"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequent on this depreciation was great and afflicting. "The requisitions of congress for eight years past," say the committee in February, 1786, to whom the subject of the revenue had been referred, "have been so irregular in their operation, so uncertain in their collection, and so evidently unproductive, that a reliance on them in future as a source from whence moneys are to be drawn to discharge the engagements of the confederacy, definite as they are in time and amount, would be not less dishonourable to the understandings of those who entertain such ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... contains about 100 houses; these are built of unburnt brick, and have a peculiar blueish appearance; none are of any size. The best building in Bamo is the Chinese place of worship. Those occupied by the Burmese have the usual form. The country adjoining Bamo is flat, dry, and I should think unproductive; it is intersected by low swampy ravines, one or two of which extend into the town. To the south there is an extensive marsh, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... in it. Their religion is full of it; their blood is full of it; our Celia is fuller of it than anybody else. The Ireland of two thousand years ago is incarnated in her. They are the merriest people and the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile, the most talented and the most unproductive, the most practical and the most visionary, the most devout and the most pagan. These impossible contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood. When I look at Celia, I seem to see in my mind's eye the fair young-ancestral mother ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... beyond that, by extending the Northern Pacific Railroad, yet for want of means it cannot be done, unless foreign capitalists can be induced by land grants, at least to invest sufficient to make the road finally, and be made to see that their present large unproductive investments in Canada railroads can be made productive in the use of more ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... Wroxeter and Corbridge, yielded little; they were both concerned with remains which had to be explored in the course of a complete uncovering of those sites but which were not in themselves very interesting. The lesser sites, too, were somewhat unproductive, though at least one, Traprain Law, is full of promise for the future, and good work has been done in the systematic examination of the fort at Ambleside and of certain rubbish-pits in London. In one case, that of Holt (pp. 15-21), where excavations have for the ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... altogether the Devil's Tooth outfit, and was swinging back now by way of the Lava Beds, where Tom had said that they were going. It was because Tom had named that as his destination that Lance had ridden elsewhere to find him; good reasoning, but so far unproductive of results. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... thousand millions at par in 1865, and most of this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium? Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... payable by the lord, because the demesne lands were in farm; and these dues were paid by the tenant. A reference to the Promptorinm Parvulorum (a further instalment of which I rejoice to learn, from Mr. Way's communication, in No. 15., is in a state of progress) has been equally unproductive. The editorial note to the communications inserted in No. 17., on the interpretation of Pokership, induces me to send you this query, in the hope of eliciting information, if not from the gentleman you there refer to, at least from some one or other of your ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... Africa. In reference to the benefits which had been derived from her West India colonies, before the suppression of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the command of the productions of the torrid zone, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... ardent admirer of famous military men, the sound common sense of this peasant woman's observations made him reflect upon the wealth which would necessarily accrue to the country if all these unemployed and consequently ruinous hands—so much unproductive force—were available for the great industrial works that would take centuries ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation So often degenerated into tyranny (Calvinism) Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition There are few inventions in morals To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland Tranquil insolence Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing Upon their knees, served the queen with wine Wish to sell us the bear-skin before they have ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... hills is the ancient Mount of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses and wise men who seek for fulfillments of prophecy think they find here a wonder of this kind—to wit, that the Mount of Blessings is strangely fertile and its mate as strangely unproductive. We could not see that there was really much difference between them in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... requirements of the college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless: we yearn, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... raw shoulder of a horse whose collar does not fit, but when men make their misfits and the heart is sore society does not soothe, but with whips it scourges the man to his fruitless task. This large class may be counted unproductive. John Stuart Mill placed the industrial mismatings among the heavier ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... my mind, but as a matter of fact the rude effigy was wrought by Mrs. Bruce's father for a ship to be called the Sea Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter, in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs. Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea Queen and buy chops out of courtesy ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of reasoning is visible, and also the presence of common sense, which tries to convert into a work of lasting results those impressions which would probably remain unproductive without the aid of ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... in the field, though his oath of neutrality was taken and he was availing himself of our hospitality. On one occasion Captain G. S. Higginson spent the night in an empty house in the town in an attempt to mark this fox to ground, but unfortunately his vigil was unproductive of result. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... [now an entirely forgotten Piece], which had been printed in the Papers, was really by me? I answered, 'Sire, I am not famous enough to have my name forged' [as a certain Other name has been, on this same unproductive topic]. He felt what I meant. It is known that Horace Walpole took the King's name to write his famous LETTRE A JEAN JACQUES [impossible to attend to the like of it at present], which contributed the most to drive mad that eloquent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... experiments having been the conversion of bar-iron into steel in the crucible by contact with regulated proportions of charcoal. The experiments which he made in connection with this controversy, though in themselves unproductive of results, led to the important discovery by Mr. Mushet of the certain fusibility of malleable iron ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... was not unproductive. Various measures of importance were transacted. The cabinet possessed much administrative ability, and displayed it by carrying a number of bills of great practical utility. It was a good peace, but a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... well the state of his finances, he began to search his pockets to see if he could not somewhere find a stray dime, or, better still, a quarter, with which to purchase the meal of which he stood so much in need. But his search was unproductive, or, rather, it only resulted in the discovery ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... soon became evident to the committee, that their mission was to be unproductive of results. The government did not take kindly to them, nor would the Bishop of Quebec and his clergy trust the vague expressions of the United Colonies, whose statute books, they pointed out, still bore the most bitter and unchristian sentiments against all priests and adherents ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... genius of the nineteenth century I fancy, which betrays itself by strange incongruities and contrasts of a violent kind, but is otherwise unproductive," Mrs. Orton Beg ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... grasp the necessary conditions of their existence, suppressing all accidental limits. No doubt this transcendental procedure will remove us for some time from the familiar circle of phenomena, and the living presence of objects, to keep us on the unproductive ground of abstract idea; but we are engaged in the search after a principle of knowledge solid enough not to be shaken by anything, and the man who does not dare to rise above reality will ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... notice briefly, however, how the principle applies to the two Anti-Semitic arguments already considered. The first is the charge of usury and unproductive loans, the second the charge either of treason or of unpatriotic detachment. The charge of usury is regarded, not unreasonably, as only a specially dangerous development of the general charge of uncreative commerce and the refusal of creative manual exercise; ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... crave, but the privilege to work and earn our bread? Why impossible, when willing hearts and hands are ready to spring forward and at any cost dive into this dark forest and bring the hungry mouths into the fostering care of the fruitful earth? Why impossible, when a mass of unproductive wealth waits to serve some useful purpose and bless its holder, bringing back to him a hundred per cent, if he will but lend it to his God by giving it to ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the necessary cause ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... sends them their diseases, bad weather and bad crops, and that he makes and supports witches. He owns a large country adjoining that of his brother, with whom he is continually at variance. His fields are unproductive; thick clouds intercept the rays of the sun, and consequently destructive frosts are frequent; game is very scarce, and not easily taken; ravenous beasts are numerous; reptiles of every poisoned tooth lie in the path of the traveller; streams are muddy, and hunger, nakedness and general misery, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... suggestions to them, and point out their usefulness and their charm—but if, for some reason which may be entirely intuitive and fundamental and all-wise, the feelings refuse to respond, or to cooeperate, any further compulsion is apt to prove futile and unproductive of ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... bordering our gardens, the yellow central boss of each compound flower has given place to strap-shaped florets like the outer rays, and without pollen, so that the entire flower consists of this purple inflorescence. But such aristocratic culture has made the blossom unproductive of seed. Like many a proud and belted Earl, each of the pampered and richly coloured Daisies pays the penalty of its privileged luxuriance by a disability ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... at his place he found that the trouble was less serious than his steward had represented. The year had been unproductive, and his tenants had demanded a lowering of their rents; but neither flames nor imprecations were in order. Dartmouth was inclined to be a just man, and, moreover, he was very much in love, and anxious to get away; consequently, after a two days' examination of the situation ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... held three years before, before the same judge, listening to the same church bells, and taking the walk to Kenilworth Castle which he had taken with Grant Duff in 1854. Although the circuit appears to have been unproductive, business looked 'pretty smiling in various directions.' John Duke Coleridge, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, was at this time Attorney-General. Fitzjames differed from him both in opinions and temperament, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... will be a blank day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the mind with happy recollections. One walk on a winter's day over the hills from High Barnet to Edgware I reckoned sadly unproductive of the special novelties I sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of some landscapes which I can never forget, and it printed on my brain a little papier-mache-like church at Totteridge which was worth going ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... perhaps, for it would be too bold in me to think that you could form no better wish for yourself than mine. You see, therefore, most kind and charming lady, that I can wish nothing for you on your nameday, because my wishes are too feeble, and therefore unproductive. As for me, I venture to wish for myself your kind indulgence, and the continuance of your friendship, and the goodness that I so highly prize. This is my warmest wish! But if any wish of mine may be permitted, then mine shall become identical with your own, for thus I shall ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... them at the hands of the Indians if they remained under the domination of the English; that they had retired to Cape Breton, where they had remained ever since; but that the lands given them had been unproductive, and that they had been unable to support their families. They therefore wished to return to their former habitations. They cheerfully subscribed to the oath which was tendered them, and in consideration of their poverty twenty-four ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... suspicion that the Kid's fences needed repairing, and that the adjutant-general's sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive soil. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... should be homozygous and give only yellows when crossed with agouti. But Cuenot and others have shown that all of the yellows are heterozygous, and when crossed with agoutis give both yellows and agoutis. We are led, therefore, to suppose that an ovum carrying the yellow factor is unproductive if fertilised by a spermatozoon which also bears this factor. In this way alone does it seem possible to explain the deficiency of yellows and the absence of homozygous ones in the families arising from the mating of yellows together. At present, ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... non-slaveholding States, nor the denunciations of the holders of slaves, but the improvement, intellectual and moral, of the slaves themselves. Slavery has but two natural and peaceful modes of death. The one is the increase of the slave population until it reaches the point of being unproductive. When the number of slaves becomes so great that the master can not profitably employ them, he manumits them in self-defense. This point would probably have been reached long ago, in many of the Southern ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... profuseness of unstimulated yield is a surprise. The red soil of Cuba, which is impregnated with the oxide of iron, is less rich, and is better adapted to the coffee plantation. The mulatto-colored earth is considered to be inferior to either of the others named, but is by no means unproductive, being preferred by the tobacco growers, who, however, often mingle a percentage of other soils with it, as we mingle barnyard refuse with our natural soil. Some tobacco planters have resorted by ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... were mentioned with praise by the Sous-Prefet at the public distribution of prizes. Besides, what was still more important, Stephen had successfully passed his examination for the "Baccalaureat." Lastly, there had been an expensive and unproductive journey, and there was the prospect of another. All this in the same year somewhat alarmed me. The gig was not an important concern, being made, like the four-wheeled carriage, from designs of my husband's, by ordinary ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... will, for a year or two, give you a worse crop than before you went so deep; but that that deep ploughing will turn up the under-soil, and sun and air and rain will give you harvests increasingly rich. So, this moral soil, North and South, was unproductive. It needed deep ploughing. For a time the harvest was worse. Now it is becoming more and more abundant. The political controversy, however fierce and threatening, is only for power. But the moral agitation is for the harmony of the ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... predisposition which exists in the Philippines toward indolence, and which must exist everywhere, in the whole world, in all men, because we all hate work more or less, as it may be more or less hard, more or less unproductive. The dolce far niente of the Italian, the rascarse la barriga of the Spaniard, the supreme aspiration of the bourgeois to live on his income in peace ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... These pensions were paid by Cousins John and James, and paid by no means willingly. Not to boggle at this matter, the two cousins, at John's instigation, had contrived a simple villainy. Very near to the unproductive salt pit was a noble property of the same kind, and John's device had been to tap the wealthy neighbour's store by running a little adit from the worthless shaft into the rich one. It was not an unheard-of thing for the value of such properties to fluctuate. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... understood and expected on all sides that the unproductive tax on tea would be repealed with the other articles enumerated in the Revenue Acts. Such was the wish of Governor Botetourt; such was the advice of Eden, the newly appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland; Golden, who now administered the government of New York, on account of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... that it is deliberately protected by organized society is a more devastating example of "the thing which is in the way" than any amount of mud and litter and refuse and excremental debris. For this unproductive commercialism, this "unreal reality" projected by the malignant power which resists creation, is not only an obscene outrage to the aesthetic sense; it is actually an assassination of life. When, therefore, a philosopher who uses the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... for his associate. Both were returned, and Lord Cochrane held his seat for eleven years. In 1807, however, he had only time to bring forward two motions respecting sinecures and naval abuses, which issued in violent but unproductive discussion, when he received orders to join the fleet in the Mediterranean as captain of the Imperieuse. Naval employment was grudgingly accorded to him; but it was thought wiser to give him work abroad than to suffer under his ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Master of the 'Hull Swimming Club,' and also of 'The College Youth's Swimming Club,' and his whole life was a practical lesson on the value of the art of swimming. He contended that the youths of Hull ought to be taught this art, and pleaded that a sheet of water which had been waste and unproductive for twenty years should be transformed into a swimming bath. The local papers favoured the scheme, and Alderman Dennison, moved in the Town Council, that L350 should be devoted to this object, which was carried by a majority. The late Titus Salt, Esq., ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... To-day there are less than half a dozen families left, and they survive by cutting cord wood from the sheep pastures! We must haul our wool from the Argentine, and our mutton from Montana, while our own land goes back to unproductive wilderness. As the road draws near the long hill down into Monterey, there stands a ruined house beside it, one of many ruins you will have passed, the plaster in heaps on the floor, the windows gone, the door half ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... part of town is seldom featured in song or story, for it is certainly neither dull nor unproductive of plot. The tenements that loom, canyon-like, upon every side are filled to overflowing with human drama; and the stilted little parks are so teeming with romances, of a summer night, that only ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... some say a five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square feet or a quarter of an ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... murder spread quickly over the county. For two or three days bands of armed men scoured the woods and roads, and then this activity quite unproductive of any tangible results ceased, matters were allowed to rest with the constituted authorities, namely Mr. Betts the sheriff, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... drop more—we are the creatures of circumstances. It is a long story. There were misrepresentation and misunderstanding. It is true, sir, that at that time my property was encumbered, but it was not unproductive. She died long ago. I have reason to believe that her married life was not happy. I was hot-blooded in those days, and my honor was touched, but I never blamed her. She was, at twenty, the most beautiful woman in Virginia. I have never ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have taken upon themselves the vows and obligations of wedlock, and have been fruitful and happy in this relation. Alliances founded upon position, money, or purely arbitrary considerations, mere contracts of convenience, are very apt to prove unhappy and unproductive. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... unproductive. There began to prevail amongst the islanders, a disposition to hear the wondrous discourses of this stranger, and he was employed, day after day, in explaining to large and attentive audiences, the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... imaginable. We saw no deer near Port Bowen at any season, neither were we visited by their enemies the wolves. A single ermine and a few mice (Mus Hudsonius) complete, I believe, our scanty list of quadrupeds at this desolate and unproductive place. ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... case of a bad subsoil, trench-ploughing may do much harm. Every practical man in fact knows that bringing up the subsoil in any quantity, he would in some districts render his fields in a great measure unproductive for years to come. On the other hand, we believe that the use of the subsoil-plough can never do harm upon drained land. We speak, of course, of soils upon which it is already conceded that either the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... winter. And there was yet a third part of the estate, acres upon acres of equally sterile soil, all sand and gravel, descending in a gentle slope to the embankment of the railway line. It was indeed a stretch of country lost to culture, where the few good patches of loam remained unproductive, inclosed within the waste land. But the spot had all the beauty and exquisite wildness of solitude, and was one that appealed to healthy minds fond of seeing nature in freedom. And on that lovely night one could nowhere have found more perfect ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Arminius was too cautious to attack him on ground favorable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful to entangle his troops in the difficult parts of the country. His march and countermarch were as unresisted as they were unproductive. A few years later, when a dangerous revolt of the Roman legions near the frontier caused their generals to find them active employment by leading them into the interior of Germany, we find Arminius again active in his country's defence. The old quarrel between him and his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... was with the two men who hustled, and not with the fellow who took it out in growling and blaming the boss. Jesus would have agreed to the proposition that to live an unproductive life is one of the cardinal sins. Evolution and Christianity agree on that. This exhortation to do good work was given when Jesus was looking forward to his death and his absence. He would leave the Kingdom of God as an unfinished task. He wanted ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... government has embraced free-market economics, freezing spending, easing price controls, liberalizing domestic and international trade. Mongolia's severe climate, scattered population, and wide expanses of unproductive land, however, have constrained economic development. Economic activity traditionally has been based on agriculture and the breeding of livestock. In past years, extensive mineral resources had been developed with Soviet support; total Soviet assistance ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... specially undertakes the defence of deer-parks. But his ground is that the deer-forests which were denounced as unproductive have been proved to be the only mode of raising the condition and securing the well-being of the ill-fed population. If so, "humanitarians" are ready to hold up both hands in favour of deer-forests. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... have been advocated, not involving the removal of the sexual glands or organs, and not as a punishment, but simply for the sake of protecting the community and the race from the burden of probably unproductive and possibly dangerous members. Naecke has, from 1899 onwards, repeatedly urged the social advantages of this measure.[448] The propagation of the inferior elements of society, Naecke insists, brings unhappiness into the family and is a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... impression is, ladies, that at present capital is exceedingly unproductive. Shares pay very small dividends, and speculating is exceedingly dangerous. As I understand it, the capitalist now finds himself in a more critical position than ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... were doubtless unproductive of pain, but in view of the fact that in other experiments no anaesthetic was employed, it may be questioned whether his second "rule" was always very strictly observed. In one lecture he referred to his demonstration "as the first time that we have applied electrical stimulus to a nerve," ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... fearless pioneers of the movement, Mr. and Mrs. Hewat Mackenzie, I am allowed to publish another example of spirit photography. The circumstances were very remarkable. The visit of the parents to Crewe was unproductive and their plate a blank save for their own presentment. Returning disappointed, to London they managed, through the mediumship of Mrs. Leonard, to get into touch with their boy, and asked him why they had failed. He replied that the conditions had been bad, but that he had actually succeeded ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs and their cabinets. Only sixty ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... where minerals abound, there is not one collection; and, in all probability, I venture a conjecture, the want of mechanical and chemical knowledge renders the silver mines unproductive, for the quantity of silver obtained every year is not sufficient to defray the expenses. It has been urged that the employment of such a number of hands is very beneficial. But a positive loss is never to be done away; and the men, thus employed, would ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... American continent, has heretofore lain far outside of the common interest, and therefore of the accurate knowledge, of mankind at large. The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, in themselves remote, tempestuous, and comparatively unproductive regions, for centuries derived importance merely {p.002} from the fact that by those ways alone the European world found access to the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The application of steam to ocean navigation, and the opening ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." The modesty of the Roman is fascinating. "Much of what I have related," he says, "and shall have to relate, may perhaps, I am aware, seem petty trifles to record.... My labors are circumscribed and unproductive of renown to the author." How agreeable to place in contrast with this the prophecy of his friend, the younger Pliny, in a letter to the historian: "I augur—nor does my augury deceive me—that your histories will be immortal: hence all the more ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... those above cited are to be met with from time to time in the laws of the state of New York: but in general these attempts at centralisation are weak and unproductive. The great authorities of the state have the right of watching and controlling the subordinate agents, without that of rewarding or punishing them. The same individual is never empowered to give an order and to punish disobedience; he has therefore the right of ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... am not obliged, for the ways and means of this substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths: not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me,—it ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... zones, between the polar circles and the poles, were considered uninhabitable and unnavigable, on account of the extreme cold. The torrid zone, lying beneath the track of the sun, or rather the central part of it, immediately about the equator, was considered uninhabitable, unproductive, and impassable, on account of the excessive heat. The temperate zones, lying between the torrid and the frigid zones, were supposed to be the only parts of the globe suited to the purposes of life. Parmenides, according to Strabo, was the inventor ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies, the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... must be attributed to other causes. These I believe to have been the extinction of commercial republics, the decay of free commonwealths, iniquitous systems of taxation, the insane display of wealth by unproductive princes, and the diversion of trade into foreign channels. Florence ceased to be the center of wool manufacture, Venice lost her hold upon the traffic between East and West.[242] Stagnation fell like night upon the land, and the population ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wants to convert the world,' Herbert answered chillily, rolling himself a tiny cigarette, 'he must convince the unproductive as well as the proletariate before he can set things fairly on the roll for better arrangement. The proletariate's all very well in its way, no doubt, but the unproductive happen to hold the key of the situation. One convert ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... they had acquired a world-wide reputation for literary culture, it is an instructive fact that their city continued for several centuries afterwards to be one of the strongholds of Gentile superstition. But the labours of Paul at this time were not entirely unproductive. "Certain men clave unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman, named Damaris, and others with them." [107:1] The court of Areopagus, long the highest judicial tribunal in the place, had not even yet entirely lost its celebrity; and the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Clover makes good pastures, being nutritious, and early and rapid growing. Red-clover makes fair hay, though inferior to timothy or red-top. White clover is unsuitable for hay; it shrinks so much in drying, that it is very unproductive. It is the best of all grasses for sheep pasture, and its blossoms afford in abundance the best of honey. Red clover plowed in, even when full-grown, is an excellent fertilizer. It begins to be regarded, in western ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... colonel. He frowned at her, involuntarily. He was ready to accept Madame Beattie's knowing neither good nor evil, but she seemed to him singularly unpleasant in flaunting that lack of bias. She was quite conscious of his distaste, but it didn't trouble her. Unproductive opinions were nothing to her now, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country, unproductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side. But by now he had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this matter which is said to happen to drunkards—the first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... baleful, deleterious, mischievous, noisome, malign, malignant, noxious, unpropitious, disadvantageous; offensive, serious, grave, severe, mortal; defective, imperfect, incompetent, inferior; untoward, depressing, unwelcome, adverse, grievous, unfavorable, inauspicious; infertile, inarable; barren, unproductive, worthless; hard, heavy, serious, irreparable, egregious; nefarious, felonious, infamous, villainous, heinous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... good growth; indeed, it is better if they are removed at once from the bed where they are sown, to the plantation. Here they should be planted as soon as they have attained two years of age, for, be it remembered, that if they are left too long in the nursery, they become unproductive and never recover. The distance at which they should be put out in the plantation need not exceed eight feet apart in the rows, between which, also, there should be eight feet distance. The seedlings appear in about a month after the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... objects to this, and enumerates the amounts paid to each officer. Directions for arranging this reduction are given by the Council, as also for the governor's management of expenses, etc., Fajardo makes recommendations as to certain crown encomiendas, at present unproductive. This is approved by the Council, who order him to prevent any unjust collections. He commends certain officers as deserving rewards, and exonerates many of the religious from the blame of harassing the Indians. He ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... abandoning my purpose of crossing China on foot with some regret. I was not yet fit, had my broken arm in splints, but rejoiced that at Yuen-nan-fu I should be able to consult a European medical man. Comparatively an unproductive task—and perhaps a false and impossible one—would it be for me to detail the happenings of the few days next ensuing. I should be able not to look at things themselves, but merely at the shadow of things—and it would serve ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... behind the church door, which, when the father was seventy, the son might fetch to knock his father on the head as effete and of no more use."[1036] Once in Iceland, in time of famine, it was decided by solemn resolution that all the old and unproductive should be killed. That determination was part of a system of legislation by which, in that country, the society was protected against superfluous and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... they were as much the effect as the cause, and one reacted on the other), yet at any rate they afforded scope and room for the play of powers which, without such scope, let them have been as transcendent as they would, must have passed away unproductive and blighted. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had it not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people gained,—money, besides, that could never have benefited her, and that came nearer to benefiting her when spent in that manner than in another. Clotilde, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... what business it is of a clergyman, or of any one else, whether I own property in Dalton Street," Mr. Plimpton had said, as he sat on the edge of the lawyer's polished mahogany desk. "What does he expect us to do,—allow our real estate to remain unproductive merely for sentimental reasons? That's like a parson, most of 'em haven't got any more common sense than that. What right has he got to go nosing around Dalton Street? Why doesn't he stick ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702 Private Phineas McPhail in ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... and clerical endowments would be suppressed, and the present generation of priests would be heavy sufferers. This result is inevitable. Under no free government would or could a city of 170,000 inhabitants support 10,000 unproductive persons out of the common funds; for this is substantially the case at Rome in the present day. Every sixteen lay citizens, men, women, and children, support out of their labour a priest between them. The Papal question with the Roman ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... may probably not impress the reader with any lofty notions of the superiority of the black-letter; but this symptom of the Bibliomania is, nevertheless, not to be considered as incurable, or wholly unproductive of good. Under a proper spirit of modification, it has done, and will continue to do, essential service to the cause of English literature. It guided the taste, and strengthened the judgment, of Tyrwhitt in his ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... By no means,' replied the banker. 'But pardon me for suggesting that it is too large a sum to remain unproductive. Would you not ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... driven towards it by a ring of beaters. Deer were caught in nets or transfixed with javelins while running. In more open places the hunter, accompanied by hounds, rode after a hare. But though far too much of Italy was taken up by preserves of this unproductive kind, the large estates were mostly turned to agricultural purposes. Different owners, different practices; but the possessor of a number of country seats would in some cases work the land for himself by means of slaves—often in disgrace and labouring in chains—under ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... feature that the young farmer is most likely to overlook in the selection of a farm is the relative proportion of tillable land. One farm of 200 acres, may, on account of stony land, wet land, comparatively unproductive woodland, or because of the arrangement of fences and roadways, contain only eighty acres of tillable land, while another may contain 160 acres. This is one reason why a 160-acre farm in the central West may be more valuable ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... bore some vestiges of cultivation? They would have reduced all their most necessary establishments; they would have suspended the justest payments; they would have employed every shilling derived from the producing to reanimate the powers of the unproductive parts. While they were performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors, whose crimes were their claims, that they must keep an awful distance,—that they must silence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... will upon the muscles, as was done by M. Maine de Biran, we shall find it in none of these cases, not even in the last; for it is possible there should be a paralysis of the muscles which deprives the will of power over them, makes it unproductive, incapable of being a cause, and, consequently, of suggesting the notion of one. But what no paralysis can prevent is the action of the will upon itself, the production of a resolution; that is to say, the act of causation entirely ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... such accumulations may be considered as funds rescued from unproductive consumption, to be laid out productively in various important branches of industry; and whilst, therefore, in this view, the provident Institutions deserve encouragement from all classes, they more particularly suggest to the gentlemen acting in the different Emigrant and Agricultural ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... to one's own, well grounded, indisputable insight, from the study of human affairs to the study of nature. Study Aristotle, but do not become his slave; instead of yielding yourselves captive to his views, use your own eyes; do not believe that the mind remains unproductive unless it allies itself with the understanding of another; copy nature, not copies merely! He equals Bacon in his high estimation of sensuous experience in contrast to the often illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... exercise to the emotions and beliefs; but change from faith in the fixity of the past to the future by observation led to intellectual development. The exercise of faith and the imagination even in unproductive ways prepared the way for broader service of investigation. But these standing alone could permit nothing more than a childish conception of the universe. They could not discover the reign of law. They could not advance the observing and reflecting powers of man; they could not develop ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... said Mountford, "that the grave proved quite unproductive. Yes, you will not have forgotten it; for I well recollect how eagerly you listened, with that queer little girl, to my talk with the old governor, and how disappointed you seemed when you found that the grave was not to be opened. And yet, it is very odd. I failed ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thinking, Sieyes resembles Bentham and Hegel. His flight is low, and he lacks grace and distinction. He seems to have borrowed his departments from Harrington, the distilled unity of power from Turgot, the rule of the mass of taxpayers over the unproductive class above them, from the notion that labour is the only source of wealth, which was common to Franklin and Adam Smith. But he is profoundly original, and though many modern writers on politics exceed him in genius and eloquence and knowledge, none equal him in invention ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Pitying the boy, as well as being considerably interested in his intelligent answers in class, Theo began to have him a good deal at the Bunk. She found many little offices there for him, such as to look after and keep tidy 'The Theodora,' the family boat, and to help in the obstinately unproductive garden. In this way the acquaintance between the three boys became a week-day as well as a Sunday one. Alick and Ned, in particular, rapidly found themselves to be kindred spirits. In each was ingrained ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... the province of Connaught, which with the unproductive lands appertaining to it, had been in the possession of O'Haras from time immemorial, was sold by Bridget's father to pay his debts. His brother—the heiress' husband, who, unlike the traditional spendthrift O'Haras had accumulated a small fortune in business, was able by some lucky chance ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... which is the attribute of all absolute monarchy. Every extreme principle carries with it an appearance of negation and the symptoms of death; for is not life the struggle of two forces? Here in this Northern nature nothing lived. One sole power—the unproductive power of ice—reigned unchallenged. The roar of the open sea no longer reached the deaf, dumb inlet, where during one short season of the year Nature made haste to produce the slender harvests necessary for the food of the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... indeed, break forth into its glory till after his death; but what a number of ideas must have been in circulation before such an author could arise! Many branches of human knowledge have, since that time, been more extensively cultivated, but such branches as are totally unproductive to poetry: chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and rural and political economy, will never enable a man to become a poet. I have elsewhere [Footnote: In my Lectures on the Spirit of the Age.] examined into the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Michigan, and at one time owned vast tracts in the Lake Superior region, where the most valuable mines have since been worked. While he has been interested in bank and manufacturing stocks, his larger investments have been in land. Much of his pleasure has been in reclaiming waste territory and unproductive investments, which have been abandoned by others as hopeless. The satisfying aim of his ambition incites him to difficult undertakings, that add to the wealth and happiness of the community, from which others have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to consummate with my palate the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I would let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my earliest childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms towards them, before even I could pronounce their charming name—a name fit for the Prince in some ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Mr. Browning's married life had been unproductive from a literary point of view. The realization and enjoyment of the new companionship, the duties as well as interests of the dual existence, and, lastly, the shock and pain of his mother's death, had absorbed ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Agriculture is well developed and relatively large quantities of the principal cereals are produced. Upper Austria has the largest proportion of meadows in all Austria, 18.54%, while 2.49% is lowland and Alpine pasturage. Of the remainder, woods occupy 34.02%, gardens 1.99% and 4.93% is unproductive. Cattle-breeding is also in a very advanced stage and together with the timber-trade forms a considerable resource of the province. The principal mineral wealth of Upper Austria is salt, of which it extracts nearly 50% of the total Austrian production. Other important products are lignite, gypsum ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... baths, at the circus, in the theatre, the gratuitous supplies of food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... civilization. For this reason the question of transportation is just as important to a community as the industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs are ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... restoration of old trees to a bearing condition. It consists in taking off all the small fibres, shortening the long roots to within 6 or 8 in. of the stem, and cutting away any bruised or injured roots before the trees are first planted out. The mode of procedure in the case of old or unproductive trees is to open the earth in autumn 3 ft. from the stem of the tree, and to saw through two-thirds of the strongest roots. The opening is then filled in with fresh mould. Should the growth still be too vigorous, the soil must be opened again the following season and the remaining roots ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... the weather grows warmer your fishing this season will, I fear, prove unproductive; for it has always been observed that in cold and windy weather the fish keep in deep water and are never caught in numbers, especially ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... light to 37 1/2 before the pencil is thrown out of the tube by a prism or a third reflector. This loss of light, it is true, may be compensated by an additional inch or two to the margin of the large speculum; but still it is the best part of the large speculum that is made unproductive by the eclipse of it by the convex speculum. "With regard to the mechanical contrivance which you propose for working the instrument, I think it is singularly ingenious and beautiful, and will compensate for any imperfection in the optical arrangements which are ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... however, that farms to be had on these terms were usually of a very poor quality, on which energetic or forehanded men did not care to waste their labor. It was a kind of land generally known in the West as "barrens"—rolling upland, with very thin, unproductive soil. Its momentary usefulness was that it was partly cleared and cultivated, that an indifferent cabin stood on it ready to be occupied, and that it had one specially attractive as well as useful ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... though ostensibly their friend. However this may be, there was nothing inconsistent in their conduct, and Wood accounted for his vote very fairly. The Tories were triumphant for a moment, but these defeats are now so common and so unproductive of any consequences, that after the first shouting was over nobody seemed to attach much importance to it. The Cambridge and Ludlow elections having gone against them is of greater consequence, because ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... necessary, after this, to say that the search in the wood for Sir Francis Varney was an unproductive one, and that the morning dawned upon the labours of the brother and of Mr. Marchdale, without their having discovered the least indication of the presence of Varney. Again puzzled and confounded, they ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... it took a sudden sharp turn, and a little farther. Then he crossed it, and was in a lonely nook of the glen, with steep braes about him on all sides, some of them covered with grass, others rugged and unproductive. He threw himself down in the clover, a short distance from the stream, and straightway felt as if he were miles from home. No shadow of life was to be seen. Cottage-chimney nor any smoke was visible—no human being, no work of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... excursion to the westward in April last, and which, from its form, he had named the Crescent. This measure appeared the more expedient, as the soil in and about the settlement seemed to be very indifferent and unproductive, and by no means so favourable for the growth of grain ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. [13:7]And he said to his vine dresser, Behold, I have come three years seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none; cut it down; why should it make the ground unproductive? [13:8] And he answered and said to him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, and put on manure; [13:9]and if it bears fruit, well; but if not, at a future time ...
— The New Testament • Various
... important work. Here he wrote his treatise On Monastic Vows, declaring that they are wrong and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September 1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... all right," began Issy, and stopped short. The lobsterman made other attempts at conversation, but they were unproductive. McKay was gazing at the growing fog bank and thinking hard. To doctor an engine may be difficult, but to get lost in a fog—He took the compass from the glass-lidded binnacle by the wheel, and carrying it into the little cabin, placed it in ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fact that is to the writer's perception so universally obvious. One can only appeal to the intelligent reader to use his own personal observation upon the people about him. Everywhere he will see the property-owner doing nothing, the profit-seeker busy with unproductive efforts, with the writing of advertisements, the misrepresentation of goods, the concoction of a plausible prospectus and the extraction of profits from the toil of others, while the real necessary work of the world—I don't mean the labour and toil only, but the intelligent direction, the real ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... snap and glisten of those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow with fever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in bare feet, the same listless inefficiency showing in their weak, unproductive, unshaven features. The car grew so crowded I went to sit on the platform rail, as had a half-dozen already, though large signs on the door ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... travel are supposed to be assuaged by oranges and apples, even at ruinously low prices. Perhaps it may be, figuratively, the last offering of the fruitful earth, as the passenger commits himself to the bosom of the sterile and unproductive ocean. Even while the wheels are moving and the lines are cast off, some hardy apple merchant, mounted on the top of a pile, concludes a trade with a steerage passenger,—twenty feet interposing ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... barely ten shillings. But David Trevarrow had neither wife, child, nor mother to support, so he could afford to toil for poor pay, and, being of a remarkably hopeful and cheery disposition, he returned home that afternoon resolved to persevere in his unproductive toil, in the hope that at last he should discover a good "bunch of copper," or a "keenly ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... wrong view of things, and if it was not the idle and good-for-nothing fellows who were more prudent than he. To waste his life in superhuman works, to tire his mind in seeking to solve great problems, and to attain old age without other satisfaction than unproductive honors and mercenary rewards. Those who only sought happiness and joy—epicureans who drive away all care, all pain, and only seek to soften their existence, and brighten their horizon—were they not true sages? Death comes so quickly! And it is with astonishment that one perceives when ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... however, that the entrance must be on the sunny side, though this is generally best, as the loss of space in the rooms is more than made up by the cheeriness of the approach. For the same reason, unless you are sailing very close to the wind, let your entrance-hall be roomy. It is in no sense an unproductive outlay, for it avails above in chambers, and below in the refuge it affords to the children from the severer rules of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... she sits on chairs and benches all the weary afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the "Library;" and then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of which the fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about the present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to see your old father—tradesman, or clerk, or what not—who has done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the wants of the several tenants; and all other necessaries of life not raised by them must be purchased extravagantly dear. It is, indeed, surprizing how this immense city, said to contain three millions of inhabitants, is contrived to be supplied at any rate, considering the very sterile and unproductive state of the country for many miles around it. It might not, however, be a matter of less astonishment to a Chinese, nor less difficult for him to conceive, in what manner our own capital receives its daily supplies, especially after he had observed that there is not a single ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... ridge of land, generally barren and unproductive, when upon a small scale. It is also a ridgy height that runs for ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... vestiges of cultivation? They would have reduced all their most necessary establishments; they would have suspended the justest payments; they would have employed every shilling derived from the producing, to re-animate the powers of the unproductive, parts. While they were performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors whose crimes were ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... pride bade me try every other means first. So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I began to pace the streets if haply I might see her face shine upon me from the crowd of passers by; a foolish fancy, unproductive of result! I not only failed to see ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... either a pride in the managers in "treating all men alike," though they might respond better to different handling, or else the individual is undirected and his personality manifests itself in all sorts of unguided directions, many of which must necessarily be wasteful, unproductive, or incomplete in development. Under Scientific Management, functionalization, as will be shown, provides for the utilization of all idiosyncrasies and efficient deviations from class, and promotion is so planned ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... tithes and taxes, that he cannot thence derive subsistence unless he converts its products into money at the expense of others' comfort, reputation, and life? Is every honest calling so crowded, or so unproductive, that every avenue is closed? Have the men who make this plea tried, even for a single year, to live without the manufacture of spirits? It may be, indeed, that for a time they will find other pursuits less productive than this. And is not this, after all, the true reason why ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... complex of varietal and environmental conditions, the effect of the conditions of growth, of soil fertility, temperature, soil, water and humidity, sunshine, etc., on that plant. Very often it is because people get the wrong variety and do not know what they have. They may have an unproductive seedling. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... that lack of enterprise which seems to characterise the Dutch farmer is easily noticeable. Irrigation is sadly neglected and hundreds of acres which with a little care and outlay would grow excellent crops are still unproductive. ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... mentions "the honey and wheat, the gold and silver," which he found in "fair Innis-fail." It is probable that land was cultivated then which now lies arid and unreclaimed, for a writer in the Ulster Archaeological Journal mentions having found traces of tillage, when laying out drains in remote unproductive districts, several feet beneath the peaty soil. Dr. O'Donovan also writes in the same journal: "I believe the Irish have had wheat in the more fertile valleys and plains from a most remote period. It is mentioned constantly in the Brehon laws and in our most ancient poems."[256] Nor should we ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... great caravans which formerly carried on trade between Europe and India. It consists largely of a high plateau, surrounded by mountains. Large parts of the country are sandy and dry from lack of sufficient rain, and therefore are unproductive. The people are a branch of the Aryan race. They doubtless lived a nomadic life, and were obliged to be ever ready to defend themselves. Success in defense against the frequent assaults of their surrounding enemies stimulated them to become a nation of warriors. This fact had much to do in shaping ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... becoming straightened. The prospect was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was considerably ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the nation at once to both of the ruling mediaeval impulses: feudalism, which metamorphosed the relative positions of the people and the nobles, and the recognition of papal supremacy, which altered not less thoroughly the standing of the church. While these changes were not unproductive of good at that time, they were distasteful to the nation, and soon became injurious, both to freedom and knowledge, until at length, under the dynasty of the Tudors, the ecclesiastical shackles were cast off, and the feudal bonds began gradually to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their lives in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partners or the welfare of their mutual offspring; and that the early education of their children takes its color from the squabbles of the parents. They are nursed in a systematic school ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... circumstance that he was the first to feel the depth and power of that idea, partly in the thoughts and pictures with which some speeches, principally the monologues of Faustus himself, are interwoven. The Faustus of Marlowe is the Faust of the legend, tired of learning because it is so unproductive, and selling his soul, not for knowledge, but for wealth and power. His investigating conversations with Mephistopheles, his inquiries, and the answers of the latter, are almost as shallow and childish as those in the People's Book; and Faustus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... we neared the Berry Islands, unproductive and rocky, as the geography books would say. One of these islands belongs to a coloured man, who bought it for fifty dollars—a cheaply-purchased sovereignty. He, his wife and children, with their negro slaves! live ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... prevailed upon to present a bill. It was not because the community was poor, though some of our people are poor, and it was certainly not because the Doctor was rich and could afford such philanthropy, for, saving a rather unproductive farm which during the last ten years of his life lay wholly uncultivated, he was as poor as any man in the community. He simply seemed to forget that ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... frequently afford most useful indications respecting the value of land. It may be laid down as an axiom that a soil to be fertile must contain all the chemical ingredients which a plant can only obtain from the soil, and chemistry ought to be able to inform us in unproductive soils what ingredients are wanting. It also is able to inform us if any poisonous substance exists in the soil, and how it may be neutralized; when lime, marl, and chalk are to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... question of the Mongol mission in committee, but I know their individual opinions in an informal way. Messrs. Meech and Barradale don't say much; Mr. Owen thinks we will never do much in Mongolia working upon so distant a base as Peking; Mr. Lees thinks it a pity to take up such a seemingly unproductive field while so many more promising fields call for attention; he moreover thinks that the only way to do much for Mongolia is through China; Dr. Edkins thinks I spend too much time and labour over the Mongols, his idea being seemingly a ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... lacked this necessary impulse. In the light of this new theory the author was roused by a sense of injustice. He felt that it should be possible for anyone to write a good book if they took sufficient pains, and he set himself to work again with a savage and unproductive energy. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... this work of the Spirit has been done can the Logos, the kosmic Mystic Christ, take on Himself the clothing of matter, entering in very truth the Virgin's womb, the womb of Matter as yet virgin, unproductive. This matter had been vivified by the Holy Spirit, who, overshadowing the Virgin, poured into it His life, thus preparing it to receive the life of the Second Logos, who took this matter as the vehicle for His energies. This is the becoming incarnate of the Christ, the taking flesh—"Thou ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... degree. Indeed, without it, all attempts to study the geometry of space (even the very elements of descriptive geometry, to say nothing of the more recondite investigations of the science) would be entirely unproductive. It is, moreover, a power capable of being acquired by men of average intellect without extreme difficulty; and that even to the extent of "mentally seeing" the constituent parts of figures which have never been exhibited to the eye ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... the west, by the strait connecting our sea with the ocean;[62] on the east, by a vast sloping tract, which the natives call the Catabathmos.[63] The sea is boisterous, and deficient in harbors; the soil is fertile in corn, and good for pasturage, but unproductive of trees. There is a scarcity of water both from rain and from landsprings. The natives are healthy, swift of foot, and able to endure fatigue. Most of them die by the gradual decay of age,[64] except such as perish by the sword or beasts of prey; for disease finds but ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... to the Saone just above Challe. Tall bushy trees followed the course of the little stream, and described a half-circle, inclosing the house on three sides. The house itself was formerly an inn which proved unproductive to the innkeeper. It had been closed for seven or eight years, and was beginning to fall into decay. Before reaching it, the main road coming from Macon ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Paschal [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a prebend, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to dwell amid the luxurious vineyards and gardens of the south of Europe, seems like being transported from a cheerless desert to a blooming paradise. Our beautiful things are not connected with our climate or our unproductive fields, but with our free institutions, our systems of education, our public morality, our well-regulated government, our well-administered laws, and the industry, intelligence, and religious habits of the people. Our ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... Mr. Rose Smith in his book, "The Growth of Nations," the vast possibilities of irrigation have not yet been realised by the business men of the modern world. Millions of acres in the warmer regions of the earth now unproductive can be made to yield food to mankind and rich pecuniary profits to the capitalists who shall introduce modern engineering methods and a scientific system of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... were excluded from the octavo Edition Definitive five-and-twenty years ago, have never been the object of that exhaustive bibliographical and critical attention which has been bestowed on those which follow them. They were not absolutely unproductive—we hear of sixty, eighty, a hundred pounds being paid for them, though whether this was the amount of Balzac's always sanguine expectations, or hard cash actually handed over, we cannot say. They were ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... sacrifice, begin your allotment by devoting two hours at the least in each day to active bodily exercise, and give one of these to the early morning, and the other to the evening. So with your meals. First consult health, without which your studies will be unproductive, and your hopes of future success blighted. Thus, then, would stand the account for the day:—Exercise, two hours; meals and rest, three; sleep, seven; for study, twelve.' Twelve hours for study would be too long, if he did not make study itself a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... opulent, With virile manhood, and emotions keen, And wonderful with God's creative fire. At noon he stands, with Love's large fortune spent In petty traffic, unproductive, mean - A ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... instrument for military and commercial purposes. How much can it carry, allowing for return trains, chiefly empty? Where is Russia, with a debt equal in charge to our own, to find forty millions sterling for such a work, which would be wholly unproductive? It is true that, by employing troops and Turkomans, the work may be done cheaply; but all this ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... indeed, I myself have no use for it, for a man who has fallen from the pinnacle of his hopes needs very little. It costs but little to live, the idler's life alone is a costly one, and I am not sure that the unproductive consumer is not robbing the community at large. There was some discussion about Napoleon's pension after his fall; it came to his ears, and he said that five francs a day and a horse to ride was all that he ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... regarded here as the representatives of socialism in the early centuries of the Christian era, by a singular fallacy,—which arose however from the paucity of economic knowledge in their day,—allowed farm-rent and condemned interest on money, because, as they believed, money was unproductive. They distinguished consequently between the loan of things which are consumed by use—among which they included money—and the loan of things which, without being consumed, yield a ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... quality, but rather unproductive. Shape somewhat long, though often nearly round; color white and purple, striped, and blended together. It is of no value as an agricultural variety; and, for table use, cannot be considered superior to many other varieties equally ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde's approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the "young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse," "her dearest of friends," could tell me nothing more than that she had left London, and she believed with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various |
