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adjective
Naught  adj.  
1.
Of no value or account; worthless; bad; useless. "It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer." "Go, get you to your house; begone, away! All will be naught else." "Things naught and things indifferent."
2.
Hence, vile; base; naughty. (Obs.) "No man can be stark naught at once."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Naught" Quotes from Famous Books



... forces you to relinquish your profession, in which you have so greatly distinguished yourself. Truly, my friendship for you is genuine, and it cuts me to the heart that, although I could uphold you against the most powerful nobles in open enmity, I can do naught to save you from assassination. I trust some day that I may see you again, but, should it not be so, remember that I shall always feel myself your debtor; and should you have friends for whom you may ask my protection be sure ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... noted, the initial attempts of the colonists to grow the grains with which they had been accustomed in England came to naught. They were familiar with wheat, rye, barley and oats. To make satisfactory yields, these grains had to be broadcasted on well prepared seed beds. Newly cleared forests left the soil full of stumps and roots. ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier

... from that One, and, consequently "of" it. It may be objected to, that the creeds teaching a personal god do not so hold, for they teach that their God is the creator of the Universe, which he has set aside from himself as a workman sets aside his workmanship. But this objection avails naught, for where could such a creator obtain the material for his universe, except from himself; and where the energy, except from the same source; and where the Life, unless from his One Life. So in the end, it is seen that ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... glistened on the smooth firmness of her perfect skin. I am afraid that often I was more occupied with admiration of this beautiful animal than with a desire for knowledge; but be that as it may, I nevertheless learned much that evening, though part of what I learned had naught to do with ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... sun sinks through leagues of arid sky, Where the sun dies o'er leagues of arid plain, Where the dead bones of wasted rivers lie, Trailed from their channels in yon mountain chain; Where day by day naught takes the wearied eye But the low-rimming mountains, sharply based On the dead levels, moving far or nigh, As the sick vision wanders o'er the waste, But ever day by day against the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... and Spring is always gay; If she, too, be passing she does not weep to know it. Time she takes to quicken seed but never time to grow it— Naught she cares for harvest ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... occasion which called them into being had passed. The question of disposing of them was summarily solved. One day some boys playing near the Terminal Station saw a sinister leer of flame inside. A high wind soon blew a conflagration, which enveloped the structures, leaving next day naught but ashes, tortured iron work, and here and there an arch, to tell of the regal ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... civilization, seeds of discontent. He wailed aloud that the pride of the community, meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large designs in connection with this pig the ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... with absurd vanity about his dress and legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, who told Messieurs de la Garde to fire first, were smirking French dancing-masters; and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner, was acting an inane masquerade: and Chivalry is naught; and honor is humbug; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly; and Ambition is madness; and desire of distinction is criminal vanity; and glory is bosh; and fair fame is idleness; and nothing is true but two and two; and the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... butt I did not mistrust that ye Iriquoits weare abroad in ye forest, for I had been at ye Peace. Nevertheless I find that these wild men doe naught butt what they resolve out of their bloodie mindedness. We passed the Point going out of ye Lake St. Peter, when ye Barbars appeared on ye watter-side discharging their muskets at us, and embarquing for ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... indifferent &c. adj.; stand neuter; take no interest in &c. (insensibility) 823; have no desire for &c. 865,have no taste for, have no relish for; not care for; care nothing for, care nothing about; not care a straw about, not care a fig for, not care a whit about &c. (unimportance) 643; not mind. set at naught &c. (make light of) 483; spurn &c. (disdain) 930. Adj. indifferent, cold, frigid, lukewarm; cool, cool as a cucumber; unconcerned, insouciant, phlegmatic, pococurante[obs3], easygoing, devil- may-care, careless, listless, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... of their own lands—these Adepts, Masters and Hierophants—prostrated themselves on the ground before the child and gave him the salutation due only to the great Occult Master of Masters who was come to take his seat upon the Throne of the Grand Master of the Great Lodge. But the child knew naught of this, and merely smiled sweetly at these strange men in gorgeous foreign robes, and reached out his little hand toward them. But Occult tradition has it that the tiny fingers and thumb of his right hand, outstretched toward the Magi, unconsciously assumed ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... way of retaliation, Buonaparte caused Sir George Rumbold, a British Minister, to be seized at Hamburgh, by a detachment of French soldiers, who carried him off to France. The law of nations was, in fact, set at naught by all the Belligerent Powers; in most cases the weakest went to the wall. The English Ministers violated every known and heretofore received principle of the law of nations. Buonaparte always took care to retaliate ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... to assert That naught his digestion could hurt, Was forced to admit That his weak point was hit When they gave him ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... Naught was in me to tempt your feet To seek a lodging. Quite forgot Lay the sweet solitude we two In childhood used to wander through; Time's cold had closed my heart about; ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... because of him, and said, "What are we to do with thee, O son? for thou art good for nothing. Other people's children are a stay and a support to their parents, but thou art but a fool and dost consume our bread for naught." But it was of no use at all. He would do nothing but sit on the stove and play with the cinders. So his father and mother grieved over him for many a long day, and at last his mother said to his father, "What is to be done with our son? Thou dost see that he has grown up and yet is ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... free institutions which Chili herself enjoyed. The first part of our object had been fully effected by the achievements and vigilance of the squadron; the second part was frustrated by General San Martin arrogating to himself despotic power, which set at naught the wishes and voice of the people. As "my fortune in common with his own" was only to be secured by acquiescence in the wrong he had done to Chili by casting off his allegiance to her, and by upholding him in the still greater wrong he was inflicting on Peru, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... pond behind the Wentworth house. He would drop another ten dollars into the plate on Christmas Day toward the repairs on the church; if he starved, he would do that. He was a failure. Everything his hand touched turned to naught. He looked himself full in the face, recognizing his weakness, and in this supremest moment of recognition he was a stronger man than he had been an hour before. His drooping shoulders had straightened; the restless look had gone from his eyes; his somber face had something of repose in ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... impotent man, by what means he is made whole: be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at naught by you builders." Hear what these rulers say when Peter and John were sent aside. "What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... that cut to the quick. His hair was iron-grey, his face hard and of the colour of pump-leather. He shaved every morning of his life—at six—but once (being caught in a fierce hurricane eighty miles southwest of Mauritius) he had missed three consecutive days. He feared naught but an unforgiving God, and wished to end his days in a little house, with a plot of ground attached—far in the country—out of ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... enthusiast, whose scorched locks and smoke-begrimed limbs gave him almost the appearance of an infernal spirit, the king inquired, with some trepidation, from his attendants, who or what he was, and being informed, ordered them to seize him. But the enthusiast set their attempts at naught. Springing with wonderful agility from fragment to fragment of the ruins, and continuing his vociferations, he at last plunged through the flame into the Exchange itself, rendering further pursuit, of course, impossible, unless those who desired to capture him, were determined to share his fate, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... slant, she had decided to try to bring her to our house to live. But though the girl was sweetly gentle in her appreciation of Kate's thoughtful attentions, in her simple way she made us both feel that our efforts would be for naught, that her position must be the same as that of any other clerk in the office. We both finally left her to herself. Bob explained to me, some three weeks after she came to the office, that she received no visitors at her home, a hotel on a quiet uptown street, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... mortal combat with the son of Dejah Thoris, but the guardsmen pressed about him, preventing, though it was clearly evident that naught would have better pleased Carthoris ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... very gingerly way in which he reached out for her elbow to guide her around the rail and toward the step. Technically, the action constituted putting her off the car. She heard the crisp voice once more, this time repeating a number, "twenty-two-naught-five," or something like that, just as she splashed down into the two-inch lake that covered the hollow in the pavement. The bell rang twice, the car started with a jerk, there was another splash, and a big gray-clad figure alighted in the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... coined my soul in words for naught? And must I, with the dim, forgotten throng Of silent ghosts that left no earthly trace To show they once had breathed this vital air, Die ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... they call counterfeit pleasures they make naught; as of pride in apparel and gems, or in vain honours; or of dicing; or hunting, which they deem the most abject kind of butchery. But of true pleasures they give to the soul intelligence and that pleasure that cometh of contemplation ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... of town workers' nerves and sinews? Why do we bother to impede a process which is denied? If there be no town-blight on us, why a million indications of uneasiness and a thousand little fights against the march of a degeneration so natural, vast, and methodical, that it brings them all to naught? Our physique is slowly rotting, and that is the plain ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... lonely, a little distraite, and (but this she will not allow even to herself) distinctly disappointed. She is trying very hard to prevent her mind from dwelling upon a certain face that should be naught to her, when she suddenly becomes conscious of the fact that some one has come to a standstill close beside her ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... both of the latter that he could have left his mustang so far away from the place where his self-imposed duties had called him to bring to naught the cunning of his great enemy, the principal war-chief of the Apaches. But the truth was, the camps of the scout and the redskins were not so widely separated as Mickey and Fred believed. He had selected the best site possible, and took a roundabout ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... that he would fain have thrown it down; but he dared not. So he said with such spirit as he could muster, "And what shall I see beside the stone?—it seems a fair and curious jewel—I cannot give it a name." "Nay," said the old man sharply, "it is not the stone; the stone is naught; but it hides a mystery. You shall see ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... who now was universally acknowledged to be the king, soon gave orders that she should be buried, observing that, wretch as she was, she was of royal blood. But the vulture and the jackal had been before him: naught remained of that haughty, revengeful, and heaven-defying woman, save the skull, the feet, and the palms of her hands. Thus, to the very letter, was fulfilled the prediction of a prophet, one of her contemporaries: ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... still with his tongue he kept licking his bearded chin. Then instantly I hid me in the dark undergrowth, on the wooded hill, awaiting his approach, and as he came nearer I smote him on the left flank, but all in vain, for naught did the sharp arrow pierce through his flesh, but leaped back, and fell on the green grass. Then quickly he raised his tawny head from the ground, in amaze, glancing all around with his eyes, and ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... his fathers have brought this bitterness into his days— His life is accounted as naught; his soul is a brand for ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... that rough fiddle. The hearthstone of the cabin in the mountains was bright and warm; a pardoned prisoner sat with his baby on his knee, surrounded by his rejoicing children, and in the presence of his happy wife, and although there was naught but poverty around him, his heart sang: "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;" and then he reached up and snatched his fiddle down from the wall, and played "Jordan is a hard road ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... keep his mouth shut, that chap," Hutchinson had said once, and Mr. Palford remembered it. "Most of us can't. I've got a notion I can; but I don't many's the time when I should. There's a lot more in him than you'd think for. He's naught but a lad, but he is na half such a fool as ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... too late now! Mrs. Condiment, mum, mind what I tell you! As soon as we return to Hurricane Hall, send in your accounts and seek a new home! I am not going to suffer myself to be set at naught any longer!" exclaimed Old Hurricane, bringing down his cane with ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... once in this harmless seaman's rig and inquired at all the yards down the river. I drew blank at fifteen, but at the sixteenth—Jacobson's—I learned that the Aurora had been handed over to them two days ago by a wooden-legged man, with some trivial directions as to her rudder. 'There ain't naught amiss with her rudder,' said the foreman. 'There she lies, with the red streaks.' At that moment who should come down but Mordecai Smith, the missing owner? He was rather the worse for liquor. I should not, of course, have known him, but he bellowed out his ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... but so many strange things have befallen your Majesty that you should be the last to wonder at this. At any rate, as you said but yesterday, naught but good can come of it. He has done his worst against you, and one can scarce doubt that if he chooses he has power to do as much good for you, as in past times he has done you evil. 'Tis certain that his coming here shows he ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... is a versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, postman, purveyor of news, and dictator in general. He alone makes the schedule of each trip, arriving and departing at will. Time in the Congo counts for naught. It is in truth the land of leisure. For the man who wants to move fast, water travel is a nightmare. Accustomed as I was to swift transport, I spent a ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... for thou hast known me long Almost these twenty yeeres, and halfe those yeeres Hast bin my bed-fellow; long time before This unseene thing, this thing of naught indeed, Or Atome cald my Lordshippe shind in me, And yet thou mak'st thy selfe as little bould To take such kindnes, as becomes the Age And truth of our indissolable love, As our acquaintance sprong but yesterday; Such is thy gentle, and ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... all their Beauties bearing, Two Breasts as smooth and soft;—but oh alas! Their smoothest Softness far exceeds comparing: More smooth and soft—but naught that ever was, Where they are first, deserves the second Place: Yet each as soft, and each as smooth as other; But when thou first try'st one, and then the other, Each softer seems than each, and each than each ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton

... together for beds, and then crept out to find food. When we returned there was a dark object in the dim hall against our door. I struck a match to see what it was. It was a woman, and the sorrows of living and the troubles of dying were as naught to her. Above and about her hung the aroma of the peat fires of Scotland. It was our janitress, and she had returned ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... who would not condescend to bend their knees before temporal power, and it became one of the characteristics of Zen monks that they would never approach rulers and statesmen for the sake of worldly fame and profit, which they set at naught. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... a hearted casement, curtained red, Trellised with intertwining charities; (For, though I knew His love Who followed, Yet was I sore adread Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside) But, if one little casement parted wide, The gust of His approach would clash it to Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue. Across the margent of the world I fled, And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, Smiting for shelter on their changed ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... who have all the advantages in a conjunction, are miserly in keeping them, and shudder to think that one thing remains hidden, which the world they move in might put down pityingly in favour of their spouse, even though to the little man 'twere naught. She assumed that a revelation would diminish her moral stature; and certainly it would not increase that of her husband. So no good could come of it. Besides, Andrew knew, his whole conduct was a tacit ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that will guard our ashes; we wish that fame should hover over our tomb to warm with its breath the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive. Naught of this can we offer to those who come to watch over our destinies. And the worst of all this is that they go away just when they are beginning to get an understanding of their duties. But we are getting ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... defend this home and that which was precious to him within it. There were a few before him upon this summer's day, alas, alas! that Fate should will it so, who had not somewhere a grave whose grass moved in the softness of the wind over dead loves and hopes cherished even in this hour as naught else ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and bands, a morrice train, Thou greet'st the Traveller in the lane; If welcome once thou count'st it gain; Thou art not daunted, 20 Nor car'st if thou be set at naught; And oft alone in nooks remote We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... by the second gypsy, was now verified in the flesh and put to naught all the fake ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... across the swelling, broad Atlantic Comes scornful menace? it is naught to thee— 'Tis but the jealous raving, wild and frantic, Of those who would, but never can, be free;— Who, slaves to selfish passions bold ambition, Hold up their shackled arms in heaven's broad light, And prate of ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... reanimated in vain! Let us together dive into that air, that light, that verdure; amid those sprouting branches, in that flood of life and vegetation, which is even now inundating the whole earth! Let us go, let us see if naught in the works of his creation has grown old by the weight of an added day; if naught in that enthusiasm, which sang and groaned, loved and lamented within us, on the mountains and on the waters of Savoy, has been lowered by one ripple or one note!" "Yes, let us go," said she. "We shall neither feel ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set at naught. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... metropolises, our colonies were able first to keep, and afterwards to enfranchise their slaves, without succumbing to the task. But let a Southern Confederacy come, in which the immigration of the whites will be naught, while the increase of the blacks will be pursued in all ways, and, in case of success, the moment will soon arrive when many States will see themselves placed, as is the case already with South Carolina, in presence of a number of slaves exceeding that of free men. Such ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... confidence in your great kindness and humanity, that I am assured that your magnificences will have compassion on me and my wife, who is departing to solicit you as humbly as possible to pardon my not appearing before you, as my heart is so desolate that I can say or do naught to help in these circumstances. Therefore, may it please you to listen to her proposition and to grant as great a degree of honor and welfare as is possible ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... will do so; as it was with Yathodaya so long ago, so it is now. But when religion calls them and says, 'Come away from the world, leave all that you love, all that your heart holds good, for it is naught; see the light, and prepare your soul for peace,' they hold back. This they cannot do; it is far beyond them. 'Thakin, we cannot do so. It would seem to us terrible,' that ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... 'll follow thee, my lassie, Fu' soon I 'll follow thee; Thou left me naught to covet ahin', But took ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... like shot from guns, and all the wild demons of this black night in the wilderness seem bent on tearing apart the huge end-locked logs that form my cabin home. In truth, it is a terrible night to be afar from human companionship, with naught but this roaring desolation about and the air above filled with screeching terrors. Even through thick log walls I can hear the surf roaring among the rocks and beating the white driftwood like a thousand ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... falls outside of his cognizance? We have only to look back, to be assured of this. We may walk on tranquilly, Doctor, for, as sure as we live, no evil can befall us that does not have its origin within our own spirits. All the machinations of our most bitter enemies will come to naught, if we keep our hearts free from guile. They may rob us of our earthly possessions; but even this God will turn to ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... people no more received the pennies of the capitalists for the water they brought, they could buy no more water from the capitalists, having naught wherewith to buy. And when the capitalists saw that they had no more profit because no man bought water of them, they were troubled. And they sent forth men in the highways, the byways, and the hedges, crying, "If any thirst let him come to the tank and buy water ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... was a lad he was terribly bad. He worried his parents a lot; He'd lie and he'd swear and pull little girls' hair; His boyhood was naught but a blot. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams

... Tell it again,"— No matter how weary and worn. For we children knew naught Of the care we brought, Before our ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... self-will, wealth and self-indulgence. They, once the children of Ormuzd or light, had become the children of Ahriman or darkness; and therefore it was, as I believe, that Xerxes' 1000 ships, and the two million (or, as some have it, five million) human beings availed naught against the little fleets and little battalions of men who believed with a living belief in Athene and Apollo, and therefore—ponder it well, for it is true—with a living belief, under whatsoever ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading, it disperse to naught." ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... They even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural interpretation; pretended philosophers built walls of false political economy; pretended ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... of,—merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will. See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe with ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... me, nay to demand of me, a favour; it was, to receive a visit from Law regularly every week. I represented to him the perfect inutility of these conversations, in which I was incapable of learning anything, and still more so of enlightening Law upon subjects he possessed, and of which I knew naught. It was in vain; the Regent wished it; obedience was necessary. Law, informed of this by the Regent, came then to my house. He admitted to me with good grace, that it was he who had asked the Regent to ask me, not daring to do so himself. Many compliments followed on both sides, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... the ridicule of his brother at the spiritual-mindedness of Don Luis having thus come to naught, and recognizing also that he would not play a very dignified role in the village, where every one would say he had a poor knack at turning out saints—declined to be present, giving his occupations as an excuse; although he sent his blessing, and ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... way with us it will take no count of friendships or affinities. It will set precedence at naught. It will say to itself, "Here are two field ambulance cars and fourteen people. Five out of these fourteen are women, and what the devil are they doing in a field ambulance?" And it will appoint two surgeons, who will also serve ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... seemed as if there was naught in the apartment except the broad slanting ray of light that streamed in at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... the old man, speaking broader and broader in his earnestness. "If thy father would send thee,—nay, what am I saying?—if I took thee for naught and gladly, thou'dst sooner come to the old schoolmaster and his books than stay with pigs, even in a wood? Eh, laddie? ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... honour of the family with a better grace, and married West Indian magnates of whom, I believe, the world has never heard and would not care to hear: so strange a thing is this hereditary pride. Of Mr. Jackson, beyond the fact that he was Fleeming's grandfather, I know naught. His wife, as I have said, was a woman of fierce passions; she would tie her house slaves to the bed and lash them with her own hand; and her conduct to her wild and down-going sons was a mixture of almost insane self-sacrifice and wholly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the king from recalling you." [Footnote: Colbert a Duchesneau, 25 Avril, 1679.] Duchesneau, in return, protests all manner of deference to the governor, but still insists that he sets the royal edicts at naught; protects a host of coureurs de bois who are in league with him; corresponds with Du Lhut, their chief; shares his illegal profits, and causes all the disorders which afflict the colony. "As for me, Monseigneur, I have done every thing within the scope of my office to prevent ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... islands with a fleet, my experience in sailing to India by way of the cape of Buena Esperanca, and outside the island of San Lorenco, causes me to desist from that request, as I consider it impossible. But considering that the forces here are for naught else than defensive war, and how important it would be to dislodge the enemy from the Malucas Islands, it seems to me an easier and more advisable method for your Majesty to send the soldiers and sailors who could be a reenforcement, at the account of Philipinas, in the merchant ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... in a state of constant revolution almost ever since it achieved its independence. One military leader after another has usurped the Government in rapid succession, and the various constitutions from time to time adopted have been set at naught almost as soon as they were proclaimed. The successive Governments have afforded no adequate protection, either to Mexican citizens or foreign residents, against lawless violence. Heretofore a seizure of the capital ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... scourged by the cruel Indian wars plotted within her walls or sustained by her strength, such a blessing as was hailed with ringing bells and blazing bonfires throughout the Colonies; yet now we cannot think without pity of the hopes extinguished and the labors brought to naught in her overthrow. That strange colony of priests and soldiers, of martyrs and heroes, of which she was the capital, willing to perish for an allegiance to which the mother-country was indifferent, and fighting against the armies with which England was prepared to outnumber ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the AEsir strive to bind, Twice did they fetters powerless find; Iron or brass of no avail, Naught, save through magic, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... seemed to come nearer and nearer, closer and closer to her heart. It was the assurance of this presence that made those long days so happy to her, though when she was herself, she felt that it could be naught but a dream. Yet why should a dream move her so strangely, and why should a dream weary her so much? Why, after sleeping all night, should she awake feeling as though she had journeyed all night? Why should her limbs ache and she grow thin like one who travels without ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... of him from our friend he will tell me, I think, naught that is bad. You will be there to hear, and to arrest his words if they be evil. But I think him to be one from whose mouth no guile or folly ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... naught at all to do with the lord Eudemius!" said Nicanor. He explained, carefully, who he was, and whence he came and to whom he belonged, and they turned a deaf ear to him. He was the man they sought, even ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... [Evenly.] If he were, He would be shrewder, and not be paying money For what this woman is glad to do for naught. Nothing is cooked, and nobody is warmed,— A most unthrifty fire! Do you bid the Duke, Until he show me sounder cause for plaint, Permit this woman to gather unmolested Dead wood in his forest, and bear ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... go out of this 'ere yard. These stables is your jail. If you leave 'em I'll have to leave 'em too, and over the seas, in the County Mayo, an old mother will 'ave to leave her bit of a cottage. For two pounds I must be sending her every month, or she'll have naught to eat, nor no thatch over 'er head. I can't lose my place, Kid, so see you don't lose it for me. You must keep away from the kennels," says he; "they're not for the likes of you. The kennels are for the quality. I wouldn't take a litter of them woolly dogs for one wag ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... if he were some strange being quite beyond their ken. So he desisted; of course they could not understand him, and, of course, they knew nothing he wished to know. In this prison a sense of motion and direction was as naught. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... to a large estate. How are those powers used—how is that estate employed? The mind may accumulate large stores of knowledge without any useful purpose; but the knowledge must be allied to goodness and wisdom, and embodied in upright character, else it is naught. Pestalozzi even held intellectual training by itself to be pernicious; insisting that the roots of all knowledge must strike and feed in the soil of the rightly-governed will. The acquisition of knowledge may, it is true, protect a man against ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... you—powers that may never be known while you live. What matters it? So long as you have the love of a faithful few among those dear to you, all the fame that the earth can give counts for nothing. Take that which is near to you, and value as naught the praises of a vague monstrous world through which you pass as a shadow. Look at that squirrel who twirls and twirls in his cage. He wears his heart out in his ceaseless efforts at progression, and all the while his mocking prison whirls under him ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... were unaware of what had happened, Dante went on with his recitation of the poem. I could see very clearly that the madness of love was wholly upon him, the madness that makes a man lose all heed of what he does and be conscious of naught save the presence of the beloved. He stood there rigid, as one possessed, with his face turned in the direction where the lady Beatrice stood amid her women, and his hands, newly liberated from the control of the parchment ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... so it is,) That vows should go for naught. But she who strove to 'scape love's toils ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various

... only one cautionary word to utter. You may be saying to yourself: "So long as I stick to classics I cannot go wrong." You can go wrong. You can, while reading naught but very fine stuff, commit the grave error of reading too much of one kind of stuff. Now there are two kinds, and only two kinds. These two kinds are not prose and poetry, nor are they divided the one from the other by any differences of form ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... were deported. To provide for a more general riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overtures to the federal government looking to the creation of a territorial reservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this came to naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for the capitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves of the Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... alone, Mr. Penrose. There's an owd sayin' i' these parts that yo' cornd go into th' mill baat gettin' dusted. That means in yur talk that yo' cornd touch pitch baat gettin' blacked. If thaa goes to Mrs. Stott's they'll say thaart goan for naught good. If thaa wur a married mon, naa, and bed childer, it 'ud happen be different; but bein' single, thaa sees, th' aatside o' yon threshold is th' reight side for such as ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... this World's great Workmaister did cast, To make all things such as we now behold, It seems that he before his eyes had plast A goodly patterne, to whose perfect mould He fashion'd them as comely as he could, That now so fair and seemly they appear, As naught may be ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... their life in Samoa was so full of happiness for them as these first days—just those two alone, for the presence of their childlike native helpers counted as naught—with all the surroundings yet in a primitive state and little to remind them of the sophisticated world from which they had been glad to escape. Both were natural-born children of the wild. In the brief tropical twilight they often walked together and talked of the beautiful ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... kings with naught of a care To a hunting went; Three kings of stirrup fair And of ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice

... intercession and absolution of the Church, her refuge, in behalf of those she loved. The brains which were bold and crafty and couchant enough to dare the world's opprobrium in the conception of a scheme which held as naught the lives of men in highest places, would never have imparted it to the intelligence, nor sought the aid nor sympathy, of any living woman who had not, like Lady Macbeth, "unsexed herself"—not though she were wise and discreet as Maria Theresa or the Castilian Isabella. This woman knew ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... we hear him now in Hamlet or Henry the Fourth; like enough he would have been found a very disappointing person in a drawing-room. People stamp themselves on their work; if they have not done so they are naught, if they have we have them; and for the most part they stamp themselves deeper on their work than on their talk. No doubt Shakespeare and Handel will be one day clean forgotten, as though they had never been born. The world will in the end die; mortality therefore ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... naught amiss with the road. To the main road it will be sixteen miles—not more.... There's one little place... a bit awkward; but ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... to naught; you know how and why. Dear Natalie, in telling you my life, without reserve, without concealment, precisely as I tell it to myself, in relating to you feelings in which you have had no share, perhaps I have wounded some corner ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... deal to adultery. Children are born of the marriage, stories of the adulterous bed, and the world needs both—stories as well as children. Even my little tale would not exist if Doris had been a prudent maiden, nor would it have interested me to listen to her that day by the sea if she had naught to tell me but her unswerving love for Albert. Her story is not what the world calls a great story, and it would be absurd to pretend that if a shorthand writer had taken it down his report would compare with the stories of Isolde and Helen, but I heard it from ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... proceeding as an outrage and the suit as baseless. But his master, who saw judgment against himself for sixty dollars and his goods actually under attachment, was usually in no mood to listen to, much less believe, his clerk's explanations. At all events, they availed naught, when Levine, with an expression of horror at such deliberate mendacity on the part of the clerk, was ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... loss, that the fingers of an angry aunt have you tight by the scruff of your neck. My beautiful book was gone too—ravished from my grasp by the dressy lady, who joined in the outburst of denunciation as heartily as if she had been a relative—and naught was left me but to blubber dismally, awakened of a sudden to the harshness of real things and the unnumbered hostilities of the actual world. I cared little for their reproaches, their abuse; but I sorrowed heartily for my lost ship, my vanished island, my uneaten ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... sympathizing comrades, returned, and furious at the escape of their victim, burned his dwelling to the ground. Drentell never forgot his ignominious repulse nor the wound he received at the hands of Haim Kusel. His own offence counted as naught, so blunted was his moral sense. To inflict misery upon a Jew was at all times considered meritorious, but for a Jew to so far forget himself as to assault an officer of the Czar, was a crime for which the whole race would one day ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... ones of the High Priestess, who met his troubled look with serene and irresponsive gravity ... "Is there no touch of human pity in things divine? ... no mercy in the icy fate that rules our destinies? ... This child knows naught of what she does; she hath been led astray in a moment of excitement and religious exaltation, . . her mind hath lost its balance,—her thoughts float disconnectedly on a sea of vague illusions, ... Ah! ... by the gods! ... I understand ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... be proved, your Highness. If naught happens to me, or if I am protected from anything that does happen, then I will dare to call upon my god to work a sign and a wonder, and to humble Amon-Ra ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "Naught" :   zippo, cypher, zero, sweet Fanny Adams, zip, bugger all, cipher, nothing, nihil, nil



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