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More "Fool's errand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lieutenant brought us news that you were dismasted and lying helpless in some little inlet, and here you are with what I can see is a French equipment and a couple of prizes! I can almost accuse you of having brought us here on a fool's errand." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... not be found.... Into what a dismal fiasco the play would turn. All his interest would have been thrown away. His solicitors would have been investigating a lost cause. Forest would have been sent packing back to Rome upon a fool's errand.... ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... "I call this a fool's errand altogether," one of them said in a grumbling tone. "We don't know that they have headed this way; and if they have, we might search these woods for ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... in a Hand-book especially, of referring his readers correctly to the places at which tickets are to be obtained for any purpose whatever. It discourages the visitor to London when he is thus "sent upon a fool's errand;" and the Cockney himself is not in quite so good a humour with the author for being sent a few steps ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various
... up in support, but of their troops already on the ground two battalions had gone astray, wandering off on a fool's errand towards the pernicious Sandbag Battery, where they, too, were destined to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... come here on a fool's errand, Major Pierson," replied the captain. "We are alone now, and we may call ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the flesh to the spirit of comedy. The enchanter turns harlequin; and what the lovers ask is not the annihilation of time and space but only that the father be at his prayers, or the husband gone on a fool's errand, while they have leave to kiss each other's mouths, 'as a pigeon feedeth her young,' to touch the lute, strip language naked, and 'repeat the following verses' to a ring of laughing girls and amid all such comfits and delicates ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the famous spoon melted. So far as Captain Barry and his clews were concerned, we had come on a fool's errand. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... You are on board; you land in a beautiful country, of which you become the Queen. Ah! what do I see! Look there—look at that hideous, crooked, lame man, who is pursuing you—but he is going on a fool's errand. I see a very great man, who supports you in his arms. Here, look! he is a kind of giant. There is a great deal of gold and silver—a few clouds here and there. But you have nothing to fear. The vessel will ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... had cried. "If you must stay, if you must go on your fool's errand, at least take one or more of the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... matter rest as it is, then. I'm sorry I had to disappoint a lady, to come out here on a fool's errand, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Peter plunged forward and reached the cabin. One end and side of it was blazing furiously but he dashed around the lower end of it, seeking the door. It was open and already aflame. The hut was empty. He ran out again, blinded by the smoke and the glare. Was it a fool's errand? And had he and Shad only entrapped themselves to no good end? To the right of him the fire roared and with his back to the glare his eyes eagerly sought the shadows down the wind. Vague shapes of gnarled branches and pallid tree trunks, spectral bushes quivering before the advancing demon, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou,—again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom gold mines of Appalache. Ottigny set forth on this fool's errand with thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thirnagoas and thirty Frenchmen took up their march through the pine barrens. Outina's conjurer was of the number, and had wellnigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on Ottigny's shield, that ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... sitting-room in the Hotel de Rome, at Vallanza, Anthony and Adrian were waiting for their breakfast. It is evident, therefore, that Susanna's will had prevailed, and a fool's errand was in process of accomplishment. The fool, no doubt, to the last moment, had renewed his protests, his pleadings, his refusals; but, at each fresh outburst, coldly, firmly, the lady had reiterated her ultimatum, "Then all is over between you and me." And in the end, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the sheriff of the county, and also the officer in charge at the Gridley police station, giving the officials a hint of the joke at the second lake, so they wouldn't rush away on a fool's errand in case the wild story reached ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... headed by a gendarme. These patrols had been sent by General Goyon to keep the crowd in order; but, unfortunately, there was no crowd to keep in order; so that the soldiers looked and seemed to feel as if they were sent on a fool's errand. At St Agnese there were some 150 carriages collected, almost all hired ones, of the poorer sort. The private vehicles were very few indeed; not a quarter of the muster at most. The church itself was gaily filled, but not crowded in any part. Priests, monks, and women formed ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... and me; & if that business cometh to naught then shalt thou fare to the Uplands, & good feeling again cause with Ivar Hakonson & so bring it about that he goeth not to war against me.' Fin answered: 'What will be my reward an I go on this fool's errand, for alike Throndhjem folk and Upland folk are so hostile to thee that no messenger of thine could fare to them save at his ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... was a woman such as, had he been a painter, he must have painted; a poet, he must have celebrated in silken verse. Three-and-thirty? No, he was only a lad this night. All his illusions had come back again. At a word from this mysterious woman, he would have started out on any fool's errand, to ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... 'Twas a fool's errand! For, whatever their purpose had been, they abandoned it, and half-an-hour later we spied them striking westward once more, as in haste to overtake their fellows. So near upon them were we by this time, that not only ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... there was something of mockery in the tone. Griggs might not have noticed it at any other time, but his thoughts had been occupied with Stefanone during the last two hours, and he resented what sounded like insolence. The tone implied that he had been on a fool's errand, and that Stefanone knew it. He said nothing, but stood still and scrutinized the man's face. There was an unwonted colour about the cheek bones, and the keen eyes sparkled under the brim of the soft hat. Stefanone had a solid head, and was not given ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... he remembered in his father's factory at Limoges. All that beauty and luxury belonged to him by right; they might still have been his, if only he had not listened for years to the Voice. And now the Voice had led him on this fool's errand. Here he was, preaching to nobody, and looking at a cracked mug. Was his whole life a mistake? a delusion? 'Am I a fool after all?' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... in the boats. Those who were there for the first time had even gone the length of casting strongest possible doubts as to whether those who were there the night before had seen or heard anything whatever, and did not hesitate to state their belief that they were all on a fool's errand. The others replied in kind, and when the further question was mooted as to keeping watch all night, the scoffers told the others to keep watch if they chose; for themselves, they were ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... finger on the weak spots. Of course we can't stop it. If these two young idiots have a mind to marry and keep that mind, they WILL marry and we can't prevent it any more than we could prevent the tide coming in to-morrow morning. I realized that this was a sort of fool's errand, my coming down here. I know that this isn't the age when parents can forbid marriages and get away with it, as they used to on the stage in the old plays. Boys and girls nowadays have a way of going their own gait in such matters. But my wife doesn't see it in exactly ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... did—that the boy would be sent to the Injun town in charge of the little party, while the others went on to hatch up some deviltry. Lone Wolf knowed enough to do that, and he had therefore kept the laddy with the big company, meaning that his old friend, the scout, should go on a fool's errand. ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... were alive and suffering, the whole male population would take a search party and come to our aid. Instead they know—or rather, they think they know—that we're dead. There won't be any horses, it will be a fool's errand, and mushing through those feet of soft snow is a ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... occasions perhaps to remember most fondly, for they lead you to enchanting nooks, and the landscape has details of the highest refinement. Indeed when my sense reverts to the lingering impressions of so blest a time, it seems a fool's errand to have attempted to express them, and a waste of words to do more than recommend the reader to go citywards at twilight of the end of March, making for Porta Cavalleggieri, and note what he sees. At this hour the Campagna is to the last point its melancholy ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... so—false pretences. I thought you wanted to end the quarrel, to shake hands with him, and have done with it. It wasn't shaking hands you wanted, it seems, but clenched fists. I brought him here on a fool's errand; so the ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... the cutter come next day—that one-eyed chap we took in so with the lugger—and his chaps brought him up to the rocks, and then, my wig! how he did give it 'em for bringing them a fool's errand, as he called it! It was a fine game, ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... run after her. He kens weel they will be sure to marry, but he'll say now that his daughter disobeyed him; sae he'll get off giving her a bawbee o' her fortune, and he'll save a' the plenishing and the wedding expenses. Deacon, I'm ashamed o' you. Sending a love-sick lad on sic a fool's errand. And mair, I'm not going to hae Isabel Strang, or Isabel Callendar here. A young woman wi' bridish ways dawdling about the house, I canna, and I willna stand. You'll hae to choose atween Deacon Strang's daughter and your auld ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was, a silly old ass. You have come on a fool's errand; and are going on the wrong tack by making threats. That idiotic warrant of yours is of no more use to you than a sheet of fly paper—Samoa is outside British jurisdiction. The High Commissioner for the Western Pacific ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... these letters she told exactly what she had found: neither Lord Harry nor his wife at the cottage, the place vacated, and the doctor on the point of going away. In both letters she told how she had been sent all the way into Switzerland on a fool's errand, and now found herself planted there without the means of getting home. In the letter to Mrs. Vimpany she added the remarkable detail that the man whom she had seen on the Thursday morning apparently dead, whose actual poisoning she thought ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... say to the woman when she had found her in her present abiding place or what questions she would ask. Only she knew that an inner prompting stronger than any reasoned-out process drove her forward upon her vague and blinded mission. Fool's errand it might be—probably was—yet she meant to see ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... fool's errand, I guess it is, and that's the very reason I'm going with you, Ned. You know I'm going, that I wouldn't miss going with you for the world and you haven't any right to ask me to be a sneak and crawl out of the trouble, for it is trouble ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... decided disappointment to Sweetwater, if not to Mr. Grey. He had expected to detect signs of life in this quarter, and this additional proof of Wellgood's absence from home made it look as if they had come out on a fool's errand and might much better ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... was bent upon a fool's errand, as she strode towards the Abbot's Wood, although she did not know it. Her aim was to capture Lambert as her husband; and her plan, to accomplish her wish by working on the heart-hunger he most probably felt, owing to ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
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