do not we, who have come to Him by faith, know that in no one item has He been guilty of exaggeration? We were dead, but behold, we live! We spent our energies in profitless work; but now we bear fruit unto God. We were lonely and isolated, but now have come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable company of angels, and to the Church of the Firstborn. Our prayers were aimless and ineffective; but now we have the petitions we desired. New hope and joy have filled ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... over-eating—bloated stomach and burning bowels. Obediently, then, with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chela study; but when they came to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above the Hells, his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling—all warmly alive. Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text, bidding Kim—too ready—note how the flesh ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... and infantry, ill-fed and uncomfortable, were diminishing daily. Especially the Walloons, Flemings, and other Netherlanders of Parma's army, took advantage of their proximity to the borders and escaped in large numbers to their own homes. It was but meagre and profitless campaigning on both sides during those wretched months of winter and early spring, although there was again an opportunity for Sir Roger Williams, at the head of two hundred musketeers and one hundred and fifty pikemen, to make one of his brilliant ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... victories in the West; but in the East, our arms seemed fated to disaster after disaster. Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Pittsburg Landing, were names whose mention made the blood of Patriots to surge in their veins; and Corinth, too, had fallen. But in the East, McClellan's profitless campaign against Richmond, and especially his disastrous "change of base" by a "masterly" seven days' retreat, involving as many bloody battles, had greatly dispirited all Union men, and encouraged the Rebels and Rebel-sympathizers ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... at his companion 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 back ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in form was as little epicurean as his joy in colour; it was a banquet of the senses in which the sense of motion and energy had the largest part. Smooth, flowing, rounded, undulating outlines, which the eye glides along without check, are insipid and profitless to him, and he "welcomes the rebuff" of every jagged excrescence or ragged fray, of every sudden and abrupt breach of continuity. His eye seizes the crisp indentations of ferns as they "fit their teeth to the polished block" of a grey boulder-stone;[74] seizes the "sharp-curled" olive-leaves ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... 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 left them the poorest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... to inform her that the Lady Alesia was betrothed, and would be married six months 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 have another tyrant the less; though it was true that Alesia had always ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... my life was devoid of stirring interest or adventure, it was not profitless. Constantly employed at the outposts, I became thoroughly inured to all the roughing of a soldier's life, and learned in the best of schools that tacit obedience which alone can form the subordinate or ultimately fit its possessor for ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... scrub oak, no army could live here in sufficient numbers to subdue even a semi-warlike nation. Cettinje has been burned many a time by the Moslem, but starvation eventually drove him back to the fatter plains of the Sanjak, leaving a profitless victory behind him. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... in the authentic words Of that old hymn called SAMA; "Rise! Awake!" Call to the man who boasts his SHASTRIC lore From vain pedantic wranglings profitless, Call to that foolish braggart to come forth Out on the face of nature, this broad earth, Send forth this call unto thy scholar band; Together round thy sacrifice of fire Let them all gather. So may our India, Our ancient land unto herself return O once ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... would far surpass, in genuine grandeur, perhaps, and certainly in rational and philosophical contemplation, the loftiest and most stupendous pillar or pyramid ever raised by human art and industry, for little other purpose than to attract the gaze of profitless admiration, with the vain attempt of mocking the powers of tempests and of time, by which the proudest of these trophied monuments must necessarily be bowed to subjection, and finally crumbled into dust. The ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... appeared embodying any high order of talent. The 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, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... I answered, "yet I cannot see what we gain by raking up this miserable history. It is both painful and profitless." ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... creation of cardinals to compose the Conclave, made it a constant school of negotiation and intrigue for the best diplomacy in the world. By favour of the Habsburgs, the papacy obtained a fixed dominion, secure against all comers, requiring no military defence, no wasting and profitless expenditure, nothing to dissolve the mirage of an ideal government, under spiritual and converted men. The pontificates became steadily longer, averaging six years in the sixteenth century, eight in the seventeenth, twelve in the eighteenth, sixteen ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... some people in India who have thoroughly studied the nature of such entities (called Pisacham). I do not know much about them experimentally, as I have never meddled with this disgusting, profitless, and dangerous ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... withal 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 sectional rancor." ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... and drank a glass of anisette to steady his nerves. Who was the lady? Evidently Paragot was leading a double life. Madame Boin nodded her head mysteriously as though possessed of secrets she would not divulge. They spent the evening in profitless conjecture. The fact remained that Paragot, the hairy disreputable scallywag, had relations with a high born and beautiful woman. It was stupefying. C'etait abracadabrant! That was the final word. When the Quartier Latin ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... grocer, to whom ten dollars had been owing for a year. He had dunned the poor drunkard for the money until he got tired of so profitless a business, and gave up the account for lost. By some means, it had recently come to his ears that Gordon had ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of an European as that from day to night is uncongenial to the taste. Here, too, I repented at leisure, and amended with no small difficulty and labor, my neglect of those accomplishments to which my dear mother had so often vainly solicited my attention. The pencil was profitless; I had long thrown it by: books were no longer an adequate set-off against realities, even could I have conjured up a library in the wilderness of Nova Scotia's inland settlement; but the culinary and confectionary branches were there invaluable, and in them I was wofully deficient. Had I not ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... might stir up dissatisfaction among the people. To go over all the interminable squabbles which took place between Judge Willis, on the one hand, and the various judicial and official dignitaries on the other, would be alike wearisome and profitless. Judge Willis availed himself of every opportunity which presented itself for officially and publicly animadverting upon the conduct of those who were opposed to him. He added to his enormities by announcing, through the newspapers, that he was preparing for publication a work on ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... 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 the human mind ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston |
