"Futility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But they are still and respectful, gathered thus by a slain ruler, to see how worthy is the republic he has preserved. Whatever sympathy these have for our institutions, I think that in such audience they must have been impressed with the futility of any thought that either one citizen right or one territorial inch can ever be torn from the United States. Not to speak disparagingly of these noble guests, I was struck with the superior facial energy of our own public servants, who were generally larger, and brighter-faced, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... recognizing at last the futility of fire and sword as means for stamping out opposing religious convictions, but still thoroughly convinced as to the correctness of their respective points of view, both sides now settled down to another century and more of religious hatred, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Stoics, he rejected the world and all its conventions and prizes, its desires and passions and futility. But where the Stoic and Cynic proclaimed that in spite of all the pain and suffering of a wicked world, man can by the force of his own will be virtuous, Epicurus brought the more surprising good news that man can after ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... of some of the points of difference between the mind masculine and the mind feminine will show the futility of confounding the two, or of drawing any useless or invidious comparisons. They are as distinct in their normal action as any two things can well be. I begin, then, by dividing our whole conscious human life into two comprehensive departments, expressed by the generic terms, thought—feeling; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... love to her when they were married. They would both have so many other things to think about. It was the present that so weighed upon her, her lover's almost appalling intensity of worship and her own utter inadequacy and futility. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... that Benito sneezed. He had felt the approach of that betraying reflex for some minutes, but had stifled it. Those who have tried this under similar circumstances know the futility of such attempts; know the accumulated fury of sound with which at length bursts forth the startling, terrible ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... these exhibitions of civic hilarity, as from the height of a grim and inaccessible tower. The impression made upon the Netherlanders was any thing but favorable, and when he had fully experienced the futility of the projects on the Empire which it was so difficult both for his father and himself to resign, he returned to the more congenial soil of Spain. In 1554 he had again issued from the peninsula to marry the Queen ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... linguistic subjects which is growing on the public, and by the lamentable lack of any organized means for focussing opinion. It responds to that interest, and would supply that want.[30] There is no doubt that public opinion is altogether at sea in these matters, and its futility is betrayed and encouraged by the amateurish discussions and obiter dicta that are constantly appearing and reappearing in the newspapers. Our belief is that if facts and principles were clearly stated and ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... peace propaganda illuminates this point. Not long ago a meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, to forward peace among nations broke up in great disorder. Thousands of people who hate the waste and futility of war as much as any of the orators of that evening were filled with an unholy glee. They chuckled with delight at the idea of a riot in a peace meeting. Though it would have seemed perverse to the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... he likes universal history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former existence. I have at times startled ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Richelieu disregarded the Estates-General. He was convinced of its futility and unhesitatingly declined to consult it. Gradually the idea became current that the Estates-General was an out- worn, medieval institution, totally unfit for modern purposes, and that official business could best—and therefore properly—be conducted, not by the representatives of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... attracting the female, two of whom regard him with favor, while two males on either side, deserted for this finer type, give vent to deep regret, despair, and anger. One attempts by brute force to hold the woman; the other reluctantly gives up his choice, in the obvious futility of his unequal ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... the futility of trying to overcome the guards by wrestling. The only thing to do was dodge and punch. The guards were trying to take the Earthmen alive, but, because of their greater weight, they couldn't move quite as fast ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... have known better. The simplest calculation, had she cared to make it, would have shown her the utter futility of hoping to live on the munificent wage which a grateful country allowed to M'Gugan, less certain deductions for M'Gugan's slops and contingent sick-benefit, in return for his aid in protecting it from its enemies; and almost any parish official could have told her, what she ought ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... his chamber that Saturday afternoon, a rap at his door aroused him. He had been speculating upon the futility of his political energy in the light of the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... human emotions, the tumbled grass lay about him, a picture of confusion and ruin. The futility of human effort was borne in upon him as he scanned the waste. A pile larger than the surrounding piles separated itself from the scattered heaps at last. He regarded it eagerly. Yes! there was ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... compatriots, had served the Allies on the French front. The point made was that the active part American airmen were taking in the ranks of the Allies, combined with the enormous supply of war materials furnished by American firms, indicated the futility of abiding by concessions made to the United States controlling the submarine war. The United States was charged with taking advantage of restricted submarine activity to cover the participation of American citizens as aids to the Entente and to expand its war trade. Being ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... in himself. But all the resources of the Greek language, that most resourceful of languages, utterly failed Paul for his pressing purpose. And thus it is that, as if in scorn of the feebleness and futility of that boasted tongue, he tramples its grammars and its dictionaries under his feet, and makes new and unheard-of words and combinations of words on the spot for himself and for his subject. He heaps up a hyperbole the like of which no orator or rhetorician ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... down and thought disturbedly. The utter futility of any efforts to assist such a family was undeniable. Nothing could be done. For a vivid instant he had an idea of rushing to the market and setting up surreptitiously a term of credit for the Carrolls, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... penalty "a relic of barbarism," which is neither conclusive nor true. What is required is not loose assertion and dogs-eared phrases, but evidence of futility, or, in lack of that, cogent reasoning. It is true that the most barbarous nations inflict the death penalty most frequently and for the greatest number of offenses, but that is because barbarians ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... happened. There had been an air, a spirit. Fighting his father—or at any rate, escaping from his father—had been something vital. And here he was now, an ill-tempered, useless youth, earning two pounds a week, in love with some one who was scarcely conscious of his existence. He cursed the futility of it all. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... appeal to us more than the truth which is truest from the universal point of view. Ignorant as we are of the aim of the universe, how shall we tell whether or no it concern itself with the interests of our race? The probable futility of our life and our species is a truth which regards us indirectly only, and may well, therefore, be left in suspense. The other truth, that indicates clearly the importance of life, may perhaps be more restricted, but it has a direct, incontestable, actual bearing ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... He would stake his life to save twenty yards of distance. There was no discretion in his valor. Blithe young gambler that he was, he would do the thing in his own way. No one could tell him. Tom knew the utter futility of shouting any last ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... they were—here she was, idling uselessly at the Ritz as she had done yesterday, last week, last month—forever, it seemed to her. The vague protest that for some time had been growing within her against the senselessness and futility of her manner of existence crystallized itself now into a determination no longer to submit to it. Courageously she was resolving that she would take the first opportunity to escape from this boresome routine of pleasure-seeking. She ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... difficulty—the futility of attempting to fasten on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Canadian politics; they concern the leaders of to-day, all minor figures in the 1917 drama. Because the Union government passed without leaving behind it tangible and visible manifestations of its power, there are those who regard it as a mere futility—a sword-cut in the water, as the French say. But of the Union movement it might well be said: Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The spirit behind the movement passed with the war, but it left the old traditional ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... moment of concealing the case about her person, but a second's reflection showed her the futility of such a move. She had not seen the papers themselves; any one of them might be an absolute proof of Deroulede's guilt; the correspondence ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... caress could penetrate to the unconscious state, or influence the happiness of her who lay in the vault beneath. This conviction, together with the remembrance of soft replies to bitter speeches, of gentle looks repaying angry glances; the perception of the falsehood, paltryness and futility of her cherished dreams of birth and power; the overpowering knowledge, that love and life were the true emperors of our mortal state; all, as a tide, rose, and filled her soul with stormy and bewildering ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... executed the instinctive tactic of shifting the helm, paying off, and trying to beat up into the faint breeze that now drifted over the swirling current, he realized its futility and abandoned it. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... in times not unlike our own, when wars had shaken civilization, the arts of peace were unsettled, religion was at a low ebb. As a young man, he experienced an intense revulsion from the vicious futility of Roman society, fled into the hills, and lived in a cave for three years alone with his thoughts of God. It would be easy to regard him as an eccentric boy: but he was adjusting himself to the real centre of his life. Gradually others who longed ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... confab on the last upset. Both Generals went word by word through my M.F. 657 of the 26th September,—(1) as to drawing in our horns at Suvla,—(2) as to our power of holding on after we lose the 10th and 53rd Divisions. They concur in my cables and are emphatic as to the futility of making a gift of ground to any enemy who are shaking in their shoes. What the Turks want is a gift, not of ground but of high explosive shell. A few thousand pounds worth of that and Byng would go ahead and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... master's thought a stage further was a pleasure, if any moment of his present life could be called pleasurable. He heard these sayings first in Alexandria, and, looking towards Jerusalem, he tried to recall the exact words of the sage regarding the futility of sacrifice. Our priests try, said Heraclitus, to purify themselves with blood and we admire them, but if a filthy man were to roll himself in the mud in the hope of cleaning himself we should think he was mad. In some such wise Heraclitus ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... September 48 B.C., and the main part of the Ciris was written not much later. Now came a crisis in Vergil's affairs. Perhaps his own experience in the law courts, or the conviction that public life could contain no interest under an autocracy, or disgust at rhetorical futility, or perhaps a copy of Lucretius brought him to a stop. Lucretius he certainly had been reading; of that the Ciris provides unmistakable evidence. And the spell of that poet he never escaped. His farewell to Rome and rhetoric has been quoted in part above. The end of ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... of the hope of establishing a cognition which is to extend its rule beyond the limits of experience—a cognition which is one of the highest interests of humanity; and thus is proved the futility of the attempt of speculative philosophy in this region of thought. But, in this interest of thought, the severity of criticism has rendered to reason a not unimportant service, by the demonstration of the impossibility ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... came near to a halt, till the lash smote upon their flanks again. Twice was the effort to stop repeated, and twice frustrated in the same rude manner, till both the driver and the beaten ponies felt the futility of the attempt. All through this the elder woman had clung screaming to the girl, both arms thrown round her waist; now she sank forward, in a kind of swoon of terror, and had to be forcibly restrained from falling out of the carriage. A flood of anger and dismay swept over ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... contemplated resistance, for these were troopers of the Royal Horse, the body which was now Peter's most effective personal tool; but even as his hand slipped to the butt of one of the revolvers at his hip, the young man saw the foolish futility of such a course, and with a shrug and a smile he drew rein and turned ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and myself, we also returned to Ordway and there spent a part of each month, brooding darkly over the problem of our future. I already perceived the futility of my return to the frontier. The mysterious urgings of a vague yet deep-seated longing to go east rendered me restless, sour and difficult. I saw nothing before me, and yet my hard experiences in Wisconsin and in ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... situate in the latitude of 35 degrees 03 minutes south, and longitude 118 degrees 12 minutes east; and it is to be hoped, that a few years will disclose many others upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or futility of the conjecture*, that a still larger than Bass ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... ever longing, yet with no definite object, I believe I should always have remained in the place of my birth, except for family exigencies, for I had no ambitions, no special talent nor practical faculty. When I reflect on the futility of literature without genius, or the miserly rewards of scholarship, or the disastrous conclusion in a majority of business enterprises, I confess the life of a New England farmer is to be preferred. ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... she believed to be their true welfare. Richard listened to her without interrupting; even seemed to grant the truth of what she said. But none the less, even as she pleaded with him, a numbing sense of futility crept over her. She stuttered, halted, and finally fell silent. Her words were like so many lassos thrown after his vagrant soul; and this was out of reach. It had sniffed freedom—it WAS free; ran wild already on the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... not share the belief that the outbreak of the World War and its, in many ways, lawless and atrocious conduct have proved the futility of the work of the Hague Conferences. Throughout these anxious years we have upheld the opinion that the progress initiated at the Hague has by no means been swept away by the attitude of lawlessness deliberately—'because necessity knows no law'—taken up by Germany, ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... Abbas. 1114, and Laurentius. Abbas. 1176). I remained some little while, musing over these casual relics of antiquity thus left like wrecks upon this distant shore of time, telling no tale but that such beings had been and had perished, teaching no moral but the futility of that pride which hopes still to exact homage in its ashes and to live in an inscription. A little longer, and even these faint records will be obliterated and the monument will cease to be a memorial. Whilst I was yet looking ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... that the winners are worthless for other purposes; they can secure nothing except the prize. The very rich are neither aristocrats nor self-made men; they are accidents—or rather calamities. All revolutionary language is a generation behind the times in talking of their futility. A revolutionist would say (with perfect truth) that coal-owners know next to nothing about coal-mining. But we are past that point. Coal-owners know next to nothing about coal-owning. They do not develop and defend the nature of their ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Rebecca Miller was unlike the majority of the plain, unpretentious people of that rural community. In all her years she had failed to appreciate the futility of fuss, the sin of useless worry, and had never learned the invaluable lesson of minding her own business. "She means well," Mrs. Reist said in conciliatory tones when Uncle Amos or the children resented the interference of the dictatorial ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... "when I looked out, I felt the futility of bed, so I made an assignation with the Hound when I met it trooping along with Russ in single file to the bathroom. Why does your Hound always accompany you there, Russ? Dogs must think us awfully irrational beasts, and yet—does that Hound ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... high and soulful grunt. You ought to have understood that it meant the Melancolia.' Dick walked Torpenhow up and down the room, keeping silence. Then he smote him in the ribs, 'Now don't you see it? Bessie's abject futility, and the terror in her eyes, welded on to one or two details in the way of sorrow that have come under my experience lately. Likewise some orange and black,—two keys of each. But I can't ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... hopes, the dreams built around it. If it failed, would not they fail? Was not this angry beating rain, this dull spiritless drizzle, this wild war of air and earth, but foretaste and prophecy of ruin and discouragement, of the utter futility of striving? But if his own despair was great his pain at the plight of Zora made it almost unbearable. He did not see her in these seven days. He pictured her huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin with worse than no companions. Ah! the swamp, the cruel swamp! ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of futility and disappointment, even the rotten poison served by Johnny the Greek appealed to him. His old neurosis, almost forgotten in the half-tolerant, half-amused interest in Mademoiselle d'Albret's adventure which had occupied ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... friendliness and confidence with men like Arellano, Torres, Legarda and Tavera, who had left the Malolos government when it demonstrated its futility, and were ready to turn to the United States for help. Insurgent sympathizers also conferred freely with us. We were invited to a beautiful function given in our honour at the home of a wealthy family, and were impressed, as no one can fail to be, with the dignified bearing of our Filipino hosts, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of them came to her at Simpson's in the Strand. As she trod the staircase, narrow, but carpeted thickly, as she entered the eating-room, where saddles of mutton were being trundled up to expectant clergymen, she had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged. Then came a little surprise. "Father might be of the party—yes, Father was." ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... estimate of the army and of the futility of an attack from McClellan was justified when, after the 26th of June, the Army of the Potomac, almost in sight of the spires of Richmond, was forced to reel back, in the deadly clinch of a seven days' combat, to the ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Melbain was silent for several moments. She seemed to be thinking. Louise's face was expressionless. She had made one attempt to check Wrayson, but recognizing its futility she had at once abandoned it. From below in the valley came the faint whir of the reaping machines, from the rose garden a murmur of bees. But between the two women and the man there was silence—silence which lasted so long that Monsieur Jules, who was watching from ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cause of their being brought into the world of woe! When Eve attempted to comfort him he drove her from him with harsh words, saying that in time to come women would be the unhappy cause of all man's misery, as she had been of his. At last, seeing the futility of his outcries Adam began to cheer his wife, recalling the promise that their offspring should crush the head of the serpent, and suggested to her that they go to their former place of prayer and pour forth to God their ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... amongst all the multitude of possibilities? Had not he, Tito, suffered shipwreck, and narrowly escaped drowning? He had good cause for feeling the omnipresence of casualties that threatened all projects with futility. The rumour that there were pirates who had a settlement in Delos was not to be depended on, or might be nothing to the purpose. What, probably enough, would be the result if he were to quit Florence and go to Venice; get authoritative letters—yes, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... franchise. Let us be just, however. There are in the Cape Colony and out of it loyal Dutchmen, loyal as the day, to the British power, which is the ruling power. They know the freedom they enjoy under it, and the folly and futility of ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... the House of Commons, for instance, is not only worse than the speaking was, it is worse than the speaking is, in all or almost all other places in small debating clubs or casual dinners. Our countrymen probably prefer this solemn futility in the higher places of the national life. It may be a strange sight to see the blind leading the blind; but England provides a stranger. England shows us the blind leading the people who can see. And this again is an under-statement ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... The reason of this restraint, according to Polybius, was, the unwillingness of the Carthaginians to let the Romans have any knowledge of the countries which lay more to the south, in order that this enterprising people might not hear of their futility. Polyb. l. iii. p. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... dullness by english compilers, with the object of conforming it in rhythm to words that are unworthy of any music whatever. The chief offenders here are the protestant reformers, whose metrical psalms, which the melodies were tortured to fit, exhibit greater futility than one would look for even in men who could thus ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... the Abbe Aubert. When they spoke to me about him in a serious tone, I no longer understood them, and I imagined they took this subject as a sort of text whereon to build a parable proving to me the advantages of education, the necessity of devoting myself to study early in life, and the futility of regrets in ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Seeing the futility of arguing the question, Mrs. Cronk placed the fish and beans on his plate and, with a shrill cry to Flea and Flukey, sat ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... marshalled against him, and withdrew his motion. Thus the great debate collapsed. The Lords were relieved that an awkward question had so easily been shifted. The newspapers on the ministerial side declared that this debate had proved the futility of the Ginx's Baby Expatriation question. "So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge had established that there was no necessity for the interference of Government in the case of Ginx's Baby or any other babies or persons. The lucid and decisive statement of the Secretary for the Accidental Accompaniments ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... thought about the futility of the curse, about the folly of my father's superstitions, brought me no comfort. I knew that, brave as Winifred was as a child, she was, when confronting the material world, very superstitious. I remembered that as a child, whenever I said, 'What a happy day it has ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... (Figure 16), and still more of the Lemurs, is situated completely in the posterior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the Gorilla, as that of the Gorilla is further back than that of Man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of Platyrhine, or American monkeys, to which the 'Mycetes' belongs, contains the 'Chrysothrix', whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward than in any other ape, and nearly approaches the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... object than to rob me of every wink of sleep. If I swallow the outrage and retire, will you promise to tell me every word to-morrow? You preached a most exquisite sermon last Sunday about the meanness and futility of small concealments." ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... decided what frame of mind the great so-and-so ought to have assumed for the perusal of his biography. He carefully and deliberately adopted that frame of mind now. He thought of Marcus Aurelius on the futility of fame; he remembered his life-long attitude of gentle, tired scorn for the press; he reflected with wise modesty that in art nothing counts but the work itself, and that no quantity of inept chatter could possibly affect, for good or evil, his value, such as it ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... completed the conquest of the young man, abashed him. He found himself of a sudden endowed with a painful appreciation of his own imperfections, the littleness of his ego, the inherent coarseness of his masculine fiber, the poor futility of his ways, contrasted with her perfections. He felt as if rebuked for some unwarrantable presumption.... For he had looked into eyes that were windows of a soul; and the soul was that of a child, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... which make neither for sound births nor sound growth, but through the thinnest shams of excuse and purpose, through the most hypnotic and unreal of suggestions and motives, directly and even plainly towards waste, towards sterility, towards futility and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Britz recognized the futility of trying to obtain further admissions from a woman in her distressful state of mind. The fear that had seized her would prove a padlock on her lips. So he permitted her to lean heavily on his arm while she passed through the door and descended the steps to the street. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... thoughts, yet by new patches on the old garment. If, therefore, the readers of that work know any more familiar expressions which are as suitable to the thought as those seem to me to be, or if they think they can show the futility of these thoughts themselves and hence that of the expression, they would, in the first case, very much oblige me, for I only desire to be understood: and, in the second case, they would deserve well of philosophy. But, as long as these thoughts stand, I very much doubt ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... only a boy in his sense of justice, in his hot, primitive desire to lunge out quickly and set the maladjustments of that household straight. He did not know that there was a thing as old as the desires of men at the bottom of Ollie's sorrow, nor understand the futility of chastisement in the case of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of their cause and the strength of their character. The risks that they run through this confidence have often been pointed out, but it should also be remembered that by their reluctance to act on theory they have often been saved from the elaborate futility and expense of acting on a false theory. The disaster which has befallen Germany cannot but strengthen them in their belief that it is dangerous to devote care and thought to preparing for all imaginable conflicts. So also in the activities ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... not consist in the most extensive knowledge of facts. Oftentimes information overweights a man and snuffs out what personal force there might otherwise have been. On the futility of mere learning there is abundant testimony. Walt Whitman, as we might expect from his passion for the vital and the human, has said: "You must not know too much and be too precise and scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft. A certain ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... every great artist a moment when a sense of the futility of his efforts weighs upon and well-nigh crushes him. Such an oppression represents the reaction which follows or precedes much excellent work. The psychologist will, perhaps, fail to explain why this sense of emptiness so often comes before ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... a point like this is obviously very dangerous. Certain poets, especially among the moderns, may be said to choose imperfect rimes deliberately, both as a fresh means of securing variety and avoiding the monotony of hackneyed rimes, and also as a means of subtly suggesting the imperfection and futility of life. A few famous examples, defensible and indefensible, are: Wordsworth's robin: sobbing, sullen: pulling; Tennyson's with her: together, valleys: lilies; Keats's youths: soothe, pulse: culls; Swinburne's ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... sluggishly as may be, moving towards the selfsame goal. It had seemed to Mrs. Brenton something bordering on the blasphemous when Scott had endeavoured to put this latter phase of the question before her. Realizing his own futility upon that score, he finally had changed his tactics and assured her that, as far as money-earning work went, there were ten chances in the great college to one in ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... books. The results of Augustine's studies were that he was able to refute their attacks on Holy Scripture which they said had undergone serious changes, and to see the falsehood of their main postulate that good proceeds from a good principle and evil from an evil principle; and also to recognize the futility of their objection that the Christians spoke of a human form in God. Against this sect his principal writings are "On the Manners and Customs of the Catholic Church and those of the Manicheans;" "The Utility of Faith," "The Two Souls," and a book against ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... preserve, as a man may preserve game. The Eloi, according to the hypothesis of the Time Traveller, are the descendants of the leisured classes; the Morlocks of the workers. "The Eloi, like the Carlovingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance; since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the day-lit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... mystic who tells us that beauty is indefinable? First of all, I think, we should remind him that his own thesis can be proved or refuted only through an attempt at a scientific investigation of beauty. Every attempt to master our experience through thought is an adventure; but the futility of adventures can be shown only by courageously entering into them. And, although the failure of previous efforts may lessen the probabilities of success in a new enterprise, it cannot prove that success is absolutely impossible. Through greater persistence and better ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Barchester. As far as he himself, the bishop, was concerned, he could well spare the services of his chaplain. The little idea of using Mr Slope as a counterpoise to his wife had well nigh evaporated. He had all but acknowledged the futility of the scheme. If indeed he could have slept in his chaplain's bed-room instead of his wife's there might have been something in it. But—-. And thus as Mr Slope as speaking, the bishop began to recognise the idea that that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the fire, Overland Red told again the story of the dead prospector, the gold, and the buried papers. In his troubled slumbers the Easterner dreamed of pacing along the track counting the ties, and eventually digging in the sand, digging until his very soul ached with the futility of his labor. Waking, he never lost faith in the certainty of finding the place. He now knew the tramp well enough to appreciate that the other had not risked his own life and nearly killed one of his pursuers through sheer bravado, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... own case he had not found that a daughter produced that result. On the contrary, Lesley had been for many years a sort of bone of contention between himself and his wife; and he had retained a cynical sense of the futility of such conventional utterances, which were every day contradicted by ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... attitudes— indifference. A great change in you will be a flattering tribute to her power to which no girl would be indifferent. I must tell you now once for all that I will not again assist in any high-handed measures against Louise. Not only the futility of such action, but my own dignity and sense of right, forbid it. I did not understand her at first. Now that I do, I am all the more eager to call her daughter; but I wish her to feel toward me as she should in such ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... log, and begins to study his mark. The stag will not stand still. Greenhorn is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn has read lies the heart. Just about to fire, he catches the eye of the stag winking futility into his elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, from a tree thirty feet overhead. Then, with a mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful contempt, the stag turns away, and wanders off to sleep in quiet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... instance, it is not enough to say: "I will inform myself completely as to the Lake School." It is necessary to say: "I will inform myself completely as to the Lake School before I am a year older." Without this precautionary steeling of the resolution the risk of a humiliating collapse into futility is enormously magnified. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... of Hollis's remonstrances the girl insisted on returning to the interior of the cabin, to "bundle up her things." Feeling the futility of further objection, Hollis finally allowed her to enter. But while she was busy in one of the rooms he and Ten Spot carried Yuma's body outside, around to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... all, there remained with him the vision of his last hour with Don Gervaso. The news of Odo's changed condition had been received in silence by the chaplain. He was not the man to waste words and he knew the futility of asserting the Church's claim to the heir-presumptive of a reigning house. Therefore if he showed no enthusiasm he betrayed no resentment; but, the evening before the boy's departure, led him, still in silence, to the chapel. Here the priest knelt with Odo; then, raising him, sat on one of the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... are but apparitions hovering for a moment over the earth, made out of the ashes of the dead, and swiftly re-absorbed by eternal night, as the will-o'-the-wisp sinks into the marsh. The nothingness of our joys, the emptiness of our existence, and the futility of our ambitions, filled me with a quiet disgust. From regret to disenchantment I floated on to Buddhism, to universal weariness. Ah, the hope of a blessed immortality would ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by the court martial, had left no glimpse of hope, at head quarters, that the prosecution of Hall, on the charge of mutiny, on which he had been imprisoned, could be attempted with any prospect of success—the futility of any further proceedings against Louallier was evident—Jackson, therefore, put an end to Hall's imprisonment on Saturday, the 11th of March. The word imprisonment is used, because Eaton assures his readers, that 'Judge Hall was not imprisoned; it was merely an arrest.' ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... without implying a contradiction." This is the signification which he attaches to his own language; and it is the only meaning of which it is susceptible in accordance with his system. Thus, Leibnitz saw and clearly exposed the futility of speaking about a freedom from co-action or restraint, when the question is, not whether the body is untrammelled, but whether the mind itself is free in the act of willing. But he did not see, it seems, that it is ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... I realized the futility of any attempt to dissuade her; so we left her there, spent an hour at the Academy and did a little shopping. On our way back an idea occurred to me. We reentered the restaurant. Mrs. Bundercombe was still sitting there in ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... expression of a stoic; not a distinguished face, but unmistakably that of a gentle soul, who had loved his neighbour better than himself (therefore he died in misery). He it was who may be remembered by those who knew him—and also a few future historians of the futility of things in general—as the man who first made known to Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Cezanne. An odd fish, indeed, was this same Julien ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the Emperor, taking his crown out of his wardrobe and crushing it in his hands until the diamonds fell out upon the floor, "this shows the futility of making war without preparing for it by study. When I was a young man I was a student. I knew the pages of history by heart, and I learned my lessons well. While I was the student I was invincible. In mimic as in real war I was the conqueror. Everything ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... said he. "You'd understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can't even laugh at such an insignificant detail as a Papist's prejudices. But I wish I were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could create me a duke and ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... everything hurried untimely into existence: machines, sheds, bridges, trams, motor-cars: not one line corrected, not one angle smoothed, for the sake of the eye, of the nerves of the spectator. And all of it, both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality (let alone the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant centuries) expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a scurry along the crowded corridors, and ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... taken up his residence at La Chine in autumn, men and goods were furnished in abundance, and the petty traders were made to see, ere the winter passed, the futility of entering the lists in competition with a Company ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... great Artificer and a mass of terribly recalcitrant matter—the only medium in which he can work. In other words, the Veiled Being would be as inscrutable as ever, but the Invisible King, instead of dropping in with a certain air of futility, like a doctor arriving too late at the scene of a railway accident, would be placed at the beginning, not of the universe at large, but of the atomic re-arrangements from which consciousness has sprung. Can ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... proprieties, yet indulges in drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. Those who have no experience are dazzled with there [Transcriber's note: their?] glare, but I have been behind the scenes and have seen all the coarse pulleys, which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines that excite the ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... adventures quite different from those in which we have seen him participate as a Scout of Bridgeboro and of Temple Camp. On his foray to the Yellowstone the bigness of the vast West and the thoughts of the wild preserve that he is going to visit make him conscious of his own smallness and of the futility of "boy scouting" and woods lore in this great region, Yet he was to learn that if it had not been for his scout training he would never have been able to survive the experiences he ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... from one to the other. On each face she read a fatuous eagerness. She knew the futility of pleading with Frederik. She knew still more surely the uselessness of trying to make Peter Grimm change his stubborn wishes. With a little catch in her breath, she gave ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... conclusion is incorrect, and the "reasoning" by which it is reached can be described, from the modern point of view, only as grotesque. The weakness of the method was recognized by Roger Bacon so early as the thirteenth century. The growing recognition of its futility finds repeated expression in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably in the New Method (Novum Organum) of ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... with which the Western pilgrim must invest himself, as the invulnerable armour needed by the conflict of daily life. As a mere matter of personal convenience, this quality bears scant resemblance to the weapons enumerated by S. Paul in the Christian panoply. The oppressive heat, the futility of argument in an almost unknown tongue, and the general uncertainty of the subject in dispute, gradually producing this spurious virtue as the external decoration of sorely-exasperated souls. The exertion of the long ascent ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... while Karyl, without reply, scowled up into his face. The sense of futility left Pagratide silent. He lay insanely furious like a trapped wolf, able ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... noting the frightful consequences of this belief; common sense, observing the futility of the evidence on which it is based, in all cases that have been properly investigated; science, more and more seeing its way to inclose all the phenomena of so-called "possession" within the domain of pathology, so far as they are not to be relegated to that of the police—all ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... believe, is to guard the contents of his pockets; but a moment's reflection convinced me of the futility of differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might eventually escape from the crater. I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs. 9-8-5—nine rupees eight annas and five pie— for I always keep small change as bakshish ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... dub it 'futile Philip,' or that the Outlook feels that 'the author might have made his book true without making it so frequently distasteful'; or that the Dial cries 'a most depressing impression of the futility of life'? ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... and, it was abandoned. He could not doubt the essential truth of Leonard's statement regarding the proposal of marriage. He did not understand this nor did he try to. His own love for the girl and the bitter awaking to its futility made him so hopeless that in his own desolation all the mystery of her doing and the cause of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... country population, but striking no blow. If Henry seriously contemplated the idea of reviving old claims to the French crown, he could have adopted no worse policy. Charles of course gave no practical assistance, and the allies each blamed the other for the futility of the operations. Albany on the other hand had been back in Scotland for some months; and in opposition to Angus—in conjunction therefore with Margaret —threatened an invasion as soon as the French expedition started. The ingenious Lord Dacre however by ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... a man consistently takes Life in twenty-four-hour doses and likes those doses full-flavored with the joys of this earth, there are intervals when the soul of him is sick, and Life becomes a nauseous progression of bleak futility. He may, in his revulsion against it, attempt to end it all; he may, in sheer disgust of it, take his doses stronger than ever before, as if he would once for all choke to death that part of him which ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... young shoulders shook convulsively. She was an odd mixture of bravado and baby helplessness. To leave her to fight her terrible battle with the aid only of a theater dresser was an impossibility. Septimus looked at her with mournful eyes, hating his futility. Of what use was he to any God-created being? Another man, strong and capable, any vital, deep-chested fellow that was passing along Southampton Row at that moment, would have known how to take her cares on his broad shoulders and ordain, with kind imperiousness, a course of action. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... lends a certain air of futility even to all the inspired simplicities and thunderous veracities of Tolstoy. We feel that a man cannot make himself simple merely by warring on complexity; we feel, indeed, in our saner moments, that a man cannot make himself simple at all. A self-conscious ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... it was, a vague and inconclusive episode, like so many others in my life. So many, in fact, that as I look back at it all, if it were not just for Rosa and the children, the sum-total of life for me would be futility. When I read biography, and I have read a good deal of it, I reflect upon the achievements of men, their loves and hates, their steady ambitions hacking away at obstacles until victory is in sight and the guerdon won, or their glorious deaths ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... India Government for the discovery of a specific for the bite of the cobra, and for which no claims have ever been advanced; and the "snake charmers" or jugglers in whom this superior knowledge is supposed to center are so well aware of the futility of specifics, and the risk to which they are subjected, that few venture to ply their calling without a broad-bladed, keen-edged knife concealed about the person as a means of instant amputation in case of accident. Medical and scientific ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... flamed again. Somehow no sarcasm of my father's had bitten as deep as those last words of hers. I do not know whether it was chagrin or anger that I felt at the bitter sense of my own futility. And she had seen it all. As coldly and as accurately as my father, she had watched me, and as coldly she had given her verdict. She was watching me now with a cool, confident smile ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... was the old cruiser Kwei-lin, which had been in the Navy for over twenty years, and which had not moved from her anchorage for the last decade. She was absolutely useless as a fighting machine; and, short as the Chinese were of ships, the futility of taking her to sea was at once recognised, and she was to be left behind to carry on her former duty as ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... you wish you may get it," and the others, who knew very well the futility of the poor boy's expectations, even if Gerald's augury were not fulfilled, hastened to turn away the conversation to plans for the afternoon. Anna asked the visitor if he would ride out with her and Gerald to Clipstone or to the moor, and was relieved when he declined, saying he had ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ("Halting place of the Arabs"), after a marching day of two hours! Seeing that we rode on, the Baliyy declared that they had searched for the two principal pools, and that both were dry, or rather had been buried by the Bedawin. But, with characteristic futility, they had allowed me to overhear their conversation; and the word was passed to the soldiers, who at once filled ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... to put it mildly, less enthusiastic. I should be doing Mr. RUNCIMAN little injustice to say that for the moment the politician in him rose superior to the patriot. If after the War the old party-quarrels are to break out again with all their fatal futility I can imagine that Liberal wire-pullers in the rural districts will be much embarrassed by the existence of bounties which economically they cannot approve but which politically they dare not remove. But surely we shall have learned our lesson badly if the old strife of Tory and Liberal is to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... picturesque than those of prim and symmetrical habit, like the Ash. The practice of the great masters in painting seems adverse to this idea, since they have introduced the Ash more frequently than other trees into their pictures; and it shows the futility of the attempt to draw a distinction between picturesque and beautiful trees. All trees, indeed, of every natural shape, may be considered picturesque, as, in one situation or another, every species may be introduced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... and you have hardly stopped yet. I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that I would rather have died in torment than have done it." He broke into a sudden laugh. "But you needn't be afraid that I shall ever do it again. I can't do much to any one with only one arm, can I? You witnessed my futility last night. There's a grain of comfort in ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... said sharply, nodding toward the Colonel. The pithecanthropoid attendant in the white jacket hastened forward, pinned his arms behind him and dragged him down into the chair. For an instant, the old man tried to resist, then, realizing the futility and undignity of struggling, subsided. The psychiatrist had taken a leather case from his pocket and was selecting a ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... infinite phalanx of sloped buttress and glittering pinnacle. The spire was the natural consummation. Internally, the sublimity of space in the cupola had been superseded by another kind of infinity in the prolongation of the nave; externally, the spherical surface had been proved, by the futility of Arabian efforts, incapable of decoration; its majesty depended on its simplicity, and its simplicity and leading forms were alike discordant with the rich rigidity of the body of the building. The campanile became, therefore, principal and central; its pyramidal termination was ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the Frau herself," said Wildschloss, feeling certain that such a being as he expected in a daughter of the dissolute lanzknecht Sorel would soon, by dexterous questioning, be made to expose the futility of her pretensions so flagrantly that even Kunigunde could not ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and emotional monopolies. After a few years' hesitation Southey concluded that he need not join the Quakers simply because he disliked 'attempting to define what has been left indefinite.'[494] The semi-mystical turn of thought which is most keenly alive to the futility of such endeavours was no longer a tenable ground for secession. Or if a man believed in visible manifestations of spiritual influences, he would more probably become a Methodist than a Quaker; and the time was not yet come when ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... civilization assemble and present a great body of factual information which support and substantiate this factual summary. The present study aims to organize the facts, to compare them and to draw conclusions as to the benefits and detriments; the practicality or futility; the wisdom or folly of building empires ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... him was the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition daily becoming more fragile. He was ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... excavate at a certain spot where he believed treasure to be hidden. Sir Gaston accompanied him to the place, and a tunnel was bored into what appeared to be virgin sand and rock. At the end of the first day's work the futility of his labours was pointed out to the man, but he was not to be daunted. For two more days he stood watching the work from morn to nightfall with hope burning in his eyes, and on the following ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... instead of permissive, and their compulsory nature is found rather to reduce than to increase public opposition to dissection. A study of the history of anatomy in the United States during the 19th century furnishes an instructive lesson on the futility of attempting to suppress dissection by legislation and on the serious and sometimes terrible crimes to which any such attempt naturally leads. It also teaches that, when unclaimed bodies must be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... received. At length the white wagon coverings rose from the verge of the plain. By a singular coincidence, almost at the same moment two horsemen appeared coming down from the hills. They were Shaw and Henry, who had searched for me a while in the morning, but well knowing the futility of the attempt in such a broken country, had placed themselves on the top of the highest hill they could find, and picketing their horses near them, as a signal to me, had laid down and fallen asleep. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... write poetry. Loving, like Frost, the minutiae of existence, the quaint and casual turn of ordinary life, he caught the magic of the English countryside in its unpoeticized quietude. Many of his poems are full of a slow, sad contemplation of life and a reflection of its brave futility. It is not disillusion exactly; it is rather an absence of illusion. Poems (1917), dedicated to Robert Frost, is full of Thomas's fidelity to little things, things as unglorified as the unfreezing of the "rock-like mud," a child's path, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... accepts the demoniacal theory of insanity Yet for a time uses mild methods for the insane Growth of the practice of punishing the indwelling demon Two sources whence better things might have been hoped.—The reasons of their futility The growth of exorcism Use of whipping and torture The part of art and literature in making vivid to the common mind the idea of diabolic activity The effects of religious processions as a cure for mental disease ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... numbers; and from the Camanches, all the roving tribes of the far West, by a similar exertion of skill and daring, supply themselves in turn. It seems to me, therefore, under all these circumstances, that the apparent futility of any philanthropic schemes for the benefit of these nations, and a regard for our own protection, concur in recommending that we remain satisfied with maintaining peace upon our own immediate borders, and leave the Mexicans and the Camanches, and all the tribes ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving |
