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More "Futile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unsuited to a lady's ears. When you think that the hand of man was made to wield the sceptre of imperial power over this magnificent world, it becomes a gross impropriety to divert it from the path of destiny into so futile an effort as hooking up a mere bit of fuss, feathers and fallals. You might just as well hitch up a pair of thoroughbred elephants to a milk wagon. It will do, as Adam says, for the Mollycoddle and the meticulous weakling, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... Heine became for a number of years the subject of his song. His favorite, almost exclusive vehicle; of expression is the simple stanza of the Volkslied, which he uses with consummate skill for new effects. Heine's attempts in law proved as futile as those in business; although he did pass his examination for the degree of Doctor juris, the study of poetry had been his chief endeavor in his university career. Finally he decided to make literature his profession. Disgruntled with things in general ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... weren't horrid at all," Virginia broke in at last, her heart suddenly warming to this very obviously spoiled, futile, but none the less likable, Florrie. "You mustn't talk that way. And if your parents made you ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... forgotten it as soon as it was made. At no time was he a very scrupulous man of his word. There was no help for it; so smothering my vexation as well as I could, I strolled moodily up the street, propounding futile inquiries about Madame Lalande to every male acquaintance I met. By report she was known, I found, to all—to many by sight—but she had been in town only a few weeks, and there were very few, therefore, who claimed her personal acquaintance. These few, being still comparatively ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... regard to Lepidus: for, having placed his statue on the rostra, I also voted for its removal. I tried by paying him a compliment to recall him from his insane policy. The infatuation of that most unstable of men rendered my prudence futile. Yet all the same more good was done by demolishing the statue of Lepidus, than ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... by a number of prisoners, who are credible persons, and this is but a part of their sufferings; so that the excuse made by the enemy that the prisoners were emaciated and died by contagious sickness, which no one could prevent, is futile. It requires no great sagacity to know that crowding people together without fresh air, and feeding, or rather starving them in such a manner as the prisoners have been, must unavoidably produce a contagion. Nor is it a want of candor to suppose that ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... friendly countries. In this way it was aimed to disintegrate the commercial domination of Germany which had been built up by the efforts of a generation. It was felt that by this method efforts on the part of Germany and Austria-Hungary to recapture lost Italian import trade would be rendered futile. During this same month announcement was made regarding the third Italian war loan. This was declared to have reached on February 6, 1916, 3,000,000,000 lire, which, together with former loans, showed that altogether 5,000,000,000 lire had been contributed. Considerable ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... to work becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... defiance of desperate will; and even then it is for the woman's sake rather than for his own. Henry Irving's acting made clear and beautiful that condition of temperament. A noble and affectionate nature, shipwrecked, going to pieces, doomed, but making one last tremendous though futile effort to avert the final and inevitable ruin—this ideal was made actual in his performance. The intellectual or spiritual value of such a presentment must depend upon the auditor's capacity to absorb from a tragedy its lessons of insight into the relations of the human soul to the moral government ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... languishes for God, because it thirsts after the good and beautiful; and all her efforts to satisfy its cravings will prove futile until it is immersed in the bosom of the Divinity, the Source of all goodness and beauty. With woman the heart is the great receptacle of grace, the principal agent in the practice of piety and virtue. If this precious disposition of her heart offers many and great advantages, it carries with it ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... Wrongdoing is a great, hard, terrible fact. We must face it. We must have some clear and consistent principles of action with reference to these wrongdoers; or else our wrath and indignation will betray us into the futile attempt to right one wrong by another wrong; and so drag us down to the level of the wrongdoers against whom ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the student had had the grave and righteous intention of denouncing the superstition, but gradually he had perceived that to do so would be futile. The artistic soul of him was caught by the curious recital. He remembered now the bidding of Mary Torrance, and thought with pleasure that he would go back and repeat these strange stories to Miss Torrance, and smile ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... chance the country lawyers Larsen consulted happened to be attorneys for the little sawmill men. Larsen tried in his blundering way to express his feeling that "nobody had a right to hang our drive." His explanations were so involved and futile that, without thinking, Bob ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... person writes his own memoirs, we have, at least, the motives which he thinks it creditable to assign to his conduct—he has, generally the candour of vanity, and even when he has not that candour, he is sometimes blinded into discovering truth unawares; but nothing can be more futile and fastidious than the meagre notes of the original actor, fresh woven and discoloured by the hands of an obsequious servant, who conceals all the facts he cannot explain, and all the motives he cannot justify. Such memoirs resemble ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... fact at length dawned upon the British commander, he made a futile attempt at a diversion by sending Benedict Arnold to attack New London. It was as weak as the act of a drowning man who catches at a straw. Arnold's expedition, cruel and useless as it was, crowned his infamy. A sad plight for a man of his power! If he had only had more strength of character, ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... floated through the air, enhancing the spectral element which enveloped her. She retreated to the parlor, and, running her fingers over the keys of the piano, endeavored by playing some of her favorite airs to divest her mind of the dreary, unearthly images which haunted it. The attempt was futile, and there in the dark, cold parlor she leaned her head against the piano, and gave herself up to the guidance of one who, like the "Ancient Mariner," holds his listener fascinated and breathless. Once her guardian had warned her not to study Poe too closely, but the book ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... you call them. However, don't you think the most sensible thing is for you to wait till you meet her at dinner tonight, and then you can form your own opinion? I'm beginning to get a little bored with this futile discussion." ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... as if to say, what a relief it is to be seated! So completely did the tender manifestation reflect Mr. Powell's apparent condition that the whole audience burst into a roar of laughter. Here, too, all attempts to speak were futile. At Port Byron a generous sprinkling of cayenne pepper on the stove soon cut short all constitutional arguments and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... no disease in which treatment has been more savage than in this. The remedies in common use at that time were mainly new and of supposed specific powers; but they were so violent, and proved to be so futile, that they have all been given up since by the ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... my duty, to say much about their relations to each other; indeed Beyle delayed his novel-work so long, and Balzac codified his own so carefully and so early, that the examination of the question would need to be meticulous, and might even be a little futile in a general history, though it is an interesting subject for a monograph. It is enough to say that, generally, both belong to the analytical rather than to the synthetical branch of novel-writing, and may almost be said ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... proved equally futile as a corrective. Inexplicable though it appeared, their mistress apparently derived some obscure satisfaction out of the process of splashing about in the wet sea, and because they loved her they bore it ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... But such thoughts were futile, and soon she rose and turned on the electric light. Then she sat down at a little writing-table which had been thoughtfully provided for her by M. Polperro, and hurriedly, with feverish eagerness, wrote ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... sequence. Causality in action. An atom is dissected, a belly rumbles in hunger, a star blooms into brief nova; a bird wheels in futile escape, an ice-flow impacts, an equation is expressed in awesome mushrooming shape. These are multitudinous, apocalyptic. They are timeless and equal. These are things whereby suns wheel or blossom or die, a tribe vanishes, a civilization ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... confounded with the Jewish Christianity which is the most original form in which Christianity realised itself. This was no longer able to influence the Christianity which had shaken itself free from the Jewish nation (as to futile attempts, see below), any more than the protecting covering stripped from the new shoot, can ever again acquire significance ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... they do not actually demonstrate, that the virus of small-pox is 'particulate.' Definite knowledge upon this point is of exceeding importance, because in the treatment of particles methods are available which it would be futile to apply to molecules. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... beginning of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." United Ireland says:—"It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... and futile appeal, Mrs. Cary had made herself very late, and when she entered the large marquee which Travers had had erected in his garden she found that all the guests had arrived, including Rajah Nehal Singh himself. He stood facing the entrance, and she felt, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... with us," said the skipper sternly. Curlie had not intended going with them. He had meant to remain behind and send a call for aid, then to swim for the raft. But now, as he saw the water gaining on the stricken craft, he realized how dangerous and futile it would be. He was needed on the raft to help get her away. Having seen all this ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... commander and told her story and his, and found and brought her back to her people. He strove to find the man for whose sake she had abandoned her father's lodge and forfeited her good name. Hawk well knew how futile was her trust that the white chief would ever claim her as his wife, but among so many comrades he was concealed, and Hawk left his message. Sooner or later his people should find the white man who had wrought the wrong and his days were ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the "third degree." His argument that he found the diamonds, and that having found them they were his until the proper owner appeared, was futile. Ten minutes after having passed into a room where sat Chief Arkwright, of the Mulberry Street force, and three of his men, and Steven Birnes, of the Birnes Detective Agency, Haney remembered that he hadn't found the diamonds at all—somebody ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... property rights and the power of guardianship over their own children. They will not consent to their own disfranchisement or to the loss of opportunities of education and of economic independence. It is as futile as it is stupid to expect that in this matter history will go backward. To oppose measures already accomplished which are in the direction of democratic adjustment of social relations, even by those who ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... details the expenses of each person according to his rank in the State, or the fortune which he could prove. But this law had the fate of all such enactments, and was either easily evaded, or was only partially enforced, and that with great difficulty. Another futile attempt to put it in practice was made in 1306, when the splendour of dress, of equipages, and of table had become still greater and more ruinous, and had descended progressively to the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... on the banker's heels, was admitted by Withers, who broke into a storm of futile, highly ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... The things she whispered then were exactly those which Brent would have given the riches of the earth to have heard her say to him; and Mac replied with all his doggy eloquence, furiously wiggling his body and making futile attempts to lick her face. Brent stood silently by, and for the first time in his life—at least the first time in his remembrance—something mysteriously hot and wet slipped down ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... George glanced at the futile old couple, then cast his eye upwards, to the various stretches of the grand staircase which could be seen from the well below. Almost every length of the banisters was blazing, and the cracked and broken skylight above caused a ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... constructed, behind which we carried the sick men. In the very center we buried two jars of water, to guard us against thirst. In addition we had ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a supply for four days. Late in the evening Sami's wife came back from the futile negotiations, alone. She had unveiled for the first and only time on this day of the skirmish, had distributed cartridges ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... writing-desk, turned on the lights and sat down. He smiled as he took up the pen to begin his composition. Not one chance in a thousand. And after several attempts he realized that the letter he had in mind was not the simplest to compose. There were a dozen futile efforts before he produced anything like satisfaction. Then he filled out a small check. A little later he stole down-stairs, round the corner to the local branch of the post-office, and returned. It was only a blind throw, such as dicers sometimes make in the dark. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... late, Thoughts Underworld, the Brainstorm Slum, The land of Futile Piffledom; A salon weird where congregate Freak, Nut and ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... Allison to the sofa beside her, and was attempting a futile task of comfort. Mrs. Allison answered in monosyllables, glancing hither and thither. At last she said in a low, swift voice, as though addressing herself, rather than her companion, "If all fails, I have made up my mind. I shall leave ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from her improvements, though it was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something for poor people in Marrybone—I'm told you mayn't say Mary-le-bone. I feel it helps Michael to know I'm there, but of course I don't interrupt ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... in Myla's empty heart and rapidly grew into an obsession; but soon she realized with a sinking sensation how futile were her desires. She was no match for the Jaguar; indeed, the mere sight of the fearsome beast made her tremble. Never could she muster the courage to descend from her lofty perch while such a creature ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... elevation of man above all good merely human, and by means far beyond the compass of his natural powers? Still, this was undoubtedly a conclusion of his riper years, a result arrived at after a certain intense if not very prolonged experience in contemporary Utopias, in futile endeavors to raise man above his own level while remaining on it, whether by socialistic schemes or ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... administering food to them with greater care, begin to have doubts about their intellect as well, whether it can work as briskly as it used to do. And the mind, falling under this discouragement of doubt, asserts itself amiss, in making futile strokes, even as a gardener can never work his best while conscious of suspicious glances through the window-blinds. Geoffrey Mordacks told himself that it could not be the self it used to be, in the days when ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... marvellous beauty, and to these instruments the resolute investigator turns, promising himself the discovery of its constituent parts. The more its lustre penetrates his soul, the more determined become his efforts. As yet, however, all such praiseworthy researches have been futile, and the composition of the Cremonese varnish remains a secret lost to the world—as much so as the glorious ruby lustre of Maestro Giorgio, and the blue so coveted by connoisseurs of china. Mr. Charles Reade truly says: ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity—a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are—which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... everybody talked about it; they had come since because they could not help it, and they should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, but it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them. Others came nearer formulating what they felt; they said they could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps; the Great Spirit of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whole generation has been lost because the machine ran wild without guidance, and all attempt at improvement was met by futile resistance. ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... who formed the Christian community at Rome, had never in any way come into collision with the Roman government. They must have been the victims rather than the exciters of the messianic tumults—for such they are conjectured to have been—which led to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius. Nay, so obedient and docile were they required to be by the very principles on which their morality was based, so far were they removed from the fierce independence of the Jewish zealots, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... protest would be futile—realizing the full extent of Britt's effrontery. However, in his amazement he began to rail ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of the Egyptian anchorites; I regard both as tragic delusions, destined to bring upon the world centuries of darkness and futile violence. The principles of the Sermon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect upon average human nature was very different from what was intended. Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or to turn the other ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... awfully,' I said as we rode on again, and then we did not stop until we reached four cross-roads. Seeing the word 'Polehampton' on a finger-post, I perceived that I had returned to the road from Castlemore to London, which I had left to cross the fields in my futile endeavour to avoid the tramp. It was true that I had made a fairly wide circuit, for my new friend told me I should still have five miles ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... broke the silence, a vague gray shadow moved into sight. He saw Silvermane and called as loudly as he dared. The stallion melted into the misty curtain, the beating of hoofs softened and ceased. Hare spurred Bolly to her fleetest. He had a long, silent chase, but it was futile, and unnecessarily hard on the mustang; so he pulled her in ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... sort of light that showed in the eyes of a black cat seasonably appearing under them. Inquiries into English civilization can always wait, but such passing effects stay for no man, and I put them down roughly in behalf of a futile philosopher who ought to have studied them in their ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... to ridicule the ideals and ambitions of children when they seem to us too high-flown or futile. But a person's ideals stand too close to the centre of his character to be treated so rudely. It is better to ignore the many trifling flights of fancy that are not likely to have any permanent effect, and to throw the child into circumstances that will force the emergence ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... would have little taste for handling unsympathetic things. Well, if so, Philippina is the answer to that. Here is the most masterly portraiture of a woman utterly without imagination or heart or anything except a kind of futile and worthless attraction, that I remember to have met for some time. As I say, it is all rather astonishing from Mr. CALTHROP. The men who love Flip, and whose lives are ruined by her, are easier to understand. About Sir ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... his hirelings, the revolt continued with unabated fury, and at last Gregory was constrained to return in person to Italy with the purpose of pacifying the turbulent forces. He entered Rome, January 17, 1377; but after a year of futile effort he died, leaving the confusion worse than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a few skirmishes in Virginia and North Carolina, where the governors managed to raise small forces of loyalists, who were thoroughly defeated by the Whig militia, and of a gallant but hopeless attempt by the rebels to capture Canada. After some futile efforts on the part of Congress to induce the French to revolt, two bodies of men, in the autumn of 1775, made their way across the border. One, entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, occupied Montreal, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... at my side. I turned and saw that it came from Desiree. Her hands were raised to her face; she was holding them before her as though in a futile attempt to cover ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... all the actors in this story having played out their parts and gone to their rest, there is something touching in recording the futile efforts made by Philip to win from Sylvia the love he yearned for. But, at the time, any one who had watched him might have been amused to see the grave, awkward, plain young man studying patterns ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... companions came to reprove him for leaving them, to warn him of the peril of apostasy, to entreat him to return. It all sounded vague and futile. They spoke as if he had betrayed or offended some one; but when they came to name the object of his fear—the one whom he had displeased, and to whom he should return—he heard nothing; there was a blur of silence in their speech. The clock pointed to the hour, but the bell did not strike. ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... had expended thousands of pounds in a plant for their venture. Mr. Mortimer cruelly permitted them to go on with their costly preparations, and the first intimation they had that the field was occupied came from the newsdealers selling The Lantern. After some futile attempts at relief and redress, M. Rochefort took himself off and set up his paper ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... and he thought that whisper expressed assent—that for him, she too was willing to relinquish the home and the friends of her childhood. Ay, is it not ever so? Invoke whom we may in hours of trial, does not the oracle take its tone from our own wishes? Fond and futile pretense to invoke the Spirit of Love to decide where love is interested! As Marguerite seemed to stand beside Dumiger he lost sight of ambition, and all its pomp and circumstance; all he asked was to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... conversation was commonplace, and I related various experiences in a desultory fashion. Those that were mildly amusing were most appreciated. But gradually we drifted towards more vital issues and then the long and futile argument began. The weapons of sarcasm and denunciation were denied to me by the laws of politeness and etiquette. I beat in vain against the solid walls of obstinate prejudice and superficiality. His statements were uttered with dogmatic ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... It was a futile effort, though, upon Dick's part, for the other Malay dropped his oar, and picking up another spear, came ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... From Solomon to Burke, the wisest men have been the saddest of men. The Scottish physician who ordered his secretary to select from his library all the books upon medicine and surgery that were printed prior to 1880 and sell them, tells us how futile is the pursuit of wisdom and how rapidly the systems of to-day become the cast-off garments of to-morrow. Nor must the perfect man represent power and wealth alone, for "the wealth of Croesus cannot bring sleep to the sick ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... gone, so suddenly that his movement to intercept her was futile, and she passed through the door before he could reach her. Again he called her name, but her footsteps were almost running up the passageway. He dropped back, his blood cold, his hands clenched in the darkness, and his face as white as the girl's had been. Her words had held him stunned ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... not our work, still we have had the earnest will, the longing desire; we have made continually, perseveringly, our tiny, often futile, efforts to please and place Him first, and though perhaps almost all were failures, He has counted every one to us ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... subject was gleaned partly from neighbouring families, partly from infrequent visits to "Aunt Jane"—whom he hated with a deep unreasoned hate—and "Uncle George," who had a kind, stupid face, but anyhow tried to be funny and made futile bids for favour with pen-knives and half-crowns. Possibly it was these uncongenial visits that quickened in him very early the consciousness that his own beautiful home was, in some special way, different from other boys' homes, and his mother—in a still more special way—different from other ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... put his cigar into a tumbler and stepped out into the wings. They were crowded on both sides of the stage with the members of the company; the girls were tiptoeing, with their hands on the shoulders of the men, and making futile little leaps into the air to get a better view, and others were resting on one knee that those behind might see over their shoulders. There were over a dozen children before the footlights, with the prima donna in the centre. She was singing the verses of a ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... educate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... above the sullen shields; Nobly they fought and bravely, but not well, And sank heart-wounded by a subtle spell. They knew not fear that to the foeman yields, They were not weak, as one who vainly wields A futile weapon; yet the sad scrolls tell How on the ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... is that this partnership, in which there were three young and pretty women, no shadow of discord was found amongst the men. They often yielded to the most futile fancies of their mistresses, but not one of them would have hesitated for a moment between the mistress ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the race. When the individual soul had been decreed by the embittered gods eternally to dwell alone and never yet had been tricked beyond the moment of nervous exaltation into the belief that it had fused into its mate. Life itself was futile enough, but that dream of the perfect love between two beings immemorially paired was the most futile and ravaging of all the dreams civilization had imposed upon mankind. The curse of imagination. Only the savages ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... squall passed over, and the boat was again presented to his sight; she was still in the centre of the stream, about three hundred yards from the shore. The man who was in her, finding all his attempts futile, had lain on his oar, and was kneeling in the stern sheets, apparently in supplication. Newton could not resist the appeal; it appeared to point out to him that he was summoned to answer the call made upon Providence. The boat was now a quarter of a mile farther down the river than where ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at the dinner-hour with a futile excuse. Mrs. Lismore waited until the servant had withdrawn. "Now, Ernest," she said, "it's time to tell me ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... duties ordained in respect of every mode of life are capable, if well performed, of leading to heaven and the high fruit of Truth. Duties which are as so many doors, to great sacrifices and gifts and none of the practices inculcated by them are futile in respect of consequence. One who adopts particular duties with steady and firm faith, praises these duties adopted by him to the exclusion of the rest, O chief of Bharata's race. This particular topic, however, on which thou wishest me to discourse was in days of yore the subject ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... like a narcotic to his real individuality. He thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted to construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how the big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, saving labour, making the things controlled bigger ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were at times strong fortifications from which war of the most ferocious and unscrupulous character was waged. Christendom was steeped in violence; only a gentle saint or bishop here and there caught a futile vision of a world of peace. Every man was armed against possible trouble with his neighbour; every noble had his retainers and kept them well exercised; every prince was free, as far as the spiritual authorities were concerned, to covet and bloodily exact the lands of his neighbour. The noble, ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... published posthumously and she left nothing else but a couple of fragments. One of these, Lady Susan, does not, so far as it extends, promise much, though it is such a fragment and such an evident first draft even of this, that judgment of it is equally unfair and futile. The other, The Watsons, has some very striking touches, but is also a mere beginning. Persuasion—which appeared with Northanger Abbey and which, curiously enough, has, like its nearly twenty years elder sister, Bath for its principal scene—has also some pretensions ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... something and probably you'll soon find out," returned her mother. Since that day Charmian had tried to create something, and had found out. But she had not told Mrs. Mansfield. She was now twenty-one, and had been just eighteen when her mother's advice had driven her into the energy which had proved futile. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... starvation. The power of the Spanish armies, it is asserted, is to be used not to spread ruin and desolation, but to protect the resumption of peaceful agricultural pursuits and productive industries. That past methods are futile to force a peace by subjugation is freely admitted, and that ruin without conciliation must inevitably fail to win for Spain the fidelity of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... wholly lack. You should not attempt to "salt" the gold mine in yourself with the characteristics of other men who have succeeded by the development and use of capabilities that were natural to them, but that would be unnatural to you. It is worse than futile—it is foolish for you to imitate anybody else. Just be your best self. Make the most of what you have that is salable. You require no ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... the obligation thus imposed on him. She was his now, to have and to hold, to keep, to protect, and to defend—she who was once so glorious of her strength, of her savage isolation, her inviolate, pristine maidenhood. All words seemed futile and ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... residences were saved, but there was despair among the survivors, who were unable to get word from husbands and fathers who were caught on the east side and unable to cross after bridges were destroyed. Efforts to get lines across the river were futile. ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... not. This principle is still indeed clearly recognized by people in Oldenburg, though, as might be expected, they do not now carry out the principle to its logical conclusion by burning the bewitched animal or person alive; instead they resort to a feeble and, it must be added, perfectly futile subterfuge dictated by a mistaken humanity or a fear of the police. "When anything living is bewitched in a house, for example, children or animals, they burn or boil the nobler inwards of animals, especially the hearts, but also the lungs or the liver. If animals have ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... wall until he came to the barrier, seemingly oblivious of the carrion reek which told of a snake-devil's den somewhere about. And he raised his arm high, bringing the point of his spear gratingly along the carved surface. Nor did it seem to Dalgard a futile gesture, for Sssuri lived and breathed, stood free and armed in the city of his enemies—and ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... interruption! but after your statement of the fact that such sentimental asseverations would be futile, you waste time in recapitulating the loves of the lady aforementioned, and we in hearing them. I think I express the opinion of the audience—fit, but few—when I say that we require no other evidence than that afforded by the story I have told of Mrs. Lennox's susceptibility ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to stand like Lily Jennings; she tried to walk like her; she tried to smile like her; she made endeavors, very often futile, to dress like her. Mrs. Wheeler did not in the least approve of furbelows for children. Poor little Amelia went clad in severe simplicity; durable woolen frocks in winter, and washable, unfadable, and non-soil-showing frocks in summer. She, although her mother had perhaps more money wherewith ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Putney seemed to Priam Farll to approach the Utopian. It seemed to breathe of romance—the romance of common sense and kindliness and simplicity. It made his own existence to that day appear a futile and unhappy striving after the impossible. Art? What was it? What did it lead to? He was sick of art, and sick of all the forms of activity to which he had hitherto been accustomed and which he had mistaken ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... darkness. The light was fading out of the west, and the early autumnal dusk was at hand. Lillian was sensible of an accession of lassitude, a realization of defeat in a cause which she felt now it was futile to have essayed. Why should he forgive? How was reparation possible? She could not call back the Past—she could not assuage griefs that time had worn out long ago, searing over the wounds. She was quite silent as she rose and together they took their way down toward the bungalow. While she flagged ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... designs of the Duke. He had forgotten that sovereign dukes must make sure their succession even unto the third and fourth generation. His first impulse had been to tell the Duke that to introduce him to the Countess would be futile, for he was already married. But the instant warning of the mind that his Highness could never and would never accept the daughter of a Jersey ship-builder restrained him. He had no idea that Guida's descent from the noble de Mauprats ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... freedom is man's inalienable birthright, man's undying passion. Germany! fated to execration by future generations for that she ahs crucified the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame. Germany! for the balking of whose insolent and futile ambition, and for the crushing of whose archaic military madness we Canadians are tramping on this Dominion Day these English fields and these sweet English lanes 5,000 miles from our Western Canada which ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... compare with the slavery enforced to-day in the dens of the sweater. It is not a choice between liberty and discipline that confronts these unfortunates, but between discipline mercilessly enforced by starvation and inspired by futile greed, and discipline accompanied with regular rations and administered solely for their own benefit. What liberty is there for the tailors who have to sew for sixteen to twenty hours a day, in a pest-hole, in order to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Philip was wealthy and personally popular, while Otto's brusquerie and selfishness alienated many supporters. Consequently from 1203 Philip distinctly obtained the upper hand, and at length in 1207 Innocent opened negotiations with him. But these were rendered futile when Philip fell victim to the assassin's knife in June, 1208. Otto's acceptance now became inevitable, and he did everything to conciliate his opponents. He submitted himself to a fresh election by the German nobles, and won the Hohenstaufen by marrying Beatrice, the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... liberal committee that the election would be lost by the furious insanity of their candidate. But they decided upon supporting Moggs, having found that they would be deposed from their seats if they discarded him. At last, when the futile efforts to control Moggs had been maintained with patience for something over a week, when it still wanted four or five days to the election, an actual split was made in the liberal camp. Moggs was turned ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... himself protected well, looked at the fatal tree. No one was firing, then, and he could see nothing among its branches. In the fresh green of its young foliage it looked like a huge cone set upon a giant stem, and Ross shook his fist at it in futile anger. Nor was a foe visible elsewhere. The entire savage army lay hidden in the forest and nothing fluttered or moved but the leaves and ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... unfulfilled; and were it not that "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," all faith, all energy, all life, and all success would be at an end, as then we should know that most of our efforts are futile, whereas now we hope they may attain complete fruition. Yet, on the other hand, we learn that the fruit of dreamy hoping is waking blank despair. We were again in a region of scrubs as bad and as dense as those I hoped and thought, I had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... averages about five months, and five days each week, at a salary of $1000—and travel allowance of $2.50 for each mile between his home and the State House. This is too clear for argument. There is no need to consider those who are too rich to serve for this sum. It would be futile to discuss whether their services are worth more or less than this, as that is not here the question. Membership in the General Court is not a job. There are services rendered to the Commonwealth by senators and representatives that are priceless. For the searching out of great ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... worked it, and trained it, the passions, at the critical moment, would be roused with better effect, and would be properly organised. Organised passions are what you need for a strong public movement. Whirling emotions in contrary currents are utterly futile." ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... was resorted to and the sound of frequent explosions added to the terror of the people. All efforts to stay the progress of the fire, however, proved futile. The south side of Market street from Ninth street to the bay was soon ablaze, the fire covering a belt two blocks wide. On this, the main thoroughfare of the city, are located many of the finest edifices in the city, including the Grant, Parrott, Flood, Call, Examiner and Monadnock ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... hesitations, the consultations, the maunderings, the doubts, and the delays of the two authorities who had the matter in hand, the Signoria and the Operai, as who should say the working committee, and who made a hundred difficulties and shook their wise heads, and considered one foolish and futile plan after another with true ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... asserted, and render all attempts to enforce such claims merely attempts at usurpation. Again, could such claims from extraneous sources be regarded as legitimate, the effort to resist or evade them, by protest or denial, would be as irregular and unmeaning as it would be futile. It could in no wise affect the question of superior right. For the position here combatted, no respectable authority has been, and none it is thought can be adduced. It is certainly irreconcilable with the doctrines already cited from ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... futile experiments with brandy, a looking-glass and a feather, old Martha hid these things carefully out of sight; she disarranged the bed, turning back the clothes as they might have been left by one newly wakened and risen out of it; drew ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... upon the sky line; and the next, fled trembling and sat down glowing with excitement on the Weaver's stone. She shut her eyes, seeking, praying for composure. Her hand shook in her lap, and her mind was full of incongruous and futile speeches. What was there to make a work about? She could take care of herself, she supposed! There was no harm in seeing the laird. It was the best thing that could happen. She would mark a proper distance to him once and for all. Gradually the wheels ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... revolution has followed neither of these lines. Always the opponent of sane social reforms which Socialists deride as "melioration" or as futile attempts to shore up an obsolete system, it has consistently disassociated itself from such men as Lord Shaftesbury, who did more to better the conditions of the working classes than anyone who has ever lived. Anarchy, on the other hand, has been used by them merely as a means to an end; ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... soot was sifting down; the snow on the window- sill was speckled with black. Below, in the courtyard of the hotel, ice-carts rumbled in and out, and milk-cans were banged down on the cobblestones; a dull day, an empty sky, a futile interview, up here in this wretched little room under the eaves. David wondered how soon he ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... of her own accord how much he loved her, surely it was a hopeless task to attempt an explanation through mere words. If, after all, she was capable of misconceiving the entire set of his motives during the past two years, expostulation would be futile. In his thoughts of her he fell into a great spiritual dumbness. Never, even in his moments of most theoretical imaginings, did he see himself setting before her fully and calmly the hopes and ambitions of which she had been the mainspring. And before a reconciliation, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... experiences, stubbornly braving the perils of the wilds; making themselves a nuisance to business men in the cities. The matter had, however, a more serious aspect. Prescott had spent some time on the useless search and he could not continue it throughout the winter. It would be futile to speculate on the movements of men so erratic as those he had followed. He could not neglect his farm, and he had a heavy crop to haul in and sell: this was a duty that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... securing possession of my mind, and gathering to him, magnet-like, the thousand observations which my experience sent in his direction. In my mind his life-story ended with his death at the Cote Dorion. For years and years I saw his ending there. Yet it all seemed to me so futile, despite the wonder of his personality, that I could make nothing of him, and though always fascinated by his character I was held back from exploiting it, because of the hopelessness of it all. It led nowhere. It was the 'quid ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much she had. He supposed we were living up his salary of $10,000 a year as we went along, for it wasn't in him to save a cent. Mother took a good deal of delight in her secret. For a while she had done her best to induce him to save something, and then, realizing that her plea was futile, she got busy herself in a systematic manner and in the course of seven or eight years she laid aside ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... north-western army in 1812 occupied the city. Failing to hear immediately of the declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain, he was cut off from his supplies shipped by Lake Erie. He made from Detroit on the 12th of July an awkward and futile advance into Canada, which, if more vigorous, might have resulted in the capture of Malden and the establishment of American troops in Canada, and then retired to his fortifications. On the 16th of August 1812, without any resistance and without consulting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... deny that the age is crowded; I will admit one fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he is futile, and that we are all three as futile as the devil. What am I? I have smattered law, smattered letters, smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have even a working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all London roaring by at the street's ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the fact that one of the Assistant Commissioners of Police was an old friend of mine, we were spared much of the tedious interrogation and well-meant, but in the circumstances utterly futile, attentions of the subordinate officers ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... for them, by killing an innocent man. But he was too cowardly for that, and, no doubt, thought that the murder of one poor Jew was a small price to pay for popularity with his troublesome subjects. Still, like all weak men, he was not easy in his conscience, and made a futile attempt to get the right thing done, and yet not to suffer for doing it. The rejection of Barabbas is touched very lightly by John, and must be left unnoticed here. The great contribution to our knowledge which John makes is this private interview ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... could think of no other way of effecting his object, he had begun to taste the bitterness of futile effort, when fortune, always his friend, put him in a position to do what he wanted in the easiest possible way ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... watching that no stray sparks or wisps of burning grass got behind them, Dave and his comrades worked hard. The immediate danger seemed to have passed, but a shift in the wind might come at any time, and render their task futile. ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... white, and ashen feathers tumbled by the little ripples of the pool. But the older bird was merely winged. Recovering himself almost instantly from the shock of the wound and the fall, he made one pathetically futile effort to rise again, then started swimming down the pond, trailing his shattered wing behind him and straining his gaze toward ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... completely crushed by his disapprobation. She started to make excuses, then felt that she could not. Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. She knew that any explanation would sound stupid and futile. Why was it the man affected her in this oppressive fashion? No other doctor had ever done so. Why was it that the mere physical presence of him, of his big, thick body and his little bald head with its small, glancing eyes, filled her at times with a sort of repulsion? From the first ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... seed was planted; and the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince Leopold, thrown upon his own resources at fifteen, made a career for himself and married the heiress of England. The Princess of Leiningen, struggling at Amorbach with poverty, military requisitions, and a futile husband, developed an independence of character and a tenacity of purpose which were to prove useful in very different circumstances. In 1814, her husband died, leaving her with two children and the regency of the principality. After her brother's marriage with the Princess Charlotte, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... when the United States was settled were at different stages of their development. Some were vigorous with youth, some were in the height of their glory, and some were dying because the descendants of the men who had made them great were futile and incapable. These nations were different in race and religion, in thought, language, traditions, and temperament. When they were not quarreling with each other, they were busy with domestic squabbles. They had kept this up for centuries and were at it when the ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... out, Alexandria was occupied by Union troops. The Union authorities knew of the sale of Mount Vernon and repeated but futile efforts were made to find the securities. Mr. Burke's home was searched no less than three times. The funds were never found in their hiding place of the soiled-clothes basket. There they reposed until ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... adores her. Every time he meets her eyes, his grave, strong face softens and glows in a way which makes one feel inclined to cry. Lonely women feel so very lonely at such moments as these! She contradicts him over the most futile things, and says, "No, Jacky, it was three o'clock, not four; I was just getting up from my rest," and he smiles, and doesn't ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... more apparent than real, so that an adjustment could readily be made without sacrifice of principle. In short, the subject of dispute did not contain within itself the elements of civil war, capable of development to that extreme, at the time and under the circumstances when the futile attempt at separation was made. Doubtless, the sinister exertions of restless and ambitious men, acting upon ignorant prejudices, might, under some circumstances, have engendered opinions, even upon the tariff question, sufficiently strong and violent for the production ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of spiritual characteristics: the lines will have aims, intentions, desires, moods; their various little dramas of endeavour, victory, defeat or peacemaking, will, according to their dominant empathic suggestion, be lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or brutal; inexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar or dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief dynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music. But on the other hand there will remain innumerable ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... turned the foremost cattle, when a new contingent forged to the front, impelled onward by the fury of the storm. Again and again the boys plied the fear of ropes and the force of horses, but each effort was futile, as new leaders stepped into the track of the displaced ones, and the course of ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... in the scene. There was space here, even as in the mountains. Yet this calm was not of strength, he felt vaguely, like that he had known, but the tranquillity of nature in another, a weaker, less-wholesome mood, apathetic, futile. The thickly dotting cypresses and junipers, bedecked with streaming draperies of Spanish moss, touched the vistas with a funereal aspect. The languid movement of the festoons under the breeze was like the sighings of desolation made ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... that night was destined to be futile. Some minutes were lost in gaining access to the rear roof through the house next on the west, and some minutes more in prying open a shutter and forcing a carefully locked sash. By this time the twilight had deepened into night, and the Sergeant lit a borrowed lantern ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... had tried to create something, and had found out. But she had not told Mrs. Mansfield. She was now twenty-one, and had been just eighteen when her mother's advice had driven her into the energy which had proved futile. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... he set out alone for a tramp up the mountain road in which the two men had been shot down. A number of men under the direction of the sheriff were scouring the lofty timberland for the deadly marksmen. He knew it would turn out to be as futile as the proverbial effort to find the needle in ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... cut off by the Afridis in the Khyber Pass. But then the problem was not so difficult as telling this live girl how she came to be one—telling her, that is, without poisoning her life and shrouding her heart in a fog as dense as the one that was going to make the street-lamps outside futile when night should come to help it—telling her without dashing the irresistible glee of those eyebrows and quenching the smile that opened the casket of pearls that all who knew her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was certainly not for marble. Shelley's death had no significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant fact, and conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill- named biographers who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death is a part of their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last chapter does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of all survivors, are called upon, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... was, therefore, kept partly closed with a food-tank. The result was that a good deal of snow came in, while the hole diminished in size. For a man to try to crawl out in stiff burberrys appeared as futile as for a porcupine to try to go backwards ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to impress him as a victory that Bell had been depending upon an utterly futile threat for safety. It restored his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... according to the engagement with which I entered upon my undertaking, to examine in detail the Pamphlet which has been written against me, I am very sorry to be obliged to say, that it is as slovenly and random and futile in its definite charges, as it is iniquitous in its method of disputation. And now I proceed to show this without any delay; ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... conscious of avoiding them in her talk. She had decided not to renew the effort she had made in the spring; because she could not do them good as fellow- creatures needing food and warmth and work, and she would not try to befriend them socially; she had a horror of any such futile sentimentality. She would have liked to account to Beaton in this way for a course which she suspected he must have heard their comments upon, but she did not quite know how to do it; she could not be sure how much ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in midsummer, who stipulated that he should be an officer because he was wearing a suitable jacket, and a Spanish tavern-keeper who at the very outset had wished to rob Argensola of his command on the futile pretext that he was a soldier in his youth while the Bohemian was only an artist. Twenty Spanish battalions were attempted with the same result in different parts of Paris. Each enthusiast wished to be commander of the others, with the individual haughtiness ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Equally futile was the attempt to turn the people from raising tobacco to the production of manufactured goods. After the expenditure of large sums on industrial plants, "for want of care the said houses were never finished ... and the ... manufactury wholly in a short time neglected and no good effected." ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... both. After several futile efforts he succeeded in writing a few words. Then he folded up the note, and handed it ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... journalism. Since Mr. Campbell is preeminently an essayist, it is to his dissertations on "The Pursuit of Happiness" and "The Age of Accuracy" which we turn most eagerly; and which in no way disappoint our high expectations. The first of these essays is a dispassionate survey of mankind in its futile but frantic scramble after that elusive but unreal sunbeam called "happiness". The author views the grimly amusing procession of human life with the genuine objective of an impartial spectator, and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... obliged to tell him that, or I should have apparently condemned myself by showing how anxious I was to get it. And you know I could not have explained all this before him and you. You would have thrown up the stall in disgust." Would that he had! That was Mark's wish now,—his futile wish. In what a slough of despond had he come to wallow in consequence of his folly on that night at Gatherum Castle! He had then done a silly thing, and was he now to rue it by almost total ruin? He was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... manifest, palpable violation of the Constitution, and it brought ruin to her doors. Thousands of families, and hundreds of thousands of individuals, were beggared by it. While she saw and felt all this, she saw and felt also, that, as a measure of national policy, it was perfectly futile; that the country was no way benefited by that which caused so much individual distress; that it was efficient only for the production of evil, and all that evil inflicted on ourselves. In such a case, under such circumstances, how did Massachusetts demean herself? ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... might be cited to prove that Germany would like to see a split among the allies. But France's honour and welfare are in her own hands, and it appears a futile hope that Germany, after failing to bring France to submission and self-effacement by threats of saigner a blanc, will succeed in ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... to judgment!" he teased her. She put him in an extraordinary good humor with her alertness. Her persistence and her indomitable courage were such futile weapons against the armor of the law that they seemed pathetic, but her droll faith in herself and her absurd comments about the persons with whom she had been talking made him want to laugh as one laughs at ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... five days each week, at a salary of $1000—and travel allowance of $2.50 for each mile between his home and the State House. This is too clear for argument. There is no need to consider those who are too rich to serve for this sum. It would be futile to discuss whether their services are worth more or less than this, as that is not here the question. Membership in the General Court is not a job. There are services rendered to the Commonwealth by senators and representatives that are priceless. For the searching ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... recent days, by loyal Spanish writers, to vindicate the conduct of Ferdinand towards Columbus. They were doubtless well intended, but they have been futile, nor is their failure to be regretted. To screen such injustice in so eminent a character from the reprobation of mankind, is to deprive history of one of its most important uses. Let the ingratitude of Ferdinand ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... behind the war in Europe are very many, ruthless exploitation, heartless and brainless diplomacy, futile dreams of national expansion (the "Mirage of the Map"), of national enrichment through the use of force (the "Great Illusion"), and withal a widespread vulgar belief in indemnities or highway robberies as a ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence, to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether open. As for talkers and futile persons, they are commonly vain and credulous withal. For he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not. Therefore set it down, that an habit of secrecy, is both politic and moral. And in this part, it is good that a man's face give his ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... impulse of that defaulter under those circumstances would be to blurt out with it; at least so I believe. Such was his vacillating, impulsive nature. And for the same reason the attempt to escape in the dark, which was silly, futile! It was another sudden impulse; had it been otherwise, he was far too sensible to have tried it. I developed that scene by taking the place mentally, or trying to, of each one of the persons engaged in it. I did not start with the so-called 'dark scene'. I had no idea ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... not fail to point out that since our atomic guns were useless against the Orconites and Leider, we should have to go unarmed on our expedition, and I did not fail to state that the whole effort seemed futile. But the opportunity offered by Leider's present withdrawal was one we could not afford to miss. We were drowning people, I said, and we must clutch at straws. And my friends were good enough ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... are the confident; and the confident are those who know their business or profession: those who have no such knowledge and are still confident are madmen. This is admitted. Then, says Socrates, courage is knowledge—an inference which Protagoras evades by drawing a futile distinction between the courageous and the confident in ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... is close to the village of Badarpur, about four miles due east of the Kutb Minar, and ten or twelve miles south of the modern city. The building of it occupied more than three years, but the whole undertaking 'proved eminently futile, as his son removed his Court to the old city within forty days after his accession.' (Thomas, Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, 1871, p. 192.) The fort is described by Cunningham in A.S.R., vol. i, p. 212, whose description is copied in the guide-books. See also Fanshawe, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... tell of Castro's futile attempt to get north of the bay. Since Cabrillo was foiled in landing at Mendocino in 1543, the first royal flag floating over this "No Man's Land" was Good Queen Bess's standard, set up in 1579 by dashing Sir Francis Drake. He landed ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... expressed thoughts of his twenty-first year would have been, as he probably felt, a futile tampering with the work of another man; his literary conscience would have forbidden this, if it had been otherwise possible. But he here proves by his own words what I have already asserted, that the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... heaven." The wonderful progress and freedom of woman, as woman, within the last half century, despite the false interpretation of the Bible by the Church and by masculine power, is the result of this great battle; and all attempts to destroy her will be futile. Her day and hour have arrived; the dragon of physical power over her, the supremacy of material things in the world, as depicted by the male principle, are yielding to the spiritual, represented by woman. The eagle, true bird of the sun and emblem of our own ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... particular child of the forest had not grown there for some hundreds of years, withstanding all the shocks of wind, weather and water, in order to be laid low by an elephant, however enormous. It shook a little—no more. Abandoning this attempt as futile, Jana next began to try to dig it up by driving his tusk under its roots. Here, too, he failed because they grew among ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... inferiority to the other men assailed him; his appreciation of their muscular shoulders had a rasp in it. For once the poverty of spirit to which he held failed to offer him a refuge. His eye wandered restlessly as if attempting futile reconciliations, and the thing most present with him was the worn-all-day feeling about the neck of his cassock. He fixed his attention presently in a climax of passive discomfort on the curtain, where, unconsciously, his gaze crept with ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the fact for granted. My youth is fled, my friends are dead. The daisies and the snows whiten by turns the grave of him or her - the dearest I have loved. Shall I make a pilgrimage to that sepulchre? Drop futile tears upon it? Will they warm what is no more? I for one have not the heart for that. Happily life has something else for us to do. Happily ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... forests of Oregon, and the puny, man-made structures at its feet, appeared to have a lofty disdain of them and the burrowings into its mammoth sides, as if all ravagers were mere parasites, mad to uncover its secrets of gold, and futile, if successful, to wreak the slightest damage on ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of Waterford. Large sums of money were offered for their ransom, but in vain. They were brutally murdered by the English soldiers, who first broke their limbs, and then hurled them from a precipice into the sea. It was the first instalment of the utterly futile theory, so often put in practice since that day, of "striking terror into the Irish;" and the experiment was quite as unsuccessful as all such ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take to' . . . I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too, I was getting savage. 'How could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even seen the wreck yet—some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda) muttering to myself my opinion of him. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... creation, abroad on this beautiful earth, above on the glorious universe studded with shining orbs, without number numberless, what can I make of them? Nothing absolutely nothing—yet they are all creatures like myself. But—if I try—audaciously try—to strain my finite faculties, in the futile attempt to take in what is infinite—if I aspiringly, but hopelessly, grapple with the idea of the immensity of space, for instance, which my reason yet tells me must of necessity be boundless—do I not fall fluttering to the earth again, like an owl flying against the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... for the disfranchisement of boroughs which had been convicted of systematic corruption—he was beaten by a far larger majority,[61] the distinctness of his plan only serving to increase the numbers of his adversaries. A kinsman of Pitt's, Lord Mahon, made an equally futile attempt to diminish the expenses of elections, partly by inflicting very heavy penalties on parties guilty of either giving or receiving bribes,[62] and partly by prohibiting candidates from providing conveyances for electors; ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... under the wagons for what shade they gave, working at this task. They knew it was a futile proceeding; the time had long since gone when they had enough provisions to last them through that long northern route. But they were not the sort of people who can sit down and die. If they must perish it would be while they were still fighting. No one spoke. The ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... essentials traverse the same stages, and as I was able to find various unimportant points of similarity in support of this view, I quite overlooked the fact that the counterbalancing weight of dissimilarities rendered the whole comparison futile. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... illustrated by brush and graver, victories he had never won, and events in which he had not shone. He himself dictated or planned out those wonderful lives or allegories of a life which might have been his. It was on such a work of futile self-glorification that he ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... not love you like the simple, artless girl who felt for a moment the delightful hope of being your companion, of making you happy, of doing you honor, of becoming a noble wife. But I gather from that futile hope the courage to return to a life of vice and infamy, that I may put an eternal barrier between us. I sacrifice both honor and fortune to you. The pride I take in that sacrifice will support me in my wretchedness,—fate may dispose ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... dispatch published in the "Morgen-Blad," spoke of it to their neighbors, and the entire crowd soon became aware that the search of the "Telegraph" had proved futile. This being the case all felt that there was no longer any hope of finding even a vestige of the lost "Viking." Not one of the crew could have survived the shipwreck, and Hulda would ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... was not by nature a sentimentalist—and he was not a fool. He knew how to accept the inevitable things life cruelly brings to men, without futile struggling, without contemptible pretence. Quite calmly, quite serenely, he had accepted the snows of middle age. He had not secretly groaned or cursed, railed against destiny, striven to defy ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... now and then from Howick. This is a fine occasion for attacking the Government and placing them between two fires, for the Radicals abuse them for their tyrannical and despotic treatment of the Canadians, and the Tories attribute the rebellion to their culpable leniency and futile attempts at conciliation by concessions which never ought to have been made, and only were made out of complaisance to the Radicals here. As generally happens when there are charges of an opposite nature, and incompatible with one ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... sending of a vessel to China, which has been undertaken this year. Your Majesty decrees that all the goods coming from China should be sold at the pancada and that nothing should be bought on private account until after the pancada. The aforesaid decree would be futile if license were then to be given to send money to China, and also ships, to buy there the stuffs and merchandise for the Spaniards. It may be that there are those who represent that this has been done for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... lapse of five years from this futile attempt the first court actually held within the bounds of Minnesota was presided over by Judge Dunn, then chief justice of the Territory of Wisconsin. The court convened at Stillwater in June, 1847, and is remembered ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... after lasting twenty-six years, eventually broke down. Durham's fear of French disloyalty proved to be as groundless as his ideal of complete anglicization was futile. It was neither necessary, sensible, nor possible to extinguish French sentiment, and human nature triumphed over this half-hearted effort to apply in dilution the medicine of Fitzgibbonism to the Colonies. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... German Fatherland; and the absolute security of that frontier rests not upon a monopoly nor a community, still less upon a balance of power, but on the opinion held on both sides of that frontier that all power is irrational and futile as a guarantee of peace between civilised or ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous secrets and futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is still unformed. Believe me," he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that bay—more Breton than ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... comfort to me during my time of anxiety; without the faithful creature I should have run my feet off my legs and my wit out of my head in futile search. He was much too tactful to remind me of his warnings, but did not cease to show me all sorts of reasonable grounds for Virginia's conduct, which had the effect of keeping his first prognostication always before me. "The girl," he said—I repeat the sum ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... me some lessons—at least I hope so. I feel solemnised, startled, when I think of how life looked when I could do nothing for the time. Pray for me that I may be more real. I learnt, too, how futile it is to put off repentance till sickness. It is hard at such a time to think of aught save self and physical pain. And my own pain was so trivial compared with that of others. O God! it is a terrible thing. Some day shall we be able to understand, if not with the head, with the ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... arctic, and fireplace there was none; still he could not intermit his custom of spending at least an hour in what he called scientific study, with the result that he went to bed numbed and shivering. It was but another illustration of possibilities rendered futile by circumstances. It was more than likely that the man might, with fair treatment, have really done something in one or other branch of physics. To Emily, who strove to interest herself in his subjects out of mere love and compassion, he appeared to have gained not a little knowledge ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... had the heart to contradict her—and Priscilla, with the tears running down her face, brought the brandy she asked for and held it while she tenderly moistened the lips of the corpse and tried to force a few drops between the clenched teeth—in vain. This futile attempt frightened her, and she looked at Robin Clifford with a ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... means failed, a strong piece of wood, well covered with leather, was placed (where the hollow of the heel ought to have been) on the most prominent part, and hit several times with a heavy hammer; but all efforts were futile. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... rhinoceros, Miss Luscombe had accepted the blow of Rathbone's proposal—the proposal which she had taken for an offer of marriage, but which was really an offer to go on the stage. She set to work at once making little efforts (most of which she knew to be futile) to arrange the matter. After all, if she should succeed in getting him some sort of a part, mightn't he, out of gratitude?... And she saw visions. Again, he had evidently got it very badly, this mania ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... research was never reached, because the relations upon which a belief in its feasibility was based were absolutely chimerical, but as a compensation, the accessory and preliminary knowledge, the mere means to a futile end, have been of incalculable value. Thus, in order to give an imposing and apparently solid basis to their astrological doctrines, the Chaldaeans invented such a numeration as would permit really intricate computations to be made. By the aid of this system they sketched out all the great theories ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... ought not to hesitate to adopt any practical plan that might reasonably be expected to succeed. But it would not care to attend a conference which from its location or constituency would in all probability prove futile. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... failed in his attempt to show that "much of what Thomson's biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact, have been blind wonderment," let us accompany him in his equally futile efforts to show "how the rest is to be accounted for." He attempts to do so after this fashion: "Thomson was fortunate in the very title of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared sympathies of every one; in the next place, notwithstanding his high powers, he writes a vicious ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... transfigured by this enthusiasm for liberty, for equality, for sentiment, for austerity, which mingled oddly with their childish pleasure in all new things, in mesmerism, in America, in electricity, in Montgolfier balloons, with their habitual pleasure in all their big and small futile and wicked pleasures of worldliness;—all these men and women, these morituri delighted at the preparations, the scaffoldings, red clothes, black crape, torches and drums and bugles, for their own execution, all assembled at that hotel of the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... no more of Beulah's whereabouts than did George, and inquiry at other homes in the neighbourhood was equally futile. Harris shrank from carrying his search into the town, as he dreaded the publicity that would be attached to it. He was a subscriber, somewhat in arrears, to the local paper, and by calling on the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... came. Squarely amidships the scow struck the Dragon's Tooth. Kent was prepared for the shock, but his attempt to hold his feet, with Marette in his arms, was futile. The bulwark saved them from crashing against the slippery face of the rock itself. Amid the roar of water that filled his ears he was conscious of the rending of timbers. The scow bulged up with the mighty force beneath, and for a second ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... an apparently futile effort to do as he was bid. It was painful to look at him,—he was like a feeble, frightened, tottering child, who would come ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... His futile, dull anger surged up again. "You call us cowards because we don't git up on our hind legs and fight the Sawtooth. A lot you know about courage! You've read stories, and you've saw moving pictures, and you think that's the West—that's the way they do it. One man hold off a hunderd ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... have played their parts and passed off the stage, as if the sole purpose was the entertainment of some unseen spectator. When we reach human history, what wasted effort, what failures, what blind groping, what futile undertakings!—war, famine, pestilence, delaying progress or bringing to naught the wisdom of generations of men! Those who live in this age are witnessing in the terrible European war something analogous to the blind, wasteful ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the swoon, and so futile the usual methods of restoration, that the prisoner was carried into the small ante-room, and laid upon a wooden bench; where a physician, who chanced to be in the audience, was summoned to attend her. Finding restoratives ineffectual, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... much in him—not much fight, as he himself said. Not the sort to survive. Life was too strong—too difficult for him. He bungled everything—even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let him drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness—a fierce pity. He had to protect him—pull him through. He had promised so much—he forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty grass behind the biscuit factory, or that night when he had dragged ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... than to the commentator who wishes to establish a new and original theory. But they are so important (particularly Cantos xxx. and xxxi.) to any one who wishes to understand Dante's whole position as man, poet, scholar, and politician, that they should not be passed over as mere futile mediaeval fancies. It should be said, too, that they contain some passages which will never be out of date until the poetic taste of mankind has ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... pieces like a flower whose petals are scattered in the tempest? Even the burning hope of his heart, the dream of a life of earthly bliss with his love, was showing its insecurity and dropping asunder. His ship was sinking in the ocean of Eternity. How futile his intrigue, how mean his deceptions, how insufficient his excuses. The Everlasting Presence gazed through them, and in its all-illumining blaze they fell and sank away. He saw that that which underlies life and death and all that is, is a living Conscience, to which all must perforce conform. Pride, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... dazed and confused, feeling that my six feet made me too conspicuous, and longing in a vague and futile way to let her know without words that I ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... only be the beginning of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." United Ireland says:—"It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... partners at the wickets; but Lansdowne did not appear to like his mate, on whose play it is impossible to calculate. Coventry, the short slip, excited much merriment, by a futile attempt to catch this player out, which terminated in his finding himself horizontal and mortified. Wellington, having bowled out Lansdowne, resigned his ball to Peel, who took his place at the wicket with a smile of confidence, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that the good-nature of the young Englishman induced him to attempt conversation with the Indian girl, and at first Manuela appeared to be amused, if not interested, by his unsuccessful efforts; but after one of these futile attempts Pedro made some remarks to the girl in the Indian tongue, and in a tone of remonstrance, which had the effect of rendering her more silent and grave than before. Lawrence, therefore, finally ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... The ruined gable looked due east, and in the present aspect of the sun the light streamed down through the door-way as our lantern had done, throwing a flood of light upon the damp grass beyond. There was a strange suggestion in the open door,—so futile, a kind of emblem of vanity: all free around, so that you could go where you pleased, and yet that semblance of an enclosure,—that way of entrance, unnecessary, leading to nothing. And why any creature should pray and weep to get in—to nothing, or be kept out—by nothing, you could ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... pas bien, and if the son of a teetotaller should later in life become a drunkard, the conclusion would be even worse. In fact, this kind of atavistic or parental influence is a very pleasant subject for gossips, but from a scientific point of view, it is perfectly futile. If it is not the father, it is the mother; if it is not the grandmother, it is the grandfather; in fact, family influences can always be traced to some source or other, if the whole pedigree may be dug up and ransacked. But ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... thou wilt see me in private once again. Marie, thou darest not refuse me this! Thou canst not have so fallen as to give no reason for this most foul wrong—fancied weak, futile as it may be. We part now, but we meet again!" And with a strong effort at control he strode ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... a farce the whole thing was! I longed—I yearned to yell my disclosures against the man who like an octopus had now placed his tentacles around me. But I saw that it was futile to kick against the pricks. I had only to wait ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... this ship that would make the energies of your greatest battleship seem weak and futile. We can race through space a billion times faster than the speed of light; we can tear apart and destroy the atoms of matter; we can rip apart the greatest of planets; we can turn the hurtling stars and send them where we want them; we can curve ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... species, and considered as seductive, but imperfect beings, and (what may well provoke astonishment) women ultimately look upon themselves in the same light, and almost consider it as a privilege that they are entitled to show themselves futile, feeble, and timid. The women of America ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... horseback; also Mrs Stoutley's maid (Mrs Stoutley never travels without a maid), Susan Quick, who sits beside the Captain; and Gillie White, alias the Spider and the Imp, who sits beside the driver, making earnest but futile efforts to draw him into a conversation in English, of which language the driver knows ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... But how futile he made all these appear when he declared the national bankruptcy. Could anything be more absurd than the assumption, by the individual, of a personal instead of a national guarantee of part of a national debt?—an undertaking too hazardous ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... set forth in this paragraph result in much of the futile discussion in recent years regarding methods of teaching. Enthusiastic innovators have debated at cross purposes about teaching methods as if they were to be measured by some absolute standard of pedagogic values, not recognizing that the chief differences ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... had taken so much interest in his troubles from the first, Lapham thought he ought to tell him, before taking the final step, just how things stood with him, and what ho meant to do. Bellingham made some futile inquiries about his negotiations with the West Virginians, and Lapham told him they had come to nothing. He spoke of the New York man, and the chance that he might have sold out half his business to him. "But, of course, I had to let him know how it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Peggy's nocturnal visit to the death chamber. That wing of the inn was as empty and silent as it had been the night of the murder, but a lighted candle, placed on an old hall stand which Colwyn remembered having seen that night in the lumber room, flickered in the wavering shadows—a futile human effort to ward off the lurking terrors of darkness by the friendly feeble companionship of a light which could be extinguished even more quickly ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... not, therefore, agree with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that the extravagance of thought and diction which characterizes much of our modern poetry is traceable to the influence of Shakspeare. We see in it only the futile effort of misguided persons to torture out of language the secret of that inspiration which should be in themselves. We do not find the extravagances in Shakspeare himself. We never saw a line in any modern poet that reminded us of him, and will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... interval of waiting, before they had quite abandoned hope of the lunch turning up, you could induce them to play silly games, such as that idiotic one of 'the Lord Mayor's dinner-party,' in which every one has to choose the name of a dish and do something futile when it is called out. In this case they would probably burst into tears when their dish is mentioned. It ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... nation has known since the close of the Civil War. My opposition was as doomed as such single independence must always be—but at least it was an opposition. There is a consolation in having been right, though you may have been futile! ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... qualities, and those who are withal, negroes of more than ordinary value, are never sold to negro traders. The statement that Shelby was guilty of such an act, under the circumstances, as detailed in the preceding pages, is too absurd, too futile, too foolish to deceive or mislead any one who knows anything about the institution of slavery in the South; or the customs, habits, or manners of slaveholders. The work, however, was prepared for those whoso minds were warped ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... should renew the relations which were broken off three years ago, between him and Mrs Dale's family." It was very short, certainly, and it did not by any means satisfy Mrs Dale. But she did not know how to say more without saying too much. The object of her letter was to save him the trouble of a futile perseverance, and them from the annoyance of persecution; and this she wished to do without mentioning her daughter's name. And she was determined that no word should escape her in which there was ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... this period that the constancy and firmness of the missionary is taxed, for he has to overcome the unspeakable sluggishness of the uncivilized people, and to defeat the futile and continuous pretexts that they invent for the purpose of desisting from the work and of returning to the obscurity of the forest. It is helpful to be able to provide sufficient alimentation for them for a few days at least, so that it will not ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Pursuit was futile. Slowly he turned back. He thought of notifying the police, but, after all, he was none the worse off—except for his promise to Poritol and Alcatrante, now involuntarily broken. He must explain to them as best ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... to be in ill humor with humanity and the plan of creation in general (if, indeed, he recognized such a plan), and he devotes himself, with ruthless satisfaction, to showing what a paltry contemptible lot men are, and how aimless, futile, and irrational their existence is on this earth, with its chaotic strivings and bewildered endeavors." ... "Furthermore, he utterly undervalues what we call civilization, which he regards primarily as an ignominious compromise—a surrender and curtailment of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... high time for me to begin the world, and do something for myself. The only difficult problem left for them to solve was, in what way I had better commence. One would have thought the world had nothing in its whole construction but futile beginnings and most unsatisfactory methods of doing for one's self. Scheme after scheme was discussed and discarded; new plans were hot-beds for new doubts; and impossibilities seemed to overwhelm every succeeding though successless suggestion. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... West Bowlby now. It was the next station, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack and piled them neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... as large as Tyrannosaurus could leap or spring upon another, and its slow stride quickening into a swift resistless rush, might well end in unavoidable impalement upon the great horns of Triceratops, futile weapons against a small and active enemy, but designed no doubt to meet just such attacks as these. A true picture of these combats of titans of the ancient world we cannot draw; perhaps we will never be able to reconstruct it. But the above considerations may ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... went on, "that this attempt of the spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... have reached a sort of climax, for there you have the people actually forgetting, deriding, or denying their greatest men who form the only lasting glories of their history; they have even done their futile best to tarnish the unsoilable fame of Shakespeare. In that land you,—who, according to your own showing, started for the race of life full of high hopes and inspiration to still higher endeavor—you have been, poisoned by the tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... atrocities committed by Robert and his hirelings, the revolt continued with unabated fury, and at last Gregory was constrained to return in person to Italy with the purpose of pacifying the turbulent forces. He entered Rome, January 17, 1377; but after a year of futile effort he died, leaving the confusion worse than he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... into the darkness in a futile endeavour to catch a glimpse of his man. But the night was too black for the keenest eye to penetrate it. A slight thud put him on the right track. It showed him two things; first, that the unknown had dropped into the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... ideal was to stand incarnate before men, there must be approximations to that ideal before the crowning incarnation could be appreciated. We look upon the character of Jesus as the complete embodiment of human excellencies. Such a revelation, however, would have been futile if there had not previously been glimpses of and anticipations of the ideal in the lives of those who were forerunners of Jesus. The Scriptures teach, or at least imply, that the life of a good man is in itself ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... wives and mothers, fell into the way of going out late in the afternoon for a walk by herself. She had grown to dread with a nervous dislike the constant meeting with acquaintances and neighbours, the usual rather futile exchange of remarks about the War, or about the local forms of war and charitable work in which she and they were now all engaged. The stillness and the solitariness of the evening walk soothed her ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... mirrors and soft-hued paintings, in their gilded frames, on the walls, and the deep carpets on the floors spoke of comfort. But the beautiful room was a mockery, for the promised comfort, was not there—only futile luxury. Upon that bright hearth was warmth for the body, but none for the spirit, for before it sat the master and mistress—the presiding geniuses of the house—upon whose oneness the structure of the home must stand, or without it fall into ruin; there they ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... worthless, the Roman civilization was allowed to continue uninterrupted in one unneeded corner of its former domains. For over a thousand years the successors of Theodosius and of Constantine held unbroken sway in the capital which the latter had founded. They only succeeded in emphasizing how futile their culture ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... musk-ox nearest him tries to get him, and will even rush out of the line for a short and brief pursuit. But the bull does not pursue more than twenty yards or so, for fear of being surrounded alone and cut off. At the end of his usually futile run, back he goes and carefully backs into his place in the first line of defense. A charging bull does not rush out far enough that the wolves can cut him off and kill him. He is much too ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... unreturned? No weak and mean upbraidings of the beloved, no futile complaints; a solemn resignation to immitigable Fate; intense gratitude for inspiring love to the unloving beloved. So in 'A Serenade at the Villa'; so in 'One Way of Love', ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... possessed the more complicated personality; but they had certain common traits—a combination of perfect aristocracy with complete democracy, directness, kindliness, generosity, and nobility beyond all measure. It has been said that eugenics is futile because it cannot define its end. The answer is simple—we want men like William James and Francis Galton" (Popular Science Monthly, March, 1911.) Probably most of those who were brought, however slightly, in contact with these two fine personalities ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... he knew was worse than futile. "It you knew Miss McLean you couldn't misjudge her so. She thinks an' acts as straight ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... woman who thou sayest is loved by the man thou lovest—and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale is as full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in which thou spinn'st thy web—thou would'st tear her from him by craft. Explain thy seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for behold the hour ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... The appearance of that woman crushed him utterly. Shotaye appeared to him by the side of the great war shaman of his enemies like some fiend, to be sure, but a fiend of so much higher rank than his own that it was futile to cope with her. The Indian believes in evil spirits, but even they are subjected to the power of deities of a higher order beneficial to mankind. As such a shuatyam the woman appeared to Tyope,—as one whom the Shiuana had directed ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... pass a futile hand over the top of his head, as was his way when disturbed. "I just thought you'd like one. I thought every girl liked a fan. Just," feebly, "just ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... few pieces of brass cash before secreting them where Cheng Lin must inevitably displace them, when the person in question quietly stood before him. Thereupon Wang Ho returned the money to his inner sleeve, ineptly remarking that when the sun rose it was futile to raise a lantern to the sky ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... enough to surround the base of the plant above the rotted part. In a few weeks there was a good crop of new roots formed, and the plant has since flowered most satisfactorily. With almost any other plant, this course would have proved futile; but Cactuses are singularly tenacious of life, the largest and oldest stems being capable of forming roots as freely and as quickly as the ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... souls may be born and die to live, in oneness with Love. Oh, my brethren"—he stretched out his arms yearningly, and his eyes and his voice were full of tears—"why do ye haggle in the market-place? Why do ye lay up store of gold and silver? Why do ye chase the futile shadows of earthly joy? This, this is the true ecstasy, to give yourself up to God, all in all, to ask only to be the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this volume to discuss the economic aspects of geology without exhaustive discussion of the principles of geology which are involved. Practically the whole range of geologic science has some sort of economic application, and it would be futile to attempt in one volume even a survey of the science of geology as a whole. Our purpose is rather to indicate and illustrate, in some perspective, the general nature of the application of geology to ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... fortune had straitened the line, and only in this corner of a downtrodden land was its greatness even a memory—she was chastened for it now! She suffered for it now! She could have wept tears of shame. And yet, so plain was the collapse of the man before her, and so futile words, that she did not think of reproach; even had she found heart to chide him, knowing that her words might ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... hastened back to one of a number of his hiding-places, there to stay through the day, unless routed out by the blood-hounds. He was fortunate, however, in the help of God, for his safety, and the efforts of the hounds and the hounds' followers were futile. ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... mothers on the shores of all the seven seas had once rocked them to sleep—only now the sound of heavy firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile and indistinguishable as the whisper of a child in the roar of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... that this partnership, in which there were three young and pretty women, no shadow of discord was found amongst the men. They often yielded to the most futile fancies of their mistresses, but not one of them would have hesitated for a moment between the mistress ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... not often known what it is to think of some futile thing and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or memories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking about some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train of reflections, a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstract connection of ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... with a pathetically futile effort to make a fine gesture, "don't do it. I am brave enough to die. You would not have me ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... After a futile discussion as to the value of Cobham's evidence, the foreman of the jury asked a plain question: 'I desire to understand the time of Sir Walter Raleigh's first letter, and of the Lord Cobham's accusation.' Upon this Cecil spoke for the first time, spinning out ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... word. He gave no more attention to Venner's futile blows than to the whispering of the sands of the shore. But bearing ever toward the other two men, now seemingly paralyzed out of all volition by the awful exhibition of strength, he reached out with his free hand and added Tomlin to his capture ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... His jaw! I was terribly angry, in my desolation. But it was a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm. Could they not understand, would they never understand, that they were grotesquely deceived? How much longer would they continue to fuss over that body on the bed while I, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to you, dear ancestor, by that girl Feng," Madame Wang smiled. "It only shows how sincere her filial piety is. She does not render futile the love, which you, venerable senior, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... its drift, runs inexorably in the channel ordained for it by its historic antecedents; it is as regardless of the feelings and sentiments of its speakers as is the course of a river of the atmospheric humors of the landscape. I am convinced that it is futile to look in linguistic structure for differences corresponding to the temperamental variations which are supposed to be correlated with race. In this connection it is well to remember that the emotional aspect ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... truth, it is absolutely certain that either method of presentment is natural and logical; and hence all criticism that aims to exalt romance above realism, or realism above romance, must be forever futile. Guy de Maupassant, in his valuable preface to "Pierre et Jean," has spoken very wisely on this point. The ideal critic, he says, should demand of the artist merely to "create something beautiful, in the form most convenient to him, according to his temperament." And he states further:—"The ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... I wonder?" asked Seaton, while the futile shells of the enemy continued to waste their force some hundreds of feet distant from their goal, and while Crane and DuQuesne were methodically destroying the huge vessels as fast as they could aim and ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... too, that what is conceded to have been one of the most disastrous and futile campaigns of the war was attempted by England. Constantinople was to be captured and the Turks crushed, with a view of opening communication with Russia by way of the Black Sea. The British fleet was sent ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... at the party as it passes, cursing the idiosyncrasies of each fire bay. The instrument is connected with the end of the wire, and all hold their breath in order to hear the answering buzz which tells them that they are through to the battery. Several futile buzzes may be made by the telephonist, and then, no response being forthcoming, a linesman is sent down the wire towards the first relay station. A break in the wire is discovered and speedily mended, the next attempt is successful, ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... this seemed to cap the climax; and he did not mask his sentiments. The pitiful little forcible-feeble rebellion, all along but a futile attempt to cast straws against the wind, was now completely over and done with, and would never be heard of again. Or such at least, he added, was the earnest hope of the law-abiding community. This irritated Purdy, who was spumy with the self-importance of one who has ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Each night the parties met at the rendezvous appointed for the wranglers with the pack horses. From sunrise to sunset often no face was seen other than those of their own outfit. Sometimes a solitary sheep herder was discovered at his post. Always the work was hard, discouraging, and apparently futile. But the young sheriff never ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... constant stream of worshipers passing in and out through the great open door: plumed cavaliers, their arrogant swagger for the nonce put off; gray pilgrims, weary and dusty, with blistered feet and splintered staves; mailed soldiers ready to march for the wars; tired-eyed crusaders home from a futile quest; a haughty lady, a troubled daughter of artisans, a faded wanton, brought into a brief gentle sisterhood by a common need; all seeking the same thing. And perhaps in the doorway a faltering sinner unconfessed, fear ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... centered all his thoughts in them. He shared his darling's grief and desired above everything to console her; but the very depth of his sympathy prevented him. Hopeless himself, in this grim crisis, every human effort seemed futile. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... this. Yacoub Artin Pasha declares that the superstition dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and he explains it in two ways. Firstly, it is a facetious exaggeration, meaning that no one has leisure or patience to wade through the long repertory. Secondly, the work is condemned as futile. When Egypt produced savants and legists like Ibn al- Hajar, Al-'Ayni, and Al-Kastallani, to mention no others, the taste of the country inclined to dry factual studies and positive science; nor, indeed, has this taste wholly died out: there are not a few who, like Khayri Pasha, contend that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... his short, velvet jacket hung heavy with six rows of enormous silver buttons, his little, round hat was tilted over his nose. A silver buckle decorated it in front; behind, two little velvet ribbons fluttered in futile conflict with the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Nan, do be still," broke out Delia at last after a dozen futile attempts to stem the tide of the girl's anger. "I didn't listen nor peek nor anything, and you scream so loud she'll hear every word you say. You—now be quiet and let me speak—you walked in your sleep last night. You went into her room and said off a whole lot ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
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