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Ineffectual   Listen
adjective
Ineffectual  adj.  Not producing the proper effect; without effect; inefficient; weak; useless; futile; unavailing; as, an ineffectual attempt; an ineffectual expedient. "The peony root has been much commended,... and yet has been by many found ineffectual."
Synonyms: Inefficient; useless; inefficacious; vain; fruitless; unavailing; futile. See Useless, Inefficacious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ineffectual" Quotes from Famous Books



... it is to find true sympathy;—how few love us for ourselves; how few will befriend us in our misfortunes—then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, even in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual had been my love. My heart melted as I retraced the days of infancy, when I was led by a mother's hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's arms, and was without care or sorrow. "O my mother!" exclaimed ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Ruby Ruggles, and having ascertained that she was at any rate living in a respectable house with her aunt, returned to Carbury. He had given the girl his advice, and had done so in a manner that was not altogether ineffectual. He had frightened her, and had also frightened Mrs Pipkin. He had taught Mrs Pipkin to believe that the new dispensation was not yet so completely established as to clear her from all responsibility as to her niece's conduct. Having done so much, and feeling that there ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... of truth, without which none of their theories would have a corporal's guard of honest believers. We have been working towards that truth in an unsystematic way for centuries, but we are a long way from it, and till we solve how to realize it, we shall have ineffectual discontent." ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... of hands. He is so like someone one knows, whom one wants to talk to tenderly, touch in a friendly way, and say as little as possible. He comes to one humanly first, and asks you for your eye to his verse afterward, something of the "Little boy Lost", in his so ineffectual face, weak with sweetness and hidden in shyness, covered with irresponsibility, or lack ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... We went to see the leviathan slog for six, and we saw it. We expected him to do it, and he did it. So with Macaulay—the good Whig, as he takes up the History, settles himself down in his chair, and knows it is going to be a bad time for the Tories. Macaulay's style— his much-praised style—is ineffectual for the purpose of telling the truth about anything. It is splendid, but splendide mendax, and in Macaulay's case the style was the man. He had enormous knowledge, and a noble spirit; his knowledge enriched his style and his spirit consecrated it to the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... a dozen revolutions of the rubber-tired wheels, and the Nelson left the ground, as strong and capable as ever. The motors made little noise, and no signs of discovery came from the other side until the machine was high up. Then a few ineffectual shots were ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... took up his stick again, and tried to thrust the end of the stick into the roll. After one or two ineffectual attempts, he succeeded, though by this time the bark was pretty well burnt through, and was all ready to fall to pieces. He, however, succeeded in raising it into the air, upon the end of his pole; but before he got it to the hollow tree, it dropped ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott

... House, with one exception, voted yea or nay. The closeness of this last division should have warned the advocate of the measure that it was likely to produce difficulty, for it is clear that all laws which are intended to regulate the personal habits of men must be ineffectual unless they have the support of a large majority of the people affected by them. That this was not the case with the prohibitory liquor law was shown by the vote in the legislature, and it was still more clearly shown after the law came into operation on ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... of direction, than in that part of life when we need it most; we are in haste to meet enemies whom we have not strength to overcome, and to undertake tasks which we cannot perform: and as he that once miscarries does not easily persuade mankind to favour another attempt, an ineffectual struggle for fame is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... verse if you are ever going to put in practice its first words. 'Even as the Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister,'—if Jesus Christ had stopped there He would only have been one more of the long roll of ineffectual preachers and prophets who show men the better way, and leave them struggling in the mire. But He did not stop there: 'Even as the Son of Man came ... to give His life a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... those barren days what influence did women exert! By men they seem not to have been feared nor loved, but regarded rather as 'dear little creatures' or 'wonderful little beings,' and in their relation to life as foolish and ineffectual as the landscapes they did in water-colour. Yet, if the women of those years were of no great account, they had a certain charm, and they at least had not begun to trespass upon men's ground; if they touched not thought, which is theirs by right, at any rate they refrained from ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... away with a quick frown. She also made a slight, ineffectual effort to free her hand. But he did not appear to ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... redeem'd, He does with potions of oblivion kill Remorse of the lost Love that helps them still. Apart from these, Near the sky-borders of that banish'd world, Wander pale spirits among willow'd leas, Lost beyond measure, sadden'd without end, But since, while erring most, retaining yet Some ineffectual fervour of regret, Retaining still such weal As spurned Lovers feel, Preferring far to all the world's delight Their loss so infinite, Or Poets, when they mark In the clouds dun A loitering flush of the long sunken sun, And turn away with tears into the dark. Know, Dear, these are not mine ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... once brought up, and though Voules did ample justice to the viands it contained, Lord Reginald, after making several ineffectual attempts to eat, had to confess that the pain overpowered him, and he allowed himself to be led off to his room ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... Arcadia, the marauder made for the mountains. By the time he had well passed the last outpost the hue-and-cry was at his heels, followed, after an easy-going delay, by the lumbering dragoon. The soldier, armed with ineffectual sabre and carbine, encumbered with a variety of traps about as useful as they, usually managed, if not forced to put back by stress of provisions, to come up with him in the gates of the hills. There an idle interchange of arrow and round ball between hollow and cliff wound up the eventful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... there were limits set to my wanderings. Toward the sea my progress was barred by an express prohibition of the savages; and after having made two or three ineffectual attempts to reach it, as much to gratify my curiosity as anything else, I gave up the idea. It was in vain to think of reaching it by stealth, since the natives escorted me in numbers wherever I went, and not for one single moment that I can ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... St. Domingo, if not destroyed by the blacks. He stated that every thing was going on well in St. Domingo and therefore conjured him, in the name of humanity, not to attempt to reverse this beautiful order of things. His efforts were ineffectual. The armament sailed, and, arriving on the shores of St. Domingo, a scene of blood and torture followed, such as history had seldom if ever before disclosed, which, though planned and executed by whites, all the barbarities ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin

... Swedish practitioners, and subsequently revived by the English. In Germany it has recently been used by Professor OSAN, and we believe particularly by Dr. DE POMMER, who appears to have prescribed it boldly in very many instances, and in some, after the ineffectual employment of all other anthelmintics. Dr. P. adds, that he never saw any bad effects resulting from its use, and that patients are very little liable to relapses when ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... deposits. When Carpophorus, by whom he was now suspected of embezzlement, determined to call him to account, Callistus fled to Portus—in the hope of escaping by sea to some other country. He was, however, overtaken, and, after an ineffectual attempt to drown himself, was arrested, and thrown into prison. His master, who was placable and kind-hearted, speedily consented to release him from confinement; but he was no sooner at large, than, under pretence of collecting debts due to the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... idiotically at the white foam that swept aft from the schooner's keen cut-water; and four, who had probably assumed the duty of looking out, staggered and lurched in pairs, holding each other on their legs, to-and-fro between the windlass and the fore-rigging, occasionally indulging in an ineffectual attempt to exchange remarks. So far, all was right; nobody here seemed capable of giving us the slightest trouble. In fact, discipline was for the time being at an end, lawlessness reigned supreme, everybody was his own master, and the schooner ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... took up their abode on some large plantation to serve as overseers or head workmen. In 1639 Sir Francis Wyatt was instructed to see to it "that tradesmen and handicraftsmen be compelled to follow their several trades,"[58] but this order was entirely ineffectual and soon but few artisans remained. Makensie says, "Our tradesmen are none of the best, and seldom improve from the incouragement they have. If some few stick to their trades, they demand extravigant rates, and few employ them but out of pure necessity."[59] Not infrequently ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... amuck, breaking in doors and shooting at every one they saw. That some of the citizens snatched up such weapons as came to hand and defended their homes and their women no one attempts to deny— but this scattered and pitifully ineffectual resistance gave the Germans the very excuse they were seeking. The citizens had attacked them and they would teach the citizens, both of Louvain and of other cities which they might enter, a lasting lesson. They did. No Belgian will ever ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... fat Rabelaisian scoundrel who has piqued my imagination. And besides, if Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were cast into my throat this minute they would find it quite a different thing from Nebuchadnezzar's ineffectual bonfire." ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... He made a sudden, ineffectual grab at the gun, which had slipped from his fingers, and missed. As the weapon clattered against the rocks, Lynch's covetous glance followed it involuntarily. What happened next was a bewildering whirl of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... important event of the period was the contention between the northern and southern Hy-Nials. Murtough was planning, with great military ability, to obtain the supreme rule. The Archbishop of Armagh and the clergy strove twice to avert hostilities, but their interference was almost ineffectual. "A year's peace" was all they could obtain. In the year 1100, Murtough brought a Danish fleet against the northerns, but they were cut off by O'Loughlin, "by killing or drowning." He also assembled an army at Assaroe, near ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... was no room for them in the Bursa. So on they went into Bohemia, where at the town of Kaaden the rector of the school was able to allot them a room—just a bare, unfurnished chamber, in which they were permitted to settle. Such teaching as Butzbach received was spasmodic and ineffectual, and after two years of this bondage he ran away. For the next five years he was in Bohemia in private service, longing for home, hating his durance among the heathen, as he called the Bohemians for following John Hus, but lacking courage to make his escape from ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... now admiral in the place of Howard, after an ineffectual cruise in the south of the Channel, returned to Portsmouth on the 8th of July. A few vessels remained in the neighbourhood of Calais, when M. de Thermes, whom the Duke of Guise left in command there, with the garrison ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... diamagnetic through which the ray passes. He operated with liquids and solutions. Of aqueous solutions he tried 150 and more, and found the power in all of them. He then examined gases; but here all his efforts to produce any sensible action upon the polarized beam were ineffectual. He then passed from magnets to currents, enclosing bars of heavy glass, and tubes containing liquids and aqueous solutions within an electro-magnetic helix. A current sent through the helix caused the plane of polarization to rotate, and always ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... very popular, but not to his taste, nor, indeed, by any means, impeccable, though stirring; his censure and praise were both just. From his occasional fine efforts, the author of this romance, he said, should have cleared away acres of brushwood, of ineffectual matter. It was so, no doubt, as the writer spoken of would be ready to acknowledge. But he was an improviser of genius, and Mr. Stevenson was ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... bodies, each controlling in its own way and from motives known only to itself the particular branch of legislation assigned to it. The only semblance of responsibility attaching to the committee is found in the party affiliation of the majority of its members with the majority in the House. But ineffectual and intangible as this is, it is rendered even more so by the fact that the opposition party is also represented on each committee. This allows the dominant party to escape responsibility, since it can claim that its failure ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... room was quite cleared and the noise abated (it was a frightful experience to see how little the judge had been affected by all this hubbub of combined movement and sound), she stepped within the line of his vision and lifted her feeble and ineffectual hand in an effort to attract his ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... Crusades, and received a vigorous impetus from the Renaissance, made its mark even in the fifteenth century upon ecclesiastical affairs. Three main facts of the moral order are presented during this period: the ineffectual attempts of the councils of Constance and Bale to reform the Church from within; the most notable of which was that of Huss in Bohemia; and the intellectual revolution that accompanied the Renaissance. The way was thus prepared for the event that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... fell, had ordered Goldlein forward: Goldlein with his Infantry did advance, gallantly enough; but to no purpose. Goldlein was soon shot dead; and his Infantry had to fall back again, ineffectual or worse. Iron ramrods against wooden; five shots to two: what is there but falling back? Neipperg sent fresh Horse from his right wing, with Berlichingen, a new famed General of Horse; Neipperg is furiously bent to improve his advantage, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of him. An uncontrollable shivering fit seized his frame, he was obliged to clench his teeth together, to prevent them from chattering audibly; he glanced wildly round him as if seeking for some means of escape; and, after two or three ineffectual efforts to speak, he managed to gasp out brokenly through his ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... themselves and the country. By the difference just mentioned, between Mr. Pitt and Lord Thurlow, the ministerial arrangements of 1793 were facilitated, and the learned Lord, after all his sturdy pliancy, consigned to a life of ineffectual ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... to perform, to take off his bridle and let him shift for himself, in doing which I was suddenly affected with sickness and giddiness, and falling upon the sand, felt as if the hour of death was fast approaching. Here, then, thought I, after a short but ineffectual struggle, terminate all my hopes of being useful in my day and generation; here must the short span of my life come to an end. I cast, as I believed, a last look on the surrounding scene, and whilst I reflected on the awful change that was about to take place, this world with its enjoyment seemed ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park

... however ineffectual, possessed the merit of being thoroughly constitutional. The same praise cannot be awarded to Count Mamiani's inaugural oration. Next day, which was the 9th of June, he ascended the Tribune, and there enunciated ideas which belonged more ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... "many-coloured glass," wherewith to "stain the white radiance of eternity." And after such a plunge into the antenatal reservoirs of life, we may, if we can, go on spitting venom and raking in the gutter with the old too-human zest, and let the "ineffectual" ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... on bail she fled to Calais, and there the career was closed. It was extraordinary that this woman should subjugate and hold in thrall men of great force of character. She had great loveliness of person; but physical beauty alone is ineffectual to charm such as these. Though not regularly educated, she acquired much general knowledge, and was tactful in the display and use ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... used to be," and a queer sort of pride in him followed. After all, there was something in being a lord, even in drunkenness! But this foolish, grinning, damp-mouthed thing before her, who kept making ineffectual attempts to lift his hand to his head and take off his hat, who was coming closer towards her with the inadequate movements she had once seen made by a duck when ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... travellers looked at each other in dismay. Was this to be the ineffectual ending of that long and toilsome scramble through the ravine? There was just one single narrow crevice between the huge boulder which blocked their way, and one of the precipitous walls which pressed so closely in upon them—a crevice left by the irregular shape ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... place to say, "What the devil are you doing here, sir?" to Mr. Roper; it was the question which, if Mr. Roper had had the slightest presence of mind, he would have addressed to Winn. As it was he did nothing but snarl—a timid and ineffectual snarl which was without ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... the last half-century these compositions remained buried in the libraries of colleges or of individuals, and so difficult of access that no successful attempt was made to give them to the world. This reproach was removed after ineffectual appeals to the patriotism of the gentry of Wales, by Owen Jones, a furrier of London, who at his own expense collected and published the chief productions of Welsh literature, under the title of the Myvyrian Archaeology of Wales. In this task ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... myself up with an effort, and finding the surroundings of the yard so ineffectual as a stimulus, I wandered down the hill towards the wood. I suggested to myself that I might meet Banks returning from the Hall, but my chief hope was that I might revive the romance of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... tallow candle, whose meagre gleam flickered hither and thither apprehensively among the huge shadows of the darkening wood. In her right hand the woman carried a large tin bucket, half filled with fresh-run maple-sap. By the glimmer of the ineffectual candle, she moved wearily from one great maple to another, emptying the birch-bark cups that hung from the little wooden taps driven into the trunks. The night air was raw with the chill of thawing snow, and carried no sound but the soft tinkle of the sap as it dript swiftly into the birchen ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Ship," a marvellous boat that fled past the astonished burghers at New Amsterdam without stopping—a flagrant violation of the customs regulation, which caused those worthy officials to fire several ineffectual shots ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... shall we multiply testimony on the subject; but in this, as in the case of Canada and the West Indies, allow the abolitionists to speak of their own schemes. The Hon. Gerrit Smith, in his letter to Governor Hunt, of New York, in 1852, while speaking of his ineffectual efforts, for fifteen years past, to prevail upon the free colored people to betake themselves to mechanical and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... encouragement is, the better the work will be performed; and it will become the wisdom of the parliament in what they do, to make it effectual; for should such an undertaking as this prove ineffectual, instead of remedying, ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... which agrees with it, and transposed [Greek: pherontes] to the verb it is attached to, thus clumsily excluding the exquisite hint, clear enough to those who can read between the lines, that in the ineffectual attempt to bring in the paralytic only some of the company reached our Lord's Presence. Of course the scribe in question ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... sun which softens the wax, hardens the clay, so it is with the preached gospel, which is to some 'the savour of death unto death, and to others the savour of life unto life' (2 Cor 2:16). The gospel is ineffectual to any saving purpose respecting the reprobate; partly through pride, and in not enduring to be reproved by it; partly through slothfulness, in not coming under the sound of it; and principally through cursed infidelity, in not believing the gracious message it brings. Let it be well attended to, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... was the first to break the silence, for he was continually tempted to make ineffectual head against this tyrant of the seas, and to regain his lost consequence in the eyes of his ancient companions. He now tried to match the gunpowder tales of the stranger by others equally tremendous. Kidd, as usual, was his hero, concerning whom he seemed ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... grown crasie with perpetual Toil and Meditation; and I conjure you, as soon as I am dead, to anoint me with this Unguent; and when you see me begin to move, pour into my Lips this inestimable Liquor, else the Force of the Ointment will be ineffectual. By this Means you will give me Life as I have you, and we will from that Hour mutually lay aside the Authority of having bestowed Life on each other, but live as Brethren, and prepare new Medicines against such another Period of Time as will demand another Application of the same ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... melancholy, yet not dismal, the brooding twilight seems to betoken Nature's compassion for myriad mortals exiled from her beauty and her solace. Noises far and near blend into a muffled murmur, sound's equivalent of the impression received by the eye; it seems to utter the weariness of unending ineffectual toil. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... were found at times ineffectual, other means were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One of the earliest of these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept in churches and bedchambers to drive away devils.(230) Another safeguard was found in relics, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... his ineffectual inquiry after Lady de Courcy's bracelet at Lambert's, John Eames was in the act of entering Mrs Roper's ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... the culprits had been secured, the attention of the troops was directed to putting out the flames, but their attempts were ineffectual; the mansion was burned to the bare walls, and but little of the furniture saved; indeed, the major part of it had been destroyed in the attack made by Don Silvio ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... immediately commenced. An unusual degree of sickness was prevailing among the female portion of Mrs. Livingstone's servants, and the very day before the company was expected, Aunt Milly, the head cook was taken suddenly ill. Coaxing, scolding, and threatening were alike ineffectual. The old negress would not say she was well when she wasn't, and as Hagar, the next in command, was also sick (lazy, as her mistress called it,) Mrs. Livingstone was herself obliged to superintend ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... the tides of life that flow within me, I am dumb and ineffectual, when it comes to casting my thought into a form. No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the pleasure of creation would make it possible for me to write. What shall I do, dear friend? I want force to be either a genius or a character. One ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Porter, "I thank you very sincerely for sending me a copy of your last book; I had already read it nearly twice, and found much in it very admirable and timely,"—I could very well afford to pass over Dr. Royce's ineffectual "criticisms" with indifference. But when he insinuates to the uninformed public that these same "criticisms" have the weighty sanction of Harvard University, it is quite another matter. That calls upon me to defend myself against so atrocious ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... volunteers; at the moment when he was about to set out he had to yield the command to M. de Saint-Jean, who was higher in rank. The little troop went and entrenched itself among the debris of a burned house and exchanged an ineffectual fire with the savages ambushed in a clump of trees. They soon perceived a party of French and friendly Indians who, coming from Fort Remy, were proceeding towards them in great danger of being surrounded by the Iroquois, who were already sobered. The volunteers wished ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... After a moment of ineffectual vexation, I bethought me of several repositories in which I had seen portions of debris,—leaves, covers, brazen bosses, and other membra disjecta; in one of these I might very probably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... ineffectual attempts to extract from Scythrop the secret of his mystery; and, in despair of drawing it from himself, began to form hopes that she might find a clue to it from Mr Flosky, who was Scythrop's dearest friend, and was more frequently than any other person ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... poor fellow happened to pass within its reach, the animal seized him with its teeth, and broke his arm. It then threw him down, and lay on him, when, every effort to get it off proving ineffectual, they were compelled to shoot it. Afterward the fact was discovered that the man had performed a cruel operation on the horse some time before, which it ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie

... moved off without waiting for the cooperation of the fleet and eventually went to pieces in an ineffectual siege of an inland city. When the fleet started out from Corinth it numbered 47 triremes. As this was more than twice the number possessed by Phormio, the Corinthian admiral evidently counted on being secure from attack. Accordingly he used some of his triremes as transports and started ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... occasionally visited Bridgeport, where he almost always found at the hotel a noted joker, named Darrow, who spared neither friend nor foe in his tricks. He was the life of the bar-room, and would always try to entrap some stranger in a bet and so win a treat for the company. He made several ineffectual attempts upon Barnum, and at last, one evening, Darrow, who stuttered, made a final ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... brandishing their double-barrelled guns. But he was beyond reach, and he breathed again. Now starvation stared him in the face. To the pangs of hunger were added the agony of thirst. The sun beat down pitilessly, and at last Mungo fell on the sand. "Here," he thought—"here after a short but ineffectual struggle I must end all my hopes of being useful in my day and generation; here must the short span of my life come to ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... doctrine about the motion of the earth. It is all in vain. If the world is really turning round, all mankind together will not be able to keep it from turning, or to keep themselves from turning with it." The decrees of Oxford were as ineffectual to stay the great moral and political revolution as those of the Vatican to stay the motion of our globe. That learned University found itself not only unable to keep the mass from moving, but unable to keep itself from moving along with the mass. Nor was the effect ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... by his maniac howling, two of them took turn about to hold him down by force, and silence him by a napkin thrust into his mouth. This mode of quieting the unlucky heretic, though sufficiently emphatic, being deemed ineffectual or inconvenient, George Jackson, a Cameronian, who afterwards suffered at the gallows, dashed the maniac with his feet and hands against the wall, and beat him so severely that the rest were afraid that he had killed him outright. After ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... or deed when the family is under affliction, and, as it were, oblige them to be sorrowful. What! does it not appear, when you have ceased to mourn, and have discovered that your grief has been ineffectual, that the whole of that mourning was voluntary on your part? What does that man say in Terence who punishes himself, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... been uttered—it was in war times—and late in the evening got on his legs for the tenth time to make a reply. The spirit did not move him to utterance, however; on the contrary, it quite deprived him of the power of speech; and after an ineffectual attempt at speech he ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... overtaken. The calendar has the inexorableness of fate. The day, the month, goes by, unrelenting. It may be shattered with feeble and inexpressive demands, but all the same it is gone, and it is unreturning. Whether freighted richly with the essential, or merely burdened with the ineffectual, it is equally irretrievable. ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... mortification and chagrin to the officers of his army. Many of them were older than himself, and better able to resist these temptations to luxury, effeminacy, and vice. They therefore remained firm in their original simplicity and integrity, and after some respectful but ineffectual remonstrances, they stood aloof, alienated from their commander in heart, and condemning very strongly, among themselves, his wickedness ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Colonel! if that nigger gal a' yourn don't stand close with her blazer we'll get into an all-fired snarl," says one, endeavouring to extricate himself and regain his upright. After sundry ineffectual attempts, surging round the room in search of his hat, which is being very unceremoniously transformed into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, "There's something very strange about the floor of this establishment,—it don't seem solid; 'pears ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... give them several days of rest; during which period the Austrian cavalry came from time to time to probe our outposts, which were positioned two leagues from the town; but this amounted to no more than some ineffectual fire which kept us on our toes, gave us some exercise in skirmishing, and allowed us to learn to recognise the various uniforms of the enemy. I saw, for the first time, the Uhlans of Prince Charles, Rosenberg's ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... if I go on much longer,—which it would be improper for me to do,—into something like a critical delineation of the genius of our illustrious guest. I shall not attempt that; but I cannot but express, in a few ineffectual words, the delight which every human bosom feels in the benign spirit which pervades all his creations. How kind and good a man he is, I need not say; nor what strength of genius he has acquired by that profound sympathy with his fellow-creatures, whether in prosperity and happiness, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... I, Emperor of the East, aided by the Western Empire, makes an earnest but ineffectual effort against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... utmost endeavours of the party to make him drunk proved ineffectual; he was restless and uncomfortable, and he could not help fancying by the visible efforts to do him up, that some mischief was brewing, or some hoax was about to be played off. He had his master-key in his ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... were launched on Walthamstow—two of them ineffectual. The sixth bomb fell into a field close beside the railway line and worked a hideous wonder. It blew into never-to-be-gathered fragments all that was mortal of old Tom Cumbers, the signalman. They found only his left hand plastered gruesomely against ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... shoulders, he laid him flat on his back in the road, and quietly picking up the bag, he proceeded peaceably on his wonted way. The man, much dismayed, arose and followed the dog, making, every now and then, an ineffectual attempt to coax him ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... go and look at the house, Signor Principe," observed Contini, in the midst of an ineffectual effort to light the stump ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... except those necessary to protect their own strongholds, are being concentrated against Callisto. They cannot spare vessels to guard uselessly the abandoned satellites. Because of the enormously high gravity of Jupiter the hexans there are safe from human attack save for ineffectual long-range bombardment, but Io is being attacked constantly and it is probable that in a few more years Io also will be an abandoned world. Some of you may have received the impressions that the hexans are to triumph immediately, but such an idea is wrong. The humans can, and ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... keen eyes, that he would not be able to carry on his battle upon good terms. In spite, therefore, of the lady's very plain instructions, he made an attempt to take possession of the chair which he had himself placed; but it was an ineffectual attempt, for the spy was very peremptory with him. "There, Captain Clavering; there; there; you will be best there." Then he did as he was bid, and seated himself; as it were, quite out at sea, with nothing but an ocean of carpet around him, and with no possibility of manipulating ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... seamen requires revision and amendment. The provisions for their support in foreign countries and for their return are found to be inadequate and ineffectual. Another provision seems necessary to be added to the consular act. Some foreign vessels have been discovered sailing under the flag of the United States and with forged papers. It seldom happens that the consuls ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson

... some ineffectual efforts to escape, was very indignant, stormed, and spluttered, and wound up by saying, "Well! now, my Mistress, what do you wish me to do?" which was exactly the state into which I had intended to bully her. "You know how hot we are in the tent every night," said I. "Good me! and ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... Nicky as if something in his ineffectual presence maddened her. "Do you suppose," she said, "that woman counts? No woman counts with ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... devotion to the cross; and it is said a notable housewife of the place in days of yore is held in pious remembrance, and almost canonized as a saint, for having died of pure exhaustion and chagrin in an ineffectual attempt to scour a black ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... pumping with great hammer-strokes; his breathing came laboured between those merciless hands. His own hands were closed upon the iron wrists, but their hold was weakening moment by moment, he knew their grasp to be wholly ineffectual. He obeyed the order because he lacked the strength to ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... and all reasonable people blamed him for having collected diamonds to so considerable an amount without any positive order for them. This man had purchased the office of jeweller to the Crown, which gave him some rights of entry at Court. After several months spent in ineffectual attempts to carry his point, and in idle complaints, he obtained an audience of the Queen, who had with her the young Princess, her daughter; her Majesty did not know for what purpose Boehmer sought this audience, and had not the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... France as well as in England, that Dumas was a mere amuseur, whether they did or did not extend their battery to the other notion (common then in England, if not in France) that he was an amuser whose amusements were pernicious. These efforts were perhaps not entirely ineffectual: let us hope that actual reading, by not unintelligent or prejudiced ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... believes to be harmful. This is a far different thing from telling all the truth all of the time, or urging all the measures he regards as good for mankind in season and out. That is the attitude of the irreconcilable, and the irreconcilable is as ineffectual in journalism as he is in church or state. Thus "The Ladies' Home Journal" has not as yet taken any part in furthering the great woman's suffrage movement which is sweeping over the world, and which ought to, but nevertheless does not, ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... the ruffian-scene—the penitent peasantry—and killing the Bishop and Princes—oh, it was all over. The curtain fell upon unheard actors, and the announcement attempted by Kean for Monday was equally ineffectual. Mrs. Bartley was so frightened, that, though the people were tolerably quiet, the epilogue was quite inaudible to half the house. In short,—you know all. I clapped till my hands were skinless, and so did Sir James Mackintosh, who was with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... of jingalls and matchlocks from the whole line of the city wall, running parallel with the canal. As the wall was nearly forty feet high, the gun in the barge could not be elevated sufficiently to do service, and the fire of the musketry was ineffectual. Lieutenant Crouch and Mr Lyons, midshipman, two artillery officers, sixteen seamen, and eight artillerymen were wounded. As it would have been madness to have remained longer than necessary exposed to such a fire, the men leaped from the boats, which they abandoned, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... the edge of the rear seat when the Nevada Highway Patrol cars drove up next to them. Barbara Wilson had stopped screaming, but she was still sobbing on Malone's shoulder. "It's all right," he told her, feeling ineffectual. ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... reporting their want of success to some of the principalities and powers of evil, these likewise had essayed their diabolical arts, but had not succeeded in leading Job to swerve from his integrity. Last of all, the great arch-enemy himself had found all his own efforts ineffectual to harass and lead astray GOD'S beloved servant. He found a hedge around him, and about his servants, and about his house, and about all that he had on every side—an entrenchment so strong that he had been unable to break through, so high that, going about as a roaring lion, he had been unable ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... previous expressions of affection for himself by Mrs. Reveley, proposed within a month after her husband's death, and begged her to set aside prejudices and cowardly ceremonies and be his. As in the previous case, a second and a third lengthy letter, full of subtle reasoning, were ineffectual, and did not even bring about an interview till December 3rd, when Godwin and Mrs. Reveley met, in company with Mr. Gisborne. To this gentleman Mrs. Reveley was afterwards married. We shall meet them both again ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... went out to interview the farmer, sparsely bearded, lank, and long-necked and seamy-skinned, his face ineffectual yet shrewd, a poor white of the South strung on wiry nerves, instead of lax muscles, the outcome of the New Jersey soil. He shuffled determinedly in his great boots, heavy with red shale, standing guard over his fine vegetables. He nodded phlegmatically ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... cargo, and there after some time had fainted from loss of blood. While he lay there, he could hear the shrieks of his shipmates and the shouts and execrations of their butchers, he expecting, every instant, to share the fate of the rest. At last all was silent, the pirates made an ineffectual attempt to scuttle the ship, but were hurried off, probably, by seeing a sail which they mistook for us, or for ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... in his ringlets was an ineffectual, colourless, effeminate person, a perfect contrast to his ugly, barrel- shaped, badly-dressed but robust-minded neighbour, Gandara. Yet he too had a taste in animals which distinguished him among his fellow- landowners, and even reminded one of Gandara in a ridiculous way. For ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... was rather a sob, indicative of the inner throes that were racking the statesman's whole being, burst from his heart. His head fell upon his breast, and his whole body trembled. Joseph comprehended the immensity of his grief, and made no ineffectual attempt to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the writ, but all efforts of the marshal to serve the writ were thwarted by the state militia. The marshal then summoned a posse comitatus of two thousand men. Bloodshed seemed imminent; but after an ineffectual appeal to the President, the Pennsylvania authorities gave way and paid over the money. Subsequently the officer commanding the militia and others were indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment, for resisting the writ of a federal court; but they were pardoned ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... make another ineffectual effort to check the progress of the bateau, and again abandoned the attempt in despair. The rebels followed him on the bank, encouraging him with words of cheer, and with dire prophecies of his fate if he fell into the hands of ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... too weak for that, and after several ineffectual efforts to rise, fell back half fainting on the turf; while Rocket took his stand directly over him, a powerful and efficient guard until help from some quarter should arrive. Patiently, faithfully he stood, waiting as quietly ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... formal attempt to effect a reconciliation was ineffectual, of course, and so the two principals took their ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... to, it should be given. Lord Cardigan declared that certain portions of those letters were true, but that the greater part were calumnies. On this, the apology was refused, and a meeting was the consequence. It took place on the afternoon of the 12th Sep., on Wimbledon Common. The first shot was ineffectual, on both sides; but, on the second fire, Mr. Tuckett received his adversary's ball in the back part of the lower ribs, which traversed round to the spine. The ball was extracted, and Mr. Tuckett, after a ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... suffragists with Germans and with the negro vote. Miss Charlotte Rowe of Yonkers, N. Y., representing the National Anti-Suffrage Association, remained in Oklahoma during most of the campaign but their work was scattered and ineffectual. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... But such was the disposition that Mother Nature had given me that fifteen months under The Leads had not been enough to cure this mental malady of mine. But when I reflect upon after events of my life I am not astonished that The Leads proved ineffectual, for the numberless vicissitudes which I have gone through since have not cured me—my disorder, indeed, being of the incurable kind. There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives, notwithstanding that saying of the Stoics, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... How ineffectual so far are all European attempts at democracy! Carlyle's satire about the thirty men of Dumdrudge called out, they know not why, to kill thirty men from a Dumdrudge elsewhere is not referred to in these days; but it still expresses the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... accumulations of appropriations were piling up, waiting the hurried action of the last few days of the session. The senators dawdled in and out dressed in the thinnest clothing; the House looked sparse and ineffectual. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... all countries for men to seek Christ from no higher motive than that they may "eat of the loaves and be filled!"[98] In proof of the single voice that was raised in the wilderness of New South Wales being not altogether an empty and ineffectual sound, we are told that in 1790, when the female convicts who arrived by the Lady Juliana attended divine service for the first time, Mr. Johnson, with much propriety, in his discourse, touched upon their situation so forcibly as to draw tears from many of them, who were not yet hardened enough ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... terrace, from which, in a few moments, he returned to his seat, then rose again, and appeared to be greatly agitated; while Emily found her spirits so much depressed, that several of her attempts to renew the conversation were ineffectual. Valancourt again sat down, but was still silent, and trembled. At length he said, with a hesitating voice, 'This lovely scene!—I am going to leave—to leave you—perhaps for ever! These moments may never return; ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... position in the Church, and his great age gave him such just title? Yes, he had been forced to leave Francis to needlessly expose his disciples to all sorts of danger, to send them on missions as perilous as they had proved to be ineffectual, and all for what? For the most trivial point of honor, because the Brothers Minor were determined not to enjoy the smallest privileges. They were not heretics, but they disturbed the Church as much as the heretics did. How many times had he not been ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... to gaze his fill. This seemed the goal of his journey; it was what he had come for. It was a strange satisfaction, and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of the place seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing. It told him that the woman within was lost beyond recall, and that the days and years of the future would pile themselves above her like the huge immovable slab of a tomb. These days and years, in this place, would always be just so gray and silent. Suddenly, from the ...
— The American • Henry James

... the bow of our canoe, and we should very soon have had the water rushing in. We had, therefore, to look out for some opening into which we could slowly paddle till we found a landing-place. After making two or three ineffectual attempts, we succeeded in finding a bank with an almost perpendicular side, on to which we could at once step from ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... ever tried! It was the ambition of my life to see myself in print; though, hitherto, it had been ineffectual. 'I have written a few sketches,' I answered, with becoming modesty. As a matter of fact, our office bulged with my ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... gone, by his ineffectual exertions to rescue it, and restore its predominance. He was not without merits as a ruler. He looked out for the impartial administration of justice: he revived discipline and a military spirit in the army, and sought to infuse a better spirit into the civil administration. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... judge suggested that Sir Edwin should try it on; he made a wry face, but consented, and took off his own upper garment. He then put an arm into one of the sleeves of that in dispute, and made an apparently ineffectual endeavour to reach the other, following it round amidst roars of laughter from all parts of the Court. It was a common jury, and I was told that there was a tailor upon it, upon which I suggested that there was a gentleman of the same profession as the plaintiff in Court who might assist Sir Edwin. ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... of Fort Sumter.—South Carolina, finding other means of seizing or regaining Fort Sumter at Charleston ineffectual, ushered in the great struggle by the bombardment of the 12th of April 1861. Against overwhelming odds the United States troops held out until honour was satisfied; they then surrendered the ruins of the fort and were ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... dear sister, for the trouble you give yourself in my affairs, though I am still so unhappy to find your care very ineffectual. I have actually in my present possession a formal letter directed to Mr. Wortley to acquaint him with the whole business. You may imagine the inevitable eternal misfortunes it would have thrown me into, had it been ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... the souls of living men, mere prose, as long as 'carent vate sacro,' who will, forsooth, do them the honour to make poetry out of a little of them (and of how little!) by translating them into words, which he himself, just in proportion as he is a good poet, will confess to be clumsy, tawdry, ineffectual? Was there no poetry in these Puritans because they wrote no poetry? We do not mean now the unwritten tragedy of the battle-psalm and the charge; but simple idyllic poetry and quiet home-drama, love-poetry of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... State. They also desired (but did not expect to obtain) complete freedom in regard to their external relations, and they lost no time in trying how far they would be allowed to go in the direction of stretching the spirit of the Convention. Nothing in that ineffectual and miserable document is clearer than the definition of certain boundaries, and the provision that no extension shall be allowed. This hemming of them in—or shutting them up in a kraal, as President Kruger has expressively put it—was intensely repugnant to them. It cut into ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... a few officers, would have declared for him. In other words we should have added to our army about a thousand drilled armed men who knew the country through which we were to pass. By not fighting, we discouraged our own army, who grumbled bitterly when they found their second battle as ineffectual as the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... sings, after Lucifer and a third part of the angels had seceded from its golden palaces,—and perhaps all the more heavenly, because so many gloomy brows, and soured, vindictive hearts, had gone to plot ineffectual schemes of mischief elsewhere. [Footnote: We regret the innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be allowed to terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern principles. We hold the event in our own hands, and may choose whether to terminate it by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the Peace Conference had been transmitted to the House of Representatives, and while the joint resolutions were under consideration, several ineffectual attempts were made to get the labors of the Conference before the House. Here ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... under pressure of those evils he could quietly read Cicero de Consolatione; but if either of them threatened his wife he was impetuous for her relief." The remedies both of the Gravesend 'surgeon of some eminence,' and of yet another practitioner, who was sent for from Deal, were ineffectual; but about eight in the evening of the following day, when the ship under contrary winds, was at anchor in the Downs, Mrs Fielding fell asleep; and to that accident we owe one of the most characteristic passages in the Voyage. His wife's relief from pain would, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... They did not, however, continue in this harmony after entering on their office, but they differed on almost every subject, and quarrelled about everything, and by their disputes rendered their consulship unfruitful in all political measures, and ineffectual: however, Crassus made a great festival in honour of Hercules, and feasted the people at ten thousand tables, and gave them an allowance of corn for three months. It was at the close of their consulship, when Pompeius and Crassus happened ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... in the House made an ineffectual effort to sustain the veto, but the party whip and the power of the saloons were too strong for them, and the bill was passed over the veto by a vote of 9 to 4. It met a different and better fate, however, in the Council, where it was sustained ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... and children, were in the crowd. I passed along till I found myself inside the grove, where I met Charles Ewing and John Hunter, and we stood looking at the troops on the road, heading toward the city. A band of music was playing at the head, and the column made one or two ineffectual starts, but for some reason was halted. The battalion of regulars was abreast of me, of which Major Rufus Saxton was in command, and I gave him an evening paper, which I had bought of the newsboy on my way out. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... incursions of Zagarli. I waited on this prince, having great difficulty to obtain an audience, telling him that I was sent as ambassador to his father, and had need of guides, whom I prayed him to provide me; but it was quite ineffectual, as he hardly deigned to answer me, and took no kind of interest in me or my affairs, so that I was obliged to return disappointed to my lodgings. Masu-beg endeavoured to raise money from the inhabitants of Tauris for the purpose ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... the skeptical philosophy of Hume, when, with admirable practical sagacity, he said: "As those dictates of experience which regulate conduct must be the objects of belief, all objections which attack them, in common with the principles of reasoning, must be utterly ineffectual. Whatever attacks every principle of belief, can destroy none. As long as the foundations of knowledge are allowed to remain on the same level with the maxims of life, the whole system of human conviction must continue undisturbed.... Skepticism has practical ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... him, frowning a little, pulling at his long moustache. He was absorbed for some time—they had turned into the Edgware Road, and the soft rain had begun again—in ineffectual pursuit of cabs. When at last he had caught a driver's eye, and they had settled themselves on the cushions of a hansom, he turned abruptly to his companion to ask him if he had seen the Academy ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... as the symptoms of colic manifest themselves, has frequently afforded relief. At any rate, the irritating substances may be expelled from the alimentary canal before the pains will subside. All local remedies will be ineffectual, and consequently the purgative should be given in large doses until a copious vacuation is ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... almost too great for mortal frame to bear, He expected the time when He was again to be examined. He busied himself in planning ineffectual schemes for escaping both present and future punishment. Of the first there was no possibility; Of the second Despair made him neglect the only means. While Reason forced him to acknowledge a God's existence, Conscience made him ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... whether a time-thrust or cut should ever be allowed to score, unless the result of it be such as would have rendered the direct attack ineffectual in real fighting. Should not the rule be, either that the point scores to the person making the direct attack, as shown by the action of his foot in lunging (unless, indeed, the attacked person has guarded ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... continued. "Let us assume that Holladay has been providing for this illegitimate daughter for years. At last, for some reason, he is induced to withdraw this support; or, perhaps, the girl thinks her allowance insufficient. At any rate, after, let us suppose, ineffectual appeals by letter, she does the desperate thing of calling at his office to protest in person. She finds him inexorable—we know his reputation for obstinacy when he had once made up his mind. She reproaches him—she is already desperate, remember—and he answers with that stinging sarcasm for ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... engraft themselves. Here and there one of them starts to speak of nightly visions, complains about a feeling of anxiety, speaks of suspicious noises and voices in the vicinity, and finally makes a superficial, ineffectual attempt at suicide. Others become suddenly more antagonistic, vehemently assert their innocence, speak of being the victims of false accusations, etc. Still others suddenly develop a wild, maniacal state, destroy everything within reach, become markedly hallucinated, elaborate various persecutory ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... until August 1530 that Florence finally capitulated. Still the months which intervened between that date and Michelangelo's return from Venice were but a dying close, a slow agony interrupted by spasms of ineffectual heroism. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... for Mr. Sinclair to travel is the road of irony and documentation, both of which will hold him back from ineffectual rages and thereby serve to enlarge his influence. Such genius for controversy as his may be neither expected nor advised to look for quieter paths; it feels, with Bernard Shaw, that "if people are rotting and starving in all directions, and nobody else ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... told me, "that I use Bunsen cells, not Ruhmkorff cells. The latter would be ineffectual. One uses fewer Bunsen cells, but they're big and strong, and experience has proven their superiority. The electricity generated here makes its way to the stern, where electromagnets of huge size activate a special ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... we ought to recur for a moment, perhaps, to the Pilgrim Fathers [laughter], and I desire to say that both Harvard and Yale recognize the fact that there are some things before which universities "pale their ineffectual fires." ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... meanest man of the Tiers Estat: "that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes, troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon



Words linked to "Ineffectual" :   futile, inefficient, ineffective, powerless, impotent, unable, uneffective, unavailing, effectualness, useless, toothless, ineffectualness, unproductive



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