"Uselessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... illness with the doctor. "He has changed, has become more gentle, but is dispirited." Enter Nicholas Ivnovich and speaks to Doctor about the uselessness of treatment. But for his wife's sake he agrees to it. Enter Tnya with Stypa. Lyba with Starkvsky. Conversation about land. Nicholas Ivnovich tries not to offend them. Exeunt all. Nicholas Ivnovich with Lisa. "I am always ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... suddenly, and he let both hands fall slowly upon his knees. In effect, the uselessness of all argument, the futility of any recrimination in the face of what had been accomplished, was suddenly borne in upon him with irresistible force: and his momentary irritation against the malice of circumstance, the baseness of the man, was swallowed up in ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... husband examined the accounts, he discovered that she had spent 14,000 francs instead of 10,000, and found himself constrained to declare that their purse was too light for her liberality. Not having anything else to do, and her uselessness vexing her, she took to doctoring the poor and concocting medicines. Hers, however, was not the spirit that allows itself to be fettered by the triple vow of obedience, silence, and poverty. No wonder, therefore, that her life, which she compared to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... nor had it cost the good lady much, for she had picked it up years ago at an auction. Mrs. Gorman Stanley was not a generous person, and as the Berlin wool-work had always troubled her on account of its magnificence, its uselessness, and the almost certainty that the moths would get in and devour it, she thought it a good opportunity of making an effective present, and getting ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the lectures of Cornutus, in the company of Persius, he caught a glimpse of this higher life. And so behind the showy splendours of his rhetoric there lurks a sadness which tells of a mind not altogether content, a brooding over man's life and its apparent uselessness, which makes us believe that had he lived till middle life he would have struck a lofty vein of noble and earnest song. At other times, at the banquet or in the courts, he must have met young men who lived in an altogether different world ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... all! Let him talk! When the wind blows the willow rustles; when the wind subsides the willow is silent; and neither a cart-shaft, nor a broom can be made out of the willow; it is a useless tree! And from this uselessness comes the noise. What have they, our judges, accomplished; how have they adorned life? We do not know it. While our work is clearly evident! Gentlemen of the merchant class! Seeing in you the foremost men in life, most industrious and loving your labours, seeing in you the ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the ground. Men went past him a hundred feet away. He saw them in outline against the illuminated parked cars and trucks and in the space around the huge rocket. They carried no rifles, probably no firearms at all. Lockley's march up the highway had warned them of the uselessness of guns, at least at short range. They were watching for him now. Perhaps these men were relieving other watchers ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... up to visions and dreams. What else have your canonised Saints done? Yet they are worshipped by a vast community of apparently sensible beings, as holy. It only shows that there are certain minds capable of penetrating the uselessness of a purely worldly existence, and finding it too hard to live a double life, that is to say, spiritual and material (a life only possible to the modern clergy), they seek refuge in seclusion and leave that outer life to those whom it satisfies and suits. As to the ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... had maintained a system of public schools which produced first-class snobs and third-rate scholars; she had ignored the rights of women until in very desperation they had resorted to the crudities of violence in order to achieve some outlet for the pent-up uselessness and directionlessness of their sex; she had tolerated vile living conditions for the poor, and had forced men and women to work under conditions which were degrading and an insult to their Maker. . . . One by one these dragons reared their heads ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... reply; "he must see the uselessness of resistance, and we are not fighting Indians who learned warfare from the late ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... The Uselessness of Dialogue.—Dialogue, naturally, is out of place in the scenario. If Frank asks Ethel where she hid the letter, and she replies by opening a volume which she takes from the bookcase and taking ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... she said no more for she had learned the uselessness of arguing with Mabel, so she determined to make ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... unhappy event out of his head. What troubled him most was the uselessness of Fanny's effort. No one could have worked harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in herself with all her heart; but it was plain that self-confidence meant very little, all his friends had it, Miguel ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... punishment of those who have lived ill is infamy and obscurity and utter annihilation, which hurries them off to the dark river of oblivion,[912] and plunges them into the abyss of a fathomless sea, involving them in uselessness and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... up two additional rifles, and a heavy ulster. The rifles I loaded, and laid alongside my other; as I intended to make things warm for any of the creatures who might show, during the night. I had plenty of ammunition, and I thought to give the brutes such a lesson, as should show them the uselessness of attempting ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... of an hour with the frog, Ben pronounced the absolute uselessness of remaining any longer. While he was operating I had fixed up my most useful portmanteau-rod with its fly-fishing tops, and with a sea-trout collar, and a small, silver-bodied salmon fly cast over the open spaces. This was no more successful than the frog, and we, as a matter of fact, caught ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Mill undertakes to prove the uselessness and harmfulness of supernatural religion both to society and individuals, and the sufficiency of human authority, of education and public opinion to accomplish all the beneficial results usually accredited to faith in a Divine Being. "Religion," he says, "by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... and we know that the East India Company had always a route open for their dispatches on emergent occasions; but let the reader consult the Reminiscences of Dr. Dibdin, and he will find an example of its utter uselessness when resorted to in 1776 to apprize the Home Government of hostile movements on the part of an enemy. To show, however, in a more striking light, the difference between the "overland route" a century back, and that of 1853, I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... the very beautifulest and divinest piece of folly a woman can commit. Beautiful enough in the sublime martyrdom of the idee, to make angels smile; and vain enough, and foolish enough in its utter uselessness, to make sinners weep. It can't be done—not in 98 cases out of a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... absolute power the law of the land gave Uncle over her. She knew the uselessness of a Japanese girl struggling against the rigid rules laid down by her elders. She knew resistance might bring punishment. Well, Mate, I do not care ever to see again such a look as was in Sada's eyes as she turned her set face to me ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... dinner given in her honor, in the newspaper accounts of which the rare old Russell silver figured effectively, and on the whole she had enjoyed it. But a season of it was enough; her practical mind rebelled against the expense and uselessness of such a life. She adopted the plainest style of dress, declined invitations, and privately ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... shewed the uselessness of this question, since the reason of her refusing the honour he intended her would have made her reject the addresses of every other man in the world. Lord Robert could not believe this possible and therefore desisted not from urging a question so disagreeable ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... "Your uselessness?" she echoed, and now it was her eyes that expressed a grave wonder. "But you were Governor of the Islands; and you are Governor still, are ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... men. Strange that the people should have submitted to such monstrous usurpations, although decently veiled under the names of the old offices of the republic. But they had become degenerate. They wished for peace and leisure. They felt the uselessness of any independent authority, and resigned themselves to a condition which the Romans two centuries earlier would have ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... you are going to do this: to spend the best and most vigorous portion of your days in idleness—in uselessness—in the gratification of self—in the contamination of others. And then weakness, the relics, and the miserable dregs of life;—you are going to give that sorry offering to God, because His mercy endureth for ever! Shame—shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... telling them of the strange and wonderful things which transpired in the world beyond the mountains; telling them of the wonderful discoveries of science; the fame of many brilliant men and women, telling them of the advantages of communication with the outer world, of the uselessness and folly of spending their lives in so simple a manner, ridiculing their simplicity, telling them that the mere youths of his country could teach the venerable grandsires of the valley things of which they had never dreamed, telling ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... be appeased. She stamped her flat foot and repeated her command in so savage a tone that Kirk perceived the uselessness of trying to explain. He looked appealingly at the girl, but she merely nodded her head and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... was a wretchedly constructed, long-neglected building of a type common to those old river towns that in their many years of uselessness have lost all civic pride, and in their own resultant squalor and filth have buried their self-respect. A dingy, scarcely legible sign over the treacherous board walk, in front, by the sickly light of a smoke-grimed kerosene lantern, announced ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... should assemble and confirm the vote of the army were loud and strenuous. Parties of men went out in all directions to the houses of the senators to tell them the people demanded their presence at the forum. Seeing the uselessness of further opposition, and fearing the consequences if they resisted, Hanno and his friends no longer offered ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... more at present as to the uselessness of medicine. My aim is to consider its bearings on morals. Still I cannot refrain from saying that men employ the same sophism about medicine as they do about the search for truth. They assume that the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the spalpeen!" whispered Terry, in some excitement, pointing his finger toward the camp, and with no thought of the uselessness of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... triumph of the fleet. The prisoners and malefactors, thus released from confinement, rushed upon the garrison at the same time with the mountaineers, who had besieged the place on the land side. The uselessness of the artillery, the breaches of the fort, the attacks of the English, all combined to force the retreat of the garrison, "in the midst of scenes of ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Edward Everett Hale calls "A Hen's Right Hen." She is at length presented, her remarks are interspersed with legal terms; evidently some part of the training has been at the F. S. & T. C. of the G. S. M. & T. Her talk is upon the uselessness of the male sex and the applause is loud and enthusiastic. Her face and manner are very familiar, and looking at the programme I see that the initials of her name spell ...
— Silver Links • Various
... been of coarse fibre and heavy mind, this lack of education would have troubled him but little. His great success in that case would have served only to convince him of the uselessness of education except for inferior persons, who could not get along in the world without artificial aids. As it was, he never ceased to regret his deficiency in this respect, and when Humphreys urged him to prepare ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... speaking of his late confinement, and its comfortless circumstances, in very strong terms, dwelling on its solitude and its uselessness, as if those only formed its disagreeability, and the pain went for nothing. Social and kind is his heart, and finely touched to the most exquisite sensations of sympathy; and, as I told Colonel Gwynn, I must needs wish he may ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... displaying an unusual affection toward my mother, either as a blind, or through remorse, or (as I incline to think) through an amiability born of triumph; there was at times even a touch of commiseration in her manner, and more than once she spoke to me, in a tone of philosophical speculation, on the uselessness of endeavouring to repress natural feelings and the futility of treating as children persons who were already grown up. This mood lasted some time, so long, I suppose, as the stolen delight of doing the thing was more prominent than the delight in the thing itself. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... no worse than pleonastic, that is, redundant, therefore only unnecessary, can be no satisfaction to the man who would find perfection, if he may, in the words of him who was nearer the Lord than any other. The phrase 'that was made' seems, from its uselessness, weak even to foolishness after what precedes: 'All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... have therefore only more fully demonstrated the uselessness of further attempts at present to arrive at any agreement on ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... stranger, doubtless to dispel the slight cloud that covered Morcerf's brow, "we do not act thus in Italy; we grow according to our race and our species, and we pursue the same lines, and often the same uselessness, all ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ships nor the Nitherohy, which sails equally ill, are adapted to the purposes to be effected, as from their slowness, the enemy has an opportunity to force an action under any circumstances, however disadvantageous to this undisciplined squadron. The Real is no better, and her total uselessness as a ship of war, has determined me to prepare her as a fireship, there appearing no probability of the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... of the young people—at the first glance she seemed to understand all A great joy flashed across her; but she said nothing. She as well as they were long used to that peculiarity of nature—which especially belonged to the Harper family—a conviction of the uselessness of talk and the ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one's eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher, and "Shady Hollow," as Andrew called it, had surely never been more glorious than on the morning which he chose for his walk. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... son, and pining away, she fell into a slow decline. Her sufferings were greatly aggravated by Richard's harsh and cruel treatment of her. He was continually uttering expressions of impatience against her on account of her sickness and uselessness, and making fretful complaints of her various disagreeable qualities. Some of these sayings were reported to Anne, and also a rumor came to her ears one day, while she was at her toilet, that Richard was intending to put her to death. She was dreadfully alarmed ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... at last, but it was not as she had answered once. She spoke sweetly and bravely of their age and of the uselessness of it all now, and of what people would say, and of other things. But her eyes were just as loving as when ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... solicited work, laborious and painful work. Moreover, he went to the job of his own free will, when sober and in his right mind. This seemed to imply an awakening of conscience, a dawning sense of his utter uselessness to the body politic, and a desire to figure as a useful member of society. On the other hand, it may have been a symptom of brain-softening. But it happened to be neither; it was in fact a means to a wicked end. On the fading end of a superior suburb, where the streets of fine ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... even without points, are capable of attracting the atmospheric electricity; but it must be remembered that there are two points at every join in the wire. M. Bede insists strongly upon the uselessness of terminating lightning conductors in wells, or even larger pieces of water. The experiments of MM. Becquerel and Pouillet proved that the resistance of water to the passage of electricity is one thousand million times greater than that of iron; consequently, if the current conveyed by a wire ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... conversation. No matter what the mental contact may be, it has its effects—we are continually gaining knowledge, making new friends, receiving fresh inspiration. The complexion of this kind of daily association determines the cast of one's mind, the thoroughness of his taste, the usefulness or uselessness of what he does. A man is known by the company he keeps, because that company forms him; he gets from it what becomes brain of his brain and soul of ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... progressive dissolution and in hopeless and exhausting struggles far more than in education or in profitable correction. Toothache and sea-sickness, birth-pangs and melancholia are not useful ills. The intenser the pain the more probable its uselessness. Only in vanishing is it a sign of progress; in occurring it is an omen of defeat, just as disease is an omen of death, although, for those diseased already, medicine and convalescence may be approaches to health again. Where a man's nature is out of gear and his instincts ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Captain Hamelin, back to France. We sailed in company, and after a somewhat lengthy winter passage, we got to Toulon only to find ourselves put into thirty-five days of quarantine. Five and thirty days of prison and solitude and uselessness imposed on a crew without a single sick man, which was daily inspected by its officers as to cleanliness, whose health was looked after by three doctors, and which had just gone through the best and safest of purifying operations—a long sea voyage. Five and thirty days during ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... implores piteously for relief from fancied dangers. The sufferer now stands in a slippery place; unless his case is treated intelligently he will issue from that period of gloom cured of the sweetest of madnesses, and doomed to a life of singular uselessness. ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... The girl presented herself at the dressmaker's late one afternoon, her smooth forehead disfigured by an irritated frown, her mouth resolutely unsmiling. Under one arm she carried a roll of cheap white lawn. Annabel frequently commented on the uselessness of buying expensive materials for a girl who grew as rapidly as Diantha, though the reasonableness of this contention was slightly discounted by her recognized ability to demonstrate that the cream of things was invariably her portion, while an all-wise Providence had obviously designed the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... did not wish for any personal praise; yet, because a tinge of red showed under the bronze, she was glad she had seized the opportunity to offer a tribute that might at some odd moment heal a passing sense of uselessness and appreciation. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... more careful consideration of the whole matter, distinguishing between the general good intention of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of which it may be guilty, ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem. For in its spiritual meaning asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of the twice-born philosophy. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in their presence compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn Kunigunde and her rude women without them. A few sneers on her daintiness and uselessness had led her to make an offer of assisting in the grand chopping of sausage meat and preparation of winter stores, and she had been answered with contempt that my young lord would not have her soil her delicate hands, when one of the maids who had been sent to fetch beer from the cellar came ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the book, or one in which the author's meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the straining after good sense, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... display of Verey lights. A telephone message from our front line informed us that a considerable party of the enemy had crept quietly up, and were now prowling round our wire and trying to pick a way through. A hot fire from rifles, Lewis guns and machine guns, soon convinced the enemy of the uselessness of attempting, without artillery preparation, a raid against an alert enemy well entrenched with wire intact. They were beaten off, and withdrew to a fold in the ground a couple of hundred yards out in No Man's Land, where they were ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... of her sense of uselessness made his eyes sting. "I couldn't get along without you," ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... together on doorsteps as well as promenading the pavement. If there is any way of spending the evenings more destructive of every good gift and useful quality of manhood and womanhood than this, I know not what it is. The idleness and uselessness of it, the precocious abuse of tobacco, the premature and forced development of the emotions which should belong to love at a later period, the loss of such intellectual attainments as had already been acquired, the vacuous mind, the contentment to remain in the ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... uselessness of any words, knowing that in this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations of life could bear either cogency or meaning, he ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... at first was minded to dash it into the old woman's sneering face, but remembering the uselessness of such a performance, he thrust it into his pocket together with ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... it probably does the governor no injustice to say that he now had his eye on the Mormon vote. The non-Mormons in Hancock and the surrounding counties held meetings and appointed committees to obtain accurate information about the thefts, and the old complaints of the uselessness of tracing stolen goods to Nauvoo were revived. The Mormons vigorously denied these charges through formal action taken by the Nauvoo City Council and a citizens' meeting, alleging that in many cases ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... had—and could and should have—no authority to enforce its decisions. At present, however, all this is Utopian, and perhaps it always will be so. We will return, therefore, to our immediate object, which is to point out the utter uselessness of Christianity in the midst of class antagonisms. It cannot control the rich, it cannot assist the poor. Its chief idea is to stand between the two, not as an ambassador of justice, but as a dispenser ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... you. I know you mean it kindly, and no one can be expected to enter into my feeling of the uselessness of wasting my time over classical studies when I know I shall never be able ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man to have. But we soon found out what you were—a man well born, well bred, full of brilliant possibility, who was slowly becoming an idle, cynical, self-centered egoist—a man who, lacking the lash of need or the spur of ambition, was degenerating through the sheer uselessness and inanity of his life. And, oh, the pity of it! For Mr. Keen and I have taken a—a curiously personal interest in you—in your case. I say, the pity ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... will continue to try to impose her will upon mine. I wonder why she has not found out by this time the uselessness of her effort. But no; she still keeps on hoping at last to wear me down. She wants me to live the life she has marked out for me to live—to take up my position in the county, and, above all, to marry and give an heir to the property. I see it all; ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... his studied demeanor for the moment, sits down and begins to read the report with knitted brows and careworn looks, reflecting on his desperate situation and Swindon's uselessness. Richard is brought in. Judith walks beside him. Two soldiers precede and two follow him, with the sergeant in command. They cross the room to the wall opposite the door; but when Richard has just passed before the chair of state the sergeant stops him with a touch on the arm, ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... this is not the first time that these thoughts have troubled you. I have perceived your moments of melancholy, and sometimes I have accused the past as causing your sadness. But, as I was uncertain, I dared not even attempt to combat the sad influence of these remembrances—to show you the uselessness, the injustice of them—for if your grief had arisen from another cause, if the past had been to you what it ought to be, a vain, bad dream, I should risk awakening in you painful ideas that I should wish ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only the stir and waving of the scrub and of the shadows increased. And suddenly and violently I shivered. "Cav—" I began, and realised once more the uselessness of the human voice in that thin air. Silence. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... a lifetime had passed since the early morning, up in the hills, when he had attempted to escape by the bedroom, and had been seized as he came out of the press. Of course, he had fought; it was his right and his duty; and he had not known the utter uselessness of it, in that guarded house. He had known nothing of what was going forward. He had heard the entrance of the searchers below, and now and again their footsteps.... Then he had seen the wainscoting begin to gape before him, and had ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Curtis. Rachel had from the first insisted that she should be kept out of her room; and the mother's piteous entreaty always implied that saddest argument, "Why should I be deprived of you both in one day?" So Grace found herself condemned to uselessness almost as complete as Ermine's. She could only answer notes, respond to inquiries, without even venturing far enough from the house to see Ermine, or take out the Temple children for a walk. For indeed, Rachel's ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his back squarely upon him. A realization of the uselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money to his pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmed lamp of his temper. "What's this," he demanded, "I hear about driving stage? about Buck boasting around that ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... been accustomed to do. But Shenac knew this to be impossible. Her mother was able for no such work now, though she might think so herself; and Shenac knew that to try and fail would make the mother miserable. What was to be done? Over this question she pondered with an earnestness, and, alas! with a uselessness, that gave impatience to her hand and sharpness ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... basis; clay in the latter condition only is meant when we say 'The jar has gone to pieces.' There, sixthly, is a numerical difference: the threads are many, the piece of cloth is one only. In the seventh place, there is the uselessness of the activity of the producing agent (which would result from cause and effect being identical); for if the effect were nothing but the cause, what could be effected by the activity of the agent?—Let us then ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... practical comment upon the uselessness of our petty standing regular army of twenty-five thousand men is the act of Congress just passed, making West Point a school for Signal Service officers, and for training those preparing for Arctic, ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... hope. For some days past Thomas had been labouring under depression, his power of devouring pemmican had, it is true, remained unimpaired, but in one or two trying moments of toil, in rapids and portages, he had been found miserably wanting; he had, in fact, shown many indications of utter uselessness; he had also begun to entertain gloomy apprehensions of what the French would do to him when they caught him on the Lake of the Woods, and although he endeavoured frequently to prove that under certain circumstances the French would have no chance whatever against ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... mothers was an understood thing, and though it had never reached open warfare, it was kept alive by the kindness of neighbours, who never forgot to repeat disparaging speeches. Mrs White's opinions of the genteel uselessness of Bella and Gusta were freely quoted to Mrs Greenways, and she in her turn was always ready with a thrust at Lilac which might be ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... less demonstrative than most of her countrywomen. She had had time to recollect the uselessness of giving vent to her indignant anguish, and her brother's derisive look held her back. The family tactics, from force of habit, recurred to her; she made no further objection to her father's commands; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Arrras had approached near enough to fire a shot we were again hotly engaged with the thern fleet, and as soon as he drew near he too commenced to pour a terrific fusillade of heavy shot into us. Ship after ship reeled and staggered into uselessness beneath the pitiless ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be asked, "Why, then, do the workers strike in such cases, when the uselessness of such measures is so evident?" Simply because they must protest against every reduction, even if dictated by necessity; because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not be made to bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to yield to them as ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... which the fleets had been during the night, must have gone about at this time, and probably for this reason. She was able thus to fetch into the wake of the crippled vessel, which a frigate had already gallantly attacked, taking advantage of the uselessness of the Frenchman's lee batteries, encumbered with the wreckage of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... invisible fingers to greet our famishing lips—and I caught it eagerly, dividing the welcome nutriment with the perishing child, now patient from weakness and instinctive consciousness, perhaps, of the entire uselessness of cries and tears. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... him, and, recognising the uselessness of argument, Ann yielded and laid hers in it. Somehow she was not altogether sorry to feel that friendly, human grip. In single file they made the perilous return journey along the narrow track, emerging ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the Russian would have painted him as he was, a saint in humility, springing from the soil, the friend of poor painters, a socialist in theory, but a Christian in practice. After following the humble itinerary of his life you realise the uselessness of "literary" invention. Here was character for a novelist to be had for the asking. The Crainquebille of Anatole France occurs to the lover of that writer after reading Emile Bernard's ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... himself together with an effort that drove his nails bitingly into his palms and left his face gray. He saw the uselessness of pleading with these people of polished iron, who could not understand his fearful loss. For the sake of Chum—for the sake of the self-respecting man he himself had become—he would not let himself go to pieces. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... the civil population as to gain any military end by the actual destruction of defense works. Bombs were dropped also upon ships in the harbor. Occasionally the Japanese flyers scattered circulars calling upon the defenders to surrender and pointing out the uselessness ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... anyone the uselessness of appealing from such an order, but he was frantic. Realizing the importance of the news he carried, and beginning to glimpse vaguely the meaning of Graves and his activity, he was ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... rest of the afternoon to a gentle elucidation of the mysteries before him, setting copies for his heavy hand, or even guiding it with his own, like a child's, across the paper. At times the appalling uselessness of Uncle Ben's endeavors reminded him of Rupert's taunting charge. Was he really doing this from a genuine thirst for knowledge? It was inconsistent with all that Indian Spring knew of his antecedents and his present ambitions; he was a simple miner without scientific ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... made for the frontier. The odd customs and manners which seemed strange at first have become very acceptable to me now. I find everyone so honest and simple and brave. Here one must work to live, which is right. Do you know, I never worked in my life until I came to Fort Henry. My life was all uselessness, idleness." ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... I weighed the probable uselessness of my going, nor how I shrank from one so vile as he. It was not the kind of ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... you this story, my young readers, because I thought it might be, not only interesting to you, but because I hoped it might be the means of leading you to reflect upon the uselessness and wickedness of PROFANITY; and that it might aid in impressing on your minds the importance of governing your passions and keeping your tongues free from ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... how this title 'Missis,' addressed to me and to my children, shocks all my feelings! Several times I have exclaimed, 'For God's sake do not call me that!' and only been awakened, by the stupid amazement of the poor creatures I was addressing, to the perfect uselessness of my thus expostulating with them; once or twice indeed I have done more—I have explained to them, and they appeared to comprehend me well, that I had no ownership over them, for that I held such ownership sinful, and that, though I was the wife of the man who pretends ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... felt to assist Julianillo, he was well aware of the uselessness of making the attempt; the words he had just heard making him more anxious than ever to escape from the country. He therefore rode forward with the same unconcerned air which he had assumed on approaching the emissaries of the Inquisition. Following the advice of the innkeeper, ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... persevered even while they realized the utter uselessness of their efforts. But what could they do under such circumstances? The defence of these twenty-nine prisoners lasted only one hour ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... threw myself at Jacques Bontet. He also had clubbed his weapon, and he struck wildly at me as I came on. My head he missed, and the blow fell on my right shoulder, settling once for all the question whether my right arm was to be of any use or not. Yet its uselessness mattered not, for I countered his blow with a better, and the butt of my pistol fell full and square on his forehead. For a moment he stood looking at me, with hatred and fear in his eyes: then, as it seemed to me, quite slowly his knees gave way under him; his face ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... he is bound to take the right stand when the time comes, is as though one were to attempt to put all the law of the state into its constitution to make it more binding. The result would be hopeless congestion and general uselessness. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... been at the root of the temporising policy which had been pursued after Churubusco. But the uselessness of half-measures had then been proved. The conviction had become general that a desperate enterprise could only be pushed to a successful issue by desperate tactics, and every available battalion was hurried ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... three times. She recognised the writing and gave me the letters without reading them. Sometimes the terms of these letters brought tears to my eyes. He had imagined that by closing his purse to Marguerite, he would bring her back to him; but when he had perceived the uselessness of these means, he could hold out no longer; he wrote and asked that he might see her again, as before, no matter ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... through the mist, her face turned away, her arm trembling beneath the firm clasp of my fingers. As we advanced I became conscious that my own position was an awkward one. I had no money of my own with me—not a cent other than those two five-hundred dollar bills handed me by Vail. The uselessness of attempting to pass one of these was apparent; it would be better to plead lack of cash, and put up some security if the man in charge refused credit. At whatever cost the ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... for mercy. She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned at regular intervals in piteous accents:—'He has forgotten and abandoned me!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, her acknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... feelings, and it were best to apparently unintentionally seat yourself on it; then beg a thousand pardons, and, as you, in your efforts to make it better, only make it worse, give it up in despair, and console the owner by a reference to spilt milk and the uselessness of crying. As to the contents of the boxes, they must look out for themselves. If they get injured, hint that they should keep ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... which the Austro-Hungarian representative refers, nullified even the right of general suffrage by an artificial creation of an over-representation of the German minority in the Reichsrat, and its utter uselessness for the liberty of nations was clearly demonstrated during the three years of unscrupulous military absolutism during this war. Every reference to this constitution, therefore, means in reality only a repudiation of the right of self-determination for the non-German nations of Austria who are ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... conscious that she could not go on living at home as she was doing, without place or meaning or worth. The very children that went to school held her uselessness in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... lonely in the midst of the commotion. A humiliating sense of his own weakness and uselessness crept over him; and the poor little dwarf turned away from it all, and wandered out of the village, far away through the meadows, and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... YOUR charming sex every fortune and every good blessing, and getting kicked for our pains! And sometimes it happens that we are permitted the amazing honour of toiling to keep you in food and clothing, while you jest at your clubs about the uselessness of woman's work in the world! Yes, I know! Have you seen Angela's ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... until the moment should come for him to take part in the wide-reaching plan of campaign which had been devised by the Boer Governments. They saw the uselessness of attempting to withstand the British forces in the Republics, and they determined to bring the war back into the Cape Colony and Natal. The general idea was that L. Botha should march on Pietermaritzburg from the Eastern Transvaal, while De Wet followed Hertzog and Kritzinger across ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... him say some strong, sincere things about the uselessness of rich men who would sooner use their money on the gratification of vanity than upon public service. He meant that. He repeated such things at various interviews. In doing so he proved that he himself had always made a god of very ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... I've only been able to catch rumors of the progress of the war in the various ports at which I've touched, and I came right here from my ship. But I've no sympathy with either side. The whole thing annoys me, somehow—the utter uselessness and folly of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... towering above her. She looked upon the gorgeous pomp of papal worship, with its gormandizing pastors and its starving flocks, with its pageants to excite the sense and to paralyze the mind, with its friars and monks loitering in sloth and uselessness, and often in the grossest dissipation, and her reason gradually began to condemn it as a gigantic superstition for the enthrallment of mankind. Still, the influence of Christian sentiments, like a guardian angel, ever hovered around her, and when her bewildered mind was groping ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... imperfections of his organization. The naturalist studies the play of his apparatus, and if he has the right of admiring most of its parts, he has likewise that of showing the imperfection of other parts, and the practical uselessness of those which fulfill no functions."[268] And it is further claimed that there are a great many structures which are clearly useless; that is, they fulfill no purpose at all. Thus there are monkeys, which have no thumbs for use, but only ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... after the linen for the ambulances, to take away the blood-stained pillow-slips and blankets, and deliver them at the laundry and get clean ones from the linen-room. It's odd, but I'm almost foolishly elated at being allowed to do this. We are still more or less weighed down by the sense of our uselessness. Even the Chaplain, though his services as a stretcher-bearer have been definitely recognized—even the Chaplain continues to suffer in this way. He has just come to me to tell me with pride that he is making a good job of the stretchers he has ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... equal the torture of the soul? If it were possible by any amount of physical pain to still and silence the agony of conscience, who would not endure it? The greatest condemnation of the self-cruelty of the fakeers is—its uselessness. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... will ever learn the uselessness of such efforts is yet a matter for prophecy. Miss Hyde heard all that was said, and replied very quietly, "I don't believe it." And as Mrs. Perkins had no tangible proofs of Abner Dimock's unfitness to marry Judge Hyde's daughter, the lady in question got ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the uselessness, of their ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... careful in preserving it, as though his fortune were still insecure. Why was this? We should answer the question thus: Because his defective education left him no other resource. We frequently hear the "success" of such men as Astor and Girard adduced as evidence of the uselessness of early education. On the contrary, it is precisely such men who prove its necessity; since, when they have conquered fortune, they know not how to avail themselves of its advantages. When Franklin had, at the age of forty-two, won a moderate competence, he could ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... passion for honey; hence the murders committed in excess of the needs of her family. The Scolia leaves us perplexed: she takes nothing from the Cetonia-grub, which is left without an egg; she stabs, though well aware of the uselessness of her action: the heap of mould is lacking and it is not her custom to transport her prey. The other prisoners, once the blow is struck, at least seek to escape with their capture between their legs; the Scolia ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... being no wind, and the uselessness of the stay-sails and spankers. What has brought you ashore? Galleygo tells us something of a cutter's coming in, with information that the French are out; but his news is ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and the dark figures which dotted the ice behind the advancing Indians showed that the fire was an effectual one. The Indians did not return a shot. Their chief had, no doubt, impressed upon them the uselessness of firing against men lying in shelter, and had urged them to hurry at the top of their speed to the island and crush the whites ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... capital—they would not need to bother themselves with the State. If, in possessing themselves thus of all economic power, they were also to neglect the State, its machinery would, of course, tumble into uselessness and eventually disappear. As the great capitalists to-day make laws through the stock exchange, through their chambers of commerce, through their pools and combinations, so the working class could do likewise if they were in possession of industry. But the working class to-day has no real ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... each word of which later on made him weep with regret, produced upon him at that moment an impression of fear rather than love or pity. When at length he broke the cruel silence, the sound of his voice revealed to the unhappy girl the uselessness of that supreme appeal addressed by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... who nevertheless has done some service to the State, I say that I will bear the shield if others draw the sword." Applause rang out from a hundred thousand throats. Crassus followed to the same purpose, and was received with the same wild delight. A few senators, who retained their senses, saw the uselessness of the opposition, and retired. Bibulus was of duller and tougher metal. As the vote was about to be taken, he and his tribunes rushed to the rostra. The tribunes pronounced their veto. Bibulus said ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown her a hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided with Mrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised, by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'm towd as doon i' Lunnon town, yo'll find scores o' this mak"—he would say to his intimate the old shepherd—"what th' Awmighty med em for, bets me. Now Miss Polly, she can sarve t' beese"—(by ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... colorless, otherwise there was little to show what the last month and a half had meant to Allan Gerard. Except when he rose or moved, the inert uselessness of his right arm was not obvious. And however hard the battles and rebellion he inwardly had passed through, tone or expression carried no outward intelligence of past conflict as he smiled across at his entertainer. Gerard possessed in full measure that Anglo-Saxon reticence which ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... more like it. This was more nearly the tone in which Mr. Atkins was wont to be addressed. It was possible that the man, recognizing the uselessness of ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ancients wrote a book to prove that there was no word which did not convey an ambiguous and uncertain meaning. If we possessed this lost book, our ingenious dictionaries of "synonyms" would not probably prove its uselessness. Whenever the same word is associated by the parties with different ideas, they may converse, or controverse, till "the crack of doom!" This with a little obstinacy and some agility in shifting his ground, makes ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... other, "I was reflecting on the uselessness of our being filled, for, let us go away never so full, we always ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... it to the basest metal, betraying his mean soul. George Stephenson was born with the pewter spoon in his mouth, but the true temper of his soul turned it into pure gold. The test of a gentleman is his use, not his uselessness; whether that use be direct or indirect, whether it be actual service or only inspiring and aiding action. "To what purpose should our thoughts be directed to various kinds of knowledge," wrote Philip Sidney in 1578, "unless room be afforded for putting it into practice so ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... principal personages of our legend were not idle. By a tacit but intelligent understanding, the stranger with Content and his son placed themselves back to back, and struggled manfully against their luckless fortune. The former showed himself no soldier of parade; for, knowing the uselessness of orders when each one fought for life, he dealt out powerful blows in silence. His example was nobly emulated by Content; and young Mark moved limb and muscle with the vigorous activity of his age. A first onset of the enemy was repelled, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... was a spot from which I was excluded by nature; that it belonged to others so wholly, that scarcely by any conceivable chance could it ever be mine; and that I could remain within its walls no longer, but with a sense of uselessness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... uselessness and the wretchedness of my existence, how fruitless my life now was, both to myself and to others; how of old I had been of some service to the clerics whom I had now abandoned for the sake of these monks, so that I was no longer ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... look at that remarkable man, as he held forth with wonderful effect on the requirements of true theatrical art. Turning towards the dismal scene, I gently and respectfully pointed out to Spontini the uselessness of his declamation, and promised that everything should eventually be done ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... beneath the arched passageway of the citadel which the great Vauban built for the still greater Louis XIV, thinking, no doubt, when he built it, that it would always be potent to keep out any foe, however strong. Next to its stupid massiveness what most impressed us this day was its utter uselessness as a protection. The station stood just beyond the walls, with a park at one side of it, but the park had become a timber deadfall. At the approach of the enemy hundreds of splendid trees had been felled to clear the way for gunfire from ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... inspiration. In earlier, and it may be happier, times, the duty of the good man was to strive against all evil, disorder, uselessness, incompetence in their more simple forms. 'He therefore is a holy man,' says Ormuzd in the Zend-avesta, 'who has built a dwelling on the earth, in which he maintains fire, cattle, his wife, his children, and flocks and herds; he who makes the earth produce barley, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... is to eat a fish of a Sunday. I go altogether by faith, in my religion, general, for they talked so much to me of the uselessness of works, that I've got to be very unparticular as to what I do. Your people who have been converted four or five times, are like so many pickerel, which strike ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the same theory of government with which the constitutionalists tormented the late Louis Philippe,—Le roi regne et ne gouverne pas. He was unwilling to accept such a position, and so am I. I cannot take a pride in insignificance and uselessness, although I confess with shame that most women do,—the result of which is, that we have not the kind of influence we ought to have, and that a real, hearty, genuine respect for women does not exist. In every man's heart there lurks a mild contempt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... convince Wilkins of the folly, as well as uselessness, of rebellion. Pocketing his pride and burning with indignation, he walked forward, while the tyrannical steward went grumbling to his ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... naive and intelligent count and played with him as with a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre, pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and proving the larger half of the truths, whether of science or of daily life, which we believe; while those who have avoided this inconsistency, and followed out the general theorem respecting the logical value of the syllogism to its legitimate corollary, have been led to impute uselessness and frivolity to the syllogistic theory itself, on the ground of the petitio principii which they allege to be inherent in every syllogism. As I believe both these opinions to be fundamentally erroneous, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... company gazed at the singer, not seeing in him the indolent, sickly youth, despicable on account of his uselessness for work. In their primitive minds stirred a vague something which impelled them to respect the words and complaints of the weakling. It was something extraordinary, which seemed to sweep, with rude beating of wings, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... household servant or aged nurse brings her tidings of the lover who has been unable to cast her out of his heart, and whose tears drop silently when he hears aught about her. Then, when she hears of his affections still living, and his heart still yearning, and thinks of the uselessness of the sacrifice she has made voluntarily, she touches the hair[31] on her forehead, and she becomes regretful. She may, indeed, do her best to persevere in her resolve, but if one single tear bedews her cheek, she is no longer strong in the sanctity of her vow. Weakness of this kind would ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various |
