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Unsuccessful   /ˌənsəksˈɛsfəl/   Listen
Unsuccessful

adjective
1.
Not successful; having failed or having an unfavorable outcome.
2.
Failing to accomplish an intended result.  Synonyms: abortive, stillborn.  "A stillborn plot to assassinate the President"



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"Unsuccessful" Quotes from Famous Books



... a touching endeavour to appear better, but too often ability refused to second will; too often the attempt to bear up failed. The effort to eat, to talk, to look cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an hour passed during which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could never more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking might ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... back and forth to the plantation, or by one of master's house servants, a day ahead. The preparation required to receive our white guests was that each little negro was to be washed, and clad in the best dress he or she had. But before this was done, the unsuccessful attempt was made to straighten out our unruly wools with some small cards, or Jim-Crows as we ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer

... report on December 29, 1915, from the British War Office mentioned an unsuccessful attack by the Germans on one of the British aerodromes by four machines, only two of which reached their objective, and no damage was done to them, although one of the British aeroplanes was shot down. On December 29, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... Dec. 7th, the question again came up in its order, and after several unsuccessful attempts to procure a vote on Mr. Wilson's motion to lay the Impeachment Resolution on the table, Mr. Wilson, by agreement, withdrew his motion, and called for the yeas and nays on the adoption ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... reproductive instinct owing to repeated rebuffs. She is now at the self-immolating stage. Rather dangerous. Falls about. Her knees give way. Might cut her head open. Great struggle for supremacy apparently with flapper sister. Both passionate girls, of course. Only thrown up sponge after hard and unsuccessful fight. Local doctor orders iron, quinine, and strychnine. It's a wonder he didn't order brimstone and treacle. Mother doesn't understand the condition at all, but is sufficiently wise to suspect that the behaviour of a certain ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... persecution of the Arminians, and his selfish intrigues, the confidence of the people. Conspiracies against his life were formed: fortune no longer favoured his arms. His attempts to compel the Marquis Spinola to raise the siege of Breda were unsuccessful. This reverse of fortune preyed upon his mind. He thought himself haunted by a spectre of Barneveldt: he was frequently heard, during his last illness, to exclaim, "Remove this head from me!" "This anecdote," says the author of the Resume ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... became of age he entered upon a course of extravagant expenditure. This, with unwise and unsuccessful wars, finally piled up debts to the amount of nearly a million of marks, or, in modern money, upwards of 13,000,000 pounds. To satisfy the clamors of his creditors, he mortgaged the Jews (S119), or rather the right of extorting money from ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... or two unsuccessful attempts to bend the branch down, that was just what they did do. Bobby managed to bend it within arm's reach of Meg, who detached the little cat much as you pick a caterpillar off a leaf. Though the cat stuck tighter to the branch than ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley

... hold his peace. After a year and a half of earnest preaching an attempt was made by the Jews to drive Paul out of the city by bringing accusations against him before the Roman proconsul Gallio, but in this they were unsuccessful. Paul tarried and worked here until it seemed best for him to turn his steps homeward again to Antioch. The keynote of his preaching in this city is given by him in his First Epistle to the Corinthians where he says (2:2), "For I determined ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... he had been an unsuccessful man all his life, and had much to reproach himself with, for we got quite confidential at last. He added that he had a family in England—what family he didn't say—whom he was anxious to make wealthy by way of reparation for past misdeeds, and that was why he was treasure-hunting. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... much the youngest, was the most advanced in the class. Afterwards, finding it was impossible to do for him what this strange child required, Dr Jaeger advised his removal, and gave him a private lesson of an hour every day instead. This was continued with only a few months' interruption and unsuccessful trial of a school at Hamburg, till Barthold was eighteen, when he was sent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... state religion. The attempt made by the emperor Shi-Hoang-Ti in the third century after his death to suppress his memory and the books connected with his name, was, though conducted with great vigour, unsuccessful. The teaching of Mencius (371-288 B.C.), the most distinguished of his disciples, added no new element to that of Confucius. Two movements, however, have to be noticed, which in different ways aimed at giving something richer and deeper than Confucianism, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... abortion, or whereby the child within her is killed, it is not murder or manslaughter by the law of England, because it is not yet in rerum natura.'' But the common law appears, nevertheless, to have treated as a misdemeanour any attempt to effect the destruction of such an infant, though unsuccessful. Blackstone (1723-1780), to be sure, a hundred years later, says that, "if a woman is quick with child, and by poison or otherwise killeth it in her womb, or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... weeks to that auspicious day when Lavender House was to be the scene of one long triumph, and was to be the happy spot selected for a midsummer holiday, accompanied by all that could make a holiday perfect—for youth and health would be there, and even the unsuccessful competitors for the great prizes would not have too sore hearts, for they would know that on the next day they were going home. Each girl who had done her best would have a word of commendation, and only those ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... may be placed upon the above measure to restore animation, than upon the warm bath. Still this is sometimes useful, and therefore must not be neglected. Whilst inflation is going on, the bath may be got ready, then resorted to, and if unsuccessful, inflation may and ought again to be followed up.[FN28] If the bath is useful at all, it will be so immediately upon putting the infant into it; respiration will be excited, followed by a cry; and if this does not occur at once, it would be wrong ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... poet to equal rank beside her had she possessed the power. She could and did defy the Family, and subdue her worshipping father, the most noble prince, to a form of paralysis of acquiescence—if I make myself understood. But she was unsuccessful in her application for the sanction ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... effort is made to study the effects of these methods, the results of their enforcement and the causes of their nonenforcement, no one is justified in declaring that either policy is successful or unsuccessful. It is very easy to select from the meager facts now available convincing proofs both that prohibition does not prohibit and that high license leads to increased drunkenness. The consequence is that the movements to control, restrict, or prohibit the use of alcohol are ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... England. Henry II had to live to see the man who had refused him the old accustomed obedience, reverenced among his people with almost divine honours as one of the greatest saints that had ever lived. The great Hohenstaufen in the unsuccessful struggle with the Papacy was at last brought to declare that all he had hitherto done rested on an error; and in like manner, but one far more humiliating and painful, Henry II had to do penance, and receive the discipline of the scourge, at the tomb of the man who had been murdered by his ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... beat and utterly tired out from a second unsuccessful search for the Captain. The floe is of enormous extent, for though we have traversed at least twenty miles of its surface, there has been no sign of its coming to an end. The frost has been so severe ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Canadian Fork of the Arkansas, named by him the St. Andre, became entangled in the shallows and quicksands of that difficult river, fell into disputes with his men, and, after protracted efforts, returned unsuccessful.[383] ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... own glass, and swept the water in the direction named. After one or two unsuccessful trials, his eye caught the object; and as the moon had now some power, he was at no loss to distinguish its character. There was evidently a boat, and one that, by its movements, had a design of holding ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... big!" cried Grace, as she wandered about the spacious rooms. But she had hold of Amy's arm, it might be noticed, and both girls kept rather near to Mr. Blackford. He had come back unsuccessful in his ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession, where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The counsellor at law, who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than twenty others, who are ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... terrible haste, he snatched the keys, and began trying them again. But he was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the locks. It was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he kept making mistakes; though he saw for instance that a key was not the right one and would not fit, still he tried ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... I was not wholly unsuccessful, and every time I raised my eyes, I was sure to find those of Monsieur de Chavannes riveted on my face with a deep, earnest gaze, which, though it was instantly averted even before our glances met, showed ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... All attempts at Chiswick failed with some of the more esculent species, and Mr. Ingram at Belvoir, and the late Mr. Henderson at Milton, were unsuccessful with native ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... of the Red Sea, and embarked upon the Nile with a retinue of twenty-one hired men and twenty soldiers, but he could not get past Gondokoro, and ran extreme risk of his life among the negro tribes, who were in full revolt. The expedition directed by M. d'Escayrac de Lauture made an equally unsuccessful attempt to reach the famous ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... glass to her lips, and after several small sips, appearing to be so many unsuccessful attempts at overcoming her reluctance to drink it, she at length took courage, and bolting it down, immediately applied her apron to her mouth, making at the same time two or three wry faces, gasping, as if to recover the breath which it did not ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... nothing by his attempt to blacken his wife's character except the contempt of everyone, and even the few friends he had gained turned their backs on him until no one would associate with him but Slivers, who did so in order to gain his own ends. The company had quarrelled over the unsuccessful result of Villiers' visit to the Pactolus, and Slivers, as senior partner, assisted by Billy, called Villiers all the names he could lay his tongue to, which abuse Villiers accepted in silence, not even having ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... warlike enemy in his mountains and forests, where the arts of war as practised by the former were not so readily applicable as in the plains, or the more probable circumstance that Domitian had been unsuccessful in an expedition against two other tribes, the Quadi and Marcomanni, and needed the support of Julianus, certain it is that the overtures of Decebalus were at length received favourably, and a peace was concluded with him in the year 90, which was ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... fighting Shin priests had become so powerful as arsenals and military headquarters, that in 1570, Nobunaga, skilful general as he was, and backed by sixty thousand men, was unsuccessful in his attempt to reduce them. For ten years, the war between Nobunaga and the Shin sectarians kept the country in disorder. It finally ended in the conflagration of the great religious fortress at Osaka, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... although so far my applications to him on your behalf have been unsuccessful, I think it only right and prudent in you to write to him yourself, and remind this affectionate father that you are still in the land ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... or Fraser, who, being found to be spies, tried to escape, but were caught and made to witness the young King Magnus' coronation in his father's lifetime.[3] These embassies, though backed by offers of money compensation, were wholly unsuccessful. ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... many of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the island. That he believed they would join him as volunteers; and that he only asked two hundred men of his own regiment as a nucleus. General Washington declined granting the request. But subsequently, an unsuccessful attempt was made under the command of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... interwove the complicated, slender strands of college gossip. But a woman of barely thirty, too old for friendships with young girls, too young to find her placid recreation in the stereotyped round of social functions, that seemed so perfectly imitative of the normal and yet so curiously unsuccessful at bottom—what was there ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam

... morning jacket, with the black calico sleeves, was returning in a rather desponding state from an unsuccessful survey of the mysterious house with the green gate, when, raising his eyes, he beheld a crowd pouring down the street, surrounding an object which had very much the appearance of a sedan-chair. Willing to divert his thoughts from the failure of his enterprise, he stepped aside to see ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... to love, and to revere, a being so compassionate and beneficent. If Physicians are, what I once heard them called by a lively friend, the Soldiers of Humanity, engaged in a perpetual, and too often, alas! unsuccessful conflict against the enemies of life; HOWARD is not only entitled to high rank in our corps, but he is the very Caesar of this hard, this perilous, and, let me add, this most honourable warfare. Perhaps the ambition of the great Roman Commander, insatiate and sanguinary as ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... He sought a position as clerk or bookkeeper in several stores; but was unsuccessful. Then he tried other kinds of work; but no one appeared to want him. Benjamin went with him to several places, to introduce him and intercede for him; but there was no opening for him. Days passed away, and still he was without ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... a sarcasm that brought the colour to Louis's thin cheek and made Marcella angrier than before. She saw nothing in his attack on Wharton, except personal prejudice and ill-will. It was natural enough, that a man of Anthony Craven's type—poor, unsuccessful, and embittered—should dislike ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Oglethorpe, who was at this time the victim of unfavorable reports and calumnious stories, that had been spread by disaffected members of the infant settlements in Georgia, and by some of the officers who had served under him in his unsuccessful attempt to reduce the town of Saint Augustine in Florida, "The fort at Saint Augustine," to which the writer of this Journal refers, as having been taken while under the command of Oglethorpe, was Fort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... cruel fair. 10 Urged with his fury, like a wounded deer, O'er these he fled; and now approaching near, Had reach'd the nymph with his harmonious lay, Whom all his charms could not incline to stay. Yet what he sung in his immortal strain, Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain; All, but the nymph that should redress his wrong, Attend his passion, and approve his song. Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise, He catch'd at love, and fill'd his ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... and prettily dressed lady, who had been bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities of the world by the death of an indulgent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands; or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appealing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some small prosperities which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming to have largely contributed to them by his unbought notices ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and took up arms against him, being supported by some French Roman Catholic priests who had settled in the islands. They tried to embroil him, as they had already done Queen Pomare, of Tahiti, with their own government, but were unsuccessful, and with the assistance of King George ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... himself firmly against the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws and—barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability, and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound—it was part bark, part growl, and in part a bloodhound's ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... formerly kept a gaming table; Mr —— ——, also a professional gambler; Lord Henry Bentinck, and Mr F. Cumming. Lord Henry appears to have taken no very active part in the proceedings; the other three had lost money in play with Lord de Ros, and, as unsuccessful gamblers have done before and since, considered that they ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... my dear madam, that the search should have been so unsuccessful, and can only say, that all that could be done has been done. That the will is concealed somewhere I have not a shadow of doubt, unless, of course, it has been torn up before this. As to that I give no opinion; and, indeed, as it is a matter in ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... at the same time going through an apprenticeship to journalism, of which it will be more convenient to speak in the next chapter. It is enough to say for the present that his first efforts were awkward and unsuccessful. After he was called to the bar, he read for the LL.B. examination of the University of London; and not only obtained the degree but enjoyed his only University success by winning a scholarship. One of his competitors was the present Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. This performance ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... was sunk on August 19. Coming close on the unsuccessful Lusitania negotiations and a continuation of submarine attacks in which Americans had suffered, it seemed that the United States and Germany had at last reached the point of a break. Then, on September 1, came the first rift in the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... March. Thence Baudin proceeded to De Witt Land, which was almost unknown when he visited it the first time. He hoped to succeed better than De Witt, Vianen, Dampier, and St. Allouarn, who had all been unsuccessful in their efforts to explore it; but the breakers, reefs, and sandbanks, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... impossible; the psychical, cerebral faculty is perfectly awake, and master of itself, but not the stimulating faculty, so that the limbs do not respond to the first impulse of the will. All my efforts are unsuccessful; I only succeed in escaping from this unpleasant situation by uttering with great difficulty some inarticulate sound, which acts as a shock, and I thus obtain the mastery of my body, for the nerves of speech ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... were selling like hot cakes at ten cents a piece. The Ammons's finances were looking up. In many homes today, throughout the country, there must exist yellowed copies of the card, the only tangible reminder of an unsuccessful gamble in ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... he could not conceal the torments of unsuccessful love. He stirred his tea moodily, and his usual appetite for plum-cake ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... fear that the savages, though we do not see them, are watching the banks, and that the attempt would be unsuccessful; yet, as a last resource, we must try it," answered Captain Mackintosh. "I will ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston

... husband's absence produced a state of suspense. This, however, approached to a period, and she received tidings of his intended return. Maxwell, being likewise apprized of this event, and having made a last and unsuccessful effort to conquer her reluctance to accompany him in a journey to Italy, whither he pretended an invincible necessity of going, left her to pursue the measures which despair might suggest. At the same time she received a letter from the wife ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... as she spoke, and her eyes roved pensively round the discoloured walls, those same walls whose condition had fired Mollie to make her unsuccessful appeal. The girl's thoughts went back to that embarrassing interview, not altogether regretfully, since it had ended in bringing about a better understanding between her uncle and herself. Perhaps, though he had refused her request, it would linger in his mind, and lead to good results. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... circumstances maintain their vitality for ages; and there are others, strongly encased in water-tight shells or skins, that have floated across oceans to germinate in distant islands; but such, as every florist knows, is not the general character of seeds; and not until after many unsuccessful attempts, and many expedients had been resorted to, have the more delicate kinds been brought uninjured, even on shipboard, from distant countries to our own. It is not too much to hold that, without special miracle, at least three fourths ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... they heard eagerly. Purposely, he eschewed anything striking or startling in this his first sermon. It was an attempt to establish a sympathetic understanding between himself and his audience, and not altogether an unsuccessful one, for his motives were still unmixed. He felt that he had started well; when he was through speaking small groups gathered around him as children might have done, and told him inconsequent, wandering tales of their own—tales which were rather fables, folklore ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... came East, and tried to get help to discover the cave of the diamond makers, but I was unsuccessful. I needed an airship, as I—said, and no person who could operate one, would agree to go with me on the quest. Again I received a warning to drop all search for the diamond makers, but I persisted, and about a week ago I found ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... modest, unostentatious sort. Dickie had tried not a few desperate adventures, had conformed his thought and action to not a few glaring patterns, rushing to violences of extreme colour, extreme white and black. All that had proved preeminently unsuccessful, a most poisonous harvest of Dead Sea fruit. What, he began to ask himself, if he made an effort to conform it to the pattern actually presented to him—mellow, sun-visited, with the brave red of weather stained ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... told him of her various unsuccessful attempts at "earning her living," and he deeply regretted that he had been the means of ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells

... strength to do God's will, of unsuccessful effort and disappointed hopes, of continual failure, re-echo in a thousand different forms the complaint of the captive, 'O wretched man that I am!' Thank God! there is deliverance. 'With freedom did Christ set us free! Stand ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... Talbot recommends that the drawings should be dipped in salt and water, and in many instances this method will succeed, but at times it is equally unsuccessful. Iodide of potassium, or, as it is frequently called, hydriodate of potash, dissolved in water, and very much diluted, (twenty-five grains to one ounce of water,) is a more useful preparation to wash the drawings with; it must ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling

... I wrote all the morning. Had an answer from D. of W., unsuccessful in getting young Skene put upon the engineer list; he is too old. Went out at two with Anne, and visited the exhibition; also called on the Mansfield family and on Sydney Smith. Jeffrey unwell from pleading so ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... lithe and limber—"and it's hard-set the thievin' Turk 'ill be to get the better of him at a racin' match—Hi—Och." She had begun to hail him with a call eager and shrill, which broke off in a strangled croak, like a young cock's unsuccessful effort. "Och, murdher, murdher, murdher," she said to the bystanders, in a disgusted undertone. "I'll give you me misfort'nit word thim ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... that both my mother and myself (persons of exceptional impatience of disposition and irritable excitability of temperament) should have taken such delight in so still and monotonous an occupation, especially to the point of spending whole days in an unsuccessful pursuit of it. The fact is that the excitement of hope, keeping the attention constantly alive, is the secret of the charm of this strong fascination, infinitely more than even the exercise of successful skill. And this element ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... waiting for hours at Schlesinger's, listening to my employer's very trivial conversations with his callers—conversations which he seemed purposely to protract—I reappeared under the windows of my home long after dark, utterly unsuccessful. I saw Minna looking anxiously from one of the windows. Half expecting my misfortune she had, in the meantime, succeeded in borrowing a small sum of our lodger and boarder, Brix, the flute-player, whom we tolerated patiently, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... reconnoitering was unsuccessful; but one day he discovered an animal four or five times as large as a deer, feeding in an open field near the woods. This would not have interested him much had not the large creature been followed by a little animal of the same kind. He never would have thought of attacking ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... the command started on the trail of the horse thieves. Major Brown with two companies and three days' rations pushed ahead in advance of the main command. On the eighteenth day out, being unsuccessful in the chase, and nearly out of rations, the entire command marched toward the nearest railroad station and camped on the Saline river, three miles ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... an unsuccessful attempt to enter the Roman Catholic Church and the Presbyterian fold at the same time (the Missionaries found him out and called him names, but they did not understand his trouble), he discovered Lalun on the City ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... number of the corporators (although present in the city) to form a quorum for the transaction of business. The opportunity thus lost did not recur, and though an effort was made to substitute proxies for actual members of the body, it was unsuccessful, and an organization was ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... eccentric Louis Boehner,[A] who long ago had served as the model for E.T.A. Hoffmann's fantastic pictures. Here J.P. Lyser, a painter by profession, but a poet as well, and a musician besides. Here Carl Bauck, the indefatigable, yet unsuccessful composer of songs,—now, in his capacity of critic, the paper bugbear of the Dresden artists. He had just returned from Italy, and believed himself in possession of the true secret of the art of singing, the monopoly of which every singing-master is wont to claim ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... spices which the Portuguese brought from the East Indies. But in 1580 Philip seized Portugal, and the Dutch could no longer go to Lisbon. This made them anxious to find their way to the East. In 1595 the first fleet set out. This voyage was unsuccessful, but other fleets followed, until soon the Dutch had almost driven the Portuguese, now subjects of the king of Spain, from the Spice Islands. Soon also Dutch sailors ventured across the Atlantic to the shores ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... died, and on the most conspicuous part of Broadway stands the obelisk of marble reared in honour of his memory, and bearing testimony to the high talent and the many virtues of the Irish exile, the banished rebel, or the unsuccessful patriot; for the terms are yet unhappily considered by some as synonymous, and may be selected by each according to his political creed. By his family and associates, however, he appears to have been truly beloved, and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more! My ear is pained, My soul is sick, with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, It does not feel for man; the natural bond Of brotherhood is severed as the flax That ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... of Newcastle secured all the country, garrisoned York, Scarborough, Carlisle, Newcastle, Pomfret, Leeds, and all the considerable places, and took the field with a very good army, though afterwards he proved more unsuccessful than the rest, having the whole power of a kingdom at his back, the Scots coming in with an army to the assistance of the Parliament, which, indeed, was the general turn of the scale of the war; for had it not been for this Scots army, the king had most ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... he prove more unsuccessful than Satan; blind politics, rank infatuation, madness detestable, the concomitants of arbitrary power! They can never think to succeed; but should they conquer, they'll find that he who overcometh by force and blood, hath overcome ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... following his natural bent, he became an electrician, and now, abandoning the practical side of that modest calling, he was an experimental physicist, full of deep but unremunerative lore, and—an unsuccessful inventor. Certainly he owed something to his family, and if his father wished that he should marry, well, marry he must, as a matter of duty, if for no other reason. After all, the thing was not pressing; for it it came to the point, what woman was likely to accept ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... duke of Bavaria, after forgiving him for two revolts. His scholarly brother, Archbishop Bruno of Cologne,[99] he made duke of Lorraine in the place of his faithless son-in-law, Conrad, who had rebelled against him. Many of the old ducal families either died out or lost their heritage by unsuccessful revolt. None of them offered a long succession of able rulers. The duchies consequently fell repeatedly into the hands of the king, who then claimed the right to assign them to whom ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... Brevig and was indefinitely postponed. S. T. Littleton presented the second, which was to give women a vote upon all questions pertaining to the liquor traffic. This found favor in the eyes of the W. C. T. U., as did also the County Option Bill of J. F. Jacobson, but both were unsuccessful. George T. Barr introduced a Municipal Suffrage Bill into the Senate, but too late for it to be ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... unable to walk past the guards with it. Tranest agents had made several unsuccessful attempts to pick up the plasmoid. She knew that another group had made similarly unsuccessful attempts. The Devagas. She did not yet know the specific nature of 113-A's importance. But it ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... been hardly dealt with, as is often the case with princes upright, religious, and chivalrous beyond the average of their time, yet without the strength or the genius to enforce their rights and opinions, and therefore thrust aside. After his early unsuccessful wars his lands of Provence and Lorraine were islands of peace, prosperity, and progress, and withal he was an extremely able artist, musician, and poet, striving to revive the old troubadour spirit of Provence, and everywhere casting ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... should be lost in attempting to remove the obstruction from the gullet. It may be dislodged by gently manipulating the gullet. If unsuccessful in dislodging the obstruction in this manner, secure the services of a competent veterinarian. He will use a probang, an instrument made for this purpose, or inject Sweet or Olive Oil into the gullet with a hypodermic ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... sixty or seventy years: he could not, however, withstand the powerful influence of the Lowther family, and thus lost his election. He made another effort, at the dissolution of parliament, consequent upon the death of George III., but was again unsuccessful; and a ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various

... Act of 1774—the Magna Charta of the French-Canadian race—finally passed the House of Lords on the 18th of June. The general idea of the Act was to reverse the unsuccessful policy of ultimate assimilation with the other American colonies by making Canada a distinctly French-Canadian province. The Maritime Provinces, with a population of some thirty thousand, were to be as English as they ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... at once to her rooms in Percy Street, and Mr. Andrew Larkspur betook himself to certain haunts, in which he expected to glean some information. That he was not entirely unsuccessful will appear from his subsequent conversation with Lady Eversleigh. After an absence, in reality short, but which, to her suspense and impatience appeared of endless duration, Mr. Larkspur ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... They are afraid that if they catch the spirit of their age in verse, they will give it a temporary stamp; and therefore they either abstain from writing, and take to abusing the age on which they have unluckily fallen, or else come to the same resolution after an unsuccessful attempt to revive faded stimulants. Dante embodied, for instance, his countrymen's rude conception of future punishment—and he did well. But our modern religious poets have never ventured to meddle with those moral aspects of the subject which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... inform madame that I had so far been unsuccessful," said Job. "But I will recommence ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... It might be dangerous; yet, successful or unsuccessful, it must be glorious. The course of Christianity wanted great examples. Might he not-and his young heart beat high at the thought—might he not, by some great act of daring, self-sacrifice, divine madness of faith, like David's of old, when he went out against the giant—awaken ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... whose thoughts the three bulbs were never absent, made a snare for catching the pigeons, baiting the birds with all the resources of his kitchen, such as it was for eight slivers (sixpence English) a day; and, after a month of unsuccessful attempts, he at last caught ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... celebrated voyage took place in 1562, but probably not until 1631[2] did a regular chartered company undertake to carry on the trade.[3] This company was unsuccessful,[4] and was eventually succeeded by the "Company of Royal Adventurers trading to Africa," chartered by Charles II. in 1662, and including the Queen Dowager and the Duke of York.[5] The company contracted to supply the West ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... flash more briskly than heretofore; their clouds are also better furbelowed and more voluminous; not to mention a violent storm locked up in a great chest that is designed for 'The Tempest.' They are also provided with a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets, artificially cut and shredded for that vise." In an earlier "Spectator" he had written: "I have often known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in a very great alarm all the while it has been ringing." Pope ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... and treacherous. Even his courage has been denied, probably unjustly. Swati fanaticism has been a source of much trouble on the Peshawar border. The last serious outbreak was in 1897, when a determined, but unsuccessful, attack was made on our posts at Chakdarra and the Malakand Pass. The Swatis are Yusafzai Pathans of the Akozai clan, and are divided into five sections, one of which ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... things might be grim. A certain amount of grimness must be endured. And she knew, too, that Lucinda was not a girl to be driven without showing something of an intractable spirit in harness. Mrs. Carbuncle had undertaken the driving of Lucinda, and had been not altogether unsuccessful. The thing so necessary to be done was now effected. Her niece was engaged to a man with a title, to a man reported to have a fortune, to a man of family, and a man of the world. Now that the engagement was made, the girl could not go back from it, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... the air of an unsuccessful candidate musing over the "saddest words of thought or pen;" "I started with thirteen ounces, an' in twenty minutes I was borryin' the price of a drink from the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... still under twenty, there was a great winter buffalo hunt, and he came back with ten buffaloes' tongues which he sent to the council lodge for the councilors' feast. He had in one winter day killed ten buffalo cows with his bow and arrows, and the unsuccessful hunters or those who had no swift ponies were made happy by his generosity. When the hunters returned, these came chanting songs of thanks. He knew that his father was an expert hunter and had a good horse, so he took no meat home, putting ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... (three or four months after; Luc having proved obstinate, and still unsuccessful).... "I conjure you make use of all your eloquence to tell him [the supreme Duc de Choiseul], that if Luc misgo, it will be no misfortune to France. That Brandenburg will always remain an Electorate; that it is good there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of the Revolution; Leo XII and Pius VIII, the associates of the Holy Alliance; Gregory XVI, eating sweetmeats or mumbling his breviary while young Italy sweated blood; Pius IX, grasping eagerly his tatters of sovereignty; Leo XIII, the unsuccessful diplomatist; Pius X, the medieval monk. They saw their Church shrink decade by decade, and they witnessed the prosperity of all that they denounced. Benedict XV came to save the Church, and a great moral opportunity awaited him. But, while claiming to be the moral arbitrator ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... changed at once the course of the boat, without attempting to utter a word, so heavy was his heart at this unsuccessful termination of the expedition. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... friendliness and readiness to assist us made us for ever grateful to her. At that time we did not know her standing in society, and looked upon her merely as a benevolent and wealthy woman. We soon learned more of her, however: for, though unsuccessful in her first efforts, she shortly after sent for my sister, having secured her a place in Mr. Theodore Sedgwick's family; which was acceptable, inasmuch as it placed her above the level of the servants. She remained there seven weeks, ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... bluster, I saw that old Katchiba was in a great dilemma, and that he would give anything for a shower, but that lie did not know how to get out of the scrape. It was a common freak of the tribes to sacrifice the rain-maker should he be unsuccessful. He suddenly altered his tone, and asked, "Have you any rain in your country?" I replied that we had, every now and then. "How do you bring it? Are you a rain-maker?" I told him that no one believed in rain-makers ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker



Words linked to "Unsuccessful" :   unrewarded, stillborn, success, unrealised, unprofitable, disappointed, foiled, unrealized, defeated, down-and-out, hitless, abortive, empty-handed, winless, goalless, thwarted, undone, discomfited, out, unplaced, frustrated, unfortunate, successful, self-defeating, scoreless, unfulfilled, sunk, unsuccessful person, ruined, unfruitful, done for, washed-up, attempted, no-win



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