"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these prices may probably not impress the reader with any lofty notions of the superiority of the black-letter; but this symptom of the Bibliomania is, nevertheless, not to be considered as incurable, or wholly unproductive of good. Under a proper spirit of modification, it has done, and will continue to do, essential service to the cause of English literature. It guided the taste, and strengthened the judgment, of Tyrwhitt in his researches ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... disposable surplus. The probable accumulation of the surpluses of revenue beyond what can be applied to the payment of the public debt whenever the freedom and safety of our commerce shall be restored merits the consideration of Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults? Shall the revenue be reduced? Or shall it not rather be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union under the powers which Congress may already possess or such amendment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... most flourishing; immense fields of rice, sugar-cane, and coffee, had taken the place of woods and forests unproductive in themselves. Rich pasture-grounds were covered with numerous flocks; and a fine Indian village stood in the centre of the labouring-ground. Here, there was everywhere to be seen plenty, activity; and joy ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... dead-falls and debris of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in itself. And occasionally, once in a great while, they ran against a glorious piece of luck, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... as simple as they are beautiful, seeks its sap in narrow formulas dictated solely by ecclesiastical interests. In order that religious fanaticism should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure. It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and sacristies, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... tower his? Febrer replied with a smile. Bah! Four old stones that were falling apart; an unproductive hill, which would be worth something only if the peasant should cultivate it. But the latter insisted; there was the property in Majorca, which, even though it were ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... say that the calling of an officer was an altogether unproductive vocation. The yearly training of a large number of soldiers, who supported the credit of the kingdom, and thereby insured peace, was, no doubt, a positive factor in both political ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... country, the happiest of men." And yet, he confesses that the scholars of this country have not fulfilled the reasonable expectation of mankind. "Men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought." For all this he offers those correctives which in various forms underlie all his teachings. "The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect." New lessons of spiritual independence, fresh examples and illustrations, are drawn ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... making enquiries for the Marechale, in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde's approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the "young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse," "her dearest of friends," could tell me nothing more than that she had left London, and she believed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... treatise On Monastic Vows, declaring that they are wrong and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September 1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last published ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of grammatical lore. Many I seek to instruct in the order of the stars which illuminate the glorious vault of heaven; so that they may be made ornaments to the holy church of God and the court of your imperial majesty; that the goodness of God and your kindness may not be altogether unproductive of good. But in doing this I discover the want of much, especially those exquisite books of scholastic learning, which I possessed in my own country, through the industry of my good and most devout master (Egbert). I therefore intreat your Excellence to permit me to send into Britain some ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the beast was driven towards it by a ring of beaters. Deer were caught in nets or transfixed with javelins while running. In more open places the hunter, accompanied by hounds, rode after a hare. But though far too much of Italy was taken up by preserves of this unproductive kind, the large estates were mostly turned to agricultural purposes. Different owners, different practices; but the possessor of a number of country seats would in some cases work the land for himself by means of slaves—often in disgrace and labouring ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... course, were early on the ground, for in spite of the father's contention that they could ill afford, at the moment, to tie up more money in unproductive properties, the son had argued that they must have "protection," and his arguments ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... author—viz., one S. T. Coleridge—who repeated that same doctrine without finding any evil in it. Look at the first part of the Wallenstein, where Count Isolani having said, 'Pooh! we are all his subjects,' i. e., soldiers, (though unproductive laborers,) not less than productive peasants, the emperor's envoy replies—'Yet with a difference, general;' and the difference implies Sir James's scale, his vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium? Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... numbers: it was long before I could believe that a country as large as Scotland, covered with vegetable productions and with a variety of stations, could be so unproductive. The few which I found were alpine species (Harpalidae and Heteromidae) living under stones. The vegetable-feeding Chrysomelidae, so eminently characteristic of the Tropics, are here almost entirely absent; [5] I saw very few flies, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... possessed this power in an eminent degree. Indeed, without it, all attempts to study the geometry of space (even the very elements of descriptive geometry, to say nothing of the more recondite investigations of the science) would be entirely unproductive. It is, moreover, a power capable of being acquired by men of average intellect without extreme difficulty; and that even to the extent of "mentally seeing" the constituent parts of figures which have never been exhibited to the eye either ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... river, and followed the latter up, to where it took a sudden sharp turn, and a little farther. Then he crossed it, and was in a lonely nook of the glen, with steep braes about him on all sides, some of them covered with grass, others rugged and unproductive. He threw himself down in the clover, a short distance from the stream, and straightway felt as if he were miles from home. No shadow of life was to be seen. Cottage-chimney nor any smoke was visible—no human being, no work of human hands, no sign of cultivation ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Champlain with the Hudson River at Albany, N.Y. There he turned architect, then returned to Europe, settled, married, and was knighted in England. He occupied eighteen years of his life in building an unproductive tunnel beneath the river Thames at London; invented a method of shuffling cards without using the hands, and several of her devices for dispensing with labor, which, upon completion, were abandoned from economical motives. On his decease, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... between the capitulation of the French garrison and Sir Alexander Ball's appointment as His Majesty's civil commissioner for Malta, his zeal for the Maltese was neither suspended nor unproductive of important benefits. He was enabled to remove many prejudices and misunderstandings, and to persons of no inconsiderable influence gave juster notions of the true importance of the island to Great Britain. He displayed the magnitude of the trade of the Mediterranean ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and wheat, the gold and silver," which he found in "fair Innis-fail." It is probable that land was cultivated then which now lies arid and unreclaimed, for a writer in the Ulster Archaeological Journal mentions having found traces of tillage, when laying out drains in remote unproductive districts, several feet beneath the peaty soil. Dr. O'Donovan also writes in the same journal: "I believe the Irish have had wheat in the more fertile valleys and plains from a most remote period. It is mentioned constantly in the Brehon laws and in our most ancient ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... sufferers endured, and having nothing to bind up their wounds but shirts which they tore into bandages, they were eager to reach Cerigo. The island of Cerigotto, where they had landed, was a dependency on the other, about fifteen miles long, ten broad, and of a barren and unproductive soil, with little cultivation. Twelve or fourteen families of Greek fishermen dwelt upon it, as the pilot had said, who were in a state of extreme poverty. Their houses, or rather huts, consisting of one or two rooms on the same floor, were, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... two years at Mossgiel, from 1784 to 1786, when the times were hard, and the farm unproductive, Burns must indeed have found poetry to be, as he himself says, its own reward. A nature like his required some vent for itself, some excitement to relieve the pressure of dull farm drudgery, and this was at once his purest ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... country, where minerals abound, there is not one collection; and, in all probability, I venture a conjecture, the want of mechanical and chemical knowledge renders the silver mines unproductive, for the quantity of silver obtained every year is not sufficient to defray the expenses. It has been urged that the employment of such a number of hands is very beneficial. But a positive loss is never to be done away; and the men, thus employed, would naturally find some other means of living, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... one-tenth of a farthing. The same reasoning is obviously applicable to all the productive routes in the United States. And we have seen the injustice of taxing the letters on routes that are productive or self-supporting, to defray the expense of the unproductive routes which the government is bound ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... number of laborers, by securing a larger return from those now employed, and by the permanent occupation of the fertile soil of the South by a large portion of the Union army, as settlers and cultivators, who have heretofore spent their energies upon the comparatively unproductive soil of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... growth; indeed, it is better if they are removed at once from the bed where they are sown, to the plantation. Here they should be planted as soon as they have attained two years of age, for, be it remembered, that if they are left too long in the nursery, they become unproductive and never recover. The distance at which they should be put out in the plantation need not exceed eight feet apart in the rows, between which, also, there should be eight feet distance. The seedlings appear in about a month after the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... but he was in another sort of contemplative mood perhaps more common in the young men of our day—that of questioning whether it were worth while to take part in the battle of the world: I mean, of course, the young men in whom the unproductive labor of questioning is sustained by three or five per cent, on capital which somebody else has battled for. It puzzled Sir Hugo that one who made a splendid contrast with all that was sickly and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... totals up to something like L19 per head, leaving out of account the immense and yearly growing indebtedness of our great cities and towns. Furthermore, almost the whole of the National Debt of this country, as of the European Powers generally, has been incurred not only for unproductive, but as a matter of fact for destructive purposes. The vast loans of Europe have been raised for the purpose of waging bloody wars, some at least of which history has pronounced to have been gigantic, not to say wicked, blunders. Much of the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... expenditure, which added to the opulence of the settlers, enabled them to build also: they looked with envy on the government which detained so large a proportion of the mechanical power: they forgot that the unproductive employment of large numbers created the demand for their crops, without which no dollar had been theirs to spend. Their outcries rung in the ears of the Commissioner: he blamed the improvidence of the Governor, who had rejected their applications, and threw some ridicule on his architectural ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... farm can be cultivated with a fewer number of men and horses; but how does this act? It throws a certain quantity of labourers out of employ, who are supported in idleness. Is the sum gained by farmers by employing fewer men on large farms more than their proportion of the poor's rates paid for unproductive industry? That it may be more to the farmers is possible, as they shift a great part of the onus upon others; but to the nation it certainly is not—for the man who does not work must still be fed. May we not then consider the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... offer The Negro in America; the University of Minnesota, The American Negro; and Harvard University, American Population Problems: Immigration and the Negro. This study of the race problem, however, has in many cases been unproductive of desirable results for the reason that instead of trying to arrive at some understanding as to how the Negro may be improved, the work has often degenerated into a discussion of the race as a menace and the justification of preventative measures ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of fruit, flower, grain or garden vegetables was anything but wild and unproductive, or bitter, tasteless or unprofitable. Chemical changes are made in the plant by the soil in which it grows, because it is from the soil that it gets its food. The large and juicy carrot found at home is nothing but the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... crossed with agouti. But Cuenot and others have shown that all of the yellows are heterozygous, and when crossed with agoutis give both yellows and agoutis. We are led, therefore, to suppose that an ovum carrying the yellow factor is unproductive if fertilised by a spermatozoon which also bears this factor. In this way alone does it seem possible to explain the deficiency of yellows and the absence of homozygous ones in the families arising from the mating of yellows together. At present, however, it ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... not payable by the lord, because the demesne lands were in farm; and these dues were paid by the tenant. A reference to the Promptorinm Parvulorum (a further instalment of which I rejoice to learn, from Mr. Way's communication, in No. 15., is in a state of progress) has been equally unproductive. The editorial note to the communications inserted in No. 17., on the interpretation of Pokership, induces me to send you this query, in the hope of eliciting information, if not from the gentleman you there refer to, at least from some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... ten innings—eleven—twelve, every one marked by masterly pitching, full of magnificent catches, stops and throws, replete with reckless base-running and slides like flashes in the dust. But they were unproductive of runs. Three to ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... Ruskin's criticism of his sketches nor the kindly hospitality of his Genevan hosts. Early in 1863 he made another fruitless visit to London, where he remained four or five months, but found no opening. Though unproductive of work, this year brought Yule official recognition of his services in the shape of the C.B., for which Lord Canning had ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... iret. Citerior Hispania obvenerat. Ceterum aut ire jussus aut jurare pro contione sollemni sacrificio se prohiberi.... Praetores ambo in eadem verba jurarunt. I have seen the passage cited as a proof that governors would not go to unproductive provinces; but Sardinia was a fruitful sphere for plunder, and the excuses may have been genuine. That of Popillius seems to have ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Although the meadows were unproductive ground to a naturalist, the woods on their borders teemed with life; the number and variety of curious insects of all orders which occurred here was quite wonderful. The belt of forest was intersected by numerous pathways leading from one settler's ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... magnificently, and his children enjoyed every luxury wealth could provide. Still, Daniel was content to be known as a business man; he deported himself modestly and kindly; he pursued with all his old-time diligence the trade which in earlier days he had found so unproductive of riches. His indifference to the pleasures which money put within his reach was passing strange, and it caused ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... a living from their small and comparatively unproductive farms, and equally unable to find work elsewhere, the peasants clamor loudly for more land; and when, as the result of a bad harvest, their situation becomes intolerable, they are seized with a sort of berserker madness and break out into fierce bread riots, which frequently end in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... most useful indications respecting the value of land. It may be laid down as an axiom that a soil to be fertile must contain all the chemical ingredients which a plant can only obtain from the soil, and chemistry ought to be able to inform us in unproductive soils what ingredients are wanting. It also is able to inform us if any poisonous substance exists in the soil, and how it may be neutralized; when lime, marl, and chalk are to be ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... each an accessit at the "Concours Academique," and both were mentioned with praise by the Sous-Prefet at the public distribution of prizes. Besides, what was still more important, Stephen had successfully passed his examination for the "Baccalaureat." Lastly, there had been an expensive and unproductive journey, and there was the prospect of another. All this in the same year somewhat alarmed me. The gig was not an important concern, being made, like the four-wheeled carriage, from designs of my husband's, by ordinary wheelwrights and blacksmiths; but though admitting its usefulness, and even ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... instruction as existed in the North and West. Any permanent improvement must therefore be based upon the strengthening of the South's economic position. Essentially the task was to build up Southern agriculture, which for generations had been wasteful, unintelligent and consequently unproductive. Such a far-reaching programme might well appall the most energetic reformer, but Dr. Buttrick set to work. He saw little light until his attention was drawn to a quaint and philosophic gentleman—a kind of bucolic Ben Franklin—who was then ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... probationary stage, is regarded as the serious business of life. It is impossible to overestimate the loss which results from the deflection of attention from the strategic point to a comparatively unproductive point. It fails most just where it thinks it is succeeding—in getting a preparation for ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... who, like so many Esaus, have sold their inheritance for a meal! I leave the whole school of Adam Smith to calm their calculating emotions concerning "that unprosperous race of men" (sometimes this master-seer calls them "unproductive") "commonly called men of letters," who are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians would be in, were these, as he tells us, in that state when "a scholar and a beggar seem to have been very nearly ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... all wonderful, very, very wonderful. There seemed indeed, as Glastonbury affirmed, a providential dispensation in the whole transaction. The fall of his family, the heroic, and, as it now appeared, prescient firmness with which his father had clung, in all their deprivations, to his unproductive patrimony, his own education, the extinction of his mother's house, his very follies, once to him a cause of so much unhappiness, but which it now seemed were all the time compelling him, as it were, to his prosperity; all these and a ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... of a bad subsoil, trench-ploughing may do much harm. Every practical man in fact knows that bringing up the subsoil in any quantity, he would in some districts render his fields in a great measure unproductive for years to come. On the other hand, we believe that the use of the subsoil-plough can never do harm upon drained land. We speak, of course, of soils upon which it is already conceded that either the one method or the other ought to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... preferable. But on some soils these are not a success, especially when the first attempts are made to grow crops. The choice of hay may be one between a crop of beggar weed and no crop at all. All are agreed as to the renovation which it brings to soils; hence, when grown or allowed to grow on unproductive soil for a few years and then plowed under, the soil becomes productive. Since it grows late rather than early in the season where the seed is in the land, it will not interfere with the growth of the corn, but will come on later, ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... my courtyard, is a boat in which I row myself out in warm weather to visit my friends along the coast. When I ply the oar, the crab-fishery is unproductive, droughts prevail, and I am ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... frowned at her, involuntarily. He was ready to accept Madame Beattie's knowing neither good nor evil, but she seemed to him singularly unpleasant in flaunting that lack of bias. She was quite conscious of his distaste, but it didn't trouble her. Unproductive opinions were nothing to her ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... enthusiasms, into games and amateur employments, and an enormous proportion of the whole world's fund of effort wastes itself in religious and political misunderstandings and conflicts, and in unsatisfying amusements and unproductive occupations. In a modern Utopia there will, indeed, be no perfection; in Utopia there must also be friction, conflicts and waste, but the waste will be enormously less than in our world. And the co-ordination of activities this relatively smaller waste will measure, will be ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... point, for it is familiar to all. Any newspaper will furnish facts and figures vividly exemplifying some aspect of the matter. For while only a handful of persons in any country are sincerely anxious under present conditions to reduce the colossal sums every year wasted on the unproductive work of armament; an increasing interest in the matter testifies to a vague alarm and anxiety concerning the ultimate issue. For it is felt that an inevitable crisis lies at the end of the path down which the nations ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... bade me try every other means first. So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I began to pace the streets if haply I might see her face shine upon me from the crowd of passers by; a foolish fancy, unproductive of result! I not only failed to see ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... influence. The land of Cape Leveque is low, and presents a sandy beach lined by a rocky reef, extending off the shore for a mile, on many parts of which the sea was breaking heavily: the land was clothed with a small brush wood, but altogether the coast presented a very unproductive appearance, and reminded us of the triste and arid ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... Denmark, however, having a higher opinion of the value of science, promised Tycho the first canonry that should fall vacant in the cathedral chapter of Roskilde, so that he might be assured of an income while devoting himself to financially unproductive work. In 1568 Tycho left Rostock, and matriculated at Basle, but soon moved on to Augsburg, where he found more enthusiasm for astronomy, and induced one of his new friends to order the construction of a large 19-foot quadrant of heavy oak beams. ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... as the representatives of socialism in the early centuries of the Christian era, by a singular fallacy,—which arose however from the paucity of economic knowledge in their day,—allowed farm-rent and condemned interest on money, because, as they believed, money was unproductive. They distinguished consequently between the loan of things which are consumed by use—among which they included money—and the loan of things which, without being consumed, yield a ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... equitable, practical, and scientific methods of castration have been advocated, not involving the removal of the sexual glands or organs, and not as a punishment, but simply for the sake of protecting the community and the race from the burden of probably unproductive and possibly dangerous members. Naecke has, from 1899 onwards, repeatedly urged the social advantages of this measure.[448] The propagation of the inferior elements of society, Naecke insists, brings unhappiness into the family and is a source of great ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... past, a chief coeval with our sires, Not young, but vigorous; and of the Greeks, 985 Achilles may alone with him contend. So saying, the merit of superior speed To Peleus' son he gave, who thus replied. Antilochus! thy praise of me shall prove Nor vain nor unproductive to thyself, 990 For the half-talent doubled shall be thine. He spake, and, doubling it, the talent placed Whole in his hand. He glad the gift received. Achilles, then Sarpedon's arms produced, Stripp'd from him by Patroclus, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... States. The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs and their cabinets. Only ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a prebend, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... could reply that it was eschewing all pleasure and living the life of a galley-slave in order that the next generation might have leisure to paint the poppy a more glorious scarlet. But no. The next generation is going at it just as hard for the same unproductive end; it has no wish to leave anything behind it—a new colour, a new scent, a new idea. It has one object only in this world—more bees. Could any scheme ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed; there is another which has no such effect. The former as it produces a value, may be called productive, the latter, unproductive labour. {Some French authors of great learning and ingenuity have used those words in a different sense. In the last chapter of the fourth book, I shall endeavour to shew that their sense is an improper one.} Thus the labour of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... remember," said Mountford, "that the grave proved quite unproductive. Yes, you will not have forgotten it; for I well recollect how eagerly you listened, with that queer little girl, to my talk with the old governor, and how disappointed you seemed when you found that ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... among the Sangleys, who, in places which seemed totally unproductive, are raising many good vegetables of the kinds that grow in Espana and in Mexico. They keep the market here as well supplied as that of Madrid or Salamanca. They make chairs, bridles, and stirrups of so good a quality and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... climate, our bare fields and rock-ribbed mountains, to dwell amid the luxurious vineyards and gardens of the south of Europe, seems like being transported from a cheerless desert to a blooming paradise. Our beautiful things are not connected with our climate or our unproductive fields, but with our free institutions, our systems of education, our public morality, our well-regulated government, our well-administered laws, and the industry, intelligence, and religious habits of the people. Our fields and vineyards, our rich groves ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... produced year after year on the same field certain constituents of the soil essential to plant growth are removed, and the soil becomes impoverished and unproductive. To make the land once more fertile these constituents must be replaced. The calcium phosphate of the mineral deposits or of bone ash serves well as a material for restoring phosphorus to soils exhausted of that essential element; but ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... little rivulet without a name flowed past the corner of the garden and made its way to the Saone just above Challe. Tall bushy trees followed the course of the little stream, and described a half-circle, inclosing the house on three sides. The house itself was formerly an inn which proved unproductive to the innkeeper. It had been closed for seven or eight years, and was beginning to fall into decay. Before reaching it, the main road coming from Macon ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... this part of town is seldom featured in song or story, for it is certainly neither dull nor unproductive of plot. The tenements that loom, canyon-like, upon every side are filled to overflowing with human drama; and the stilted little parks are so teeming with romances, of a summer night, that only the book of the ages would be big enough to hold them—were they written ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... of land on the farther slope of the Pennsylvania Alleghanies. His own purchases lay near and around the few hundred acres his ancestor took up and where an aged cousin was left in charge of the farm-house. When this tenant died, the house decayed, and the next Penhallow weary of being taxed for unproductive land spent a summer on the property, and with the aid of engineers found iron in plenty and soft coal. He began about 1830 to develop the property, and built a large house which he never occupied and which was long known in the county as "Penhallow's Folly." It was considered ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... had indeed discovered a gold mine in Sydney, by working which with industry, ability, and perseverance, enormous riches have been obtained. When the story of the mine was invented, the land around Port Jackson was unproductive, and the hills wild or barren, but in little more than fifty years from that time the imports into the Port of Sydney amounted in 1840 to L2,462,858, while the amount of goods exported from the same place during that year was ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... a high ridge of land, generally barren and unproductive, when upon a small scale. It is also a ridgy height that runs for many ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... composition which appeals to the public taste, the more rich and easily worked mines being exhausted, the adventurous author must, if he is desirous of success, have recourse to those which were disdained by his predecessors as unproductive, or avoided as only capable of being turned to profit by ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and to grasp the necessary conditions of their existence, suppressing all accidental limits. No doubt this transcendental procedure will remove us for some time from the familiar circle of phenomena, and the living presence of objects, to keep us on the unproductive ground of abstract idea; but we are engaged in the search after a principle of knowledge solid enough not to be shaken by anything, and the man who does not dare to rise above reality will never ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town—called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"—was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... mother she governed her home in the fear of God. When she chastised her children, she did not forget their spiritual welfare, as it was her custom after punishment, to take them alone to a private room, and there to pray with the culprit, and seldom were these seasons unproductive of serious resolves of amendment. Her letters to her husband bear the impress of a saint, in their spirit of patience, sympathy with the erring, and quest after a better life. During a period of severe sickness ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... utilise Mr. Butteridge's cigars; but here again luck was on his side, and he couldn't find any wherewith to set light to the gas above him. Or else he would have dropped in a flare, a splendid but transitory pyrotechnic display. "'Eng old Grubb!" said Bert, slapping unproductive pockets. "'E didn't ought to 'ave kep' my box. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows, once fertilized by irrigation, are waste and unproductive because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows that ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... tropical Africa. In reference to the benefits which had been derived from her West India colonies, before the suppression of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... it underlies modern civilization. For this reason the question of transportation is just as important to a community as the industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... the time, such an amount of human suffering, that no king who had any regard for the happiness of his subjects could have consented to it. Khufu must have forced his subjects to labour for a long term of years—twenty, according to Herodotus—at a servile work which was wholly unproductive, and was carried on amid their sighs and groans for no object but his own glorification, and the supposed safe custody of his remains. Shafra must have done nearly the same. Hence an evil repute attached to the pyramid builders, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Clytie were but lately back from their wedding-trip. Adrian, after several years of unproductive traffic in exotic literature, had finally made a hit; he had been able not only to lay a telling piece of work at the dear one's feet, but also—by a slight discounting of future certainties—to put a good deal ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... capital as consisting of implements of production, which are embodiments of past labour, and his theory of modern capitalism as representing nothing but a gradual abstraction by a wholly unproductive class, of these implements from the men who made them, and who alone contribute anything to ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. [13:7]And he said to his vine dresser, Behold, I have come three years seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none; cut it down; why should it make the ground unproductive? [13:8] And he answered and said to him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, and put on manure; [13:9]and if it bears fruit, well; but if not, at a future time you ...
— The New Testament • Various
... of those fearless pioneers of the movement, Mr. and Mrs. Hewat Mackenzie, I am allowed to publish another example of spirit photography. The circumstances were very remarkable. The visit of the parents to Crewe was unproductive and their plate a blank save for their own presentment. Returning disappointed, to London they managed, through the mediumship of Mrs. Leonard, to get into touch with their boy, and asked him why they had failed. He replied that the conditions had been bad, but that he had actually succeeded ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... senmaskigi. Unnatural kontrauxnatura. Unnerve malkuragxigi. Unoccupied neokupata, senokupa. Unpack elpaki. Unpardonable nepardonebla. Unpleasant malplacxa. Unpolished (surface) malglata. Unpretending neafektema, simpla. Unprincipled malhonesta, senprincipa. Unproductive senfrukta. Unpublished neeldonita. Unquiet malkvieta. Unravel maltordi. Unrecognisable nerekonebla. Unremitting sencxesa. Unreserved nerezerva. Unrestrained nedetena, libera. Unroll ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... shillings. But David Trevarrow had neither wife, child, nor mother to support, so he could afford to toil for poor pay, and, being of a remarkably hopeful and cheery disposition, he returned home that afternoon resolved to persevere in his unproductive toil, in the hope that at last he should discover a good "bunch of copper," or ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Confolens a piece of property rented for 2,956 livres in 1665, brings in only 900 livres in 1747. On the confines of la Marche and of Berry a domain which, in 1660, honorably supported two seigniorial families is now simply a small unproductive tenant-farm; "the traces of the furrows once made by the plow-iron being still visible on the surrounding heaths." Sologne, once flourishing,[5127] becomes a marsh and a forest; a hundred years earlier it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of its mills ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... land hitherto unproductive, or even death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... to see if we are doing what He meant, and what He means should continue! But some men are too valuable to be thrown away on the mission field; they are such successful workers, pastors, evangelists, leaders of thought. They could not possibly be spared. Think of the waste of burying brain in unproductive sand! Apparently it is so, but is it really so? Does God view it like that? Where should we have been to-day if He had thought Jesus too valuable to be thrown away upon us? Was not each hour of those thirty-three years worth more than a lifetime ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... entirely forgotten Piece], which had been printed in the Papers, was really by me? I answered, 'Sire, I am not famous enough to have my name forged' [as a certain Other name has been, on this same unproductive topic]. He felt what I meant. It is known that Horace Walpole took the King's name to write his famous LETTRE A JEAN JACQUES [impossible to attend to the like of it at present], which contributed the most to drive mad that eloquent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was that she would succeed; she would speak and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down throughout this long, leaden-footed day—the past twenty-four hours unproductive of ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... once to both of the ruling mediaeval impulses: feudalism, which metamorphosed the relative positions of the people and the nobles, and the recognition of papal supremacy, which altered not less thoroughly the standing of the church. While these changes were not unproductive of good at that time, they were distasteful to the nation, and soon became injurious, both to freedom and knowledge, until at length, under the dynasty of the Tudors, the ecclesiastical shackles were cast off, and the feudal bonds ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... By no means,' replied the banker. 'But pardon me for suggesting that it is too large a sum to remain unproductive. Would you ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... miracles as an evidence was depreciated. It is hoped that it will not be considered improper to have named a writer, whose sex might be expected to shelter her from remark; but her writings are too able to be unproductive of influence. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... have been so moderately steep that soil could gather and lie on them, in which case they yielded fair pasturage for cattle, or at least for goats: but nine-tenths of their superficies were utterly unproductive and inhospitable. On the mountain-tops, indeed, there is sometimes a level space, but the snow generally monopolizes that. Such is Switzerland from the Italian frontier, where I crossed it, to the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... we must not be misled by the difference between the apparent and the real fertility of the soil. What would be a poor soil in Europe may prove to be an excellent one in a tropical country. So the famous "red earth" of Sao Paulo, which in a drier climate would be sterile and unproductive, is there excellent because of its extremely permeable, porous and ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. That is to say, the tunnel had ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... France, Italy, and England similarly to utilize natural opportunities for subsistence in their enormous tracts of unproductive lands. In Mexico all proprietors will be required to designate what they propose to cultivate and the remainder will either be allotted temporarily for agricultural purposes to those desiring them or it will be cultivated under government management. There is no remedy ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... possible waste, must blend. But as long as man's mind is not greatly changed, both will be the natural tendency of the capitalist, and both are abhorred by the governmental worker. He has no right to run risks, but does not feel it his duty to avoid an unproductive luxuriousness. He wastes in the routine where he ought to economize, and is pedantic in the great schemes in which his imagination ought to be unbridled. The opponents of socialism have often likened the future state to a gigantic prison, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... to have some splendid mania or other. Even the most selfish of young people are endowed with a superfluity of life, a capital sum of energy which has been advanced to them and cannot be left idle and unproductive: they are for ever seeking to expend it on a course of action, or—(more prudently)—on a theory. Aviation or Revolution, a muscular or intellectual exercise. When a man is young he needs to be under the illusion ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... consistent thinking, Sieyes resembles Bentham and Hegel. His flight is low, and he lacks grace and distinction. He seems to have borrowed his departments from Harrington, the distilled unity of power from Turgot, the rule of the mass of taxpayers over the unproductive class above them, from the notion that labour is the only source of wealth, which was common to Franklin and Adam Smith. But he is profoundly original, and though many modern writers on politics exceed him in genius and eloquence and knowledge, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... there in comparative seclusion for a long time after that. Joan tried to think of plans, but her mind seemed, unproductive. She felt half dazed. Jim, too, appeared to be laboring under the same kind of burden. Moreover, responsibility had ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... They could see the world unified and at peace, but what detail was to follow from that unification they seemed indisposed to discuss. This diffidence struck the king as remarkable. He plunged upon the possibilities of science. All the huge expenditure that had hitherto gone into unproductive naval and military preparations, must now, he declared, place research upon a new footing. 'Where one man worked we will have a thousand.' He appealed to Holsten. 'We have only begun to peep into these possibilities,' he said. 'You at any rate have ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... grows warmer your fishing this season will, I fear, prove unproductive; for it has always been observed that in cold and windy weather the fish keep in deep water and are never caught in numbers, especially at ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... worm, the egg must be fixed almost vertically by one end near the bottom of the cell. Is it true, that it is unproductive unless fixed in this manner? I cannot determine the fact; and therefore leave it to ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... when the Stokowski brain was unproductive of new stunts, his private life and his recurrent rows with the directors of the orchestra about matters of salary and control kept ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... earning his bread. He'll be sure to be borrowing money by-and-by. We've got ten thousand too many fellows writing already, and they 've seen a few inches of the world, on the Continent! He can write. But it's all unproductive-dead weight on the country, these fellows with their writings! He says Beauchamp's praise of Miss Denham is quite deserved. He tells me, that at great peril to herself—and she nearly had her arm broken by a stone he saved Shrapnel from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their countrymen, and besought Chosroes to accept their submission, and extend to them the protection of his government. The province was distant, and possessed few attractions; whatever the tales told of its ancient wealth, or glories, or trade, in the time of Chosroes it was poor and unproductive, dependent on its neighbors for some of the necessaries and all the conveniences of life, and capable of exporting nothing but timber, slaves, and skins. It might have been expected, under such circumstances, that the burden of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... book then read all over Europe excited only ridicule and unbelief. As soon as the Western mind mastered them of itself, they became straightway of immense importance, and gave rise, we may say, to all that we call modern civilization. But in the hands of the Chinese they remained useless and unproductive, as they are to this day, although they may now see what we have done with them. Their mind, therefore, once active enough to invent mighty instruments of material progress, long ago became perfectly incapable of improving on its own ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702 Private Phineas ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... the labor of the manual workers. I have already shown you, when discussing the case of Mr. Mallock, that Socialists have never claimed that wealth was produced by manual labor alone, and that brain labor is always unproductive. All the great political economists have included both mental and manual labor in their use of the term, that being, indeed, the only sensible use of the word known to ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... clues to her appearance have yielded no solid results. The representatives of the famous family of brewers have been unable to throw any light on the subject, and an application to the managing director of the London and General Omnibus Company has also proved unproductive. (Polly Perkins "married the conductor of a twopenny 'bus.") Her brilliant appearance suggests a possible relationship with Dr. PERKINS, the famous pioneer of the aniline dye industry; but this, as well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... ignorance and violence in marked contrast to the civilization of the Greeks and Romans on the one hand, and to the enlightenment of modern times on the other. The more careful studies of the last half century have made it clear that the Middle Ages were not "dark" in the sense of being stagnant and unproductive. On the contrary, they were full of movement and growth, and we owe to them a great many things in our civilization which we should never have derived from Greece and Rome. It is the purpose of the first nineteen chapters of this manual ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... finished, would depart for the little room he slept in and used as work-place over at the carpenter's house among the vineyards. He kept his books there, his rows of pipes and towering little heap of half- filled match-boxes, and there he wrote his clever studies that yet were unproductive of much gold and brought him little more than pleasant notices and occasional letters from enthusiastic strangers. It seemed very unremunerative labour indeed, and the family had done well to migrate from Essex ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... seasons, should be but three in number, but this is quite in accordance with the notions of the ancient Greeks, who only recognized spring, summer, and autumn as seasons; nature being supposed to be wrapt in death or slumber, during that cheerless and unproductive portion of the year which we call winter. In some parts of Greece there were but two Horae, Thallo, goddess of the bloom, and Carpo, of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... government has embraced free-market economics, freezing spending, easing price controls, liberalizing domestic and international trade. Mongolia's severe climate, scattered population, and wide expanses of unproductive land, however, have constrained economic development. Economic activity traditionally has been based on agriculture and the breeding of livestock. In past years extensive mineral resources had been developed with Soviet support; total ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... some idea of the immense sums of money which the clergy absorb by virtue of this belief in the dogma of purgatory. When he reflects that those contributions are upon a more liberal scale than any others which the Spanish nation pays, and that the product is sunk by the most unproductive of all the classes in society, he will then be able to arrive at some conjecture as to who and what are the Roman Catholic clergy of Spain. These contributions, be it remembered, are paid, on every day in the year, in all parts of the Peninsula, and by persons of every category in the nation, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... still possessing some of the brightness but lacking the snap and glisten of those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow with fever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in bare feet, the same listless inefficiency showing in their weak, unproductive, unshaven features. The car grew so crowded I went to sit on the platform rail, as had a half-dozen already, though large signs ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... now to this country, taken at large, from the actual existence of the National Debt? I never could get a plain and practical answer to that question. I do not advert to the past loss of capital, although it is hard to see how that capital can be said to have been unproductive, which produces, in the defence of the nation itself, the conditions of the permanence and productivity of all other capital. As to taxation to pay the interest, how can the country suffer by a process, under ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... manufactures were known and valued throughout the world; their industry and frugality were, in fact, their worst crimes; they were able to draw wealth from the sterile lands which "Christians" found wholly unproductive. "Since it is impossible to kill them all," said Ribera, the representative of Christ, he again and again urged on ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... compact; berry medium, round, black, juicy; rather pleasant, but unproductive, and of little value, where better ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... thrown away &c (wasted) 638; abortive &c (immature) 674. worthless, valueless, priceless; unsalable; not worth a straw &c (trifling) 643, dear at any price. vain, empty, inane; gainless^, profitless, fruitless; unserviceable, unprofitable; ill-spent; unproductive &c 169; hors de combat [Fr.]; effete, past work &c (impaired) 659; obsolete &c (old) 124; fit for the dust hole; good for nothing; of no earthly use; not worth having, not worth powder and shot; leading to no end, uncalled for; unnecessary, unneeded. Adv. uselessly ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not until this vulgar clamour has had time to subside. Nevertheless, as a business man, I am forced to recognise that a large amount of unproductive capital is locked up in ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... tree, the fruit of which is of remarkably fine flavour; but what is yet stranger, whoever ascends it, sees many wonderful objects. If to-day, going to visit this orchard, we gather dates from this tree, and also see the wonders of it, it will not be unproductive of amusement." In short, she so worked upon her husband with flattering speeches and caresses, that nolens volens he went to the orchard, and at the instigation of his wife, ascended the tree. At this instant she beckoned to the bramin, who was previously seated, expectantly, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Railroad, yet for want of means it cannot be done, unless foreign capitalists can be induced by land grants, at least to invest sufficient to make the road finally, and be made to see that their present large unproductive investments in Canada railroads can be made productive in the use of more of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... not entirely unproductive. There began to prevail amongst the islanders, a disposition to hear the wondrous discourses of this stranger, and he was employed, day after day, in explaining to large and attentive audiences, the history of the Christian world, and the observances ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Nara epoch, the Government spent fully one-half of its total income on works of piety. No country except in time of war ever devoted so much to unproductive expenditures. The enormous quantities of copper used for casting images not only exhausted the produce of the mines but also made large inroads upon the currency, hundreds of thousands of cash being thrown ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had actually contrived to perpetuate their species to a very limited extent. And the reason why the lake was not swarming with them, instead of containing probably only three or four specimens at the utmost, was doubtless that the waters were too circumscribed in extent, and too unproductive in the matter of fish, to support more than ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... their services to the psychological problems of the special industrial plant. There are many factories that have scores of scientifically trained chemists or physicists at work, but who would consider it an unproductive luxury to appoint a scientifically schooled experimental psychologist to their staff. And yet his observations and researches might become economically the most important factor. Similar expectations might be justified ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... poetry, had a real respect for the antique greatness of his devotion to Poverty and Peasanthood, recognised his strong intellectual powers and strong character, but thought him rather dull, bad-tempered, unproductive, and almost wearisome, and found his divine reflections and unfathomabilities stinted, scanty, uncertain, palish. From these and many other disparagements, one gladly passes to the picture of the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... upon it: an Halictus more or less in the world makes little difference in the general balance. But, alas, brigandage in all its forms is the rule in the eternal conflict of living things! From the lowest to the highest, every producer is exploited by the unproductive. Man himself, whose exceptional rank ought to raise him above such baseness, excels in this ravening lust. He says to himself that business means getting hold of other people's cash, even as the Gnat ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... is with many farmers. They have the elements of 100 tons of hay lying dormant in every acre of their land, while they are content to receive half a ton a year. They have property enough, but it is unproductive, while they pay high taxes for the privilege of holding it, and high wages for the pleasure of boarding ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... destiny of that plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is the inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes—land of ten million virgin farms—to the eye at present wild and unproductive—yet experts say that upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed the world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,) while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... head of the Logen—was I solicited for alms. A portion of this route, after passing Sinclair's Monument, is rudely fenced in, so as to render available every foot of the narrow valley. The road passes directly through the little farms, which at this stage of the journey are poor and unproductive. The climate is said to be very severe in this district, in consequence of its altitude, and the sharp winds which sweep down from the mountain gorges. At every gateway a gang of ragged little children always stood ready to open the gate, for which, of course, they ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... great power to have naval bases or coaling stations in several parts of the world. This presupposes preparations for war; but if international peace were maintained, such possessions would be useless and the money spent on them wasted. In any case it is unproductive expenditure. It is the fashion for politicians (and I am sorry to find them supported by eminent statesmen) to preach the doctrine of armaments; they allege that in order to preserve peace it is necessary to be prepared for war, that a nation with a large army or navy ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... annually, and that 1,040 new post-offices have been established. It hence appears that under judicious management the income from this establishment may be relied on as fully adequate to defray its expenses, and that by the discontinuance of post-roads altogether unproductive others of more useful character may be opened, till the circulation of the mail shall keep pace with the spread of our population, and the comforts of friendly correspondence, the exchanges of ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... it unprofitable. Clover makes good pastures, being nutritious, and early and rapid growing. Red-clover makes fair hay, though inferior to timothy or red-top. White clover is unsuitable for hay; it shrinks so much in drying, that it is very unproductive. It is the best of all grasses for sheep pasture, and its blossoms afford in abundance the best of honey. Red clover plowed in, even when full-grown, is an excellent fertilizer. It begins to be regarded, in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... open my ears to hear, nor will I close my heart against conviction; but I forewarn you, I have my own doctrines, not acquired, but innate, some that I fear cannot be rooted up without tearing away all the soil from which they spring, and leaving only unproductive rock ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... cry of "Sursum corda!"—When the day comes for Death to approach, he shall not find me unprepared or faint-hearted. Our faith hopes for and awaits the deliverance to which it leads us. Yet as long as we are upon earth we must attend to our daily task. And mine shall not lie unproductive. However trifling it may seem to others, to me it is indispensable. My soul's tears must, as it were, have lacrymatoria made for them; I must set fires alight for those of my dear ones that are alive, and keep my dear dead in spiritual and corporeal urns. This is the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... sums levied each year on the inhabitants generally are employed for unproductive purposes, such as creating useless places, raising sterile monuments, and maintaining in the midst of profound peace a more expensive army than that which conquered at Austerlitz, taxation becomes in ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... one of his father's unfortunate speculations had been the purchase of certain shares in some Welsh mines. The money thus invested had remained, for the last nine years, wholly unproductive. Mr. Woodstock explained that things were looking up with the company in question, who had just declared a dividend of 4 per cent. on all ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... and repression are parts of the dignified office of the preacher, but carried too far may degenerate into weak and unproductive effort. Perfection of English style, rhetorical floridness, and profundity of thought will never wholly make up for lack of appropriate action in the work of ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... of His wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of the body may be considered as a hymn to the Creator; the use of the passions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilst, referring to him whatever we find of right or good ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... told us when the country was surrounded by whites, and in possession of Indians, that it was unproductive, not being liable to taxes, nor to make roads nor improvements, it was time to change. As for the taxing of Indians, this is extra-ordinary; and was never heard of, since the settlement of America. The land is ours, by the gift of the Great Spirit. How can you tax it? We can make such roads ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... Pacific, both in anticipation of the future development of the country rather then in response to any demand then existing, having been substantially completed, or suspended for an indefinite time, a large amount of capital so invested was found for the time unproductive, and a great number of laborers were left in the Pacific States without any possible employment. The great majority of these laborers were, as usual, without any accumulated means to pay their transportation to any other part of the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... black bread to support life into the mouths of the five little children, too young to do as she had done, when she accompanied a neighbor's family, who were emigrating to seek their fortune in the New World. These neighbors had gone to the far West, and not caring to be burdened with a possibly unproductive member of their party, had left the little girl in the hands of a German employment agency, through which she had found her way ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... a time by Mahometan fanaticism, overran great part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but without influencing civilization. While in possession of a great and productive idea, they remained a sterile and nomad people, or founded unproductive dynasties. For the Semitic race, the interval between God and man, and consequently between God and civilization, was and is infinite, impassable. The Arabs possessed nothing but the devastating force of proselytism to fertilize their minds and social relations; and, with ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... therefore I have exercised it; but not upon such as thou. Hear me, Rebecca—Never did knight take lance in his hand with a heart more devoted to the lady of his love than Brian de Bois-Guilbert. She, the daughter of a petty baron, who boasted for all his domains but a ruinous tower, and an unproductive vineyard, and some few leagues of the barren Landes of Bourdeaux, her name was known wherever deeds of arms were done, known wider than that of many a lady's that had a county for a dowery.—Yes," he continued, pacing up and down the little platform, with an animation in ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... future exploration will develop Midian as it has done India. The quartzose outcrop called the "Wynaad reef" (Madras Presidency) produced only a few poor penny-weights per ton, two and seven being the extremes, while much of it was practically unproductive. Presently, in February, 1878, the district was visited by Sir Andrew Clarke, of Australian experience, member of the Viceregal Council. He invited Mr. Brough Smyth, of Victoria, to explore and test the capabilities of the country; and that eminent practical ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... a surprise. The red soil of Cuba, which is impregnated with the oxide of iron, is less rich, and is better adapted to the coffee plantation. The mulatto-colored earth is considered to be inferior to either of the others named, but is by no means unproductive, being preferred by the tobacco growers, who, however, often mingle a percentage of other soils with it, as we mingle barnyard refuse with our natural soil. Some tobacco planters have resorted by way of experiment to the use ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... no less than 25,000 acres of open commons; 30,000 acres of useless parks, 48,000 acres of heaths, and 30,000 acres of chalk hills, serving but to subsist a few herds of deer and cattle, and to grow some unproductive trees, though at the very instant 10,000 families in the same county are dependent on the bounty of their respective parishes! Is this, said I, the vaunted age of reason? Are these the genuine fruits of civilization? Do such circumstances indicate the ascendency of benevolence? Do they ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... schools, to "knowledge," that is, to one's own, well grounded, indisputable insight, from the study of human affairs to the study of nature. Study Aristotle, but do not become his slave; instead of yielding yourselves captive to his views, use your own eyes; do not believe that the mind remains unproductive unless it allies itself with the understanding of another; copy nature, not copies merely! He equals Bacon in his high estimation of sensuous experience in contrast to the often illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does not conceal from himself the fact ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... credit of these results: they were the effect of that spirit of industry which ever characterises the native of Great Britain, and which nothing can wholly extinguish. Nor was this prosperity without alloy. The unproductive improvement encouraged, was sometimes unhealthy. The settlers were deeply involved: the valuation of property was raised beyond reasonable calculation. The pleasing delusion was cherished by the members of the government, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... sloping roof. But this spot was all flagged, as I have already said, and when their eyes strayed beyond it to the untilled fields, stretching between them and the great rock at the verge of the waterfall from which she was supposed to have taken her fatal leap, it was to find them as unproductive of evidence as the brick walk itself. Not one pair of feet but many had passed that way since early morning. The ground showed a mass of impressions of all sizes and shapes, amid which it would have been impossible for them, without the necessary experience, to have followed up the flight ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... reduce military salaries, but objects to this, and enumerates the amounts paid to each officer. Directions for arranging this reduction are given by the Council, as also for the governor's management of expenses, etc., Fajardo makes recommendations as to certain crown encomiendas, at present unproductive. This is approved by the Council, who order him to prevent any unjust collections. He commends certain officers as deserving rewards, and exonerates many of the religious from the blame of harassing the Indians. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... concerning the manner of work in civilized States, these States are composed of three classes—a class which does not even pretend to work, a class which pretends to work but which produces nothing, and a class which works, but is compelled by the other two classes to do work which is often unproductive. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... Although he was an ardent admirer of famous military men, the sound common sense of this peasant woman's observations made him reflect upon the wealth which would necessarily accrue to the country if all these unemployed and consequently ruinous hands—so much unproductive force—were available for the great industrial works that would take centuries ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... knew pretty well the state of his finances, he began to search his pockets to see if he could not somewhere find a stray dime, or, better still, a quarter, with which to purchase the meal of which he stood so much in need. But his search was unproductive, or, rather, it only resulted in the discovery of a ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... general or for your particular case; and all the more, for the very good reason that your life is only really beginning now. You are not yet thirty-four, you may yet do something great, something pre-eminent, and who knows if those very qualities which have made your life unproductive hitherto, may not enable you later on to do things beside which the achievements of a Paul Haber shrink into insignificance? On the other hand, I am persuaded—quite apart from your respective ways of life—that you have chosen ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... them, hidden them away from a world which she had found unkind. It was for their interests that she had worked harder than any man of her acquaintance, experimenting, studying, managing, until she was recognized as one of the greatest agriculturists of the State, and the unproductive property left by Basil Kildare had become a stock and dairy farm which netted her an income that ran well into five figures. More than wealth, she had given them education, bringing to Storm the best tutors and governesses to ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... have an economic system that allows such nonsense as large scale unemployment of trained employees, planned obsolescence, union featherbedding, and an overwhelming majority of those who are employed wasting their labor on unproductive employment." ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... remark that slave labor is unproductive, when compared with labor performed by free white citizens; and that the agricultural interests of the country have suffered by the introduction of ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... islands in this group was formerly covered by a bed of mould, which, after an earthquake, disappeared, and was believed by the residents to have been washed by the rain through the broken masses of underlying rock; the island was thus rendered unproductive. Chamisso (See Chamisso, in Kotzebue's "First Voyage," volume iii., pages 182 and 136.) states, that earthquakes are felt in the Marshall atolls, which are far from any high land, and likewise in the islands of the Caroline Archipelago. On one of the latter, namely Oulleay atoll, Admiral ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... twelve miles over an execrable road running over a flat but rugged surface of unproductive soil.[3] India is, perhaps, the only civilized country in the world where a great city could be approached by such a road from the largest military Station in the empire,[4] not more than three stages distant. After breakfast the head native police officer ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman |
