"Unavailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do to make Rusty understand that we wanted him to follow a trail was unavailing. He simply could not do it. Kennedy coaxed and scolded. Rusty merely sat up on his hind legs and begged with those ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... discussion would be unavailing, Rodney relapsed into silence, but now his captors proceeded to ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... firm as a rock, and Mr. Shuffles was calm when he found that threats were unavailing. Mr. Lowington pointed out to his visitor the perils which lay in the path of his son. Mr. Shuffles began to be reasonable, and dined with the principal. A long and earnest consideration of the whole matter took place over the dessert. The fiat of expulsion ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... His brother disappeared for a moment under the water, but came to the surface and was hauled upon the roof. The brothers then strove frantically to tear a hole in the roof of the house with their bare hands, but their efforts were, of course, unavailing, and they were soon struggling for their own lives in the wreck at the viaduct. Both finally reached the shore. The body of Mrs. Gilmore, when taken from the ruins this morning, was but little mutilated, although her body was bloated ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... joined us in urging on the rest; but unless a general rush were made, nothing could be done. I felt as if my heart would burst with indignation and dread—indignation that strong men should see innocent ones suffer, dread lest our efforts might be unavailing. A'Dale and I rushed among the crowd, calling on them to come on. Our actions were perceived, though our words may not have been heard, by those in authority. Guards were advancing towards us. The magistrates ordered the executioners to proceed ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... contrary wind prevented the attack which, from desperation, he wished to make upon the Spanish, their gun-boats and sloops were already gathering round him, and on the 9th June the firing began, but it was weak and unavailing on the part of our ships, in spite of the heroic resolution of the crews. The fighting lasted two days, and on the Junta of Seville demanding a surrender pure and simple, Admiral Rosily, who knew that General Dupont had entered Cordova, asked ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... the terraces of the teocalli. As they came out upon the platform at the top he perceived, with rage and despair, that his own countrymen were about to be sacrificed with the usual ghastly ceremonies. The camp was near enough to the city for the white skins of the victims and their unavailing struggles to be distinctly seen by their comrades, who were nevertheless powerless to help them, and their distress and fury may ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... system. The consumption of opium, the one dissipation of the Chinese till now unadded to the three or four of the Caucasian, is said to be extending. If so, a Counter-blast to it from king or commonwealth will be as ineffectual as against its allied narcotic. Prohibitory laws will be even more unavailing than in the case of ardent spirits. It will run its course—a short one, we trust—and be followed or joined by new drugs contributed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple; ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with his keeping afloat, so at present again he might have been held agaze just by the presented grotesqueness of that vigil. Such ghosts of dead seasons were all he had now to watch—such a recaptured sense for instance as that of the dismal unavailing awareness that had attended his act of marriage. He had let submersion final and absolute become the signal for it—a mere minor determinant having been the more or less contemporaneously unfavourable effect on the business of Drury & Dean of the sudden disappearance of Mr. Dean with the ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... English must fall as a nation if such practices as Mr. Darwin had attempted in this case were to be tolerated;—when I thought of all this, I felt that though prayers for the repose of dead men's souls might be unavailing, yet a defence of their work and memory, no matter against what odds, might avail the living, and resolved that I would do my utmost to make my countrymen aware of the spirit now ruling among those whom they delight ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... violence, ten, fifteen, or twenty days; being of longer duration in old than in new towns; then diminishing in a progressive proportion from one 168 thousand a day to nine hundred, then to eight hundred, and so on until it disappeared. Whatever recourse was had to medicine and to physicians was unavailing; so that such expedients were at length totally relinquished, and the people, overpowered by this terrible scourge, lost all ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... after an unavailing interval of search for Garry, "if you're willing we'll motor to Finlake in Garry's car. He'll not be mindin'. I borrow it often. It's a bad night of course—but we could start now. And we can make time on the road. It's barely two ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and humor of this sportful proposal appealed to them at once. It also satisfied the Dutchman, who seconded it loudly, with excited enthusiasm. The protests of the granger's defender and friend were unavailing. They pushed him back, even threatening him with their guns when he would have interfered to stay the execution of this ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... due the succession of glorious victories won by the English yeomanry over the French army at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt; the ranks of the English army being so far superior, individually, to the ranks of the French, that superiority in the numbers of the French was unavailing. ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with you. And when she died—I believe broken-hearted—having never slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Adrian wander through the city, but search and question were alike unavailing; all whom he encountered and interrogated seemed to regard him as a madman, and these were indeed of no kind likely to advance his object. Wild troops of disordered, drunken revellers, processions of monks, or here and there, scattered ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... intense, he seized the keys, and again set to work. But all his attempts to open the drawers were unavailing, and this was not so much owing to the shaking of his hands as to his continual misconceptions. He could see, for instance, that a certain key would not fit the lock, and yet he continued to try and insert it. All on a sudden he recalled ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... supported by the Liverpool Territorials, the First North Lancashires, the Second King's Royal Rifles, and the Sussex Territorials. The Germans had large bodies of reenforcements held at Lille, but they were unavailing; and the British took the first line of trenches though it required fifteen and a half hours to do it. Then they went on until they were on the slope of the ridge. Beyond that, however, it seemed impossible to proceed, for the Germans had such an array of machine guns trained ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Their opposition, though unavailing, was not at all less spirited in the following reign, when they were compelled, in common with the rest of France, to acknowledge the power of the fifth Henry. But they again disengaged themselves from the English crown in 1431, after having remained in ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... monument I've reared,— Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing; And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared, Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing! ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... mingle my own assurances of sincere attachment to him, and my desire to prove it by every service I can render you. I know, indeed, that you are already under too good a patronage to need any other, and that my distance and retirement render my affections unavailing to you. They exist, nevertheless, in all their purity and warmth towards your father and every one embraced by his love; and no one has wished with more anxiety to see him once more in the bosom of a nation, who, knowing his works and his worth, desire to make him and his family for ever their ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... stormy weather the old woman was seen to rise out of the woods and stir and push the clouds before her with a broom. For a hundred yards around Witch Rock the ground is still accursed, and any attempt to break it up is unavailing. Nearly a century ago a scoffer named Reynolds declared that he would run his plough through the enchanted boundary, and the neighbors watched the attempt ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... absolutely, madam, though I am certain no more tenderly, than a lady to whom I am indebted for such kindnesses," returned the Prince. "But this is unavailing. We are not here to hold a court ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... given, were known by all Richmond to be leveled at Miss Triplett. Mr. Mordecai resented the verses and the dispute which followed resulted in a challenge. Dr. Bagby came to our rooms when Page McCarty was there and made an unavailing effort to secure peace. Both he and the general were unsuccessful in their pacific attempts, the duel took place and Page McCarty, who bore a name that had in former times become famous in the duelling annals of Virginia, killed his antagonist ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... water with great unwillingness, and at a small distance from the shore commenced struggling with his rider, whom he twice dashed from his back; the lad, however, clung to the bridle, and detained the animal. All his efforts, however, being unavailing to ride him deeper in, he fell to washing him strenuously with his hands, then leading him out, he dressed himself and returned by ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... consciousness pierced through the heavy, drunken stupor that pressed upon her brain. With vague movements of hands, she endeavoured to fasten the front of her dress, and with a groan rolled herself out of the light; but her efforts to fall back into insensibility were unavailing, and like the dawn that slips and swells through the veils of night, a pale waste of consciousness forced itself upon her. First came the curtains of the bed, then the bare blankness of the wall, and then the great ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... round his turn of triumph, takes, in French revolutions and such other fits of madness, his own period of wild revenge. The service of truth is made to appear as one thing, the service of God as another; and in that fatal separation religion dishonours itself with unavailing enmity to what nevertheless it is compelled at last to accept in humiliation; and science, welcoming the character which its adversary flings upon it, turns away with answering hostility from doctrines without which its ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... little Kitty's window-pane; and when in the morning Nurse drew up the blind, and burst into an exclamation of surprise, Kitty knew that her worst fear was realized, and that her prayer had been unavailing. The "Lord that dwelt on high" did not seem to have listened. She tried to nerve herself to bear the tidings which Nurse conveyed in as cheerful a tone as she ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... I hoped eagerly for the hearing of a footfall. We were in a labyrinth of dark streets where no one was astir. A wretched dog trotted up to us, followed at our heels a short distance, and left us as if he smelt no luck about us; our cajoleries were unavailing to keep ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for heart and flesh are failing, My spirit yielding in the strife; And anguish wild as unavailing Sweeps in a flood across ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... rope, it parted, and we dropped astern. Cries of despair rose from many of those on board when they saw what had occurred. We instantly got out our oars and endeavoured to pull up to the ship, but the quantity of water in her made all our efforts unavailing. To prevent the boat going down we were obliged to turn to and bail. Away we drifted, every moment, increasing our distance from the ship, and lessening our hope of being able to return. There stood our late companions on ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... smile. His present total liability lay in the dog beyond the wall, so the arab wasn't so badly fixed, after all. Besides, he owned property. It consisted of a bullfrog which he carried in his mouth, with its legs and web feet protruding in wriggly, but unavailing, protest. ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... other and meaner beliefs and hopes—faith in the higher Selfhood and its immortal Life. The Soul must perish! Despair seizes the Mind of man. For some time he resists the cruel demand; he produces argument after argument, appeal after appeal. All are unavailing. Why should the Soul be respected where nothing else is spared? Forced into surrender, the Mind at last yields up his best-beloved. Life is no more worth living now; black death and despair confront him; he cares no longer to be ruler ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... look about us and note the effects of the brigantine's disastrous encounter with the transport. Truly these were terrible enough, in all conscience; for although as soon as the uninjured portion of the crew had made sail upon the vessel, in their unavailing effort to escape, they had employed themselves in separating the wounded from the dead and carrying the former below to the cockpit— where the ship's surgeon was then busily engaged in attending to their hurts—there had not been time enough for them ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... of his treasure. His heart gave a quick bound when he failed to discover it in the place where he remembered to have put it. In dismay he instituted a search, which, of course, proved unavailing. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... fought only with his hands and feet. He tried by all the tricks known to wrestlers to break away from the boy, or to hurl him to the floor, but Ned had skill as well as strength, and all such efforts proved unavailing. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... upon her fate — Death, with its formidable band, Fever and pain and pale consumptive care, Determin'd took their stand: 55 Nor did the cruel ravagers design To finish all their efforts at a blow; But, mischievously slow, They robb'd the relic and defac'd the shrine. With unavailing grief, 60 Despairing of relief, Her weeping children round Beheld each hour Death's growing power, And trembled as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... mind demands solace and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings it can endure no employment not connected with those sufferings. Forcibly to turn away our attention to other subjects is a painful and in general an unavailing effort. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... There were in addition five men in the crew. We regret to add that Mr. Hazlehurst and Mr. Hubbard, a negro sailor known as Black Bob, and another man, name not mentioned, were drowned; the bodies were all recovered, but every effort to restore life proved unavailing." ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... love, knew what it was to toss all night on her sleepless bed and wet the pillow with her tears. De Souvary, who found himself every day deeper in the toils of his ravishing American, chafed and struggled with unavailing pangs; and as for Frank Rignold, he endured long periods of black depression as he watched from afar the steady progress of his rival's suit; and his moody face grew moodier and exasperation rose within him to ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... Where the joyous troops Of children, and the haunts I did so love? 0 my companions! O ye loved names Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. Gone divers ways; to honour and credit some: And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! I only am left, with unavailing grief One parent dead to mourn, and see one live Of all life's joys bereft, and desolate: Am left, with a few friends, and one above The rest, found faithful in a length of years, Contented as I may, to bear me on, T' ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... son," said Nani, "anger is always harmful. You remember that on your arrival here I promised that if your own efforts to obtain an interview with the Holy Father should prove unavailing, I would myself endeavour to secure an audience for you." Then, seeing how agitated the young priest was getting, he went on: "Listen to me and don't excite yourself. His Holiness, unfortunately, is not always prudently ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... treaties of extradition with Italy miscarriages of justice have occurred owing to the refusal of that Government to surrender its own subjects. Thus far our efforts to negotiate an amended convention obviating this difficulty have been unavailing. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... shrewdest private detective bureaus are put in possession of the few facts that have been ascertained. In a hundred directions public and private sleuths are set in motion. But their untiring efforts are unavailing. They have to combat a more adroit, more nervy and more intelligent force than they have ever before been brought in ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... unavailing is the prayer— The proud ones pass us by; Their chariots roll, their torches glare Cold on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... upon this so long as the man Adams remained with us; but when at length we had finished our breakfast, had reluctantly submitted to be trussed up again—because we could not help ourselves, and nothing could be gained by offering an unavailing resistance—and were once more shut in and left to ourselves, the skipper turned ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... could La Mothe do but obey? For a moment he glanced this way and that, uncertain, drawn to the one man who stood alone against such odds, yet knowing that to aid him was the surest way to make Hugues' sacrifice unavailing. Then he jumped for the stairs; but not before the doorway was darkened; not before he heard the dull clash of steel upon wood; not before Hugues had stifled a cry which told that the offering up of the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... horses lost their charms, "flowing bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was departing for ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... the outposts, on the approach of the formidable Piedmontese invader, and were concentrated at Rome, they numbered not more than some ten thousand men. Such an army was quite inadequate to cope with the superior power of the Florence government. Pius IX., therefore, in order to prevent an unavailing conflict, placed an order in the hands of his general-in-chief, to the effect that as soon as sufficient resistance was made, in order to show that violence was used against the Holy See, he should surrender the city. This was a trial to the devoted ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... appearance of the stricken man—stricken right into his big heart—precipitated Lady Charlotte's reflections and urged her to an unavailing fever of haste during the circuitous drive in moonlight to the port. She alighted at the principal inn, and was there informed that the packetboat, with a favouring breeze and tide, had started ten minutes earlier. She summoned the landlord, and described a lady, as probably one ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from all sides against the Tyrol were so immense that no hope remained to the inhabitants but by deeds of glory to throw a last radiance around their fall. The Tyrolese fought with desperate valor, but their heroism was unavailing. The superior forces of the enemy were everywhere victorious. The artillery of the Bavarians and French thinned the ranks of the mountaineers from day to day; whole ranks of the Tyrolese being mowed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... his room and made a systematic, though unavailing, search for Stephen's letter; thinking that by some chance he might have recovered it from Harold and had ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... which boasts of its popular education, that the Sequoia, a race 10,000,000 years old, sought its last refuge in the United States, with individual trees older than the entire history and civilization of Greece, that an appeal to the American people was unavailing, that the finest grove was cut up for lumber, fencing, shingles, and boxes! It must not be recorded that races of animals representing stocks 3,000,000 years of age, mostly developed on the American continent, were eliminated in the course of fifty years for ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... lest he should injure it in the violence of his insanity; but, terrified by the alteration of his features, stood transfixed by the bedside. He grasped my shoulder convulsively, and, striking his breast with the other hand, made a desperate attempt to articulate. It was unavailing; he extended his arm towards them, and made another violent effort. There was a rattling noise in the throat—a glare of the eye—a short stifled groan—and he ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... reminded that these sufferings ought not to be regarded in the light of punishment, but that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Some texts were read at her request. "They are very nice," she said, "but I cannot receive them all now." Truly this was a time when all human help was felt to be unavailing, and when none but the Ruler of the waves Himself could speak a calm; and, if we may judge from the subsequent altered and tranquil expression of her countenance, her petitions were mercifully granted. ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... been tried is a consolation to us, and that we are relieved by the assurance that our sufferings are not special and peculiar, but common to us with many others. Death has always been a terror to me, and at times, nay generally, religion and philosophy have been altogether unavailing to mitigate the terror in any way. But it has been a comfort to me to reflect that whatever death may be, it is the inheritance of the whole human race; that I am not singled out, but shall merely have to pass through what the weakest have had ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... love of Margaret Roper continued to display itself in those outwardly unavailing tokens of tenderness to his (her father, Sir Thomas More's) remains, by which affection seeks to perpetuate itself; ineffectually, indeed, for the object, but very effectually for {11} softening the heart and exalting ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... such, that no man should have cause to weep for her. Then rising, she entered the prison, and its gloomy doors were locked and bolted on her. Shocked and dismayed, but still resisting the weakness of unavailing lamentation, she called for her book, and devoutly prayed that she might build her house upon ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... attended with too much [unavailing] horror! I found him, I have already said, bereft of life; his breast was pierced [lit. open], and his blood upon the [surrounding] dust dictated [lit. wrote] my duty; or rather his valor, reduced to this condition, spoke to ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... unsatisfying, baseless, idle, trifling, unserviceable, bootless, inconstant, trivial, unsubstantial, deceitful, ineffectual, unavailing, useless, delusive, nugatory, unimportant, vapid, empty, null, unprofitable, visionary, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... grief of the face of the daughter of Minos as she lies deserted by her lover on the rocky shore of Naxos be a poignant and a present woe, there is the shadow of its mate on the brow and lips of the girl who gazes at its pure and pallid and all-unavailing loveliness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee, Or threats thy Heaven-born spirit tame? Or threats thy Heaven-born spirit tame? Too long the slave has groaned, bewailing The power these heartless tyrants wield; Yet free them not by sword or shield, For with men's hearts they're unavailing; Have pity on the slave; Take courage from God's word; Toil on! toil on! all hearts ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... my friend! since unavailing woe Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain - Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low, Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain: But thus unlaurelled to descend in vain, By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... might have been made with a London group, but only on condition of a four per cent guarantee for twelve years, another condition which, less wisely, was also rejected. In the {141} end the quest proved unavailing. It is true that the Paris firm of Cohen, Reinach and Co. entered the syndicate, and that the London house of Morton, Rose and Co. also joined. It was really, however, the New York end of that firm, Morton, Bliss and Co., ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... yards! What was that to the raking stride of his untamed mare? It would be gone in a few seconds. Action was the only thing to serve him, and such action as instinct prompted him to was utterly unavailing. With a mighty heave of his body, and with all the strength of his sinewy arms, he tried to pull the creature on to her haunches. As well try to stem the tide ahead of him. She threw up her head until it nearly struck him ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... ground on which to meet, speech is unavailing and mere waste of time. It is like shouting to a person at a distance whom it is impossible to approach. If he notices anything it will only be that, for some reasons of your own, you are making ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... The imperious necessities of war take no heed of economic principles. The work which the secretary had done became as the rope of sand. It is not surprising that Gallatin wearied of his post; that he watched with vain regret and unavailing sighs the unavoidable increase of the national debt, and that he sought relief in other services where success was not so evanescent as in the Treasury Department. Before the close of Madison's administration, February ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... another," he replied, in a tone so calm that it sounded almost cold to her ear. "I found you suffering, and I have employed what knowledge I possess of the healing art to restore you to health. I rejoice to find that my efforts have not been totally unavailing." ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Vain this unavailing battle, vain this woeful loss of life, 'Gainst the death-compelling Bhishma hopeless in ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... ground o'erspread. He grasps the rock unmov'd, and proudly shoots As high to heav'n his head, as down to hell his roots. With storms as fierce the lab'ring Hero torn, 555 Now here now there by swelling passion borne Sunk in his soul a mighty load of woe, His mind unshook—tears unavailing flow. ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,—some average marriage with children and home would have given her more fully the human modicum of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In no other circumstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... fiercer, for Rossi's rage has a background of intensest suffering. One is an enraged tiger, the other a wounded lion. Both are maddened—the one with wrath, the other with pain. But in the last act, with the unutterable anguish of its closing scenes—the swift remorse, the unavailing agony of that noble nature, too late undeceived, the wild, pathetic tenderness wherewith Othello clasped the dead Desdemona to his heart, smoothing back her loosened tresses with an inarticulate cry of almost superhuman love and woe—the horror of the catastrophe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... emotions of sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... warnings and efforts to stifle this irrepressible and joyous expectation were quite unavailing and, as he decided after he had been home a week, equally unnecessary, for the unaccustomed, piquant sense of anticipation remained with him and gave a flavor to his days which in themselves were not lacking in flavor; for merely to look, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... protoplasm, seem to me almost more overwhelming still. This evidence proceeds on different lines from that adduced by Mr. Spencer, but it points to the same conclusion, namely, that though luck will avail much if backed by cunning and experience, it is unavailing for any permanent result without them. There is an irony which seems almost always to attend on those who maintain that protoplasm is the only living substance which ere long points their conclusions the opposite way to that which they desire—in ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... of the spirits was next dwelt upon. The strength of man, it was stated, was unavailing in opposition to theirs. No human power could prevent the table from moving when they pulled it. During the evening this pulling of the table occurred, or rather was attempted, three times. Twice the table moved when my attention was withdrawn from it; on a third occasion, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... I grant you, jealousy's a proof of love, But 'tis a weak and unavailing medicine; It puts out the disease, and makes it show, But has no ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... morning strong out of weakness. He determined that he would be checked no longer by unavailing regrets, and that his repentance should be open and manly, as his prostration had been conspicuous. Fortified by the humiliating experience of his own want of strength he sought for help in resolute determination and earnest prayer. After breakfast, his first step was to call on ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... occasion being gone that made his strength, he sat there impotent; he was still the viper, but now spent his venom on a file. Two more thoughts occurred to me while yet we sat at breakfast: the first, that he was abashed—I had almost said, distressed—to find his wickedness quite unavailing; the second, that perhaps my lord was in the right, and we did amiss to fly from our dismasted enemy. But my poor master's leaping heart came in my mind, and I remembered it was for his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this man always accompanied him whenever he went out. To such surveillance Mr. Coleridge cheerfully acceded, in order to show the promptitude with which he seconded the efforts of his friends. It has been stated that every precaution was unavailing. By some unknown means and dexterous contrivances, Mr. C. afterward confessed that he still obtained his usual ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... that moment of terror, Flavia's indulgence in the feminine weakness was short, for it was measured by the time she devoted to thoughts of her own fortunes. Quickly, very quickly, she overcame her weakness; she stood up, she understood, and she extended her arms in rage and grief and unavailing passion. That rage which treachery arouses in the generous breast, that passion which an outrage upon hospitality kindles in the meanest, that grief which ruined plans and friends betrayed have bred ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... shoulder. This time it was the old seaman himself going out of his way to pick up the uninteresting waif—all that there was left of that sudden and sordid shipwreck. To Willems, the rough, friendly voice was a quick and fleeting relief followed by a sharper pang of anger and unavailing regret. That voice carried him back to the beginning of his promising career, the end of which was very visible now from the jetty where they both stood. He shook himself free from the friendly ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... misery of a bloody calamity. The man is called upon, too probably, to die; but to die at the very moment when, by any momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a murderer. He had but the twinkling of an eye for his effort, and that effort might, at the best, have been unavailing; but from this shadow of a chance, small or great, how if he has recoiled by a treasonable lachete? The effort might have been without hope; but to have risen to the level of that effort, would have rescued him, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... reproaches of the Great Captain for this treachery—as fierce and bitter as they were unavailing. On August 20, 1504, Cesare Borgia took ship for Spain—a prisoner bound for a Spanish dungeon. Thus, at the early age of twenty-nine, he passed from Italy and the deeds that well might have ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... and the pistols had also disappeared, an inquiry was instituted as to the old lady's whereabouts, and Mount Eskar was one of the first places where she was sought, but without success; and all other inquiries were equally unavailing. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... it was Mr. Potter to whom he was referring Mr. Emberg added at the bottom of the story, and under a separate single-line head, a note to the effect that all efforts were unavailing to get an interview with Hamden Potter, the financier, who that day had returned from Europe with his family, as Mr. Potter would see no reporters. It was added that Mr. Potter's connection with the subway interests might throw some light on the reason for the declaration ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... to his feet, and walked up and down the beach. "Ah, you hide your feelings well," he cried, and his laughter was a trifle unconvincing and a bit angry. "But it is unavailing with me. I know! I know the sick and impotent hatred of me that is seething in your heart; and I feel for you the pity you pretend to entertain toward me. Yes, I pity you. But what would you have? Frankly, while in many ways an estimable man, you are no fit mate for ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... insisted on being paymaster, and tendered a sum that the black major thought so extravagantly great, considering the entertainment we had received, that he declined taking more than one half. However, Mr Bang, after several unavailing attempts to press the money on the man, who, by the by, was simply a good looking blackamoor, dressed in a check shirt, coarse but clean white duck trowsers, with the omnipresent handkerchief bound round his ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of the city and the lives and fortunes of its inhabitants. The people in their darkened dwellings fell a prey to the helpless bewilderment which comes over men before the floods, the devastating upheavals of the earth, against which all wisdom and all force are unavailing. The same phenomenon occurs each time that the established order of things is overthrown, when public security is at an end, and when all that the laws of man or of nature protect is at the mercy of some blind elemental force. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... dissolved pearls which the quack doctor, Leoni di Spoleto, prescribed for him (as if he desired to adapt his remedies rather to the riches of his patient than to his necessities) were useless and unavailing, and so he had come to understand that he must part from those gentle-tongued women of his, those sweet-voiced poets, his palaces and their rich hangings; therefore he had summoned to give him absolution for his sins—in a man of less high place they might perhaps have ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... when he thought of home, and the death he seemed doomed to die. In this position he lay from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon; when, finding that all his efforts to extricate himself were unavailing, he tried several times, without effect, to get his knife out of his pocket to cut ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... These unavailing regrets, and the disappointments and sorrow that preyed upon him, undoubtedly aggravated the bitterness and severity ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... and, inclining her head slightly over her shoulder, wrung out the long black tresses, twisting them persistently, while she stood, sad and absorbed, like one listening to an inward voice—the voice of bitter, of unavailing regret. The thunder had ceased, the wind had died out, and the rain fell perpendicular and steady through a great pale clearness—the light of remote sun coming victorious from amongst the dissolving blackness ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... State between the three great monarchies, has uniformly been avowed, and if the undersigned has not been directed to press such a measure, it has only arisen from a disinclination to excite, under all the apparent obstacles to such an arrangement, expectations which might prove an unavailing source of discontent among ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in doing so, he would have given more offence than he gained popularity by condescending to perform the office of chief-mourner. Of this he was quite aware, and wisely withheld rebuke, where rebuke and advice would have been equally unavailing. In truth, the Scottish peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining it; and I have known many in the lowest stations, who ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Who would live deceived, erring, unjust, dissolute, discontented, dejected? "No one." No wicked man, then, lives as he likes; therefore no such man is free. And who would live in sorrow, fear, envy, pity, with disappointed desires and unavailing aversions? "No one." Do we then find any of the wicked exempt from these evils? "Not one." Consequently, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... is that we have more to fear from success than from defeat .. .the danger is lest one of our generals be crowned with victory and lest ... he lead his victorious army against the capital to secure the triumph of the Despot." But the counsels of extreme radicals were unavailing. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... necessary for the somersault was devoted to that operation. The superfluity went to the reservoir. So, also, when in his play of scaling imaginary rocks after fictitious wild beasts he endeavored futilely to walk up the play-room wall, the unavailing energy went to augment the stores from which Jarley hoped to extract so much that would prove of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... his ideas of right and wrong were veiled in pagan darkness. He took the life of his child to save her from a fate incomparably worse than that of death; and made his name historic by doing so. Thousands of fathers have found their efforts to protect the innocence of their daughters as unavailing as did the unhappy Virginius, unless, like him, they shortened life. The victims, too, are as little free-will agents in the matter as Virginia would have been; and many thousands of daughters have fallen, not by their father's hand to ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... at Fort Leavenworth; and the cattle-thieves whom Bob Owens had captured at the squatter's cabin had been turned over to the civil authorities. George did all he could to secure Springer's release, but his efforts were unavailing, and with his companions he was sentenced to the penitentiary for a long term of years. Mr. Wentworth had come out all right. With the aid of his friend, Mr. Holmes, he had gathered up all his cattle that had been stampeded by the Mexican raiders, ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... recognized Chopin's Nocturne, to which I had listened with kindling hope on the night of the storm. Was it my own mood, or did she play it with far more pathos and feeling than on that never-to-be-forgotten evening? Be that as it may, it evoked a fiercer storm of unavailing passion and regret in my mind. In bitterness of heart I groaned aloud and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... protection could not be expected even by a personal favorite and a scholar of large acquisitions, when, not content with holding doctrines deemed heretical, he strove to promulgate them. The interposition of Margaret of Angouleme had proved unavailing in his behalf. The heretics who had now ventured to nail an expose of their dogmas on his bedchamber door could ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... sentries, through the cavernous mouth of the main gate into the inner precincts of the Citadel. How powerful a fortress in days gone by it must have been, they thought, but how short lived and unavailing it would prove before modern artillery. They came to a halt before the great Mosque of Mahommed Ali, and the fine, tapering minarets met with their deepest approval. At the entrance they assumed the apologetic sandals and were taken in hand by an obtrusive dragoman, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... the morning papers hastened to see President Angell, who insisted that if he had made such a remark it was in fun. But it was unavailing. The despatch had stirred up the officials in Washington, and the morning papers that printed the President's explanation printed over it the official statement, that the Porte was objecting to Dr. Angell, on account of his close relationship ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... a seat he had just sat down upon, stamped his feet on the floor, raised his voice as high as he could, and exhibited all the rage and defiance and boldness that he could. This was all done, I knew, to intimidate me, but, blessed be God, he did not succeed. Finding his efforts unavailing, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... rustling and butchering of an 88 cow, which Lanpher had ill-advisedly essayed to fasten upon Mr. Dale. But, due to the interference of Chuck Morgan, a Bar S rider, who later married Jane Dale, Lanpher's attempt had been unavailing. It may be said in passing that Lanpher had suffered both physically and mentally because of that visit. Of course he had neither forgiven Chuck Morgan nor the Bar S for backing up its puncher, which it had done ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White |
