"Meaningless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placed before my master these comparisons and the hopes I built upon them, they were swept away as meaningless; he pointed out simply that nothing went to prove a continuation of personality after death, while on the contrary everything argued against it,—and to this I could not refuse ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... real beauty of it all consists. Honor to the great dead may, it is true, be the splendid expression of national sentiment. But in the eyes of faith it is meaningless. Other great men, deservedly honored by the nations, have passed away during this same year, but where was the prayer, accompanying them to the judgment-seat, assisting them in that other life, repairing their faults, purging away sins or imperfections? The grandeur ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... in his tone, a flippancy which Dan Treu felt and silently resented. He looked at Lutz in his shiny, black diagonals, undersized, sallow, his meaningless brown eyes as dull as the eyes of a dead fish, and he thought to himself as ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... volubility, and her haranguing echoed in Dick's ears with the meaningless sound of a water-tap heard splashing on the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... could have seen aught. Perhaps had one been there to point them out to us, we might have noted indentations in the mud, but there were countless indentations, one overlapping another into a confusion that would have been entirely meaningless to us. To Tarzan each told its own story. Tantor, the elephant, had passed that way as recently as three suns since. Numa had hunted here the night just gone, and Horta, the boar, had walked slowly along the trail within an hour; but what held Tarzan's attention was the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The prayer concerned that. "Even though I die, I will in some way keep defeat from you," she cried, and so deep was her determination that her whole body shook. Her eyes glowed and she clenched her fists. "If I am dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come back," she declared. "I ask God now to give me that privilege. I demand it. I will pay for it. God may beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... terms and phrases in the body of a document written in Semitic Babylonian might be ascribed to a mere tradition. But they were no meaningless formulae. The many variations, including the substitution of completely different though synonymous words, show that these Sumerian phrases were sufficiently understood to be intelligently used. In later times they either disappear altogether, or are ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... its law. The daughters were educated on the same principles; they were kept in strict home seclusion; their mental development was of the lowest order, and did not extend beyond the narrowest limits of household life. And all this was crowned by an empty and meaningless etiquette, whose part it was to replace mind and culture, and which made life altogether, and especially that of a woman, ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... in it all, he had said, meaningless as it often seemed. Some meaning that would show itself in God's ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... very pretty. Tall and strong-limbed, with her mother's beautiful hair and skin, and with her mother's clear, meaningless blue eyes, the little girl attracted attention wherever she was seen. No better foil to her vigorous young beauty could have been found than the pale, misshapen boy whom all the world called ugly. The children played together under Lisbeth's ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... his personal appearance.—A fine head and clever face, the nose astute, slightly Jewish in type, so she thought. His eyes were disappointing, too thickly brown in colour, too opaque. They told you nothing, were indeed curiously meaningless; and, though well set under an ample brow, were wanting in depth and softness owing to scantiness of eyelash. But his chin satisfied her demands. It was square, forcible, slightly cleft; and his mouth, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... religious severity to parade. We acknowledge a successful compromise between the austerity of the order and the grandeur befitting the fame, wealth, prestige, and power of its parent foundation. The church itself is a tolerable structure of the Renaissance—costly marble incrustations and mosaics, meaningless Neapolitan frescoes. One singular episode in the mediocrity of art adorning it, is the tomb of Pietro dei Medici. Expelled from Florence in 1494, he never returned, but was drowned in the Garigliano. Clement ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... right and only key to the true esoteric wisdom; men, who would be willing to guide and help them to reach the true and hidden meaning, and to supply them with the missing links that have resulted in such painful gaps as to leave the meaning meaningless, and to create in the mind of the perplexed student doubts that finally culminate in a thorough unbelief in his own religion. Who knows but they may find some of their own co-religionists, who, aloof from the world, have to this ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... and meaningless stimulus time after time; at first the animal makes some instinctive exploring or defensive reaction; but with continued repetition of the stimulus, he ceases after a while to respond. The instinctive reaction has been detached from one of its ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... would not view to-day with patience or equanimity the dreadful sufferings of mankind. We have inherited Christianity without Christ; we have the painted shell of a religion, and that which rattles around within it is not the burning soul of the Great Iconoclast, but a cold and shriveled and meaningless tradition. Oh! for the quick-pulsing, warm-beating, mighty human heart of the man of Galilee! Oh! for his uplifted hand, armed with a whip of scorpions, to depopulate the temples of the world, and lash his recreant preachers into devotion to the cause ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... thought such things as these so very funny that he could not possibly help laughing; how silly and meaningless—yes, and cruel—did they seem to him now! Oh, Satan was struggling for Tip to-day: he was reaping the fruits of long weeks spent in ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... in the development of that theme, he will give us an insight into the best way to present it to our hearers, and putting faith in these preliminary conditions he will take care of the results. He must also dictate the praying in a church. There is much of it that is meaningless. It is too formal, too lifeless, and entirely too general in its character. In Matthew the eighteenth chapter and the nineteenth verse, we read, "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... thus, studying this meaningless jumble of words, I of a sudden espied a man below me on the reef, a wild, storm-tossed figure, his scanty clothing all shreds and tatters, and as he went seeking of shell-fish that were plenteous enough, I knew him for my sworn ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... pure prayer of the maiden witnesses the fierce ribaldry of the courtesan; it flutters the curls of a sleeping infant, and bears on its wings the whispered exchange of chastity for bread. And man goes on, devouring his three poor meals a day, and babbling the meaningless nothings he has learned by rote. Oh, land of enlightenment! Oh, age of Christianity! Oh, zenith ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... frankly confess that while I believe it to be perfectly possible for a strong and handy man, accustomed to agricultural pursuits, to earn a living from the soil, my example has little to teach in this direction. The cry of 'Back to the Land' will be meaningless until general ownership in the land is made possible. It is the burden of rent, often a cruel and unjust rent, that has driven men from the land. Not far from me at Thornthwaite there resided a man and his wife who were among the most frugal and ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... scuttled a coach, shouting shrill, useless words. All about him were cries, commands, entreaties, confused, meaningless. Ten feet from the plate he launched himself through space, with arms outstretched. The dust was in his eyes ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Waggoner's voice tailed off into a meaningless drone that became merged with the creaking of the wheels, the plodding hoof-strokes of the horses, and ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... their magnitude. The planets and satellites of Sol had proven comparatively tractable and those that were suited to man-life were quickly brought under his dominion. But there, of course, he had the advantage of proximity. The time involved in running back and forth to the home planet was meaningless and all Earth's resources could be ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... recalling old ideas and feelings that are related to those to be presented in the selection to be studied. He must be placed in a proper intellectual attitude to interpret the ideas and in a proper emotional attitude to appreciate the feelings. Neglect of the former may make the selection wholly meaningless to the pupil; neglect of the latter may result in entire indifference toward it. A proper intellectual attitude is necessary in any lesson, but in a lesson in grammar or arithmetic the emotional attitude may be almost completely absent. In literature, however, this ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... classification on the principle of meaning. This principle of classification would give us at least three classes: memory for ideas as expressed in sentences, logical memory; memory for series of meaningful words not logically related in sentences, rote memory; memory for series of meaningless words, a form of rote memory. This classification is not meant to be complete, but only suggestive. With every change in the kind of material, the method of presenting the material to the subject, or the manner in which ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... a meaningless remark to this proverb—"An answer of a tailor to him that calls him pricklouse." Is it not meant as a reply of one who may have been under the evil influence of another, and who, having shaken himself free of it, can say honestly that since he has done ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... forces, and only occurring under special conditions. What Sir Oliver says, then, is that the properties of a part are in the whole, because the part is included in whole. What he implies, and without this implication his argument is meaningless, is that the properties of a part belong to all parts of the whole. And that is a statement so grotesquely untrue that I suspect Sir Oliver would be the first to disown the plain implications of ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... the territory of the Maharaja of Kashmir are meaningless. In the huge Indus valley the incidence is only 4 persons per sq. mile. In Jammu and Kashmir it is 138. The map taken from the Census Report gives the details. The increase in the decade was on paper 8-1/2 p.c., distributed ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... suitability to this climate as opposed to coloured chalks, &c.—a very practical method for cold fingers and one that becomes more accurate with practice in observation. His theme then became the extreme importance of accuracy, his mode of expression and explanation frankly Ruskinesque. Don't put in meaningless lines—every line should be from observation. So with contrast of light and shade—fine shading, subtle distinction, everything—impossible without care, patience, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... herself actually on trial, she endeavored to collect her faculties; but the violent palpitation of her heart was almost suffocating, and in her ears the surging as of an ocean tide, drowned the accents of the magistrate. At first the words were as meaningless as some Sanskrit formula, but gradually her attention grasped and comprehended. In a strident incisive voice he read from a paper on the desk ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... extra option added to a routine without changing the calling sequence. For example, instead of adding an explicit input variable to instruct a routine to give extra diagnostic output, the programmer might just add a test for some otherwise meaningless feature of the existing inputs, such as a negative mass. The use of hidden flags can make a program very hard to debug and understand, but is all too common wherever programs are hacked ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... agony. But this is obviously not so. That very "individuation" which to some philosophies is the primal curse—the condition by all means to be annulled and shaken off[2]—forbids the adding up of units of sentience. If "individuation" is the source of human misery (which seems a rather meaningless proposition) it is beyond all doubt its boundary and limit. We are each of us his own universe. With each of us the universe is born afresh; with each of us it dies—assuming, that is to say, that consciousness is extinguished ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... so later, when I had leisure to observe outside matters, I perceived that among the other actors in the drama confusion still reigned. There was much scuttering about and much meaningless shouting. Mr Abney's reedy tenor voice was issuing directions, each of which reached a dizzier height of futility than the last. Glossop was repeating over and over again the words, 'Shall I telephone for the police?' ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... sympathy with the leaping rill and the rushing river is deep and spontaneous; he is evidently well pleased to open afresh "the world-old book of nature," and to read it in the light of "childhood's fancy." The nature-mystic avers that what he deemed a recurrence of meaningless, if pleasant, "well-worn thoughts" was really an approach to the heart of nature from which an imperfect understanding of the place and function of science had carried him away. Not that the old forms should be perpetuated, but that the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... children I will not say: but (I remember well) my father took it for granted that he had no children, and he said nothing to the contrary. Indeed on any other assumption his gift of the crown to me would have been meaningless." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and meaningless jingle set the immediate crowd in a roar. I became an object for ribald laughter and cheers; I was pushed and hustled, albeit good-naturedly enough, but none the less to my great annoyance, so that I made all haste to wriggle away and, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... brief examination, he found it to consist of a number of Hebrew words sandwiched between apparently meaningless groups of letters. He furnished the Superintendent off-hand with a translation of the words, and Miller forthwith struck off a number of hectograph copies of it, which he has distributed among the senior officials of his department; so that at present"—here Thorndyke gave vent to a soft chuckle—"Scotland ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... was putting something true into their song, in place of what was silly and meaningless ...
— By the Roadside • Katherine M. Yates
... wake him. He opened his eyes and stared with a fixed, meaningless stare. Lewis tried to lift him from the platform, and then a horrible thing happened. Stewart struggled violently and made a snarling noise, which froze the blood in Lewis's veins. He ran out of the house with cold beads of sweat on his forehead. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... of his broker. On the other hand, provisions purporting to entitle the broker in disregard of his duties as broker himself to act as principal, would be rejected by the courts as radically inconsistent with the primary object of the contract of brokerage and, therefore, meaningless. But it is undoubtedly too often the practice of brokers who are members of exchanges to consider themselves entitled to act as principals and sell on their own account to their own clients, particularly in futures. The causes of this ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... best of them, give me the impression of being copied by very unintelligent scribes, who had but little idea of the meaning of the words which they were transcribing. In all, the superscription V.S. is expanded (wrongly, as I believe) into 'Viro Senatori;' for 'Praefecto Praetorio' we have the meaningless 'Praeposito;' and the Agapitus who is addressed in the 6th, 32nd, and 33rd letters of the First Book is turned, in defiance ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... bottom of this extraordinary expression. I don't think, however, that these persons are commonly fools. I have known a number, and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing conveys the idea of UNDERBREEDING more than this self-betraying smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit as well as that of MEANINGLESS BLUSHING may be fallen into by very good people who met often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness,—calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the look ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... is not quite so meaningless as it may appear; there is method in the madness; for this is a passage from a story by one of the most popular English authors in America, to whom an American editor has offered twenty cents a word. At the present rate of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... clock, distinct and palpable as the sun at noonday, or the moon in a cloudless night, I saw the ogre head of that dog; his great glassy, fishy eyes, his half drooping, half erect ears, his slavering jaws, and as he gazed in a stupid meaningless stare upon me, uttered his everlasting bow, wow! Tell me that the room was dark; that not a ray of light penetrated the closed doors or the curtained windows. What of that? That dog's head, I repeat, was there; I saw it, if I ever saw the sun, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... on the sidewalk as he dashed up toward Broadway, but behind came the sound of others in pursuit, and the shouting was becoming a meaningless babble as others took it up. There was no longer any doubt. Someone was certainly after him—there'd been no time to turn in an alarm over the fire in his apartment. They'd been coming ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... her life only as shattered, meaningless fragments, confused, mutilated masses without coherence. The masses and the gaps between them were of the same substance in her eyes. She wandered into her past as a child might wander among the rubbish heaps of its old home in ruins. She was vaguely conscious that there had been ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... was beyond her. But she breathed the beauty of it. Bacchus, and Pandora and Psyche—talismans to conjure with! But alas! the necromancy was her mother's. Strange, meaningless words that meant so much! Her marvelous mother had known their meaning. Saxon spelled the three words aloud, letter by letter, for she did not dare their pronunciation; and in her consciousness glimmered august connotations, profound and unthinkable. Her mind ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... adaptive changes going on elsewhere, in any given case the chances are against these correlated effects being themselves of any utilitarian significance; and, therefore, as a matter of fact, correlated growths appear to be usually meaningless from the point of view of adaptation. Still, on the doctrine of chances, it is to be expected that sometimes a change of structure which has thus been indirectly produced by correlation of growth might happen to prove useful for some purpose or another; and in as many cases as such indirectly ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations, and lose a morning with little Fleda, was a freshening of his better nature; it was like breathing pure air after the fever- heat of a sick-room; it was like hearing the birds sing after the meaningless jabber of Bedlam. Mr. Carleton, indeed, did not put the matter quite so strongly to himself. He called Fleda his good angel. He did not exactly know that the office this good angel performed was simply to hold ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... catastrophe, and men of the London world were in no humour to think; they had witnessed the inconceivable befall them, they had nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they were anxious to look the other way. The words of Tony's song were more or less meaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but the tune, with its air of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in some unaccountable manner to people who were furtively unhappy, and who were trying to appear ...
— When William Came • Saki
... have fixed upon exactly this year 585 B.C. for the death of their supposed first Mikado Jimmu (i.e. Shen-wu, the "divinely martial"). The next three Kings of Wu, all of whom, like himself, bore dissyllabic and meaningless barbarian names, were sons of Shou-meng, and a fourth son was the cultured Ki-chah, who visited orthodox China several times, both as a spy and in order to improve himself. Then follow two sons of the last and first, respectively, of the said three brothers. The second of these royal cousins ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... their elegance of style, and their ironic abhorrence of tawdry sentimentality and commonplace. Heine is the most elegant and graceful writer of his country, and Chopin the most elegant and graceful of all composers. Not a redundant note or a meaningless bar in all his compositions. Heine owed his formal finish to French influences, but Chopin did not need them, for the Poles are as noted as the French for elegance and grace. He avoided not only the modulatory monotony of the classical school, but, especially, the commonplace ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... in particular, it can be safely said that the brewer's dray is a prominent and picturesque feature of London streets, without which certain names, with which even the stranger soon becomes familiar, would be meaningless; though they are, as it were, on everybody's tongue and on many a sign-board in nearly every thoroughfare. As a historian, who would have made an unexceptionable literary critic, has said: Beer overflows in almost every volume of Fielding ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... the morning before they set out again. "You were right, Doc. It was a nice job of work. Must have taken the best guys in Southport to hide the circuit so well. But it's safe now. It just makes a kind of meaningless static nobody can trace. Maybe we can get you a permanent ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... with the lady, though few, had been memorably unpleasant. Furthermore, he considered that she had far too great an influence on Ruth. And, lastly, that infernal sentence about the torch, which he found perfectly meaningless, had a habit of running in his head like a catch-phrase, causing him the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... smile, which could maintain a long, but somewhat meaningless, brilliance. She employed it now, and it lasted until Lily ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... to the wife and children of his dead brother William; in practice, he infinitely preferred the comfort and seclusion of his own house and garden, and the companionship of his books and his parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresome incursions into a family circle with which he had little in common. It was not so much the spur of his own conscience that drove him to make the occasional short journey by rail to visit his relatives, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... all art qualities, that the world was delighted with them. After him, however, the lowered aim had its influence; poorer artists tried to follow in his footsteps, and the world of art soon became flooded with mediocre examples of these meaningless pictures. All this hastened rapidly the decay ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... go to ruin without it. Hence every battery service station proprietor should see to it that his affairs are systematized — arranged according to a carefully studied method. Most men look upon "red-tape" with contempt and in the sense of a mere monotonous and meaningless routine, it merits all the contempt poured upon it. Hard, fast and iron-clad rules, which cease to be a means, and become an end, prove a hindrance rather than a help. But an intelligent method, which adapts itself to the needs of the business, is one of the most powerful instruments ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... lift, with a tremendous effort, the apparently lifeless body into the hut, and remained standing, after they disappeared, with the vivid image in his eyes of that head swaying on her shoulder, the lower jaw hanging down, collapsed, passive, meaningless, like the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... mother's dinner. She insisted upon aiding in the removal of plates from the table and for the most part her conversation was with Mrs. Gallant. What delicious salad, she must have the dressing recipe if Mrs. Gallant would be so kind as to give it to her. She told in details that were meaningless to John of the Spanish dishes her mother prepared, of the barbecue feasts of the old days she remembered ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... too fast, Helen. You know I am leaving Upper Thames street next week; it is an old promise made to my father. I must consult him first. Of course, I shall be glad to have this meaningless tie that binds me to Cleo cut right through, and for ever. But I do not care to let my happiness rest on such a basis. Margaret and I shall remain friends ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... before: she contemplates her work. Justine sighs and arranges the furniture. Caroline picks off the yellow leaves of the plants in the windows. A woman, in these cases, disguises what we may call the prancings of the heart, by those meaningless occupations in which the fingers have all the grip of pincers, when the pink nails burn, and when this unspoken exclamation rasps the throat: ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... The walls surrounding me, and I, alone. That pedestal—that curtain—then a voice That called on Galatea! At that word, Which seemed to shake my marble to the core, That which was dim before, came evident. Sounds, that had hummed around me, indistinct, Vague, meaningless—seemed to resolve themselves Into a language I could understand; I felt my frame pervaded by a glow That seemed to thaw my marble into flesh; Its cold, hard substance throbbed with active life, My limbs grew supple, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out. She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... sin should be committed. One would rather have thought that a man had better be damned a thousand times over than allow of such a catastrophe; but, however this may be, the doctrine now suggested appears to be equally revolting, unless diluted so far as to be meaningless. It amounts to asserting that our love of our own infinitesimal individuality is so powerful that any matter in which we are personally concerned has a weight altogether incommensurable with that ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Penrod, spared for the moment, followed their operations a little while with his eyes, but not with his mind; then, sinking deeper in his seat, limply abandoned the effort. His eyes remained open, but saw nothing; the routine of the arithmetic lesson reached his ears in familiar, meaningless sounds, but he heard nothing; and yet, this time, he was profoundly occupied. He had drifted away from the painful land of facts, and floated now in a new sea of fancy which ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... uproarious that the landlady's baby on the floor below awoke from sleep and echoed his mirth with hideous yells. But he laughed again and again, and took the paper up to read a second time what seemed such meaningless nonsense. ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... where, unobserved, he could watch her movements with their rhythmic grace or catch the music of her voice, the sight or sound thrilling him with joy so exquisite as to be akin to pain. The oft-repeated compliments of the crowd about him seemed to him empty, trite, meaningless; what could they know of her real beauty compared with himself who saw her through ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Neither spoke. She summoned her outer dignity, tossed her pretty head, and went out by the end door which Austin in cold politeness held open for her. Then she mounted to her bedroom, and, throwing herself on her bed, burst into a passion of meaningless weeping. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... perhaps, some centuries from now, be brought again to light, and excite as much marvel and inquiry as any mysterious building of old, the purpose of which we do not understand, and the use of which we cannot now account for. They will be seemingly as meaningless as any lonely cairn, isolated broken piece of wall, or solitary fragment of a building, of which no principal part remains, and which puzzles us to account for ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... side by side for simple ends, and the sweeter triumphs of peace. Some there were whose sorrows drove them like Sarak in quest of the Waters of Oblivion, but, to all, those days were poppy days, unreal and meaningless; transitionary, as a bridge ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... The French, more fluid and sensitive to the incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... on the second floor up an alley in the Rue Mandar. To Lucien's great astonishment, the harsh, fastidious, and severe critic's surroundings were vulgar to the last degree. A marbled paper, cheap and shabby, with a meaningless pattern repeated at regular intervals, covered the walls, and a series of aqua tints in gilt frames decorated the apartment, where Vernou sat at table with a woman so plain that she could only be the legitimate ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... effect never pictured for its own sake; for here and there amid it would lurk a phrase that was not of it, that struck a note—an elusive key-note—which set vibrating something haunting in its familiarity, terrifying in its strangeness; something mocking and meaningless, that went echoing away into ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... misery to her, but the evenings and the nights were usually a bliss to them both. Then they were silent. For hours they sat together, or walked together in the dark, and talked only a few, almost meaningless words. But he had her hand in his, and her bosom left its warmth in his chest, making ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... deaf, and without feeling would still, I suppose, be a human being, because it would be conscious of existence; it would breathe and know that its heart was beating, but without sight or sensation there could be no idea of space—time, to it, would be a meaningless series of breaths or heartbeats. Without touch or sight it could have no idea of form or size, which are merely conditions of space, and both the past and the future would be ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... night. During all this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, on whom he had had occasion to make a post-mortem examination. The woman had suffered from ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... and haggard hair, gives him a truly awful aspect, remarked that the soil of the South was clotted with blood by fiends in human shape, (sensation in the diplomatic gallery.) The metaphor might be meaningless; but it struck him it was strong. These fiends were doubly protected by midnight and the mask. In his own State the Ku-Klux ranged together with the fierce whang-doodle. His own life had been threatened. (Faint applause.) He had received an express package ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... perils, but it is better than innocuous ignorance; virtue involves grave dangers, but it is nobler than innocence. Character cannot be secured if choice between higher and lower aims is denied; and without character the world would be meaningless. There can be no unfolding of character without growth, and growth is inconceivable without the aid of work. The process of self- expression through action is wrought, therefore, into the very structure of man's life; it is ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Bolivar to all that was said. But they faltered and hung back at every utterance of his spasmodically uttered "now! now!" He scanned their faces eagerly, with a hope that gradually yielded to despondency. Their features were blank and inexpressive, as their answers had been meaningless or evasive. Several of them were of that class of quiet citizens, unaccustomed to any enterprises but those of trade, who are always slow to peril wealth by a direct issue with their despotism. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... be swallowed up in what might well be a bottomless chasm. And what was the purpose of this well? Was it a trap to entice a prisoner into an unwary climb and then let gravity drag him over? The whole setup was meaningless. Perhaps meaningless only to him, Shann conceded, with a flash of level thinking. The situation could be quite different as far as the natives were concerned. This structure did have a reason, or it would never have been erected in ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... that he had caught hold of the stern of the boat. He could not see over the edge, but he could tell that there were two people in the boat, both men. They talked fitfully, but for the most part their voices came to Jerry only as meaningless mumbles. Once more the dark outline of Lost Island lay before him, and in Jerry's heart arose a new hope that perhaps this time he would not come away empty-handed. The boat grounded on the beach where he and Phil had stood only a few minutes before. The man who had been at the oars jumped out ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... if I'm not the incarnation of all the virtues you imagined me to be!" Olive sat down and played nervously with a penholder, jabbing meaningless lines and dots on to a loose sheet ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Routine. A little boredom. Some impatience. She began to find fault with the very things she had liked in him: his superneatness; his fondness for dashing suit patterns; his throaty tenor; his worship of her. And the flap. Oh, above all, that flap! That little, innocent, meaningless mannerism that made her tremble with nervousness. She hated it so that she could not trust herself to speak of it to him. That was the trouble. Had she spoken of it, laughingly or in earnest, before it became an obsession with her, that hideous breakfast quarrel, with its taunts, and revilings, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... is chanted consists of meaningless sounds, it being supposed that what is not understood by man is intelligible to the spirits. But some parts of it can be understood by the careful listener. The witch doctors call upon the sickness to ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... servant of Yudhishthira, myself being the third son of Pritha, standing here for battle. Turn back, show me thy face, O son of Dhritarashtra, and bear in thy mind the behaviour of kings. The name Duryodhana bestowed on thee before is hereby rendered meaningless. When thou runnest away, leaving the battle, where is thy persistence in battle? Neither do I behold thy body-guards, O Duryodhana, before nor behind. O foremost of men, fly thou away and save thy life which is dear from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to myself then, that if the chance ever offered, I'd do the same by him as he had done by me. And it wasn't a meaningless vow, for I've never felt more warmly toward any one outside my own people ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... importunate, and he resolved to make any effort to keep her for himself alone. He knew she had love for him, but he knew that love would not necessarily, or even probably, keep her entirely faithful to him. She thought too little of passing intrigues. To her they seemed trifles, meaningless, unimportant. She told him so, when he spoke his jealousy. She said, 'I love you. I do not love these other men. They are in my life for ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... 'supply' it, had the demand been in thunder and earthquake, with gold Eldorados and Mahometan Paradises for the reward. Ah me, into what waste latitudes, in this Time-Voyage, have we wandered; like adventurous Sindbads;—where the men go about as if by galvanism, with meaningless glaring eyes, and have no soul, but only a beaver-faculty and stomach! The haggard despair of Cotton-factory, Coal-mine operatives, Chandos Farm-labourers, in these days, is painful to behold; but not so painful, hideous to the inner sense, as that brutish godforgetting Profit-and-Loss ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... be, because they have been so instructed, want to have something soft and delicate; a creature without a single serious thought, who is chosen because his cheek is red and his hair is soft; because he can dance, and speak vain, meaningless words; because he makes love, as the foolish parlance of the world goes. And we see what comes of such lovemaking. Oh, Linda! God forbid that you should fall into that snare! If you will think of it, what is ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... implied, it may be well to repeat, that the ideational images are forces struggling with each other for mastery. Nor is it implied, on the other hand, that they are wholly unconditioned facts, unrelated to any phenomena in which we are accustomed to see the expression of energy. Inhibition is meaningless save as an implication of power lodged somewhere. The implication is that these changes are conditioned and systematic, and that among the conditions of our ideas, if not among the ideas themselves, power is exerted and an inferior yields to a superior force. Such force, in accordance ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... been added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife's bright look will be meaningless.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... everything that is needed to equip it fully for the special work to which it has been dedicated for some years past. In general, it looks like any other laboratory—glass tubes, Bunsen burners, retorts and jars being in more or less meaningless tangles; but there are two or three bits of apparatus pretty sure to attract the eye of the casual visitor which deserve special mention. One of these is a long, wooden, troughlike box which extends across the room near the ceiling and is accessible by means ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... understanding, so that a short, straight furrow appeared, like a sharp vertical cut extending from between the eyes to the midst of the broad forehead. One, two and three sentences she grasped and comprehended; then her thoughts wandered again, and the groups of letters passed meaningless before her sight. She was accustomed to directing her intelligence without any perceptible effort, and she was annoyed at being thus led away from her occupation, against her will and in spite of her determination. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... condescends to notice me to-day, and occasionally sits on my shoulder murmuring "Ouf! ouf!" the sweet sound which means all varieties of affection and happiness. They say wah-wah distinctly, and scream with rage like children, but have none of the meaningless chatter of monkeys. It is partly their silence which makes them such very pleasant companions. At sunrise, however, like their forest brethren, they hail the sun for some minutes with a noise which I have never heard them make again during ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the matter with me?" she whispered brokenly to St. Anthony. "We love Giovanni, don't we? We do! We do!" But her words were meaningless ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... about her stateroom setting in order the books, magazines, flowers, and candy, with which Banneker had sought to fortify her against the tedium of the trip. As the time for departure drew near, they fell into and effortfully maintained that meaningless, banal, and jerky talk which is the inevitable concomitant of long partings between people who, really caring for each other, can find nothing but commonplaces wherewith to ease their stress of mind. Miss Van Arsdale's common sense came ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cannot be a consistent evolutionist. For when an evolutionist is immersed, he is either perpetrating a meaningless travesty on immersion, or else he is denying the whole doctrine of evolution. For immersion certainly does not picture a step in the progress of the living, but rather the burial of the totally dead. Immersing churches that have gone over to the evolutionary position should ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... singer came to her—a very stout blonde lady in a very low-cut gown with a very small waist (the picture had not adapted itself to more modern fashions), placing a fat, squat hand on her capacious bosom, and uttering meaningless syllables that rose to shrieks. Anything but that, she said ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... then the taboo enforced by a Morals Police is, perhaps, as good a way as any of gaining a fictitious sense of activity. But the ideal of "annihilation" becomes an irrelevant and meaningless phrase. If lust is deeply rooted in men and its only expression is evil, I for one should recommend a faith in the millennium. You can put this Paradise at the beginning of the world or the end of it. Practical ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... were in turn appointed to all his offices. For nearly three centuries after the one-man power had become absolute, Rome continued to call itself a republic, to go through forms of election and ceremonial, which grew ever more and more meaningless and trivial. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... to take an interest in familiar things Age after age, the barren and meaningless process All life seems to be sacred except human life But there are liars everywhere this year Capacity must be shown (in other work); in the law, concealment of it will do Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... never talked of such things. It had all been pretty clothes and shops, in those brief exciting weeks, and shrewd counsel about men and what it was they wanted of women. How appallingly shallow and meaningless those conversations now appeared. They gave no comfort or support. The remembrance of the terror in Amy's eyes at the thought of death rose vividly in Ethel's mind, and she got up and ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... into the field" he meets the new word "field." Naturally a second year pupil, who has learned the reasons for sounding will apply the long sound of "i;"—as he reads it does not make sense, so he tries short "i." Still the sentence is meaningless, so he tries again with "e" and reads a sentence which satisfies him, because the meaning ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... correspondence. If this were so, I can find no reason for the plaintiff's importation into the correspondence of the figures of twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds. The defendant's contention would render these figures meaningless. It is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reforms, the careers of nations.... A bachelor hotel; a club whose windows looked out on the avenue; an office where Carington and he had pretended to work down on Nassau Street; drawing-rooms where Carington and he had pretended to be in love, on various streets; the whole gay, meaningless panorama of his life as a homeless, unplaced New York sojourner, who had considered that he had too much money to be anything seriously and too little money to do anything effectively.... Then another picture, jerking, mazy, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... with some knitting in her hand, in which she merely run the needles in and out and wound the yarn around any fashion, while she babbled softly or asked a question and forgot it as soon as asked. Rather spare in figure and much wrinkled in face, she still had a placid look and smiled with a meaningless softness ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... most excellent idea of that stately style, as developed in France under Francois I. The whole of this splendid plan, however, has been rendered futile by the destruction of the Tuileries, without which the enclosure becomes wholly meaningless. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... awkward, laughed hysterically, flung out a few meaningless phrases. Margaret murmured: "Perhaps you'd rather go?" She wished him to go, now ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... very much changed Amey," he said in a serious yet tender voice, "but," he continued slowly, "I should recognize you all the better for the change." His words were meaningless to me, but then they had always been so when we were friends long ago. "You are changed too Mr. Dalton," I retorted reciprocatingly. "At first I did not know you at all, and it was only by rude staring that I managed to remember you. Where have you been all this ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... than a utilitarian function. He was unaware of what he ate. It was merely food. He was feasting his love of beauty at this table where eating was an aesthetic function. It was an intellectual function, too. His mind was stirred. He heard words spoken that were meaningless to him, and other words that he had seen only in books and that no man or woman he had known was of large enough mental caliber to pronounce. When he heard such words dropping carelessly from the lips of the members ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... fires, and kindle again that pure flame of enthusiasm, he found how desperately his fortune had fallen. He could see no light, no color in the lines he had scribbled with eager trembling fingers; he remembered how splendid all these things had been when he wrote them down, but now they were meaningless, faded into grey. The few words he had dashed on to the paper, enraptured at the thought of the happy hours they promised, had become mere jargon, and when he understood the idea it seemed foolish, dull, unoriginal. He discovered something ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the child, who failed dismally to understand them. Through the green blinds came the noise of life and health and merriment; curses too, sometimes, but only the curses of the well fed, and therefore meaningless. Already the sun fell hot and indomitable on the room, and the atmosphere at their touch became stifling. Gregorio, swallowing his tears, tore out into the street, shouting up the narrow stairway hysterical words ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... person, or small group of persons of ordinary intelligence, can train themselves to be equal to this. A very simple instance occurred in the earliest experiences of the writer. After three or four sittings round a small table with two friends, at which there was meaningless tipping, and nothing better than commonplace sentences, the following was tipped out: "Try no more to move"—then this succession of letters—"a t a t a." It seemed useless to go on with nonsense, but one of the party suggested perseverance; when the following conclusion ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... some German philosopher. At least it sounded like that. It was far above the little gray head he was trying to ignore and so weighty I feared for her mentality. But I did not know Dolly. She rose like a doughnut. Looking like a child who delights in the rhythm of meaningless sounds, she heard him through, then exclaimed with breathless delight, "Oh, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... and exhausted Baal priests, as they gradually came out of their frenzy, and knew that they had lost their opportunity. The tranquil though earnest prayer of the prophet is in sharpest contrast with the meaningless bellowings to Baal. Note in it the solemn invocation. The great Name, which all listening to him had deposed from rule over them, is set in the front; and the ancestral worship, as well as the divine gifts and dealings with the patriarchs, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... July commemorates our political freedom—a freedom which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... railway line, a vast colonization scheme. Anything that could unsettle the public opinion in the capital was to be avoided. Don Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to dismiss from his mind the gold-laced portent in boots, and with a sabre, made meaningless now at last, he hoped, in the new ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... lagged, whatever our bronchos did; but, indeed, all we said was better heard by two than three. Why that was, I cannot tell, for like beads of a rosary our words were strung together on things commonplace enough; and fond hearts, as well as mystics, have a key to unlock a world of meaning from meaningless words. Tufts of poplars, wood islands on the prairie, skulking coyotes, that prowled to the top of some earth mound and uttered their weird cries, mud-colored badgers, hulking clumsily away to their treacherous holes, gophers, sly fellows, propped on midget tails pointing fore-paws at us—these ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... central government could no longer make its power felt at the extremities of the empire save at irregular intervals, when its mandates were not intercepted or nullified in transmission. The functions of the "Eyes" and "Ears" of the king had degenerated into a mere meaningless formality, and were, more often than not, dispensed with altogether. The line of demarcation between the military and civil power had been obliterated: not only had the originally independent offices of satrap, general, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the idea of a Heavenly Conclave, and great act of Creation in heaven. It may be considered somewhat remote, and even fanciful—but the fact is recorded both in the Old Testament and the New, and something must be meant by it. And, moreover, other and very meaningless interpretations have been from the earliest times given, so that I can hardly omit the subject if I would. I refer to the permanent presence in heaven, around the Divine Throne, of the singular forms ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... one's mind to an instrument of companionship through which many may be led from a sense of isolation to one of civic responsibility, even as another type of club provides recreational facilities for those who have had only meaningless excitements, or, as a third type, opens new and interesting vistas of life to those ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... "Frenchmen of the North," and they are greatly flattered by the epithet. But how much better, to call themselves Swedes?—to preserve the fine, manly characteristics of their ancient stock, rather than imitate a people so alien to them in blood, in character, and in antecedents. Those meaningless social courtesies which sit well enough upon the gay, volatile, mercurial Frenchman, seem absurd affectations when practiced by the tall, grave, sedate Scandinavian. The intelligent Swedes feel this, but they are powerless to ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... this," he continued with a shade of impatience in his voice, "for what can a lot of slaves like you, the brick and mortar type of man, know of freedom, all that is best and noble in life? You are so bound to the world of your own creating that it has become as meaningless as a fancy to you. Your souls run on the dead level; the great song of life sweeps by you ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... abstracted from that which gives it vitality,—i. e., Form,—from which it cannot be abstracted without rendering the color flat and meaningless." ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Duck Bank paused an instant near Darius, and with a smile spoke to him, holding out his hand. Darius gave a slight nod. The man, snubbed and confused, walked on, the smile still on his face, but meaningless ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... substantial and important aspect. At church the morning sermon was of the usual pattern; it was the same old things said in the same old way; they had heard them a thousand times and found them innocuous, next to meaningless, and easy to sleep under; but now it was different: the sermon seemed to bristle with accusations; it seemed aimed straight and specially at people who were concealing deadly sins. After church they got away from the mob of congratulators as soon ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... "degradation" of speech cadences into real music,—supposing this were really the origin of music. As a matter of fact, however, the best authorities seem to be agreed that the primitive "dance-song" was rather a monotonous, meaningless chant, and that the original pitch- elements were mechanically supplied by the first musical instruments; these being at first merely for noise, and becoming truly vibrating, sonorous bodies because they were more easily struck if they ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... these things mine ear hath heard, Mine eye hath seen them, and so it is.[241] And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar, And render my speech meaningless? ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... deplorable want of enterprise. "If I were on the other side I should call," she said, "and tell the gentleman, whoever he might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see for myself. But I gather from what you say that this is not the custom here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of those that would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall have to give up the social side altogether;" and Henrietta, though she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter to the Interviewer about the Tower (in ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Dan on his sermons. But, that night as they walked home together, something made Dan feel that his friend was pleased. The encounter with the blunt young farmer had been so refreshing that he was not so depressed in spirit as he commonly was after the perfunctory, meaningless, formal compliments, and handshaking that usually closed his services. Perhaps because of this he—for the first time—sought an expression from his ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... lad was along, for two were better than one should an accident occur. Her eyes roamed often to the little clock ticking away on the mantel-piece. Six-seven-eight-nine. The hours dragged slowly by. She tried to read, but the words were meaningless. She picked up her needlework, but soon laid it down again, with no heart to continue. Once more she glanced at the clock. Ten minutes after nine. She thought it longer than that since it had struck the hour. She arose to attend the kitchen fire, when a loud knock ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... mere barbarism. Over and over again we find, among the customs of savage tribes, or behind the elaborate ceremonial of such civilized nations as the Greeks and Romans, or lingering in strange and now meaningless ceremonies such as the one I have just described, this primitive idea of the individual who is harmful to the community. From being baleful he became sacred. They cast him out of their city, as the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... away back into my yesterdays. I startle myself with myself at the corners of streets, I confront forgotten bits of myself at the entrance to houses. In windows which to another man would seem blank and meaningless, I find personal poems too deep to be ever turned into rhymes—more pathetic, mayhap, than I have ever found on printed page. The spot of ground on which a man has stood is for ever interesting to him. Every experience ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... social conceptions as we call violence and right, honesty and bad faith, justice and injustice; each people has its different characteristics, but no one people represents good, or another bad, no one represents brutality, or another civilization. All these meaningless phrases were brought out during the War, according to which, as was said by one of the Prime Ministers of the Entente, the War was the decisive struggle between the forces of autocracy and liberty, between the dark powers of ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti |
