"Meaningless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at this moment in Anthony's head and heart? Many things must have become rather violently and painfully clear to him; many things must have changed their aspect, and adjusted themselves in new combinations. Many things that had seemed trifling or meaningless must have assumed significance and importance. No doubt he was shaken by many tumultuous thoughts and feelings. But outwardly he appeared almost unmoved. He returned the book to the table, and began to walk backwards and forwards, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... rightly; if he does everything rightly, he cannot be ungrateful. A good man returns a benefit, a bad man does not receive one. If this be so, no man, good or bad, can be ungrateful. Therefore, there is no such thing in nature as an ungrateful man: the word is meaningless." We Stoics have only one kind of good, that which is honourable. This cannot come to a bad man, for he would cease to be bad if virtue entered into him; but as long as he is bad, no one can bestow a benefit upon him, because good and bad are contraries, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... so meaningless as it may appear; there is method in the madness; for this is a passage from a story by one of the most popular English authors in America, to whom an American editor has offered twenty cents a word. At the present rate of exchange such commissions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... Southern youth, named S. Watson Wolston, a Yale student of 1845, and was an absurd romance of the hyperflorid, grandiloquent sort, entitled, "Love Triumphant, or the Enemy Conquered." Its heroine's name was Ambulinia, and its flowery, half-meaningless periods and impossible situations delighted Clemens beyond measure. He begged Cable to lend it to him, to read at the Saturday Morning Club, declaring that he certainly must own the book, at whatever cost. Henry C. Robinson, who ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of thick iron, the waves would have crushed it to pieces without the slightest compunction, and would have devoured all the people in it with no distinction of saints or sinners. The steamer had the same cruel and meaningless expression. This monster with its huge beak was dashing onwards, cutting millions of waves in its path; it had no fear of the darkness nor the wind, nor of space, nor of solitude, caring for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, this monster would have ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of material objects lying in space, clearly defined in magnitude, distance, and direction; that an experience no more complex should be the key which should unlock for me the secret storehouse of another mind, and lay before me a wealth of thoughts and emotions not my own. From the poor, bare, meaningless world of the dawning intelligence to the world of common thought, a world in which real things with their manifold properties, things material and things mental, bear their part, ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... the candidacy and platform of Bell were meaningless, those of both Lincoln and Breckinridge, Sectional, and that he alone bore aloft the standard of the entire Union; while, on the other hand, the supporters of Lincoln, his chief antagonist, claimed that—as the burden of the song from the lips of Douglas men, Bell men, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... wrong-headed, cunning, deceitful, there might still be some compensation in its cleverness. There is no such compensation. The statements made are not false, but empty; the arguments used are not bad, but meaningless. It is as if they despised language, and made use of it only because they believe that it is an instrument of deceit. But a man who has no respect for language cannot possibly use it in such a manner as to deceive others, especially if those others are accustomed to handle ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... me, and although I could not make out the expressions of their faces, in the gloom, yet I doubted not but that they were puzzled ones at that lengthy and apparently meaningless harangue. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... to expiate his cowardice in an everlasting life of tedium and sorrow! He had sinned, grievously. That he would confess! But could she not forgive him? He had paid for his deliquency with eight long, monotonous, crushing, meaningless years, one suffocating stifling night that never broke into morning. But they had met again! There was still time, Leonora! They could still call back the Springtime of their lives, make it burgeon anew, compel Love to retrace his footsteps, pass ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... him began by finding not only the money for the building of the boat but a name for her when she should be ready for sea. It seemed to him that "Meum and Tuum" would be an appropriate name, and the Mum Tum is remembered along the coast to this day as a queer, meaningless title for a boat. At a later date FitzGerald is reported to have said that his venture turned out all Tuum and no Meum so far as he was concerned. But it is possible that Posh dealt more fairly with him than he thought. At all events Posh ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... his veiled remarks. They surprised him, but at first he was inclined to consider them as meaningless and unfounded as so much of the gossip of the clubs. Men like Valentine must always be a target for the arrows of the cynical. Julian had heard his sanctity laughed at in billiard-rooms and in bars many times, and had simply felt an easy contempt for the laughers, who could not understand that any ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... with gray in it; in all the face a look of great power, reserved, but ready to act; eyes of changeable color, that took the shade of the emotion that chanced to come and look out of them; when unoccupied, cold, gray, and meaningless as a window-pane behind which no face is; and over all the countenance the look of great gravity, divided by but the ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... some meaningless things, and left her abruptly," said Hendrickson, with an impatient sweep of his hand. "I felt that her eyes were upon me, but had not the courage to lift my own ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... conception of the meaning of the word as used by the savant. We must know the content of the words that are used before we can understand one another, either in speaking or in writing. For one man, a word is big with meaning; for another, the same word is so small as to be well-nigh meaningless. To the ignorant boor, the word "education" means far less than the three R's, while to the scholar the word includes languages, ancient and modern, mathematics through many volumes, sciences that analyze the dewdrop, determine the weight of the earth and the distances and movements of the planets, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... that from him. It would never completely go. As long as he lived, what had happened in the creek would live with him. He did not deny that crying voice inside him. It was easy for his mouth to make words. He could call himself a fool and a weakling, but those words were purely mechanical, hollow, meaningless. The truth remained. It was a blazing fire in his breast, a conflagration that might easily get the best of him, a thing which he must fight and triumph over for his own salvation. He did not think of danger for Marie-Anne, for such a thought was inconceivable. The tragedy was ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... conscious of an overpowering irritation. These old wives' tales! These matronly saws! How stupid they were! How meaningless, foundationless and sickening! She did not reply to Mrs. Amber's question, but stirred restlessly in her chair, swinging her foot, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... which is always the expression of the link between these two, is, for the time, dissolved. The body rests, but the unfettered mind enters upon a "will-less state of pure seeing," where dreams no longer remain the meaningless fantasies of blind sleep, but become luminous with idea and sequence. With the body thus left behind, the intellect rises to the zenith of perception, where the blue veil of earthly knowledge is pierced ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... a snowy mountain (as Japanese artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the breadth of the sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you shall see nothing but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand Army to march down, but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense meaningless facade drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the "highest style"; in effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns, and doorways exactly alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns support nothing, like the fronts sold in boxes of children's ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... policy of George Grenville's Administration might be conveniently considered under three heads. The Ministry was resolved, in the first place, to enforce Acts of Trade which smuggling had long rendered meaningless in the American colonies. The Ministry was resolved, in the second place, to establish a permanent garrison of some ten thousand men in America. The Ministry was resolved, in the third place, to make the colonists pay a third ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... there is some personage of force and genius. But how did Cromwell, Lincoln, Bismarck arise? What force produced them? Whence did they evolve? Yet without these three names, three great periods in the world's history would be meaningless. ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... avoidance of irrational swellings and spiky projections, and by the using of careful purity of line. Even the Caslon type when enlarged shows great shortcomings in this respect: the ends of many of the letters such as the t and e are hooked up in a vulgar and meaningless way, instead of ending in the sharp and clear stroke of Jenson's letters; there is a grossness in the upper finishings of letters like the c, the a, and so on, an ugly pear-shaped swelling defacing the form of the letter: in short, it ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... served as seats; and over the table she had draped after much experiment a gaudy Indian blanket, thereby approaching more nearly the atmosphere of home they both craved so eagerly. About the wall depended picture papers, meaningless in story but heavy ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... avoided is monotony in colour. Who can not recall barren rooms, without a spark of attraction despite priceless treasures, dispersed in a meaningless way? That sort of setting puts a blight on any gathering. "Well," you will ask, "given the task of converting such a sterile stretch of monotony into a blooming joy, how should one begin?" It is quite simple. Picture to yourself how ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... realized that he had caught hold of the stern of the boat. He could not see over the edge, but he could tell that there were two people in the boat, both men. They talked fitfully, but for the most part their voices came to Jerry only as meaningless mumbles. Once more the dark outline of Lost Island lay before him, and in Jerry's heart arose a new hope that perhaps this time he would not come away empty-handed. The boat grounded on the beach where he and Phil had stood only a few minutes before. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... inexhaustible fertility, made him more the fashion than he had ever been. He had often met Caroline Danby—now Mrs. Randall—and Mary more than once delicately turned her eyes away from her cousin's face, lest she should read there somewhat of chagrin as Mr. Randall, with his meaningless face and dapper-looking form—insignificant in all save the reputation of being the wealthiest banker in Wall-street, and possessing the most elegant house and furniture, the best appointed equipage, and the handsomest wife in the ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... president election results: President Paul BIYA reelected; percent of vote - Paul BIYA 92.6%; note - supporters of the opposition candidates boycotted the elections, making a comparison of vote shares relatively meaningless ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... clubs broadens out in one's mind to an instrument of companionship through which many may be led from a sense of isolation to one of civic responsibility, even as another type of club provides recreational facilities for those who have had only meaningless excitements, or, as a third type, opens new and interesting vistas of life to those ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... may be. Well, I'm afraid that register is no good. It's meaningless. A list of names conveys nothing—except for future reference. For the present we must wait. But—in any way you can—keep your eyes open. There's one thing you can do—there was a lady in here last night ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... where he selected one of a small number of waxy cylinders. "We'll see how the General likes music," he proclaimed. He slipped the cylinder over a projection, and wound the mechanism. A sharp, high scratching responded, as painful as a pin dragging over the ear drum, a meaningless cacophony of sounds that gradually resolved into a thin, incredibly metallic melody which appeared, mercifully, to come from a distance. To this was presently joined a voice, the voice, as it were, of a sinister, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... afterthoughts possibly to be drawn from the story, but not exhausting its moral significance. In this case, powerful as the tale is, the moral intention is left vague, though except as a parable the invention is meaningless. ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... dwelling upon the antinomies involved in the argument for a Deity. As, in one case, we cannot give any meaning to an existence without a beginning, so, in the other, we can attach no meaning to the word 'substance.' If the analogy be correct, the true inference would be that both doctrines are meaningless aggregations of words, and therefore not capable of being in any true sense either 'believed' or 'disbelieved.' So again the view of the external world suggests to Newman 'atheism, pantheism, or polytheism.' Almighty benevolence has created ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... ear, except for condemnation, it must also be said that Indians in general assert that they do not recognise any particular beauty in English melodies; and the wealth of sound of a full band, performing the composition of some great master, only suggests to the Eastern mind a confused medley of meaningless noise. At the weddings of wealthy men who wish to make a special display, there sometimes appears what they call a "Europe" band, which consists of Indian performers, dressed in cast-off uniforms and with Western instruments, on which ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... satellites of Sol had proven comparatively tractable and those that were suited to man-life were quickly brought under his dominion. But there, of course, he had the advantage of proximity. The time involved in running back and forth to the home planet was meaningless and all Earth's resources could be thrown into ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... questions involved in Rhyme, Stanza and Free Verse, it may be well to revert to the old distinction between what we called for convenience the "outside" and the "inside" of a work of art. In the field of music we saw that this distinction is almost, if not quite, meaningless, and in poetry it ought not to be pushed too far. Yet it is useful in explaining the differences among men as they regard, now the external form of verse, and now its inner spirit, and as they ask themselves how these two elements are ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... grant such a request: I had no lever for my fulcrum. What could I say about one who had studied pharmacy, dissection, written a few poems, and then left the scene of action? I had no material, and a mere meaningless eulogy would have been out of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the mark and adventitious. But it is exceedingly dangerous to say that anything in Browning is irrelevant or unnecessary. We are apt to go on thinking so until some mere trifle puts the matter in a new light, and the detail that seemed meaningless springs up as almost the central pillar of the structure. In the successive monologues of his poem, Browning is endeavouring to depict the various strange ways in which a fact gets itself presented to the world. In every question there are partisans who bring cogent and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... rather meaningless, dreary town, one of thousands of such towns in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, but her mind made it ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... mostly of a sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are appended now. As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense evolving in the process of ages into something really useful. Our word "sincere" is derived from sine cero, without wax, but the learned ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... as an adjective or with an adjective sense. "Quality clothes" is meaningless: "Clothes of quality" equally so. All clothes have quality and the expression has meaning only when the quality is defined as good, bad, high, low, ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... troubled silence. There had been one wonderful moment when he thought that at last his faith was to be justified and by the unbeliever himself! and he had cried out, with a passion deferred for more than thirty years: "The VOICE!" But behold, the voice, babbling and meaningless, was nothing but sickness. No one could guess what the shock of that disappointment was. He was not able even to speak of it. So Philippa was asked no awkward questions, and her self-knowledge ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... of ancient faith and lift up his voice in the echoes of old hopes, with the blighting thought in his soul that the faith is a lie, and the hope no more than the folly of the crowd; to read hundreds of times in a twelvemonth with solemn unction as the inspired word of the Supreme what to him are meaningless as the Abracadabras of the conjuror in a booth; to go on to the end of his days administering to simple folk holy rites of commemoration and solace, when he has in his mind at each phrase what dupes are those simple folk and how wearisomely counterfeit their rites: and to know through ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... education. So much I do claim. But here I have related, at length, a string of trivialities. You must have the imagination of a poet to transfigure them. These little colored patches are stains upon the windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull and meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are glorified shapes with empurpled wings and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... for the territory of the Maharaja of Kashmir are meaningless. In the huge Indus valley the incidence is only 4 persons per sq. mile. In Jammu and Kashmir it is 138. The map taken from the Census Report gives the details. The increase in the decade was on paper 8-1/2 p.c., distributed between 5-1/4 in Jammu, 12 in Kashmir, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... English town; there were electric trams running, and rows of small trees, and an open space planted with shrubs, with asphalt paths and ugly seats. On the other side of the road was a row of big villas, tasteless, dreary, comfortable houses, with meaningless turrets and balconies. I could not help feeling that it was very dismal that men and women should live in such places, think them neat and well-appointed, and even grow to love them. We went into one of these houses; it was early in the morning, and a little ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... promenade, but stopped at the first shelter, and seating himself in the corner best protected from the wind, he examined the book at leisure. Nearly every page was scored with a meaningless jungle of pencil marks: rows of capital letters, short words, long words, complete sentences, copy-book tags. The whole thing, in fact, had the appearance of a copy-book, and on a more careful scrutiny Eustace thought that there was ample evidence to show ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... live happier lives because of him, his leadership. There was poetry in the old man, and imagination. But the young man, with his eyes filled with those other—more brilliant—glories, saw only the grime, heard only the dull roar of the wheels that turned out a meaningless flood of gold, like an engine contrived to supply desires and reap its percentage ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the Holy One The garments of the flesh put on Men followed where the Highest led For common gifts of daily bread, And gross of ear, of vision dim, Owned not the Godlike power of Him. Vain as a dreamer's words to them His wail above Jerusalem, And meaningless the watch He kept Through which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... warrior appeared, looking fierce and imperious, as he strode slowly out and acknowledged Frank's haughty bow, when his countenance relaxed a little, but assuming ignorance of the present upon the camel, he advanced with open hand to greet his visitor, saying a few words of meaningless welcome. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... cemetery wall in order to get shelter, and charged against the wind, head down. He was in the best of humors. That was two new members he had won over; he was getting on by degrees! What an odd fish Peter had become; the word, "man, man," sounded meaningless to Pelle's ears. Well, anyhow, he had got him on ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... shown that concrete knowledge of the world cannot be gained without a certain ethical effort by the seeker. Therefore, anyone who receives such knowledge with a passive attitude of soul will find it meaningless, and will be quite unable to turn it to practical account. We may therefore rest assured that the solution of the problem related here, as of any other experimental task set by Rudolf Steiner, will contain in itself a guarantee that no use will be ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... right and left, the sense of discomfort grew clearer and more vivid. It was her hands that were wrong. Her hands were empty. She must have something to fill them. Something alive, lithe, curling, sinuous. These wavings and swayings, to this side and to that, seemed so meaningless and void—without some life to guide them. There was nothing for her to hold; nothing to tame and subdue; nothing to cling and writhe and give point to her movements. Oh! heavens, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... drivers of the hotel 'bus and of the local express wagon were particular friends; they gave each other to perdition at every other word; a growing boy, who had come to meet Mr. Gerrish, the merchant, with the family sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless maledictions; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge almost as much as he respected Elbridge's horses (they were really Northwick's, but the professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally speaking, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... in the unexamined possibility that in a relativist interpretation of all truth a meaning may be found for the distinction between 'true' and 'false.' Now, not even a sceptic could deny that the size of an object is better measured by a yard-measure than by the eye, even though it may be meaningless to ask what its size may be absolutely; or that it is probable that bread will be found more nourishing than stone, even though it may not be a perfect elixir of life. Even if he denied this, the sceptic's acts would convict his words ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... without feeling would still, I suppose, be a human being, because it would be conscious of existence; it would breathe and know that its heart was beating, but without sight or sensation there could be no idea of space—time, to it, would be a meaningless series of breaths or heartbeats. Without touch or sight it could have no idea of form or size, which are merely conditions of space, and both the past and the future would be ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... and meaningless stimulus time after time; at first the animal makes some instinctive exploring or defensive reaction; but with continued repetition of the stimulus, he ceases after a while to respond. The instinctive reaction has been detached from one ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... suggestion upon the waiting canvas. Then came inquiry, explanation, reasoning, the exercise of a manly and poetic sensibility, and endless experiment with lines and forms, of which the greater part were meaningless, until by unwearied searching, and constant trial and correction, the complete ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... within his head—he walked light-heartedly up the rue de la Gaiete, with his helmet tossed backwards on his shaggy head, his heavy kit swinging in disordered fashion from his shoulders, his mouth open, shouting meaningless things to the passers-by, and his steps very short, jerky and unsteady. Thus it happened, that many people, seeing him in this condition, shuddered, and asked what France had come to, when she must place her faith in such men as that. Other people, however, laughed at him, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... laid down painfully reminds us that the poet and the historian have no such heritage in this land. We have done our best to crowd out all the beautiful significant names we found here, and to replace them by meaningless appellations. For the name of a thing is that which really has in it something of that to which it belongs, which describes and classifies it, and is its spoken representative; while the appellation is only a title conferred by act of Parliament ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... way God's law, while the law of physical retribution is the law of what they call nature, somehow not quite so much God's law as the other is. Such an absurdity only requires to be stated to be exposed. The law of moral retribution is precisely as blind, deaf, and meaningless, and entitled to be respected just as little, as the law of physical retribution. Why, sir, of the two, the much-abused law of physical retribution is decidedly more moral, in the sense of obvious fairness, than the so-called law of moral retribution ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... of the old Irishman who had been murdered by the blacks came to him. Pat Dorrity had talked in his sleep a great deal the first night after the drover had saved him from perishing. The man was feverish, and the sentences had been jumbled up and meaningless at the time, but Stobart's memory now recalled certain words which he had scarcely ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... She shook her head gravely. "It isn't those that I'm talking about. It's sitting day after day and listening to the meaningless taps and buzzings that come ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... fragmentary spoils flow in upon him, of all sizes, shapes, and hues; a chaos of confused riches, perhaps only a wealth of rubbish, as they lie at his feet. One by one they fall into harmonious relations, until the meaningless heap has become a vast mosaic, where nothing is too minute to fill some interstice, nothing too angular to fit some corner, nothing so dull or brilliant of tint that it will not furnish its fraction of light or shadow. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the organs of her body, unfitting her to be a mother, causing more than half the surgical operations in the hospitals. She will then discuss character more than fashion. She will be ashamed of her silly, giggling and meaningless conversation. God said, "a man shall not wear that which pertains to a woman neither shall a woman put on a mans garment for all that do such things are an abomination unto God" women will then see the vulgarity and immodesty and sin in dressing in male attire ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... now forming an inclined bridge over Dougal's ineffectual tubs. In front of it stood McGuffog, swinging his gun by the barrel and yelling curses, which, being mainly couched in the vernacular, were happily meaningless to Saskia. She herself stood at the hall door, plucking at something hidden in her breast. He saw that it was a little ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... looks began to talk with me; 3010 And no articulate sounds, but something sweet Her lips would frame,—so sweet it could not be, That it was meaningless; her touch would meet Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat In response while we slept; and on a day 3015 When I was happiest in that strange retreat, With heaps of golden shells we two did play,— Both infants, weaving wings ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... emotional abstractions of the diffluent imagination; affective images, the type of which is found in musicians; symbolic images, familiar in mystics. It may seem improper to add another class to this list, but it is not a meaningless subtlety. Indeed, there are no images in general that, according to the ordinary conception, would be copies of reality. Even their separation into visual, auditory, motor, etc., is not sufficient, because it distinguishes them only with regard to their origin. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... that my life should be better, and I must not impose the care of myself on other people's shoulders; but if I am going to take care of myself alone, of nothing but my own personal life,—it will be useless, ugly and meaningless. ...
— The Shield • Various
... when I had leisure to observe outside matters, I perceived that among the other actors in the drama confusion still reigned. There was much scuttering about and much meaningless shouting. Mr Abney's reedy tenor voice was issuing directions, each of which reached a dizzier height of futility than the last. Glossop was repeating over and over again the words, 'Shall I telephone for the police?' to which nobody ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... meet—we don't meet." She lived among her neighbors without hate, without malice; for years she had "meant nothing but love"—and this not negatively. The rebellion against Christmas was against only the falsity of its meaningless observance. The rebellion against taking the child, though somewhat grounded in her distrust of her own fitness, was really the last vestige of a self that had clung to her, in bitterness not toward Adam, but toward Lily. Ever since she had known that the child was coming ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... came back to us, poured over us, swept away the dross of selfishness and deception and petty scheming, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave stately as a goddess. Patriotism, that had been to us but a dingy and meaningless antiquity, took on a new form, a new mien, a countenance divinely fair and forever young, and received once more the homage of our hearts. Was that a childish outburst of excitement, or the glow of an aroused principle? Was it a puerile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the very temple of God, he looks for no God in it. Nor must there needs be two men to think and feel thus differently. In what diverse fashion will any one subject to ever-changing mood see the same world of the same glad creator! Alas for men, if it changed as we change, if it grew meaningless when we grow faithless! Thought for a morrow that may never come, dread of the dividing death which works for endless companionship, anger with one we love, will cloud the radiant morning, and make the day ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... spirit of the injunction by entering into an alliance which would secure peace and make entanglements impossible, than she is when she leaves herself and the world exposed to the constant menace of war, merely for the sake of seeming to comply with the letter of a maxim which is now meaningless. If Washington were alive to-day, it does not seem to me possible to doubt that he would favour a new English treaty, even though he might have more difficulty in compelling Congress to accept his views than he ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... He was an honest fellow of about forty—the type of working-man who had aspired to nothing beyond a chance to toil and raise a family for the Fatherland. Weltpolitik, with its vaunting boast of "World-power or Downfall," was meaningless to him and his comrades gathered in the ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... is left to us; and we judge well. Stay with us in the field of endless war! Here only is health. Yon city fortified You dream of—why, its ramparts are as dust. It gives no safety. One assaulting sweep Of our huge cohorts would annul its power— Crush it in atoms; make it meaningless." ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... perfectly possible for a strong and handy man, accustomed to agricultural pursuits, to earn a living from the soil, my example has little to teach in this direction. The cry of 'Back to the Land' will be meaningless until general ownership in the land is made possible. It is the burden of rent, often a cruel and unjust rent, that has driven men from the land. Not far from me at Thornthwaite there resided a man ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... simplicity of London noticed with horror that the grossest satires on the American Senator and politician never failed to excite the laughter and applause of every audience. Rich and poor joined in throwing contempt on their own representatives. Society laughed a vacant and meaningless derision over its own failure. Nothing remained for a young man without position or ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... spiritual life is stale, and petty, or egoistic, or seeking for enjoyment only rather than action; if we have nothing in us to give the words and forms we use, but only some national force left to use and play with them, we for a while refine, and paint, and pettify, and elaborate into meaningless subtleties of form, every one of which in turn reacts upon our mental and spiritual life, distracting and enchaining us, until at last the nation and its language—die out; for neither ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... agent here and there with a sense of responsibility beyond the pickings of his post, a Hudson Bay factor whose long experience in handling the affairs of half-breeds and Indians instructed him to read as from a printed page what to others were meaningless and incoherent happenings, and above all the officers of the Mounted Police, whose duty it was to preserve the "pax Britannica" over some three hundred thousand square miles of Her Majesty's dominions ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... rare exceptions, did not impress me more favorably here than at the Champs-Elysees. They have a used-up look; their features are meaningless, or rather they have all the same meaning. The proud, stalwart bearing which we find in the portraits of our ancestors—men who joined moral to physical vigor—has disappeared. Yet in this gathering there was one ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... had but little idea of the meaning of the words which they were transcribing. In all, the superscription V.S. is expanded (wrongly, as I believe) into 'Viro Senatori;' for 'Praefecto Praetorio' we have the meaningless 'Praeposito;' and the Agapitus who is addressed in the 6th, 32nd, and 33rd letters of the First Book is turned, in defiance of chronology, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... glimmer of new buildings, too, as far eastward as Grimaldi; and a viaduct carries (I suppose) the railway past the mouth of the bone caves. F. Bacon (Lord Chancellor) made the remark that 'Time was the greatest innovator'; it is perhaps as meaningless a remark as was ever made; but as Bacon made it, I suppose it is better than any that I could make. Does it not seem as if things were fluid? They are displaced and altered in ten years so that one has difficulty, even with a memory so very vivid and retentive ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... livened slowly. Pleasant to be nobody—a bodyless, meaningless smile awake in the morning. Opened eyes on a pillow. A deep, deep sigh on a pillow. An oblong of sunshine on the floor. A happy bed. A happy ceiling. A happy ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the [Hebrew: mvrh], in the first hemistich of the verse, must denote a divine blessing different from the giving of the [Hebrew: mvrh] in the second, is evident for this reason:—that, otherwise, there would arise a somewhat meaningless tautology. They who assigned to [Hebrew: mvrh] in the first hemistich, the signification of "rain in general," have felt how very unsuitable is the twofold mention of the early rain. To this must be added the use of the Fut. with Vav convers., [Hebrew: vivrd]. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... brain reeled, and Mescal's broken murmurings were meaningless Then his faculties grew steady and acute; he held the girl as if he intended never to let her go. Mescal clung to him with a wildness that gave him anxiety for her reason; there was something almost ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... at his guests with a meaningless stare. While they laughed he was reciting to himself the old story: "Dain dead, all my plans destroyed. This is the end of all hope and of all things." His heart sank within him. He felt a kind of ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... of those of his party that he was obliged, for reasons of political expediency and party exigency, to hold them in abeyance during the Presidential campaign of 1908. Jeffersonian democracy, therefore, seems now to be nothing more than a meaningless form of expression. ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... invalidated by the lack of faith?—that the "asking" is not credentialed by the "believing?" When the anointed minister of Heaven spreads his palms and uprolls his eyes to beseech a general blessing or some special advantage is he the celebrant of a hollow, meaningless rite, or the dupe of a false promise? One does not know, but if one is not a fool one does know that his every resultless petition proves him by the inexorable laws of logic to be the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... and wound the yarn around any fashion, while she babbled softly or asked a question and forgot it as soon as asked. Rather spare in figure and much wrinkled in face, she still had a placid look and smiled with a meaningless softness ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... little, old man, with thin lips and a straggling grey beard, and shifty eyes, and pushful snob written all over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of office. When you looked at the picture close to, it was a meaningless mass of coloured smudges, but when you stood fifteen feet away from it the portrait was absolutely lifelike, amazing, miraculous. It was so wondrously lifelike that some of the inhabitants of the Five Towns burst out laughing. Many people felt sorry—not for Sir Jee—but ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... heart, even though the ear was doing its duty. Roderick accepted sermons and church-going good-naturedly, as a necessary, respectable formality of life. That it must have a bearing on all life or be utterly meaningless he did not realise. His plans for life had nothing to do with church, and the divine call fell ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... House of Lords. We were admitted while the business was going on, and saw the curious old form of passing the Acts of Parliament by Commission, than the ceremonies of which it is difficult to imagine anything more quaint, not to say ludicrous, and apparently meaningless. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the veterans, the survivors of those who saved the Union. They did the one deed which if left undone would have meant that all else in our history went for nothing. But for their steadfast prowess in the greatest crisis of our history, all our annals would be meaningless, and our great experiment in popular freedom and self-government a gloomy failure. Moreover, they not only left us a united Nation, but they left us also as a heritage the memory of the mighty deeds by which the Nation was kept united. We are now indeed one Nation, one ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... words are onomatopoetic. The cackle of a hen, the gabble of a goose, the chatter of a magpie, the babble of a running stream, as applied to human speech, indicate a rapid succession of what are to the listener meaningless sounds. Blab and blurt (commonly blurt out) refer to the letting out of what the lips can no longer keep in; blab, of a secret; blurt out, of passionate feeling. To chat is to talk in ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... time in her life Janet felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import. Hitherto the mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom and draining her energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of meaningless documents and rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus and a motive, the Corporation began to take on significance, and she flung herself into the work with an ardour hitherto unknown, determined to make herself so valuable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fact remains that, in every department of life, in every organism, down to our own bodies, there is a survival of bad workmanship, of twofold functions, of oversights, changes of intention, absurdities, useless complications and meaningless waste. We therefore have no reason to believe that our enemies are in the right because earth is with them. Earth does not possess the truth any more than we do. She seeks it, even as we do, and discovers it no more readily. She seems to know ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... superfluous. What is the good of tormenting a soul in Hell for ages, and then whirling it back to the body in order to rise again and receive a solemn public condemnation? Better leave it in the Inferno and save trouble, especially as the solemn trial is meaningless, seeing that a part of the sentence has already been undergone and that there is no hope that any portion of it will ever be remitted. Truly the tender mercies with which the theologians have credited the Almighty are ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... they walked off together into the darkness. The music grew fainter behind them. Some of the higher notes faded out altogether. Jenny's drumming and the steady sawing of the bass throbbed on, tuneless and meaningless in their ears. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... wide-eyed state of reasonless excitement and perilous delight. It was all so meaningless, she assured her pretty vision in the mirror, as she arranged her bright hair,—the man was married, and most happily married; he was older than she; he was a man of honor! And she, Susan Brown, was only playing this fascinating game exceptionally ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... was silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out. She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... on a stranger's roof? Because flying kites, up there the boys run across and interfere with the neighbor's pigeons, which is apt to make him wroth. So you see it is all in the interests of "domestic tranquillity and the common defence." They are not meaningless phrases, those big words, they are the boy's ideas of self-government, of a real democracy, struggling through in our sight. And suppose he does walk on rhetorical stilts, he has precedent and will show it to you. A ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... who knew nothing of Paris, who had never been in Paris, and who was not somewhat au fait with the gay and triste, the splendid and squalid, the brilliant and unequal society there, these sketches would be meaningless. Again, Gavarni's pictures are not series. He does not develop his heroes and heroines. He does not make us feel for them in their mishaps. We do not laugh with them, as we would with friends or acquaintances, but we laugh at them. We do not once recognize ourselves in them. His portraits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and empty face, and in the inner recesses of the box was visible an elderly man in a wide frock-coat and high cravat, with an expression of dull dignity and a kind of ingratiating distrustfulness in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and whiskers, a large meaningless forehead and wrinkled cheeks, by every sign a retired general. Lavretsky did not take his eyes off the girl who had made such an impression on him; suddenly the door of the box opened and Mihalevitch went in. The appearance of this man, almost his one acquaintance in Moscow, in the society ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... from tangible things as the x and y of algebraic equations. These men all worked—the apologue of the quadratic equation held my mind—moving their symbols here and there, extracting roots, dissolving close-knit phrases into factors, cancelling, simplifying, but always dealing with symbols meaningless, unreal in themselves. Behind them was Ascher, Ascher and I suppose Stutz, who expressed realities in formulae, and, when the sums were done, extracted realities from the formulae again, achieving through the seemingly sterile processes new facts, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... fit his own case, to express by an almost perfect vehicle the vague thoughts that had struggled in his own heart during this last week. It was Amy of whom the man spoke, Amy with her eyes and hair, peering from the glorious gloom to catch some glimpse of her lover in his meaningless light of earthly day. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... type of the Nation, the Daily News, and the Manchester Guardian—all three newspapers well known for their Pacifist tendencies. As the speech approached its end, this sentence appeared: "It must be a peace without victory." The words greatly puzzled the secretary in charge, for they seemed almost meaningless. Suspecting that an error had been made in transmission, the secretary directed the code room to cable Washington for a verification of the cipher groups. Very soon the answer was received; there had ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... King's ship, carrying an officer of the King's navy, or an ambassador of the King's Council, irresolutely loitering about the Bay of Algiers trying to mollify a surly despot, or perhaps to experiment in a little meaningless bluster, at which the Dey laughs in his sleeve, or even openly, for he knows he has only to persevere in his demands and every government in Europe will give in. Consuls may pull down their flags and threaten war; admirals may come and look stern, and even make a show of a broadside ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... too little, were not allowed to join in the game, and contented themselves with general scrimmaging and skylarking, while Edward Quintal, Catherine McCoy, and Hannah Adams, the most recent additions to the community, rolled about in meaningless felicity. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... placated him with an insignificant remark which led both into a maze of meaningless but infinitely diverting inconsequences; diverting, at least, to Anisty, who held up his head, giving her back look for look, jest for jest, platitude for platitude (when the waiter was within hearing distance): altogether, he felt, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the right to kiss every woman they meet, and, strange to say, every woman expects to be kissed, and is quite offended if she is passed by without being saluted in this way, which is so much more ancient and historic than the meaningless modern one of shaking hands. This Indian definition of New Year's Day vastly amused the boys, and when in the morning Mrs Ross and Wenonah came in, they, of course, had to be saluted in the orthodox fashion. This was very agreeable, but when the Indian cook came into the dining ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... and, abetted by the cheering presence of a bottle of Shiraz wine, exchange my recent experiences on the road for telegraphic scraps of the latest news. How utterly unsatisfactory and altogether wretched seems even the gilded palace of a Persian provincial governor—the meaningless compliments, the salaaming lackeys and empty show of courtesy, when compared with the cosey quarters, the hearty welcome, the honest ring of an Englishman's voice, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... multiplications and divisions, in pure arithmetical form, if the pretence purpose is clearly in view, which to them is a real purpose; the same thing occurs in writing which should be considered a side issue of reading; meaningless words or sentences are written wearily and without pains, but to write the name of a picture you have painted, at the bottom of it, or to write something that Cinderella's Godmother said, or bit by bit to write a letter, will be having a purpose that gives life to ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... Portobello, where Merton rushed to the window, thrust half of his body out and indulged in the raucous and meaningless yells of the festive artisan. Thus he tided over a rather prolonged wait, but, when the train moved on, the inquiring rough returned to the charge. He was suspicious, and also was drunk, and obstinate with all ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... sledge dogs stood harnessed. Hatless, silent, crowding back their grief behind grim and lonely countenances, they waited for Cummins' wife to say good-bye. The woman did not speak. She held up her child for each man to kiss, and the baby babbled meaningless things into the bearded faces that it had come to know and love, and when it came to Williams' turn he whispered, "Be a good baby, be a good baby." And when it was all over the woman crushed the child to her breast and dropped sobbing upon the sledge, and ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the senseless day, after its happy but meaningless triviality, the throng and mixed perfumery and silly courteous gestures, his blessed solitude! Oh solitude, that noble peace of the mind! He loved the throng and multitude of the day: he loved people: but sometimes he suspected that he loved them as God does—at a judicious distance. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Sunday, he brought her a learned composition, and played it to her, preliminary to their singing it. But she declined it on the spot. "What!" said she. "Mr. X., would you compare this meaningless stuff with Kent in F? Why, in Kent, the dominant sentiment of each composition is admirably preserved. His 'Magnificat' is lofty jubilation, with a free, onward rush. His 'Dimittis' is divine repose after life's fever. But this poor pedant's 'Magnificat' ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... spring roundup stuff now for half a dozen pictures. He'll be moving in to the ranch again pretty quick. And I know this picture calls for a lot of town business that he'll have to take. I saw the script the other day." This, of course, being a free translation of the meaningless jumble of strange words which ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and the same supernally sweet, silver bell tones of—yesterday, I must call it, although in that place of eternal day the term is meaningless—bade us enter. The door slipped aside. The chamber was small, the opal walls screening it on three sides, the black opacity covering it, the fourth side opening out into a delicious little walled garden—a mass ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Nature in Sambo shapes and inspires, was the task of the time. But the task fell into bungling hands. The intuitive utterance of the art was misapprehended or perverted altogether. Its naive misconceits were construed into coarse blunders; its pleasing incongruities were resolved into meaningless jargon. Gibberish became the staple of its composition. Slang phrases and crude jests, all odds and ends of vulgar sentiment, without regard to the idiosyncrasies of the negro, were caught up, jumbled together into rhyme, and, rendered into the lingo ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... first number the proper remark is "hmmm," accompanied by a slow shake of the head. After this you may use any one of a number of remarks, as for example, "Well, I suppose Mendelssohn appeals to a great many people," or "That was meaningless enough to have been written by a Russian." This latter is to be preferred, for it leads your companion to say, "But don't you like TschaiKOWsky?", pronouncing the second syllable as if the composer were a female bull. You can then reply, "Why, yes, TschaiKOFFsky ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... women, such as I see them to be, because they have been so instructed, want to have something soft and delicate; a creature without a single serious thought, who is chosen because his cheek is red and his hair is soft; because he can dance, and speak vain, meaningless words; because he makes love, as the foolish parlance of the world goes. And we see what comes of such lovemaking. Oh, Linda! God forbid that you should fall into that snare! If you will think of it, what ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... began once more to scout through the smoke. No one met them, though distant shapes rushed athwart the gloom, yelping to each other, and near by, legs of runners moved under a rolling cloud of smoke as if their bodies were embedded and swept along in the wrack:—all confused, hurried, and meaningless, like the uproar of gongs, horns, conches, whistling bullets, crackers, and squibs that sputtering, string upon string, flower upon rising flower of misty red gold explosion, ripped all other ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... movements, though there was nothing whatever of the ghost about Miss Margaret herself. She was a plump, short person, no longer young, with coal-black hair growing low on the forehead, and a round face that would have been nearly meaningless if the features had not been emphasized—italicized, so to speak—by the small-pox. Moreover, the brilliancy of her toilet would have rendered any ghostly hypothesis untenable. Mrs. Solomon (we refer to the dressiest Mrs. Solomon, whichever one that was) in all her glory ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that he faltered in telling her; and, as for her, the crowd of uniformed or jewelled figures around them became to her, as he spoke, a mere meaningless confusion. She was only conscious of him, and of the emotion which at ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife's bright look will be meaningless.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... had selected was in a remote part of the building, there was little immediate chance of detection. So the laughter of the party grew louder and sillier; the talk more foolish and random; the merriment more noisy and meaningless. But still most of them mingled some sense of caution with their enjoyment, and warned Eric and Wildney more than once that they must look out, and not take too much that night for fear of being ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... had been eaten, the last drop of water nearly exhausted. The strongest might endure for a day or two, the weakest ones must sink within a few hours. Even O'Carroll, strong as he seemed, was giving way. He sat dull and unconscious, his eyes meaningless, only arousing himself by a great effort. My brother's head rested on my arm, and I was moistening his lips with the few drops obtained from the cask. Suddenly Kelson, who had been gazing round the horizon, started up, crying out, "A breeze! a ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... style may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... a hidden meaning in it all, he had said, meaningless as it often seemed. Some meaning that would show itself ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... humble the boy would be, and how Kate would scold and draw herself up—proud duchess that she was—and how Harry would swear by the nine gods, and an extra one if need be—and then there would come a long, long silence, broken by meaningless, half-spoken words—and then another silence—so deep and absorbing that a full choir of angels might have started an anthem above their heads and neither of them would have ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... be observed with surprise that both these tapus are for thoroughly sensible ends. With surprise, I say, because the nature of that institution is much misunderstood in Europe. It is taken usually in the sense of a meaningless or wanton prohibition, such as that which to-day prevents women in some countries from smoking, or yesterday prevented any one in Scotland from taking a walk on Sunday. The error is no less natural than it is unjust. The Polynesians have not been trained ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mercy of the housepainter, who knows much about estimates, something about paint, and little about color. I hope we are going to learn the difference between paint and color, the purely physical, meaningless thing on the one hand, and the intelligence-conveying, pleasure-giving ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... obtaining at an early hour each morning a pink or green evening paper that shrieks with crimson headlines. Such has been his reading through all time, and this may have been an element in shaping his now inveterate hostility toward those who would engage him in meaningless talk. Even in accepting the gift of an excellent cigar he betrays only a bored condescension. There is no relenting of countenance, no genial relaxing of an ingrained suspicion toward all who approach him, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... had listened without hearing, shook his head and went on. The minister's talk seemed no more than a meaningless jumble of words out of which he got ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... beautiful, with giant candles burning by the draped bier, organ music that seemed to swell and rumble in the pit of one's stomach, and light voices of singing boys that made one vibrate as if one had been turned into glass—all stirring one to a quite meaningless regret, not for the man who lay deaf and dumb and blind beneath the velvet pall, but because of vague thoughts about children who die young and have wings to hover over those they loved down here below. And, oh, the increasing heat of the church, the oppressive crush, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... once been a part of herself recreated. The prayer concerned that. "Even though I die, I will in some way keep defeat from you," she cried, and so deep was her determination that her whole body shook. Her eyes glowed and she clenched her fists. "If I am dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come back," she declared. "I ask God now to give me that privilege. I demand it. I will pay for it. God may beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both." Pausing ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... tired expecting by this time," returned Mollie practically. "Now will you please repeat that somewhat meaningless jumble of words, Betty dear? What was it—something about somebody's son having a ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... continued for some time in this meaningless strain Ten-teh turned to rebuke him, when to his astonishment he perceived that a strange cormorant was endeavouring to reach them, its progress being impeded by an object which it carried in its mouth. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and mostly by touch we crept round the outermost alley of the hidden maze till a new clump of booms appeared, meaningless to me, but analysed by him into two groups. One we followed for some distance, and then struck finally away and began another beat ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... clutch of forty-eight hours of wakeful activity was upon him. The words of Old Andy were only so much of a meaningless jumble to him. Into the car he stumbled, a doddering, red-eyed thing, to drink his coffee as the rest drank it, to shamble to the stove, forgetful of the steaming, rancid air, then like some tired beast, sink to the floor in ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... cruelty. How could anybody expect a girl to turn out well after the usual course of workhouse training? The life of the soul is too often quenched; the flame of life in the poor body is dim and low; and the mechanical morality, the dull, meaningless round of useless lessons, the habit of herding in unhealthy rooms with unhealthy companions, all tend to develop a creature which can be regarded only as one of Nature's failures, if I may parody a phrase of the superlative ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... from the universe—this would again be a judgement of purely speculative reason; because the object in this case—the cause—can never be an object of possible experience. In both these cases the principle of causality, which is valid only in the field of experience—useless and even meaningless beyond this region, would be ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... There was no other man, except my own uncle, for whom I had at that time so great an admiration. Very strangely, as it appeared to me, he bore a Christian name. He was commonly called Jacob. I did not discover how he came by such a curious and apparently meaningless name until after I had returned to the United States. His father had been converted by one of the early missionaries, before the Minnesota massacre in 1862, and the boy had been baptized Jacob. He was ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... cannot readily apprehend this connection. The teacher who announced at the beginning of the grammar lesson, "To-day we are going to learn about Mood in verbs" started the problem in a form that was meaningless to the class. The simplest method in such a lesson would be to draw attention to examples in sentences of verbs showing this change and then say to the class, "Let us discover why these verbs are ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... at the contrast between the meaningless and trivial life of the people, who presumably lived there, and the wondrous magic glory it all assumed through the power of my imagination. I meditated on the land Orplid - the youthful phantasy of Mricke - to which with a few measured words he was able to lend a deep, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the development of that theme, he will give us an insight into the best way to present it to our hearers, and putting faith in these preliminary conditions he will take care of the results. He must also dictate the praying in a church. There is much of it that is meaningless. It is too formal, too lifeless, and entirely too general in its character. In Matthew the eighteenth chapter and the nineteenth verse, we read, "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... past the other faces to his face, and the thought that came to her mind was, how simple and almost meaningless the rest were compared to his. Among the fourteen guests—seven women and seven men—though some had charm or distinction, his face alone ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... amongst the junk fleet in this neighbourhood. Dozens of these trim-built and picturesque-looking craft have lately accumulated here to give the princes a proper reception. Day after day they have duly gone through some extraordinary and to us meaningless evolutions, all flags, gongs, yells, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... countenance, Darden leaned forward, seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently. "You are too given to idle and meaningless words, Deborah," he declared, releasing her. "By the Lord, one of these days I'll break you of the habit for good and all! Hugon, and scarlet flowers, and who will marry Audrey, that is yet but a child and useful about the house,—what has all this to do with the matter ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... science listened, interrupted, and nodded his head in approval. He put an end to the recital by repeating his usual meaningless assurances, in a raised voice now and with his ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... The moment I opened my eyes, I felt that something had happened. I asked for Sir John and for Alice. I saw a swift, curious look that I could not interpret come over the face of the nurse, then she was calm again, her countenance impassive. She reassured me in quick meaningless phrases, and told me to sleep. But I could not sleep: I was absolutely sure that something had happened to them, to my friend and to the woman I loved. Yet all my insistence profited me nothing, for the nurses were a silent lot. Finally, I think, they ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... been other "voyages to the moon," but none of higher merit than the one just mentioned. That of Bergerac is utterly meaningless. In the third volume of the "American Quarterly Review" will be found quite an elaborate criticism upon a certain "journey" of the kind in question—a criticism in which it is difficult to say whether the critic most exposes the stupidity of the book, or his own absurd ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which possessed me during my wanderings after Aniela's marriage. Again I understand nothing, cannot act or look upon anything that has no direct bearing upon Aniela. The thoughts in which I do not see her image at the bottom are meaningless to me. It is a proof how far a man may sink his own self. I read this morning a lecture by Bunge called "Vitality and Mechanism," and I perused it with exceptional interest. He demonstrates scientifically that which has been in my mind more as a dim, shapeless idea ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that night as they walked home together, something made Dan feel that his friend was pleased. The encounter with the blunt young farmer had been so refreshing that he was not so depressed in spirit as he commonly was after the perfunctory, meaningless, formal compliments, and handshaking that usually closed his services. Perhaps because of this he—for the first time—sought an ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble and went ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... it possible," I said. "Yonder old Safe, if rumor says true, holds many mystic signals which the past and present could address only to the future,—signs meaningless, no doubt, to you or me, but which the freemasonry of higher intelligence shall render plain in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hotel; a club whose windows looked out on the avenue; an office where Carington and he had pretended to work down on Nassau Street; drawing-rooms where Carington and he had pretended to be in love, on various streets; the whole gay, meaningless panorama of his life as a homeless, unplaced New York sojourner, who had considered that he had too much money to be anything seriously and too little money to do anything effectively.... Then another picture, jerking, mazy, a study in kinematics—"Crazy ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... veins, upon the palm that hung listless by her side, and gazed into her eyes. Still she neither spoke nor shrank, and, in the imperfect light, her face looked very pale, while her lovely eyes were dark and meaningless ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Charlotte in just that fashion. He thought with a thrill of indignant pride that there was a maiden who would have the best of love as her right. Then sitting there he heard a quick tread and a trill of whistle as meaningless as that of a robin, and young Eastman himself came alongside. He ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nostri miserere," and greeted me with a pitiless simper. The unidentified martyr on the left stared straight in front of him with callous indifference, and St. Roch looked aggravatingly plump for all his ostentatious plague-spot. The picture was worse than meaningless. It was insulting. It drove me out of the Public Gallery. Outside a grey mist veiled the hills and a fine penetrating rain was falling. I crept home, and for the fiftieth time since I have been here, opened my "History of Renaissance Morals." I threw it, with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... French national loan, never reached their destination, in consequence of which the French nation lost from ten to twenty million francs. And even the letters and telegrams that were actually passed were so carelessly handled that many of them were lost on the way or delayed until they became meaningless to the addressee. So, for instance, an official letter despatched by the Minister of Commerce to the Minister of Finance in Paris was sent to Calcutta, where the French Consul-General came across it, and had it directed back to Paris. The correspondent ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... from the senses? Socrates thus expresses himself on this point: "But how is it with reasonable knowledge itself? Is the body a hindrance or not, if we take it as a companion in our search for knowledge? I mean, do sight and hearing procure man any truth? Or is what the poets sing meaningless, that we see and hear nothing clearly?... When does the soul catch sight of truth? For when it tries to examine something with the help of the body, it is manifestly ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner |
