"Bootless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most close in blood, even by accident, is to incur the guilt of parricide, or kin-killing, a bootless crime, which can only be purged by religious ceremonies; and which involves exile, lest the gods' wrath fall on the land, and brings the curse of childlessness on the offender until ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... been burned to death or killed, for the roof of the barn had fallen in. After some little time, however, and after much struggling on my part, I was able to allay their fears by appearing before them. It required no small amount of pluck—as I call it—to face them—bootless, coatless, vestless, hatless, penniless, and, withal, with my feet and trousers besmeared with cow dung. But there is a time in every man's life when he shall come to evoke sympathy from his fellows. "He's coming!" they said, "Here he is!" they shouted, and as ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... parted company, the former to undertake a bootless quest for the red marauders, the latter to return to Leavenworth, their occupation gone. The government held itself responsible for the depredations of its wards, and the loss of the wagons and ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... It moved me, too, to see pieces of banners and funeral shields, and even shreds of wreaths that dear hearts had put there a century ago, now all ruined and rotten—some still clinging, water-sodden, to the coffins, and some trampled in the sand of the floor. I had spent some time in this bootless search, and was resolved to give up further inquiry and foot it home, when the clock in the tower struck midnight. Surely never was ghostly hour sounded in more ghostly place. Moonfleet peal was known over half the county, and the finest part of it was the clock bell. 'Twas said ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... dazed and bootless and coatless just as they had sprung from their blankets, they saw a wonderful sight. Fully six hundred Indians were coming again, in ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... model grand Perfected by the chivalry front which Both he and thou didst draw sweet childhood's milk. These men did quick condone the ev'ry act Which emanated from the Northern mind. Yearly were millions spent on bootless task Of feeding vacant minds on useless food Because unfitted to their various needs. "A little knowledge is a dang'rous thing" And doth unfit the plodding mass for toil, Which is their proper sphere; hence ev'ry thought Hard thrust within their skulls doth discontent Engender, and ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... echo as mechanic mimes These mortal minion's bootless cadences, Played on the stops of their anatomy As is the mewling music on the strings Of yonder ship-masts by the unweeting wind, Or the frail tune upon this withering sedge That holds its papery blades against the gale? —Men pass to dark ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of outlawry, and colored by the risks of their atrocious employment. They called themselves "Brothers of the Coast," and took a solemn oath not to secrete from each other any portion of the common spoil, nor uncharitably to disregard each other's wants. Violence and lust would have gone upon bootless ventures, if justice and generosity had not been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... away from his bootless visit to his wife shaking with rage, hating her with all the strength of a crude and primitive nature. He clenched his fists till his knuckles whitened, his teeth ground ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... hear that song without tears. I never hear it, even though its half-forgotten strains, dreamily warbled, are oddly mingled with a widely different tune, in a bootless effort at remembrance; but my youth, with its golden promise, which maturer manhood but meagrely fulfilled, turns with the shadowed years veiling its brightness, and looks sorrowfully upon my old age in its solitude and desolation; but my life, with its wasted energies and flagging ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "He was bootless, and his pants and many-pocketed jumper of coarse dungaree were exceedingly dirty, and looked as if they had been cut out with a knife and fork instead of scissors, they were so marvellously ill-fitting. His head-gear was an ancient Panama hat, which flopped about, and almost concealed his red-bearded ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward and, lifting ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who, before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of bootless talking and vain-glorious attempts to lead their fellows; and after they have found that men will no longer hear them, as indeed they never were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the rank ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... see your form In the dark forest depths; the shades of night, Nor less broad daylight, bring back to my view The charms that I avoid; all things conspire To make Hippolytus your slave. For fruit Of all my bootless sighs, I fail to find My former self. My bow and javelins Please me no more, my chariot is forgotten, With all the Sea God's lessons; and the woods Echo my groans instead of joyous shouts Urging ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... unrestrained joy and vivacity of the day emphasised the gloom that rilled the first of the two funeral carriages. Mavis stared with dull surprise at the rollicking gaiety of the afternoon: its callousness to her anguish irked her. It made her think how unnecessary and altogether bootless was the loss she had sustained. She tried to realise that God had singled her out for suffering as a mark of His favour. But at the bottom of her heart she nourished something in the nature of resentment against the Most High. She knew that, if only life could ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... his full column about seven hundred men. The number of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhaps five thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this, the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would be bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... then Oak, elm, cedar and red pine And staves, together did combine, With now and then a mast or spar, To make up what would go at par, At Stadacona—old Quebec— Where brave Montgomery got a check In a most bootless, foolish strife, Which cost him his undaunted life— Where Arnold got a broken thigh, Ere at West Point his treachery Brought Major Andre without hope To Washington's relentless rope! To Wolfe I'd like to wander back, But 'twill not do, so to my track I now reluctantly return, Who next is ready for ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... the demon cries, and blows A blast of sulphur from his mouth and nose. Ah! bootless aim! the critic fiend, Sagacious Yamen, judge of hell, Is judged in his turn; Parchment won't burn! His schemes of vengeance are dissolved ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... wend ye to the greenwood merrily, And let the light roes bootless from ye run. Marian and I, as sovereigns of your toils, Will wait within our bower ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... us which to wed; Love is love, and art is art; Wilt thou have a barren bed? Joyless mate and bloodless heart? She will bring thee for her dower Shrunken limb and shriveled breast, Bitter thralldom, bootless power, Days and nights of endless quest, She will take thee heart and brain, Hold thee with a vampire charm, Kiss thee cold in every vein, Drink thy blood ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... slowly, and hurt the watching man almost as if the torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in passionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the dirty jacket, and covering the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... in these rude quarters that Law and his companion established that which was the nearest approach to a home that either for the time might claim; and it was thus that both undertook once more that old and bootless human experiment of seeking to escape from one's own self. Silent now, and dutifully obedient enough was this erstwhile English beauty, Mary Connynge; yet often and often Law caught the question of her gaze. And often enough, too, he found his own questioning running back ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... married, as you have somehow ascertained, to Marian Mayfield, just before going to Europe. I corresponded with her from Glasgow. I did appoint a meeting with her on the beach, upon the fatal evening in question—for what purpose that meeting was appointed, it is bootless to tell you, since the meeting never took place—for some hours before I should have set out to keep my appointment, my grandfather was stricken with apoplexy. I did not wish to leave his bedside until the arrival ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... say. 685 Small need of inroad, or of fight, When the sage Douglas may unite Each mountain clan in friendly band, To guard the passes of their land, Till the foiled king, from pathless glen, 690 Shall bootless ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of Egremond," you cry,— "And all the 'bootless bene:' We know that poem, every word, And ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... that which is bootless," said old Dickson, "and distract not your own attention and mine from preserving you, whom it is the Douglas's wish to rescue, and whom, so please God and St. Bride, I consider as placed by my Chieftain under my charge. Believe me, this youth's death ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... tell Lyde of wedding-law slighted, Penance of maidens and bootless task, Wasting of water down leaky cask, Crime ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the doctor, and gave their own special cases and his anxiety all the credit for his grave looks; and all these half-finished streets and rough new roads in the east end of Carlingford were sown thick with the bootless suggestions of Dr Rider's love and fears. The crop did not show upon the vulgar soil, but gave lurking associations to every half-built street corner which he passed in his rounds many a day after, and served ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... is in the tower and he has John sought out and fetched: he bids that he be tied and bound, and says that he will have him hanged or burned and the ashes scattered to the wind. For the shame that the emperor has suffered, John shall pay the penalty (but it will be a bootless penalty!) because he has secreted in his tower the nephew and the wife of the emperor. "I'faith you speak the truth," quoth John; "I will not lie in the matter; I will stick to the truth throughout, and if I have done ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... what family or families was it born? If you can get an understanding answer to these two questions, an answer that will tell you what its relations stand for as well as what their name is, your inquiries will be anything but bootless. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... (for, without vanity, I have more of a king's mettle in me), might I—even I—aspire to my brother's crown!" Here he paused, and glanced rapidly and keenly at the marquis; but whether or not in these words he had sought to sound Montagu, and that glance sufficed to show him it were bootless or dangerous to speak more plainly, he resumed with an altered voice, "Enough of this: Warwick will discover the idleness of such design; and if he land, his trumpets must ring to a more kindling measure. John Montagu, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if he was not the knavish spirit that frightened the maidens of the villagery, that skimmed milk, and sometimes laboured in the green, and bootless made the housewife churn, and sometimes made the drink to bear no barm, and whether Puck did not mislead night wanderers, and then laugh at their harm, and do the work of hobgoblins? Puck acknowledged that the fairy spoke aright; said he was the merry wanderer of the night, playing ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... growing stronger, and with every trial nobly met, you will feel a growing assurance that nobleness is not a mere sentiment with you. I sympathize deeply in your anxiety about your mother; yet I cannot but remember the bootless fear and agitation about my mother, and how strangely our destinies were guided. Take refuge in prayer when you are most troubled; the door of the sanctuary will never be shut against you. I send you a paper which is very sacred to me. Bless Heaven that your heart is awakened to sacred duties ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... The bootless one looked furtively at the demijohn, still like a wary cur who snatches at and bolts with a stray bone. Then the pair set off at a jog ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... distance. To one, Naples was more important than Minorca, more important than a half-dozen ships in a possible fleet action; to the other, Egypt was more important than the presence of sixteen thousand veterans, more or less, on a European battle-field. It is impossible and bootless, to weigh the comparative degree of culpability involved in breaches of orders which cannot be justified. It is perhaps safe to say that while a subordinate has necessarily a large amount of discretion in the particular matter intrusted ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... corridor, and as the door closed behind her they went naturally and wordlessly into each other's arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long, long time. It was not a passionate embrace—passion would come later—it was as though each of them, after endless years of bootless, fruitless longing, had ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... of course, prowling about stealthily, or making frantic, bootless leaps at the swallows. A cat in a hayloft is a beautiful example of the eternal fitness of things. We had not heard of this fitness then, but we all felt that Paddy was in his own ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... though she had not heard his doom, so filled her with concern and indignation, that—her eyes and thoughts fixed upon him, at the other end of the class—she did not know when her turn came, but allowed the master to stand before her in bootless expectation. He did not interrupt her, but with a refinement of cruelty that ought to have done him credit in his own eyes, waited till the universal silence had at length aroused Annie to self-consciousness and a sense of annihilating confusion. Then, with a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... something! the more, and nobler, so much the better deed! Remembering this, that sons have ready access to their sires, who for the most part are their bitterest foes! and that to spare none we are sworn—how, and how deeply, it needs not to remind you. More words are bootless, since to all here it must be evident that these things, planned thus far with deep and prudent council, once executed with that dauntless daring, which alone stands for armor, and for weapons, and, by the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... its height; His viewless foe now laugh'd outright, When on his battle-ground he saw, That every savage tooth and claw Had got its proper beauty By doing bloody duty; Himself, the hapless Lion tore his hide, And lash'd with sounding tail from side to side. Ah! bootless blow, and bite, and curse! He beat the harmless air, and worse; For, though so fierce and stout, By effort wearied out, He fainted, fell, gave up the quarrel; The Gnat ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... fever and dysentery, and the prince himself contracted the beginnings of a mortal disorder. Thus the crowning victory of his career was the last of his triumphs. Like many other leaders of chivalry, he had not understood the limitations of his resources, and had dissipated on this bootless Spanish campaign means scarcely sufficient to grapple with the spirit of disaffection already undermining his power in Aquitaine. With shattered health and the mere skeleton of his gallant army, he made his way back over the Pyrenees. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... compassion for his poor people." Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the whole it was well to tread carefully in the matter, so I restored our prisoner's knife to him, and treated him with increased consideration. It was well-nigh dark when we beached the boat, and entirely so before we reached Havant, which was fortunate, as the bootless and hatless state of our dripping companion could not have failed to set tongues wagging, and perhaps to excite the inquiries of the authorities. As it was, we scarce met a soul before reaching ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle |
