"Bootless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a few minutes to keep our whole party chewing all that day and at intervals for many subsequent days. It is a rather bootless kind of effort, at best, though it may tend to develop the muscles of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... clang shot on the light breeze by; A noise and a smoke on the plain afar— 'Tis the cloud and the clang of the Moslem war. And the light that flashed from his black eyes, lo! Was a light that paled the red wine's glow; And he shook his fetters in bootless ire, And called on the Prophet, and named his sire. But the lady of Saad heard the clang, And she knew the far sabres his fetters rang. Oh! she had the heart where a man might rest, For she knew the tempest in his ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... circumstanced and environed, he can beat up little or no game, and his poverty frequently putting out of his reach the procuring of the needful sporting gear, where he does follow hunting, it is pursued with much-weakened ardor, and often bootless issue. He is moved now to its pursuit, solely with the hope of realizing a paltry gain from the sale of the few ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Eglinton, or any one of her six daughters; not dainty, like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily, treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin, eyes, and hair—the last a rich, ruddy chestnut brown—with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... "Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence... This is usually the case. Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... respectful familiarity, having known me all my life, and, as he spoke, eyed me with the kind and open curiosity of a dog. He was a gentle little man, with a manner oddly compounded of the sailor's simplicity and the rustic's bootless cunning,—for he had followed both walks in his day,—and was popularly held to be somewhat weak-witted since a fall from the masthead to the decks of the brig ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... what is retained, and either the incongruity is hidden beneath a change of nomenclature or is not hidden at all. Our own social life is threaded through and through with customs and practices which go back to a superstitious origin. The matter is such a commonplace of history that it is bootless to ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... nor within the scope of these papers—even did their author possess the ability for it—to enter into detailed criticism of military events; far less to reopen those acrimonious partisanships, so bootless at the time and worse than useless now. But, to comprehend the state of public feeling at the South, it is essential to have the plain data, upon which it was based; and to have plainly stated the causes to which popular opinion ascribed ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... hare. Take him away. Hold," again added the officer, whom some strange fascination still bound to the bootless investigation. "What's my ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and Bess went about with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends to entice me into taking a vacation. Then, and at the last gasp, came the thought that saved me: Why not confiscate? If their forays were bootless, in the nature of things ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... approval, but defiance. But alas! many voices mingled in the chorus which have since been attuned to the meanest whine of mendicancy. That they vilely belied their solemn promise were of little moment. Nay, more, it is bootless to consider whether they were more false-tongued and false-hearted in that great pageant, or on the recent occasion of their kneeling in their own shame to pledge a faith they do not feel, in expectation of some royal notice or royal favour. What is mournful in both instances ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... glimpse of his approach, Don Benito had started, a resentful shadow swept over his face; and, as with the sudden memory of bootless rage, his white lips ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... my heat might say. 685 Small need of inroad, or of fight, When the sage Douglas may unite Each mountain clan in friendly band, To guard the passes of their land, Till the foiled king, from pathless glen, 690 Shall bootless ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... heart upon, For all God's charge to His high angels may Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run Quick to deny me, 'neath the morning sun? And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray? The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest A late contrition, but no bootless fear! For when thy deadly need is bitterest, Thou shall not be denied as I am here; My voice, to God and angels, shall attest— Because I knew this ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... "it is bootless to threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against me. My heart is hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I am, as ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... had risen when I waded ashore. I was swordless, coatless, hatless, and bootless; but I carried a well-filled purse in my belt. Up to that time I had given no thought to my ultimate destination; but being for the moment safe, I pondered the question and determined to make my ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... a mocking laugh. "If so, call me your fallen angel; for when I took the unfathomable leap which leads from innocence to guilt, your arms were outstretched to receive me. But pshaw! what bootless retrospection! I am here, Carl, true as steel; ready to stand or fall at your side. Feel my hand, it is warm—feel my pulse, it beats as evenly as though I had never slept a night out ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... nursed grudges in no way related to the line of feud cleavage. The Hollman-Purvy combination had retained enough of its old power to escape the law's retribution and to hold its dictatorship, but the efforts of John South had not been altogether bootless. He had ripped away two masks, and their erstwhile wearers could no longer hold their old semblance of law-abiding philanthropists. Jesse Purvy's home was the show place of the country side. To the traveler's ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Velasquez, was affected by the study of El Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Saens, when Liszt and Rubinstein were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing in common except their superiority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez with his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco's resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco was, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies we side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.: ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... conventional reasons; but he must be a materialist indeed who undervalues this priceless possession. It is something for a country to have reached the stage of passing "resolutions," even if their conversion into "acts" lags a little; it is bootless to sneer at a real "land of promise" because it is not at once and in every way ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... "'Tis bootless to attempt the salvation of those who will not believe: nevertheless, they shall perish through their own devices, and be caught in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the woodland and meadow, "Peter—O Peter!" all day, calling, reminding, and chiding— Taking us back to the time when Peter he done gone and done it! These are the voices of those left by the boy in the farmhouse When, with his laughter and scorn, hatless and bootless and sockless, Clothed in his jeans and his pride, Peter sailed out in the weather, Broke from the warmth of his home into that fog of the devil. Into the smoke of that ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... any pity or compassion for his poor people." Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fruitless Charms are bootless Spells to ward off age's peril; Lips that give not Love shall live not, Eyes that meet not ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... bootless in this cause; This open wrong must have an open plague, This plague must be repaid with grievous war, This war must finish with Locrine's death; His death will ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his happiness. Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which is ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Disappointment's blighting breath Breathes o'er him, and he droops to death; While the Destroyer glideth by, And smiles, as if in mockery. How strong a hand hath Time! Fame wins The eager youth to her embrace; With tameless ardour he begins, And follows up the bootless race; Ah! bootless—for, as on he hies, With equal speed the phantom flies, Till youth, and strength, and vigour gone, He faints, and sinks, and dies unknown; While the Destroyer passeth by, And smiles, as if in mockery. Gaze, stranger, on the scene below; 'Tis scarce a century ago, Since here ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... certain that the vindication of the supremacy of popular interests over all other considerations would have been bootless toil, and that the great constitutional struggle from 1760 to 1783 would have ended otherwise than it did, but for the failure of the war against the insurgent colonies, and the final establishment of American Independence. It ...
— Burke • John Morley
... leave my address, advising me not to remain in town, as it might be some time before I was likely to hear from him; he then politely bowed me out of the room. Whether or not anything will come of it is more than I can divine. In my humble opinion my visit to London will prove bootless; it can't be helped, Sally, so cheer up, and don't let Ned get out of spirits. I am going to call on two or three shipowners, of whom Jenkins, who knows more of London than I do, has told me, for if Ned cannot get into the ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add, that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good enough, both families and gentlemen ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... more, sir," interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she could not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those whom you would coin your heart to serve and bless! Ah, sir," he continued, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... his own soul—a Pythia which prophesies that he shall be great—and so renders the life one effort to fulfil the warning! Is this folly?—it were so, if all things stopped at the grave! But perhaps the very sharpening, and exercising, and elevating the faculties here—though but for a bootless end on earth—may be designed to fit the soul, thus quickened and ennobled, to some high destiny beyond the earth! Who can tell? ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The Caucasus passed numerous boats being towed up the stream, carrying all sorts of merchandise to Nijni-Novgorod. Then passed rafts of wood interminably long, and barges loaded to the gunwale, and nearly sinking under water. A bootless voyage they were making, since the fair had been abruptly broken up ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... heart to help, believing, as she did, that Lucia's journey would be as bootless as it would ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Comines, "ere you set your mind so keenly against what is proposed, will consider your own want of power to prevent it. Every wise man, when he sees a rock giving way, withdraws from the bootless attempt ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott |
