"Valueless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speedy fulfilment of the trust bequeathed to him? Whether the result, in the death of the mother, and more especially of the child, left him rich, or, if the last survived, reduced his fortune to a modest independence, Isaura was equally lost to him, and fortune became valueless. But his first emotions on recovering from the shock of hearing from Isaura's lips that she was irrevocably affianced to another, were not those of self-reproach. They were those of intense bitterness against her who, if really so much attached ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was fomented by the speeches of party leaders in England, where the Liberal party were violently attacking the colonial policy of Lord Beaconsfield; and Mr Gladstone, referring to the Boers' country, actually said, that if the acquisition was as valuable as it was valueless, nevertheless he would repudiate it. When Mr Gladstone came into office, the Boers, who did not understand the ethics of election campaigns, expected him to reverse an act which he repudiated; and when they found that though he disapproved the act he did not intend to revoke ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... swept away, and he asked for further remand on account of the war. Peace was concluded, the country was settled under the strong government of a Protector, and Milton's great work did not appear. It was not even preparing. He was writing not poetry but prose, and that most ephemeral and valueless kind of prose, pamphlets, extempore articles on the topics of the day. He poured out reams of them, in simple unconsciousness that they had no influence whatever ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... places. Of the intricacy of these designs they seemed absurdly proud. Various sorts of treasure trove hung from them-a bunch of keys to which there were no locks, discarded hunting knives, tips of antelope horns, discharged brass cartridges, a hundred and one valueless trifles plucked proudly from the rubbish heap. They were all clothed. We had supplied each with a red blanket, a blue jersey, and a water bottle. The blankets they were twisting most ingeniously into turbans. Beside these they sported a great variety of garments. Shooting ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... announcing their action deserves remembrance and imitation. "The consideration that our own party by this decision will lose the majority in the legislative assembly does not make our duty in the premises less solemn and imperative. The elective franchise would be utterly valueless, and free government itself would receive a deadly blow, if so great an outrage as this could be shielded under the cover of mere forms and technicalities. We cannot consent in any manner to give the sanction of our respective official positions to such a transaction. Nor can we feel justified ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... their story. He wished that he might learn more. He went back to the old desk. It might have been his uncle's. He opened a drawer; it was empty. A second and a third; the last contained some valueless miscellany, an old glass knob a faded bit of worsted fringe, some papers. Poking under them, he actually found a package of letters. He picked it up, and with a little thrill of realization recognized his uncle's writing. The paper ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... everyone she ceased to be sincere, and degenerated into a mere coquette; and even her lovers felt that the charms and fascinations which were exercised upon all who approached her without distinction were valueless, so that in the end they ceased to care for them, and ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... been, he feared, far from acting honestly with Lucifer, after all, as the corner which he had cut off for the "Goodman's" share was perhaps the most worthless and sterile spot on the whole property. Some may look upon such superstitions and superstitious practices as matters utterly vulgar and valueless in themselves; but in the eyes of the archaeologist they become interesting and important when we remember that the popular superstitions of Scotland, as of other countries, are for the most part true antiquarian vestiges of the pagan creeds and customs of our earlier ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... "carrion Heath": Noble, a former biographer of Cromwell, is "my reverend imbecile friend": his predecessors in Friedrich, as Schlosser, Preuss, Ranke, Foerster, Vehse, are "dark chaotic dullards whose books are mere blotches of printed stupor, tumbled mountains of marine stores "—criticism valueless even when it raises the laughter due to a pantomime. Carlyle ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... The impression is current in European countries—perhaps less generally since the war—that America is given over solely to a worship of the American dollar. While between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to say, from personal knowledge, that the Dutch worship the gulden infinitely more than ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... but spoken to you the world's judgment. In fact there are countless readers of novels who have grown up in this atmosphere of conviction that novels are meant only to amuse. They are so habituated to the idea that novels, to them, are valueless—mere sentimental unrealities or spiced narratives of heated invention—so that they go through the treasure houses of genius without ever hearing the soft-voiced persuasion of knowledge or seeing the marvelous, vivid panorama of human life, illustrating ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... talking of criticism as an essential part of the creative spirit, and I now fully accept your theory. But what of criticism outside creation? I have a foolish habit of reading periodicals, and it seems to me that most modern criticism is perfectly valueless. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... cannot see to the bottom of it? Strict literalists may stick out for the exact figures in feet and inches from rim to river—elsewhere given as the scientists of the United States Geological Survey have recorded them—but to me they are almost valueless. Its depth is beyond human comprehension in figures, and so is its width. And the eye of the best trained man in the world cannot grasp all its features of wall and butte and canyon, of winding ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... of the new life. Why,—even Rodney himself, about whom everything else swung in an orbit! What price had she paid for him, or for any of the rest of it? It was all as free as the air she breathed. It had come to her without having cost even a wish. Was Rodney's love for her, therefore, valueless? No, the French woman was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and dry," the solicitor explained. "You see, the drainage and lighting will be largely influenced by the purchaser of the whole estate. If Dowling gets it, he means to treat your plots so that they will become practically valueless. It's rather a mean sort of thing, but then he's ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had exposed his fallacies would triumph in his failure, and the competing Portuguese would appropriate all that he had undertaken to add to the crown of Castile. Without civilisation and gold his discoveries would be valueless; and there was so little gold at first that he at once proposed to make up for it in slaves. His constant endeavour was not to be mistaken for the man who discovered the new world. Somewhere in the near background he still beheld the city with the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the head, "let us look at the matter from the opposite point of view. If you had killed this woman, let us say, what would your conduct be? Would you not, in that case, make exactly the assertions that you now make? That is the terrible consideration that makes all assertion valueless in the case of such suspicion. But, once again, why dwell on my belief in the matter, which is nothing to the purpose? I have put your position, whether you are guilty or not guilty, clearly before your eyes. I counsel you, and strongly urge you, while yet unaccused, to ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... poor girl is once induced to sacrifice her virtue she is treated as a slave and outcast by the very man who brought her ruin upon her. Her self-respect is gone. Her life becomes valueless to her, and she is swept downward, ever downward, into the bottomless pit of prostitution, and becomes ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... Shiner's." Yet not so much as a scrap of other evidence was there found. Shiner threw open his doors to the officers, bade them search high and low, declared upon honor as he would upon oath that he himself had found the damaging evidence—two pocket-books and some valueless papers—on the open prairie a mile from his place the day after the third of the "hold-ups." There had long been bad blood betwixt him and the sheriff, and this time the man of the law gave the lie, and ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... wanes, all its care and strife and toil Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, The morning swallows with their songs like words. All these seem clear and only worth our thoughts: So, aught connected with my early life, My rude ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... The franchise vouchsafed to the Negro grew to be a "barren ideality," and regardless of numbers, the colored people found themselves voiceless in the councils of those whose duty it was to rule. With no longer the fear of "Negro Domination" before their eyes, the white man's second excuse became valueless. With the Southern governments all subverted and the Negro actually eliminated from all participation in state and national elections, there could be no longer an excuse for killing ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... mixtures,—that breath which his drugs had sweetened had now a sulphurous smell. Moreover, all the money heretofore amassed by the sale of them had been exhausted by Edward Dolliver in his lavish expenditure for the processes of his study; and nothing was left for Pansie, except a few valueless and unsalable bottles of medicine, and one or two others, perhaps more recondite than their inventor had seen fit to offer to the public. Little Pansie's mother lived but a short time after the shock of the terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... common defect in a tree, and when excessive renders the timber valueless for use except in the round. It is produced by the arrangement of the wood fibres in a spiral direction about the axis instead of exactly vertical. Timber with spiral grain is also known as "torse wood." Spiral grain usually ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... laziness, sentimentality, and greed. The ignorance which does not know facts; the vulgarity which cannot appreciate values; the laziness which will not try to learn either of these things; the sentimentality which, knowing neither, is stirred by the valueless and the untrue; the greed which grabs and exploits. But fear is worst; the fear of public opinion, the fear of scandal, the fear of independent thought, of loss of position, of ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... desire to pose. You want what the Martha Brown school calls 'distinction' in prose. My little friend, I know how it is done, and I find it contemptible. People write their articles at full speed, putting down their unstudied and valueless conclusions in English as pale as a film of dirty wax—sometimes even they dictate to a typewriter. Then they sit over it with a blue pencil and carefully transpose the split infinitives, and write alternative adjectives, and take words ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... one and the other, the freshness and the strength of his early and his ardent love; and then if he be able, let him picture those objects, in comparison with which all that earth has to give is valueless in his eyes, torn from him by violence, basely exchanged for gold, like beasts at the shambles, bent down under unpitied sorrows, their persons polluted, and their pure hearts corrupted—hopeless and unpitied slaves, to the rude caprice and brutal passions ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... I thought less of these things; the chance of leaving the island seemed so remote, and the prospect of ever seeing my grandfather so very distant, that I had ceased to take any interest in the contents of the belt. The diamonds seemed to become as valueless as they were useless; a handful of wheat would have been much more desirable. It was now some time since I had seen the belt, or ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... to him her grateful farewell. She prayed that God might bless their union, and, as she rose to leave, she handed Rowena a casket filled with most precious jewels. "Accept them, lady," she said; "to me they are valueless; I will never wear jewels more. My father and I, we are going to a far country where at least we shall dwell in liberty. He to whom I dedicate my future life will be my Comforter if I do His will. Say this to thy lord should ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... matter," continued the scientist. "The story would be valueless to you, because no one would believe it. There is little use in printing a story in a newspaper that will be laughed at, is there? However, I think you are honest, otherwise you would have promised not ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... knowledge of and power over her own body and her own instincts, education for woman is valueless. As long as she remains the plaything of strong, uncontrolled natural forces, as long as she must docilely and humbly submit to the decisions of others, how can woman ever lay the foundations of self-respect, self-reliance and independence? ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... custom that it seems to be with some people. The noise about the swing-doors, and the rustle in the aisles, the banging of hinged seats, and the occasional parley with the usher, render the seats under the galleries practically valueless during the first half of the performance, since the speakers cannot be heard in the midst of the confusion. The "sense" of the opening act being lost, the entire play is marred simply because forty or fifty people are ten ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... and what I was doing in the barn, which I still appeared not to hear, and merely looked at him, and at last acted as if I was deaf and dumb, and so effectually that he discharged me, convinced I was a valueless deaf and dumb nigger; and when told by the officer to go, I dared not move for fear of being found out in my acting, and would not move until I was forced out of the door, and for some time (for fear of detection) ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... was about fourteen years old I came into personal possession of twelve acres of land which had descended to me from my father's estate. The land was almost valueless for general cropping purposes, but I had already, at that age, determined something of the value of a pecan orchard, and I proceeded to gather nuts from the best trees in that section, and the following ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... pointless. The whole method is perverted; an unjustifiable theory of descent is first formulated with the aid of the imagination, and then we are asked to declare that all structural relations between man and monkeys, and between the different groups of the latter, are valueless,—the fact being that they are the only true basis on which a genealogical tree can ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... severely commented upon, and we may conclude that Le Liget was a tardy substitute—a cheap strip of forest land granted to an order which was celebrated for its dislike of covetousness, and whose rules required manual labour and a desert (and so valueless) land. Le Liget, be it noticed, is founded after the peace of Venice has given more power to the Papal elbow. The Lateran Council is also a little threatening towards King Henry in March, 1179, particularly on the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... would most excite the Queen's uneasy jealousy about her title, it is like enough that the secretary exercised his discretion (he had Knox's leave in this case, and did not always wait for that, it is reputed) to put the letter harmlessly away beside other valueless or unpresentable State Papers. I wonder very much if he did the same with another,[78] written two years later, after Mary had come into Scotland, in which Knox almost seeks to make Elizabeth an accomplice with him in the matter of the "First Blast." The Queen of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thankfulness that he did not yield to its allurements. 'Surrounded as we should have been by steep and lofty hills, we could have obtained only the most local records of climatic conditions, and our meteorological observations would have been comparatively valueless; but the greatest drawback would have been that we should be completely cut off from traveling over the sea-ice beyond the mouth of our harbor.... It is when one remembers how naturally a decision to return to this place might have been made, that one sees how easily the results ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... like youth—not that after-life is valueless. Even in extreme old age one may get on very well, provided we will but accept of the bounties of God. I met the other day an old man, who asked me to drink. "I am not thirsty," said I, "and will not drink with you." "Yes, you will," said the old man, "for I am this ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... happy," said the Old Man of the Sea. "I am very old, and very lonely, and there is no one here to admire my treasures but myself. The fishes will have nothing to do with me—they do not care for gold; it is valueless to them—and I may not go on land, so I am here alone with my riches, and every day I gather more and more. I have piled them high about my cave in a great circle, and some day, when it becomes top-heavy, it will fall over and crush me beneath it, and I shall be buried ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... by Prosperity was credit at the bank; but in exchange for this credit they got nothing that was not dirty, and, therefore, to a sane mind, valueless; since whatever was cleaned was dirty again before the cleaning was half done. For, as the town grew, it grew dirty with an incredible completeness. The idealists put up magnificent business buildings and boasted ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... a piece of a torn handkerchief with a deep blood-stain on it," pursued Kennedy. "He said it clearly didn't belong to the murdered man, that it indicated that the murderer had himself been wounded in the tussle, but as yet it had proved utterly valueless as a clue. Would I see what ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... If water could not be found, all this beautiful park through which he was passing would be as valueless to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... position on the coast of the polar sea, it might prove of subsequent advantage to science, whereas if they cut loose when they were submerged in the ocean, this cable from Cape Tariff to the pole must always be absolutely valueless. It was therefore determined to build a little house, for which they had the material, and place therein a telegraph instrument connected with the wire, and provided with one of the Collison batteries, which would remain in working ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... which is subject to the laws of growth and decay. The Mystics, however, did not merely desire to gain the conviction that the kernel of life is eternal. According to the view of the Mysteries, such a conviction would be quite valueless, for this view holds that the Eternal is not present as a living reality in the uninitiated. If such an one spoke of the Eternal, he would be speaking of something non-existent. It is rather the Eternal itself that the Mystics are seeking. They have first to awaken the Eternal within them, ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... shirt. Often, when I was given a brief to work up for Mr. Thompson, I would slave over it until the small hours of the morning and then, to his disgust—and my unspeakable mortification—find that my work was valueless, that I had not seized the fundamental points of the case, or that I had built all my arguments on some misapprehension ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... the eye in this bare, strangely narrow room. The weapons and pieces of armour of the aged champion of the faith, which hung high above the window, made no pretension to beauty. Besides, the rays of the dim candle did not extend to them any more than to the valueless pictures of saints and virgins ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the speakers of the day. I asked a young American non-commissioned officer how he liked DeValera. He seemed to be as stirred by the name as the young members of DeValera's regiment who besiege Mrs. DeValera for some little valueless possession of the "chief's." The boy drew in his breath, and I expected him to let it out again in a flow of praise, but emotion seemed to get the better of him, and all he could manage was a fervent: "Oh, gee!" Then I came across young Sylvia ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... rare and valued. In trying to mend the binding of an old "Odyssey" lately, I extracted from the vellum covers parts of two copies of a very scarce and curious French dictionary of slang, "Le Jargon, ou Langage de l'Argot Reforme." This treatise may have been valueless, almost, when it appeared, but now it is serviceable to the philologist, and to all who care to try to interpret the slang ballades of the poet Villon. An old pamphlet, an old satire, may hold the key to ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... of the steamers chartered by the war department as a horse transport. Her actions during this gale furnish a fair illustration of the manner in which the Government was often deluded into purchasing almost valueless ships. She started with the Burnside expedition from Hampton Roads, freighted with one hundred and thirteen horses. As soon as the gale off Hatteras came on, she began to show signs of unseaworthiness. First the boilers gave way, loosened from their places by the heavy rolling ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... new method is valueless, because inapplicable, unless it be supplied with materials duly collected and presented—in fact, unless there be formed a competent natural history of the Phaenomena Universi. A short introductory sketch of the requisites of such a natural history, which, according to Bacon, is essential, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... treatment problems, and oxidized ore of the same grade as sulphides can often be treated more cheaply. This is not universal. Low-grade ores of lead, copper, and zinc may be treatable by concentration when in the form of sulphides, and may be valueless when oxidized, even though ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... de Bolate. He who lets time pass and does not grow in virtue, the more I think of it the more I grieve. No man has it in him to be virtuous who will give up honour for gain. Good fortune is valueless to him who knows not toil. The man becomes happy who follows Christ. There is no perfect gift without great suffering. Our glories and our triumphs pass away. Foul lust, and dreams, and luxury, and sloth have banished every virtue from the world; so ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... then opened Romana's despatch. He raised his eyebrows slightly. He had been accustomed to such appeals for arms and money, and knew how valueless were ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... judgment. Often a fair profit can be made on work taken at a low figure during the "off season." Perishable work demanding instant attention should receive the best pay and pieces which may be picked up in odd moments, thus using time otherwise valueless, may be figured near the foot of the scale. The public appreciates work thoroughly done and it is the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... of the whole mystery consisted in the simple fact that the people, the nation, had steadily refused to sanction the act of their leaders; and all the pretensions of English kings, statesmen, and lawyers, were valueless. Those Irishmen who subsequently entered into the various Geraldine and Ulster confederacies, and summoned foreign armies to their aid, were neither rebels nor traitors, but citizens of an independent state, possessing their international ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... content with the turn of things. He raged at Brilliana, but she should marry him all the same when the Puritan dog was dead. He had, as he believed, convinced the King at meat that the plea Evander raised was valueless, that Evander's life was rightly forfeit. Evander was under close guard; so, indeed, was Brilliana, for he had stationed a sentry at the door of her apartments: he was determined that she should not see the ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... spade. Presently he turned up a small flat round object, which at first sight he took to be a penny. He picked it up, and rubbed the dirt off it. It proved to be merely a small lead disk, utterly useless and valueless; he didn't even know what it could have been used for. He threw it on the earth again, and went on with his digging. But it, or his action of tossing it on to the earth, had started a train of thought. It ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... be quite as valueless as one, and probably will; but it looks queer, for it is made out in proper form, and only verifies what Bob said ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... he was more industrious during these later years than at any other time, and though he had abundance of well-paid work. The failure of the publishers, who were to have paid him five hundred pounds for his magnum opus, the partisan and almost valueless Life of Napoleon, had something to do with this, and the dishonesty of an agent is said to have had more, but details are not forthcoming. He died on the eighteenth of September 1830, saying, "Well, I have had a happy life"; and despite his son's assertion that, like Goldsmith, he ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... charter; and to urge the opening up of the country for settlement. But, above all, a committee of the British House of Commons took evidence that year upon all sorts of questions concerning the North-West, and particularly its suitability for settlement, much of which was valueless owing to its untruth. Nevertheless, the Imperial Committee, after weighing all the evidence, reported that the Territories were fit for settlement, and that it was desirable that Canada should annex them, and hoped that ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... forget me. The one boon you covet Now above all things will soon seem no prize; And the heart, which you hold not in keeping to prove it True or untrue, will lose worth in your eyes. The one drop to-day, that you deem only wanting To fill your life-cup to the brim, soon will seem But a valueless mite; and the ghost that is haunting The aisles of your heart will pass ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Certainly fat and sugar would be more to one's taste; in fact those seem to me to be the great stand-by for one in this extraordinary continent: not that I mean to depreciate the farinaceous food; but the want of sugar and fat in all substances obtainable here is so great that they become almost valueless to us as articles of food, without ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... fastened themselves on his, and looked at him out of the depths of a despair which was deeper than his own—a despair which had now made life valueless. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... nothing which is not his; for your rural Ahab could not sleep with a Naboth's little vineyard even a mile away. It is useless to tell him that the land you want is waste natural land, on which you propose to confer value; he prefers that it shall be valueless, rather than that it shall be yours. Before population can be re-distributed to the advantage of town and country alike, this difficulty must be overcome. It can only be overcome by drastic legislation. Compulsory purchase, regulated by an equitable land court, is the only remedy; and it is ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... to know), the care and preciseness with which such comparisons require to be made, (and are made), in order to be of any value whatever, they would spare their tongues. In comparing the deaths of one hospital with those of another, any statistics are justly considered absolutely valueless which do not give the ages, the sexes, and the diseases of all the cases. It does not seem necessary to mention this. It does not seem necessary to say that there can be no comparison between old men with dropsies and young women ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... another, were obliterated and have been utterly forgotten by their creator, very much as in this book vexed Miramon Lluagor twists off the head of a not quite satisfactory, whimpering design, and drops the valueless fragments into his waste-basket.... But I do know that the entire book developed, howsoever helterskelter, and after fumbling in no matter how many blind alleys, from that first memorandum about the troubling window of Ageus. All ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... my former services in Mexico is on the files of the War Department, and I am without vanity led to believe that the historical associations which place my name in connection with that of James Monroe may give a prestige in our cause not wholly valueless. In conclusion I beg to add that the subject of compensation with me would be ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... long and faithful remembrance of other worlds and other lives which most minds have forgotten, that beside the beauty of those memories all things of earth seem poor and valueless. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a low, musical voice. "My thoughts are valueless. They are like caged birds which have beaten their wings against the bars of their cage and now sit on their golden perches and dream of the world beyond." He laughed gently. "No, my father. You, who have seen the world, would mock at them as ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... victuals in the graves was at an early date changed into sacrifices of food outside the graves, so burying horses with the dead was also modified under the Han Dynasty into presenting them to the dead without interring them, and valueless counterfeits were on such occasions substituted for the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Your work on 'Applied Mechanics' is a great illustration of your power to grasp, to connect, and to apply the definite principles of exact science with the less definite known elements of practical problems. Abstract principles are valueless, except in application to the wants of man, and this work occupies that field with great eminence. Your work on the 'Steam Engine and other Prime Movers' deals with the principles involved in that ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... we see about us that so many heiresses should be plain. Plain girls have a right to be cheered and comforted by the thought. It teaches them the happy lesson that beauty, as compared with a settled income, is skin-deep and valueless; and that what man looks for in the companion of his life is not so much a bright cheek or a blue eye, as a substantial and useful amount ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... pink petals change to yellow gold; Its stem, its leaves are gold—and what before Was fit for a poor peasant's festal dress May now adorn a Queen. I lift a stone, A heavy, useless mass, a slave would spurn, What is more valueless? 'Tis solid gold! A king might war on me to win the same. And as I pass my hand thus through the air, A little shower of sightless dust falls down A shower of gold. O, now I am a king! I've spread my hands against my palace walls, I've set high ladders up, that I may ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... Paul's Cross, where they each read a confession. In January 1534 by a bill of attainder the maid and her chief accomplices were condemned to death, and were executed at Tyburn on the 20th of April. It has been held that her confession was extracted by force, and therefore valueless, but the evidence of her ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... was louder. This and the drug-induced buzzing in Brion's ear made thinking difficult. "Abstractly, I of course agree with you," he said haltingly. "But you know there is nothing I can do personally without being emotionally involved. A logical decision is valueless ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... should. Who notices when the useful thing gets too full? That is what it is there for. Pour on—scalding hot, or freezing cold, or pure or foul—pour away. If one day it refuses to absorb any more, and lies limp and valueless—why, the Doctor has broken down; or the Doctor is dead. Who ever thought anything could happen to the Doctor? One thing in the natural history of the sponge is apt to be overlooked. When the process of absorption reaches a certain point, let the true hand touch the wearied thing, ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... labor, and it has, therefore, no economic value. But in exceptional circumstances, as in an arid desert or in a besieged fortress, a millionaire might be willing to give all his wealth for a little water, thus making the value of what is ordinarily valueless almost infinite. What may be called natural use-values have no economic value. And even use-values that are the result of human labor may be equally without economic value. If I make something to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... being Head of the Family, was, of course, one of the trustees, and his uncle Roger, brother of the testator, another. The third was General MacKelpie, a poverty-stricken Scotch laird who had a lot of valueless land at Croom, in Ross-shire. I remember father gave me a new ten-pound note when I interrupted him whilst he was telling me of the incident of young St. Leger's improvidence by remarking that he was in error as to the land. From what I had heard of MacKelpie's ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... hesitating, she looked as far as the autumnal haze on the marshy ground would allow her to see distinctly. There was the fragment of a hedge—all that remained of a 'wet old garden'—standing in the middle of the mead, without a definite beginning or ending, purposeless and valueless. It was overgrown, and choked with mandrakes, and she could almost fancy she heard their shrieks.... Should she withdraw her hand? No, she could not withdraw it now; it was too late, the act would not imply refusal. She felt as one in a boat without oars, drifting with ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... of the master of the house, if his return were not delayed too long. His interest in the man who had at first seemed to him so vulgar, and in the humble family whose existence he had thought to be so valueless, continued ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... these unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and direct. It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of the people's public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to make valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry. Mr. Chairman, this work is exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... consider Joan valueless? Far from it. They valued her as the fruitful earth values the sun—they fully believed she could produce the crop, but that it was in their line of business, not hers, to take it off. They had a deep and superstitious reverence for her as being endowed with a mysterious supernatural something ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... debt, but I see no prospect now of being able to do so the present month.... I wish much to know, and, indeed, it is indispensably necessary I should be informed of the precise condition of things; for, if my property is but nominal in the stocks of the companies, and is to be soon rendered valueless from the operations of pirates, I desire to know it, that I may sell my home and seek another of less pretension, one of humbler character and suited to my change of circumstances. It will, indeed, be like ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the Bhandaris, be it noted, know little of western theories of disease and sanitation; and such precautions as the boiling of water, even were there time to boil it, and abstention from fruit seem to them utterly beside the mark and valueless, so long as the goddess of cholera, Jarimari, and the thirty-eight Cholera Mothers are wroth with them. Thus at the time we speak of, when many deaths among their kith and kin had afforded full proof that the goddess was ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... in the Journal de Physique of 1789,[96] on the disappearance of the forests of Dauphine, pointing out that when the woods are removed from the sides of mountains, the soil soon follows, and the district becomes utterly valueless. The writer traced the mischief to the emancipation of serfs, and the consequent formation of communes, where each man could do that which was right in ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... on the British side of the boundary. The effect of this treaty was to remove all serious causes of dispute about territory between Germany and Great Britain in East Africa. It rendered quite valueless Peters's treaty with Mwanga and his promenade along the Tana; it freed Great Britain from any fear of German competition to the northwards, and recognized that her influence extended to the western limits of the Nile valley. But, on the other hand, Great Britain had to relinquish ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... drums and firearms, or will not submit to be shod, and be safe and steady in crowded cities, or at covert side. Nothing is more common than to hear that such a horse would be invaluable if he would go in harness, or carry a lady, or that a racehorse of great swiftness is almost valueless because his temper is so bad, or his nervousness in a crowd so great that he cannot be depended on to start ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... the English fox-hound for speed, scent, and continuance. It would seem as if there were something in the climate favourable and necessary to the perfection of the hound. Packs of them have been sent to other countries, neighbouring and remote; but they have usually become more or less valueless. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... that he had advisedly abstained from mixing up his statements with any British agency or influences which were official, diplomatic, or political. The claims and interests which he had in view were either wholly null and valueless, or they were broad as the extension of the human race ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... spare hunting-bow and a full stock of arrows, together with his fishing lines and nets and a miscellaneous assortment of traps and tools. Here, too, was the secret depository of his cherished spying-glasses and of another equally marvellous but unfortunately valueless piece of mechanism—a revolver of large caliber. This latter had belonged to his grandfather (for whom he had been named), and upon his death Constans had claimed and taken possession of it. The weapon was in perfect order, for its former owner had been careful to keep it well cleaned and oiled; ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... some unknown law of evolution by which species necessarily change; and if this be so, I cannot agree. This, however, is too large a question even for so unreasonably long a letter as this. Nevertheless, just to explain by mere valueless conjectures how I imagine the teeth of your elephants change, I should look at the change as indirectly resulting from changes in the form of the jaws, or from the development of tusks, or in the case of the primigenius even from correlation with ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... cannot smother and repress the child's powers, or gradually abort them (from failure of opportunity for exercise), and then expect a character with initiative and consecutive industry. I am aware of the importance attaching to inhibition, but mere inhibition is valueless. The only restraint, the only holding-in, that is of any worth is that which comes through holding powers concentrated upon a positive end. An end cannot be attained excepting as instincts and impulses are kept from ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... been done, I suggested the additions and subtractions I wanted made, and she was quite astonished to read the following reply: "Silence necessary. Without silence, general derision. Diamond valueless; ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the conversation fell upon his shoulders. Fitz, no great talker at any time, was markedly quiet. He had nothing to offer for the general delectation. His remarks upon all subjects mooted were laconic and valueless. The duties as temporary host occupied him for the moment, and his thoughts were obviously elsewhere. His attitude towards Eve had been friendly, but rather reserved. There was no suggestion of sulkiness, but on the other hand he had failed to take advantage of one or two opportunities ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the hostility and cruelty of the Himalayan highlanders—more especially the Ghoorkas—prevented private explorations; and with the exception of some half-dozen books, most of them referring to the western section of the Himalayas, and comparatively valueless, from the want of scientific knowledge on the part of their authors, this vast tract has remained almost a terra incognita up ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... owners, yet would be highly prized by some other family which does not possess such articles. For instance, a baby-carriage or crib, stored away in some attic, could be sold at a bargain to some young woman needing such an article; or some old brass candlesticks, considered valueless by their owner, would be eagerly bought by someone who did not possess such things and ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... Dodge would be a little more distinct in his names," said Mademoiselle Viefville, who had begun to take an interest in the subject, that even valueless opinions excite in us concerning things ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... had run a mile, and that, if the search for it were left until the morning, all that they would find of it would probably be its mangled remains, so torn and mauled by other animals as to be utterly valueless, that at length the others allowed themselves to be persuaded against their better judgment. So gathering together such dry rushes and other matters as could be converted into torches, they lighted these, and with the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the voluptuous charm of Correggio, the luminous color of Titian, the terribleness of Michelangelo, and the serenity of Raphael, being the ultimate expressions of distinct artistic qualities, were incompatible. A still deeper truth escaped their notice—namely, that art is valueless unless the artist has something intensely felt to say, and that where this intensity of feeling exists, it finds for itself its own specific and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... weeks earlier entry had been possible but difficult, and the feat was again easier after the German occupation. But during the city's days of trial the military lid was clamped and riveted. Except for those coming direct from England, the highest civil recommendations were valueless. ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... country. The shiftless man of small means, who does not care to become an actual home-maker but would like immediate profit, will find it to his advantage to take up timber land simply to turn it over to such a big company, and leave it valueless for future settlers. A big mine owner, anxious only to develop his mine at the moment, will care only to cut all the timber that he wishes without regard to the future—probably net looking ahead to the condition of the country when ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Is it possible that fathers, too, are in any danger of decline? It is impossible to overestimate the sacredness and importance of the mother-spirit in the universe, but the father-spirit is not positively valueless (so far as it goes). The newspaper-pessimists talk comparatively little about developing that in the young male of the species. In three years' practical experience among the children of the poorer classes, and during all the succeeding years, when I have filled ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... used blindly; but if analysis indicates that a particular plot of ground would derive benefit from an application of lime, acetylene lime is precisely as good as any other description. Naturally a residue containing unspent carbide, or contaminated with tarry matter, is essentially valueless (except as mentioned below); while it must not be forgotten that a solid residue if it is exposed to air, or a pasty residue if not kept under water, will lose many of its useful properties, because ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... burghership had to produce a certificate of continuous registration for a certain time. But the law of registration had fallen into disuse in the Transvaal, and consequently this provision might render the whole Bill valueless. Since it was carefully retained, it was certainly meant for use. The door had been opened, but a stone was placed to block it. Again, the continued burghership of the newcomers was made to depend upon the resolution of the first Raad, so that should the mining members propose ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old Guiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, this appears to act as well whether the blood is old or new. Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... matters with the sister university) it had come from Oxford only, and added that they hoped shortly to give something more substantial than parchment. "What they could offer was a slight thing, it was true, yet one which their old Headmaster and his coadjutors would not think valueless." He proceeded to read ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... of cure for national drunkenness? The remedy of license has been found as valueless for the whole people as restriction for the individual. Appetite, when once depraved, becomes, in the individual, lawless, exacting and unscrupulous; not hesitating to trample on duty, justice, humanity and every public and private ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... to alter, by separate enactments, those laws which the Revised Code will amend, or to sanction new provisions, in that Compendium already provided for, and which temporary enactments would, therefore, become valueless almost as soon as they ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... of the court—perhaps even at the opening of our story, poor England was hardly worse off. But then came the change. Gradually the bone and sinew of the country sought refuge in emigration. The titled classes, after mortgage upon mortgage of their valueless land, were forced to break their entails to sell their estates. And at last, when the great American Republic, in 1889, cut down the Chinese wall of protection, which so long had surrounded their country, even trade succumbed, and England was under-sold in the markets ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... ridiculous that such things should vex me—that I should be so absolutely at the mercy of the opinion of people whose judgment I know to be absolutely valueless? I find the same thing all around me. I find a middle-aged man, who knows his work thoroughly, and has seen all the best actors of the past quarter of a century, will go about quite proudly with a scrap of approval from some newspaper, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... sufficiently the extent to which the animal matters have been mixed with valueless driers, the second and third samples containing considerably more than half their weight ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... quality, and consequently of price. But these variations are usually designed to meet the differences of taste among the purchasers, and we do not expect to find that any variety of an ordinary commodity will be produced, which is so poor in quality as to be entirely valueless. But since it is nature which has produced the land, without any assistance or guidance from man, there are many pieces of land which are so unfertile, or are otherwise so unsuitable for productive purposes, as to be quite valueless from ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... into bed at any particular time. He might enjoy evenings as long as those of the warders if he chose, and he might get up as early as though his horse were waiting below to take him to his hay-fields if he liked; but this privilege, without the means of employing the extra hours, was valueless. He watched anxiously for the broad daylight that would bring his lawyer and put an end to this first martyrdom of helpless waiting. Towards seven, one of the prisoners, whose good conduct had procured him promotion to cleaning the passages and doing other work of the kind, brought ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... "A woman's oath, when it is her last resource, is quite valueless. I will deal with ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... of body and strength of mind to control your Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless you control your emotions they run over and you stand in the mire. Sympathy must not run riot, or it is valueless and tokens weakness instead of strength. In every hospital for nervous disorders are to be found many instances of this loss of control. The individual has Sympathy but not Poise, and therefore his life is worthless to himself and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... frankly ask him this question: Why must we go out? any more than the others: Why is it proper that I should go to mass to be seen? Why should I wear gowns that ruin us? Why do you accept decorations that are valueless in your eyes? Why do you seek the society of men who have no merit but what they derive from their official position or from their fortune? Why do we take upon ourselves social duties that weary both of us, instead of remaining ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... selected as useful and convenient articles for exchange, like bank-notes, and so far have inherent value as they supply that necessity; but if a fourth part of the gold and silver in existence would supply that necessity, the remaining three-fourths are as inherently valueless as the paper on which bank-notes are printed. Their value consists in what they represent of the labors ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... be worn to make lines, continue or terminate lines, accentuate a good physical point, or hide a bad one. Remember that a jewel like any other object d'art, is an ornament, and unless it is ornamental, and an added attraction to the wearer, it is valueless in a decorative way. For this reason it is well to discover, by experimenting, what jewelry is your affair, what kind of rings for example, are best suited to your kind of hands. It may be that small rings of delicate workmanship, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... unnecessary to repeat here any other of the anecdotes commonly related of Giotto, as, separately taken, they are quite valueless. Yet much may be gathered from their general tone. It is remarkable that they are, almost without exception, records of good-humoured jests, involving or illustrating some point of practical good sense; and by comparing this general colour of the reputation ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... of England, began experiments two years after Parkes, but a patent of his for dissolving the nitrated wood fiber, or "pyroxyline," in alcohol and camphor was decided by Judge Blatchford in a suit brought against the Celluloid Manufacturing Company to be valueless. No further progress was made until the Hyatt Brothers, of Albany, N.Y., discovered that gum camphor, when finely divided, mixed with the nitrated fiber and then heated, is a perfect solvent, giving a homogeneous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... highway to the pond, and fertile in nothing except the huckleberry bushes, where the large, dark fruit grew so abundantly, and the rocky ledges over which a few sheep roamed, seeking for the short grass and stunted herbs, which gave them a meager sustenance. As a whole it was comparatively valueless, but to Aunt Betsy Barlow it was of great importance, as it was her own—her property—her share—set off from the old estate—the land on which she paid taxes willingly—the real estate the deed of which was lying undisturbed in her hair trunk, where it had lain for years. Several dispositions ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the mastery of one helps to the mastery of others. Things which may at first sight appear comparatively valueless in education—such as the study of the dead languages, and the relations of lines and surfaces which we call mathematics—are really of the greatest practical value, not so much because of the information which they yield, as because of the development ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... perfect liberty, common to the whole people of the United States and to their posterity. It is because I believe all this, that I love the Union and the Constitution. If it were not for that, the Union would be valueless, and the Constitution not worth the parchment on which it is written. God-given Liberty is above the Union, and above the Constitution, and above all the works ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... religion would be necessary in the case of his accession. But Shaftesbury saw, and it is his especial merit that he did see, that with a king like James, convinced of his Divine Right and bigoted in his religious fervour, securities were valueless. From the first he determined to force on Charles his brother's exclusion from the throne, and his resolve was justified by the Revolution, which finally did the work he proposed to do. Unhappily he was equally determined to fight Charles with weapons ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... demanded the exclusion of all secondary and unimportant matter, yet in such a manner that the ideal unity should not be at all disturbed. Here was required, not merely tact and discrimination, but a high degree of philosophical analysis; and since this was valueless except as it was followed by comprehensive synthesis, the power of artistic combination was no less requisite to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to get foreign supplies. It seemed to unprejudiced observers that the Confederacy must soon collapse. Sherman in his march from "Atlanta to the Sea" had cut the Confederacy in twain. It was without gold or silver, and its paper issues were valueless and passed only by compulsion within the Confederate lines. Provisions were obtainable only by a system of military seizure. The Confederacy had no credit at home or abroad; and there was a growing discontent with President Davis and his advisers. There also ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... preoccupation with Chicago, the Commission or with vice. It is a text and nothing else. The report happens to embody what I conceive to be most of the faults of a political method now decadent. Its failure to put human impulses at the center of thought produced remedies valueless to human nature; its false interest in a particular expression of sex—vice—caused it to taboo the civilizing power of sex; its inability to see that wants require fine satisfactions and not prohibitions drove ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... then rummaged, and the state of the ship looked to, with an eye to using her as a cruiser. As a rule, the prisoners were put ashore on the first opportunity, but some buccaneers had a way of selling their captives into slavery. If the ship were old, leaky, valueless, in ballast, or with a cargo useless to the rovers, she was either robbed of her guns, and turned adrift with her crew, or run ashore in some snug cove, where she could be burnt for the sake of the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Had the charge been made as originally expected by the troopers, her life would have been saved. No trace of the child or of the coloured nurse was ever discovered, and it is probable that they were both killed while en route from the canyon to the village, as being valueless to keep either as slaves ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... iv. 10) supply nearly all the information we possess regarding his life. The biographies in the MSS. are valueless. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... flames would obliterate a portion, if not all of the evidence against him, had rifled the safe in which, John testified, his cousin always kept considerable money. Scattering broadcast valueless papers, he had safely made his escape through the window, leaving his victim's face to the licking flames. Foot-prints below the window at the base of the fire-escape indicated that the fugitive had returned that way. This was ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... to fame. And there is another point. The women who have succeeded in bursting these bonds have, in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy and fighting, that their work is rendered crude and often valueless. Self-assertion can never be the best preparation for achievement. All this narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results gained superficial and unenduring. We have here the explanation of much that has been, and still ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of power generation had become obsolete. Who would buy electric power when he could generate his own for next to nothing? Billions upon billions of dollars worth of generating equipment were rendered valueless. The great hydroelectric dams, the hundreds of steam turbines, the heavy-metal atomic reactors—all useless for power purposes. The value of the stock in those companies dropped to zero and stayed there. The value ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... defaced by wear, long after it has ceased to represent anything. In itself it is obsolete, but people still trade with it, and think it represents what it represented when it came hot from the Mint. And, unfortunately, it sometimes happens that it is worse than valueless; it becomes a forgery (which it may not have been when it came into circulation), and deceives those who traffic with it, flattering them ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... grounds remain in contact with the boiling water. Remember that flavor, the only flavor worth having, is extracted by the short contact of boiling water and coffee grounds and that after this flavor is extracted, the coffee grounds become valueless dregs. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of some of the South American railways command a high premium, but of the whole number quoted in the official list the large majority show a heavy decline on the original value, many indeed being valueless. These stocks are highly speculative and subject to be affected by political convulsions and other contingencies, which make them undesirable ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... briefest words how the spell was broken,—partially broken. During those months of passionate exaltation, letters from friends once dear to me had been thrown aside half-read, and wholly valueless. On the eleventh of November I started,—as a black seal was to be broken. My uncle had suddenly died. The last instalment of his annuity had been paid, and my little sister, an orphan and penniless, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... then she addresses the High Bailiff, who orders her to remain quiet, and, finally, turns round and speaks to the crowd. The Judge, absorbed in the attempt to master the account-book, does not for the moment notice this, till, as he comes to the conclusion that the book is utterly valueless, he looks up and finds the Defendant with her back turned gesticulating and describing her wrongs to the audience. Even his command of silence is with reluctance obeyed, and she continues to mutter to herself. When order is restored the Judge asks for ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... provided for by the act of March 3, 1891, have been appointed and the court organized. It is now possible to give early relief to communities long repressed in their development by unsettled land titles and to establish the possession and right of settlers whose lands have been rendered valueless by adverse and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... would ask her Secretary-Cousin, Aluisi Bernardini; she felt sure that his knowledge and judgment were to be trusted on Venetian matters, although Janus had already told her with unconcealed disdain that Bernardini's opinion was valueless on Cyprian questions, which were new to him—and ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that the essential characteristics of naval discipline are, and ought to be, promptitude of action, and that vigorous kind of decision which leads to certainty of purpose at all times, and under all circumstances. But these very qualities are valueless, unless they are regulated by justice. Without this, a man-of-war would very soon become worse than useless to the country, besides being what a "slack ship" has been emphatically termed, "a ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... before the swing began. I am just getting my equipment lined up, in preparation for the beginnings of the swing, and will be unable to give you figures of any accuracy for some hours yet. Any reading I could give you now would be accurate only to within two minutes of arc—relatively valueless." The voice ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... to his version of the ancient Treatise on the Sublime, says that he is making no valueless present to his age. Not valueless, to a generation which talks much about style and method in literature, should be this new rendering of the noble fragment, long attributed to Longinus, the Greek tutor ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... have the most minute knowledge of the scientific aspect of music, dating from more than five hundred years before the Christian era. This knowledge, however, is worse than valueless, for it is misleading. For instance, it would be a very difficult thing for posterity to form any idea as to what our music was like if all the actual music in the world at the present time were destroyed, and only certain scientific works such as that of Helmholtz on ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... that the torch of religion burns brightest among dark surroundings. In circumstances of tumultuous disorder and sanguinary ambition, these great divines preached a creed which taught that all worldly things are vain and valueless. Moreover, the priests themselves did not practise the virtues they inculcated. They openly disregarded their vow of chastity; bequeathed their temples and manors to their children; employed hosts of stoled soldiers; engaged freely in the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wife lived near Rouseville, Pa. Childless, they adopted a boy, John W. Steele. Prior to the discovery of coal oil, the worn out fields of that locality were valueless. Now broad acres were as valuable as the diamond fields of South Africa. Never in the wildest days of the gold excitement in California was money more rapidly accumulated or squandered than in ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... be tested, and after the test has been completed by the experiment station the propagation of the useful varieties and the rejection of the valueless may safely be left to the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... for acquisition and enjoyment be so strong and exquisite, what wonder that these "lovers" should regard all things as valueless in comparison with the objects of their love? There seem to be spells in their collections, and in their fascination they have often submitted to the ruin of their personal, but not of their internal enjoyments. They have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... "I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows, fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million reasons than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily; blood will have to flow up the Matterhorn, before I will take it as a sign that I ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... murders, and clamoured because the murderers were not regarded as heroes; or if they were hung, canonised them as martyrs. They attempted to prostitute the law to their own base standard of political morality. They assiduously laboured to render life valueless in Ireland and property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively taught the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep. From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... making such an assertion they declare that they have all the facts of scientific sociology at the back of them. The unscientific thing is, they say, to assume the contrary; and here, they proceed, we have the fundamental error which renders most of the conclusions of the ordinary economists valueless. Economic science, in its generally accepted form, bases all its reasonings on the behaviour of the so-called "economic man"—that is to say, a being from whom those who reason about him exclude all operative desires except that of economic gain. But such ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... shall leave you. I can stay no longer here. Life is valueless now. I have permitted a raging fire to consume me. I have indulged, madly and fearfully indulged, in error. I have struggled against the temptation. Heaven has willed that I should not escape it. I have learnt that you love me—come what may, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Ireland; he alluded to various reports of Commissions upon the reclamation of waste lands, and to the works of eminent writers, who were of opinion that, in many cases, the reclamation of such waste lands would provide profitable employment for large masses of the people; and would render land, now valueless, of great value, as it would be made capable of cultivation. He quoted Sir Robert Kane (then Dr. Kane), who said, "in his most interesting work on the Industrial Resources of Ireland," that the estimate, that 4,600,000 acres of waste land might be reclaimed, and be reduced to the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... it was intended, slavery could not have lived. It was the intention that it should never go beyond those boundaries. Had this been the case, it would increase the number of slaves so much that they would have been valueless as articles of property. I must say this for America, that the slaves increase in the slave states faster than the white people; and it shows that their physical condition is better than was that of the slaves ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... without result, if my brain could bear such thought for so long. I pictured in fancy an old man who had forgotten in time his own name, and had accepted another, wasting, and having wasted, the years of his life in hunting a word impossible and valueless. But I fought this fear and put it to sleep. The uncommon name would cause me to reject all common names, perhaps at first presentation; my attention would be concentrated on peculiar sounds and forms. If my mind ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... all men were looking forward to it The trappers put in the feeble days of convalescence, making long rafts on which to pile the skins dried over winter,—a fine variety, worth all but their weight in gold. Money was easily got in those days; but there are circumstances under which money is valueless. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... the scheme would be utterly valueless, I would propose that a certain number of competent transcribers be appointed for each county, either at a given salary, or at a remuneration of so much per entry, to copy the registers of those parishes the ministers of which are unwilling ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... perfect expressions of our intentions," replied Mr. Lane. "You were deceived in your purchase of the cotton; the article proved so near valueless, as not to be really worth three cents a pound. You discovered this, as I have the best reasons for knowing, almost as soon as it came into your possession; and yet you offered it to Peterson, who, not suspecting for a moment that any thing was wrong, ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... cedar, but it was ornamented with gold and had rare paintings on the case. It was customary to employ the best artists to decorate these instruments, as this greatly enhanced their value. There is a story that Salvatore Rosa, on a wager, made his almost valueless harpsichord worth a thousand scudi by painting a landscape with figures upon ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... Come, my friend, how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai, the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself, is a supposition—a valueless, windy, uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think, an animula, vagula, blandula—bah! there is no use beating about the bush—I mean A SOUL. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it some other way, and not get ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distinct animals. On my view of characters being of real importance for classification, only in so far as they reveal descent, we can clearly understand why analogical or adaptive character, although of the utmost importance to the welfare of the being, are almost valueless to the systematist. For animals, belonging to two most distinct lines of descent, may readily become adapted to similar conditions, and thus assume a close external resemblance; but such resemblances will not reveal—will rather tend to conceal their blood-relationship ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... crucial factor in determining the efficiency of afternoon study, and many students almost completely incapacitate themselves for afternoon work by a too-heavy noon meal. Frequently an afternoon course is rendered quite valueless because the student drowses through the lecture soddened by a heavy lunch. One way of overcoming this difficulty is by dispensing with the mid-day meal; another way is to drink a small amount of coffee, which frequently keeps people awake; but ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... is always the most valuable critic of his own work; in another sense his opinion is almost valueless. He knows, better than any one else, what he wanted to do, and he knows, better than any one else, how nearly he has done it. In judging his own technical skill in the accomplishment of his aim, it is easy for him to be absolutely ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... naval officer. Some twenty-five or thirty small vessels were built in the course of as many years, but gradually the whole organization was allowed to fall into decay. Except for petty repairs this establishment was in 1909 valueless to the Chinese government. There were also small dockyards at Kiang-nan (near Shanghai), Whampoa and Taku. There are well-equipped arsenals at Shanghai and at Tientsin, but as they are both placed up shallow rivers they are useless for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various |
