"Futility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was driving home, he passed McKelvey's limousine and saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained, and horrible conviction that the McKelveys were ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... may be fading into the mist of the past. It is with communities, we may take it, as with individuals. There are moments when, as it has been said, "every one is an atheist, from archbishops downwards," when a sense of the purposelessness and futility of perpetual combat seizes the most ardent. These are the dark hours when attacks are planned and delivered against the most sacred institutions, when people are not at their best, but are restless, rebellious and impatient of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... afterwards, in the London years, as the most touchingly resigned of the children of disappointment. Not only by association was he a Thackerayan figure, but much as if the master's hand had stamped him with the outline and the value, with life and sweetness and patience—shown, as after the long futility, seated in a quiet wait, very long too, for the end. That was sad, one couldn't but feel; yet it was in the oddest way impossible to take him for a failure. He might have been one of fortune's, strictly; but what was that when he was ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... with a good prospect of bringing the enemy to a halt and baffling his offensive. On the other hand, nothing was so hard on morale as the failure of an ambitious offensive of one's own side; the sense of futility and hopelessness then reached its maximum—except, of course, for the case of obviously approaching defeat. The conditions of trench warfare imposed a strain on morale: no progress, in spite of the danger and hardship, no chance ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... with the futility of ambition keenly brought home to him, he joined General McPherson, and in the battle of Kenesaw Mountain he received a serious wound. He had stationed a lookout to watch the Confederate fire while he directed the work of two batteries. ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... of things are brought to prove, and do prove, the utter impossibility of obtaining an effective revenue from the Colonies; when these things are pressed, or rather press themselves, so as to drive the advocates of Colony taxes to a clear admission of the futility of the scheme; then, Sir, the sleeping trade laws revive from their trance, and this useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, but as a counterguard and security ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... Negritos, and many are the stories related by old members of that military organization now living in the province concerning conflicts which they had with the little black bow-and-arrow men, who always got the worst of it. Gradually they came to see the futility of resistance. As a matter of fact these raids were only for the purpose of securing food and not because of enmity toward the Filipinos. When a group expressed their desire to live peaceably in their hills they were dubbed "conquistados" and ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... Both adhered to the dictates of nature, and in both cases the result was the same; nor could the most marked inconveniences which circumstances imposed hinder that result. A time comes when false things shew their futility, and things depending upon truth assert their supremacy. The difference between the authoress and the author lay in those external circumstances of station and position which could not long, much less always, be of avail. Their minds were directed by a power of nature to do essentially ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was the answer—"that is, on the Sedgwick;" and the gentleman baited lamely and glanced furtively and appealingly at his wife. There was that embarrassing, interrogative silence that makes one feel the futility of concealment. It was Miss Lawrence who quickly came to his relief and dispelled the strain ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... become actually purged from sin and thereby be saved? Was not the way to hell or the way to heaven already fixed for him immutably in God's will and decree, by which everything is determined and preordained? And did not the very futility of his own endeavours hitherto prove that it was the former fate that hung over him? He was in danger of going utterly astray in his conception of such a God. Expressions in the Bible such as those which speak of serving Him with ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... trembled on his lips to say that everything he had in the world was hers if only she would take it, but he knew the utter futility of it. Money and possessions counted very little with her. She would not have minded the house in the Brixton Road at all ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... declared, not her money. He also brought a stand of Japanese-made rifles, a gift from the Emperor to the King, and a very significant gift, too. The Minister urged on the King the helpless condition of China, and the futility of expecting assistance from her, and begged the King to take up a bold position, announce Korea's independence and dare China's wrath. The King listened, but ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... you, you going one way and I another, I can do nothing. You short-circuit my force—I am helpless without you." And he had been inviting me into the work for which he had been ordained into the holy Church of Christ. I felt myself groping blindly into the futility of my own life, and ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... vessels have least proportionate resistance. Latent heat, definition of. Latta's steam fire engine. Lavagrian, expansion valve by. Lead and lap of the valve, meaning of. Lead of the valve, benefits of. Lever, futility of plans for deriving power from a lever. Lifting apparatus for screw propeller. Limits of elasticity. Links, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in the way of futility might be expected after these ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the water, and wondering what to do. She was in a bad way now, so very different from what she had once thought; what shame, what utter futility she had wandered into! She brooded till she was worn out; then she began to listen to what people about her were saying. Two men were huddled on benches trying to shelter from the wind; she heard one of them say he ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... but explanations he had none to give, for the excellent reason, he urged that he was possessed of none. He was a soldier, and he had received orders which he must obey, without questioning either their wisdom or their justice. Appreciating the futility of bearing himself otherwise, since his retreat was already blocked by a couple of gendarmes, Caron submitted ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... honesty of Mrs. Richards' purpose, even if they had doubted her statements. But Vera doubted neither. She knew the accusation was true; and when on Jimmy coming in a few moments later and finding her red-eyed and white-faced, she taxed him with it, he recognised the futility of denial, though he pleaded ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... there is nothing, nothing but invisible time, and the immense futility of rain on ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... existence, the quaint and casual turn of ordinary life, he caught the magic of the English countryside in its unpoeticized quietude. Many of his poems are full of a slow, sad contemplation of life and a reflection of its brave futility. It is not disillusion exactly; it is rather an absence of illusion. Poems (1917), dedicated to Robert Frost, is full of Thomas's fidelity to little things, things as unglorified as the unfreezing of the "rock-like mud," a child's path, a list of quaint-sounding villages, birds' ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... it's English," said he. "You'd understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can't even laugh at such an insignificant detail as a Papist's prejudices. But I wish I were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could create me a duke and endow me ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... habits of mind and body, yet all of them, swiftly or sluggishly as may be, moving towards the selfsame goal. It had seemed to Mrs. Brenton something bordering on the blasphemous when Scott had endeavoured to put this latter phase of the question before her. Realizing his own futility upon that score, he finally had changed his tactics and assured her that, as far as money-earning work went, there were ten chances in the great college ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... pushed on east, Jondo and Bill Banney were hurrying toward the northwest, and the space between us widened every minute. A wave of helplessness and despair swept over me; then a wild up-leaping prayer for deliverance to a far-away unpitying Heaven; a sudden sense of the futility of prayer in a land the Lord had forgotten; and then anger, hot and wholesome, and an unconquered, dominant will to gain freedom or to die game, swept every other feeling away, marvelously mastering the sense of pain that had ground mercilessly at every nerve. Then came that small voice ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... spot, but he did not answer. Let them find him if they wanted him. He wasn't going to them, and he wasn't going to run, either. They would try to take his gun away now. There was a lump in his throat as he thought of the injustice of it, of the insults he had patiently borne, of the futility of explanations where grown people, who loved and treasured roosters above everything else, ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... against futility, which drove along his fingers. At each fresh attempt, he went back to the head of the drowned man. He might indeed assert his will, and avoid the lines he knew so well. In spite of himself, he drew those lines, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... at the rise of Labadism, was formal and pedantic in its modes of worship and given to theological disputation. Labadie has importance in the history of that church, and is accorded honor in its records. The futility of the sect in the New World was due not wholly to its communal form of organization, but is to be attributed as well to the fact that the Labadists migrated in obedience to no high and lofty impulse, but because in their nomadic passage from place to place, under the pressure of religious ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... thick jungles of green, this gyration, My centrifugal folly, Through roaring dust and futility spattered, Will find its ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... science of war, we are bidden to believe, is not designed for the slaughter of mankind, but so to impress the enemy with a demonstration of overwhelming power, force, and majesty, that he may become mentally unable or unwilling to offer resistance, because of its obvious futility. So it is with the black in pursuit of a fish or turtle in shallow water. By noise and bluster he works on the senses of the fish until it becomes semi-paralysed. Then he proceeds callously to the killing, which, in the case of fish, if his right hand is encumbered, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was crammed to the ceiling. Gay, electrical music of exhilarating futility was being played by the orchestra. The scene consisted of model cottages; a chorus of pretty girls in striped cotton were singing. The heroine came on; she was well known for her smile, which had become public property on picture post-cards and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... a negative was, at that stage of the bill, a vote for it,—I had done just the reverse of what I intended. The roll-call went on, and I sat debating with myself. Prudence, inclination, the natural timidity of youth, the utter futility of opposition, fear, above all else, fear,—these joined in bidding me let my vote stand as cast. On the other side stood my notion of self-respect. I felt I must then and there and for ever decide whether I was a thing or a man. Yet, again and again ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... of clotted nonsense. One whole act describes the lovers going to look for a ring in a distant cave when they both know they have dropped it down a well. Seen from some secret window on some special side of the soul's turret, this might convey a sense of faerie futility in our human life. But it is quite obvious that unless it called forth that one kind of sympathy, it would call forth nothing but laughter and rotten eggs. In the same play the husband chases his wife with a drawn sword, the wife remarking at intervals "I am not gay." Now there ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... away without another word of love to her. He saw the futility of hoping, and he was noble enough to respect her plea for silence on the subject that seemed distasteful to her. He went as one conquered and subdued; he went with the iron in his heart for the first time—deeply imbedded ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... while in reply to his questions they made statements superficially so clear and simple, and essentially so bewilderingly involved, that the longest experience could do little more for a constable than teach him the futility of wasting his time in attempts to ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... then proposed was absolutely necessary to support his majesty's government, and would be necessary as long as the nation enjoyed the happiness of having the present illustrious family on the throne. The futility, the self-contradiction, and the ridiculous absurdity of these suggestions, were properly exposed; nevertheless, the army was voted without any reduction. Sir Wilfred Lawson having made a motion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... development in the argument. The friends grow more excited and unfair, Job grows more calm and dignified; but so far as argument is concerned, neither he nor they affect each other—the author meaning to suggest by this perhaps the futility of human discussion. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... many hours of idleness and vacuity to which he was accustomed as a boy. No help having been extended to him in the moment of his first irritable revolt against industry, his whole life has been given a twist toward idleness and futility. He has not had the chance of recovery which the school system gives a like rebellious boy in a ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... he was gone. For some seconds Madame Mildau struggled desperately to free herself; then, recognizing the futility of her efforts, resigned herself to her fate. At last she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs and the rumble of wheels, and in a few minutes she ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... religion have been either the concealed or the declared enemies of reason, because they always see reason opposed to their views. Every where do they decry it, because they truly fear that it will destroy their empire by discovering their conspiracies and the futility of their fables. Every where upon its ruins they struggle to erect the empire of fanaticism and imagination. To attain this end with more certainty, they have unceasingly terrified mortals with hideous paintings, have astonished and seduced them by marvels and mysteries, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... like a metaphysical discussion, but is illustrative of the futility of formal motions, so that actually the decision depends upon the good plain common sense of the judge. The tendency is that if the case has gone to the length of a full trial and there is any question ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... spoke, the futility, the obviousness of the lie, yet somehow unable to help speaking it, Marie answered in abrupt confusion. Yes, she had been gardening; it—it was a favourite hobby ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... exquisite pain of the regret for the years he had wasted on earth, and for the solitary heritage he had left the world. Those children of his brain! They were with him still. Would that he had left them below to sing his name down through the ages! They were a torment to him here, in their futility and inaction. They could not sing to these shapeless ghosts about him; their voices would be unheeded music; nor would any strain sweep downward to that world whose tears he might have drawn, whose mirth provoked, whose passions played upon at his will. The ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... go. My last command to you, my lord," he said, smiling faintly and extending his hand. Desborough, seeing the futility of further appeal, grasped it warmly in both his own, bowed to the other officers, and with a wave of his hand stepped on the rail and sprang into the tossing ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in the hope of something 'turning up,' he was still working busily for Johnson's Museum, and still trying to bring Creech to make a settlement. At last, however, out of all patience with his publisher, and recognising the futility of his hopes of preferment, he had resolved early in December to leave Edinburgh, when he was compelled to stay against his will. A double accident befell him; he was introduced to a Mrs. Maclehose, and three days afterwards, through the carelessness of a drunken coachman, he was thrown from ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... but a Chink? They expect it! Why, down in Tulare—" His voice fell away as though he recognized the futility of an attack in ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... similar histoires. But perhaps I have told you enough to convince you of the futility of attempting to draw back from ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... consider, too, the great physical phenomena which it presents in its turbid waters, its islands, its bars, and its bayous, its vast banks of alluvial deposit, its omnipotent force, and the signal futility of all human endeavors to control it, in this phase is it truly the 'Father of Waters,' and 'the most ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thought, and went back to feeling victorious. Within a few seconds, the sense of achievement was gone, and futility had come in its place. After all, he still didn't know how to ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... minutes with the frenzy of a savage before he saw the futility of it. It was Cunningham's mare, gaining on him stride over stride, that warned him he would be cut down like a dog from behind unless he surrendered or let ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... shock to me. When I had asked Andrew to mention Jaguars to his broker it was solely in the hope of hearing some humorous City comment on their futility—one of those crisp jests for which the Stock Exchange is famous. I had no idea that his broker might like to ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... identical qualities and convertible terms. This is the opinion of those adventurers in whom defeat has generated a sense of injury and an instinct of antagonism. Others less fortunate still have found Landor a continent of dulness and futility—have come to consider the Seven Volumes as so many aggregations of tedium. Such experiences are one-sided and partial no doubt; and considered from a certain point of view they seem worthless enough. But they ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... evidently meant to sing the ship out of port. Lindsay sat down beside the victim of the demonstration and quietly took her hand. There was a consciousness newly guilty in his discomfort, which he owed perhaps to a ghost of futility that seemed to pace up and down before him, between the ranks of the steamer-chairs. Nevertheless, as she presently turned a calmed face to him with her pale apology, he had the sensation of a rebound toward the ideal that had finally ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Professor, an order of men which, rarely dining out and caring little for "Society," can devote itself entirely to letters, perhaps he hearkened to the silly charge against the Teuton of minuteness and futility of research as opposed to "good old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment." And the consequence has been a "continuation" which serves as a standard whereby to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling- off and deficiencies of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... a moment of concealing the case about her person, but a second's reflection showed her the futility of such a move. She had not seen the papers themselves; any one of them might be an absolute proof of Droulde's guilt; the correspondence might be ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... hatred reached out beyond the girl, and embraced the old, superstitious, foolish woman, whom a young and pretty face could so easily beguile. Helene Vauquier despised them both, hated them both, and yet must nurse her rancour in silence and futility. Then came the seances, and at once, to add fuel to her hatred, she found herself stripped of those gifts and commissions which she had exacted from the herd of common tricksters who had been wont to make their harvest out of Mme. Dauvray. Helene Vauquier was ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... the time being. She hated Rhett Sempland; per contra, at that moment, she loved Harry Lacy. For Harry Lacy was he about whom the difference began. Rhett Sempland, confident of his own affection and hopeful as to hers, had attempted, with masculine futility and obtuseness, to prohibit the ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... about the futility of the curse, about the folly of my father's superstitions, brought me no comfort. I knew that, brave as Winifred was as a child, she was, when confronting the material world, very superstitious. I remembered that as a child, whenever I said, 'What a happy day ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... established relations of friendliness and confidence with men like Arellano, Torres, Legarda and Tavera, who had left the Malolos government when it demonstrated its futility, and were ready to turn to the United States for help. Insurgent sympathizers also conferred freely with us. We were invited to a beautiful function given in our honour at the home of a wealthy family, and were impressed, as no one can fail to be, with the dignified bearing ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... a vague and inconclusive episode, like so many others in my life. So many, in fact, that as I look back at it all, if it were not just for Rosa and the children, the sum-total of life for me would be futility. When I read biography, and I have read a good deal of it, I reflect upon the achievements of men, their loves and hates, their steady ambitions hacking away at obstacles until victory is in sight and the guerdon won, or their glorious deaths in action ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the best that occurred to Anderson to say, and he realized its futility as he spoke; but any thing was better than to stand and listen to that horrible voice, and look at the broad, white face of the landlord, all perspiring and quivering as he clutched ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... young cock, as I think is certainly the case with blackbirds and others that are known to fight for the youngest and handsomest females. One of each pair being already an 'old bird,' will be competent to instruct its younger partner (not only in the futility of 'chaff,' but) in the selection of a site for a nest and how to build it; then, how eggs are hatched and young ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... he knew was crushing the sick man; but at other times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of. In time, however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned himself to the worst. He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness he could muster, of her part in this calamity. But Austin would not hear ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... terrible doubt and still more terrible temptation through which he had fought to-day, this was perhaps the most intolerable because the worldly man in him cried out against the futility of his ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... groove stretching into infinity. Always he was disturbed and made wretched by a consciousness of movement, of varied life and activity, of adventure, of thrill, outside the groove, but invisible, unreachable.... He strove to clamber up the glassy sides, only to slip back, realizing the futility of the EFFORT. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... whose victim lies in his power is perhaps unredeemed in its gloom and futility, save by the thought of mercy that flashes across him. Evil at times would seem compelled to beg a ray of light from virtue, to shed lustre on its triumph. Is it possible for a man to smile in his hatred ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... what is going to happen on the next day, or within a few days, may cause so much anxiety as to keep us awake; but if we have a good, clear sense of the futility of resistance, whether our expected success or failure depends on ourselves or on others, we can compel ourselves to a quiet willingness which will make our brains quiet and receptive to restful sleep, and so enable us to wake ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... met, gentlemen, upon the seventieth birthday of a man and poet whose fame is dear to us all, but whose modesty at first feared too much the ordeal by praise, to consent to his meeting with us. But he must soon have felt the futility of trying to stay away, of endeavoring to class himself with the absent, who are always wrong. There are renowns to which absence is impossible, and whether he would or no, Whittier must still have been in every heart. Therefore he is here in person, to the unbounded pleasure ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... cat in the tree is the prey of such a desire, but he does not realize it, or he might discontinue his inefficacious leaps. The man tormented by his unworthy act in the past is quite aware of the futility of his longings. His condition is psychologically explicable, but to a rational being, in so far as ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Futility . . . This world, I hear you saying,— With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture, Coldly imperious,—this transient world, What has it then to give, if not containing Deep hints of nobler worlds? We know its beauties,— Momentary and trivial ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... country;—the States of the South had all these in full possession, nay, even the right to pass the law binding the North. These things might be shown to be essentially dissimilar in every respect, but this short statement is deemed sufficient to show the futility of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and a waning moon hung in the sky. I made my way through the drive between the black shadows of the forest, and came at length to the big gates at the entrance, locked for the night. A strange thought of their futility struck me as I climbed the rail fence beside them, and pushed on into the main road, the mud sucking under my shoes as I went. As I try now to cast my memory back I can recall no fear, only a vast sense of loneliness, and the very song of it seemed to be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... large importance is a legitimate one. The very excellence of their technic, its perfect adaptedness to the motive it expresses, is, considering the insignificance of the motive, subject for criticism; inevitably it partakes of the futility of its subject-matter. Of course the personal value of the man, the mind, behind any plastic expression is, in a sense, the measure of the expression itself. If it be a mind interested in "pouncet-box" covers, in the pictorial setting forth of themes whose ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... now, according to George, we'll all be living in plastic houses with three helicopters in each garage. There won't be any unemployment, we'll have a four-day week, atomic energy'll be doing all the heavy work, mankind'll have realized the futility of war, everything'll be just hunky-dory. Nuts! Guys like George make ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... Jane's happiness. Jane was happy, as Audrey had not imagined that anyone could be happy. She had within her a supply of happiness that was constantly bubbling up. The ridiculousness and the total futility of such matters as motor-cars, fine raiment, beautiful boudoirs and correctness smote Audrey severely. She saw that there was only one thing worth having, and that was the mysterious thing that Jane Foley had. This mysterious thing rendered innocuous cruelty, stupidity ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... and thought disturbedly. The utter futility of any efforts to assist such a family was undeniable. Nothing could be done. For a vivid instant he had an idea of rushing to the market and setting up surreptitiously a term of credit for the Carrolls, by paying their bills himself, but the absurdity of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... She had lifted a lazy Chinaman into a reasonable specimen of comparative energy, and saw to it that meals were well and carefully served, and partaken of at regular hours by men who quickly discovered the futility ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... sent to Niagara General Riall, who took over the command from Vincent. On December 13, M'Clure reported the enemy appearing in force on the opposite shore; but, "having deprived them of shelter, they are marching up to Queenston." This alone showed the futility of burning Newark, but more decisive demonstration was to be given. Early on the 19th the British and Indians crossed the river before dawn, surprised Fort Niagara, and carried it at the point of the bayonet; meeting, indeed, but weak and ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... like this is obviously very dangerous. Certain poets, especially among the moderns, may be said to choose imperfect rimes deliberately, both as a fresh means of securing variety and avoiding the monotony of hackneyed rimes, and also as a means of subtly suggesting the imperfection and futility of life. A few famous examples, defensible and indefensible, are: Wordsworth's robin: sobbing, sullen: pulling; Tennyson's with her: together, valleys: lilies; Keats's youths: soothe, pulse: culls; Swinburne's lose him: bosom: blossom. Keats and Rossetti ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... a demonstration of futility," the gray man said, his hard voice becoming harder, "but I will permit no more foolishness. Now I will introduce myself. I am known as Roger. You probably have heard nothing of me yet but you will—if you live. Whether or not you two live ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... no further attempt to advise you. As fast as my counsels rise to my mind follow reflections that convince me of their futility. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... control to be exercised for their own benefit and prosperity no less than for the protection of investors and of the general public. As I have repeatedly said in Messages to the Congress and elsewhere, experience has definitely shown not merely the unwisdom but the futility of endeavoring to put a stop to all business combinations. Modern industrial conditions are such that combination is not only necessary but inevitable. It is so in the world of business just as it is so in the world of labor, and it is as idle to desire ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... even at the present day is often considered as a crime or misdemeanor, should be simply regarded as a reason for divorce. We have already treated the question with regard to civil law, and have shown the futility of trying to obtain fidelity by law. In my opinion, the misdemeanor of adultery should be entirely abolished from penal law. When it is complicated by fraud or other crimes, it is the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... tradition. But Zagreb is now even as Munich was in 1866; after having been the Rome of the Yugoslav movement, the seat of its philosophy and the centre of its politics, the Croat capital has now an atmosphere of sad futility, for Belgrade is the beacon of the Yugoslav world. While comparing Zagreb with Rome one must add that she had also the misfortune to resemble Rome of the decadence—a good deal of outer polish was imparted by the Austrians, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... hand do not bore your readers with dictionary definitions of words whose meaning no one doubts; that is a waste of good paper for you, and of good time for them; and we have seen in Chapter II the futility of the dictionary for cases in which there is real disagreement over ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... suicide! In this, however, he was perfectly consistent—for if gaming of any kind is right, so is murder, robbery, and suicide. In this, Mr. Freeman over-reached himself—and by attempting too much, exposed the futility ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... advance. As it turned out, I should have done better to have waited at Flat-top Mountain till I knew that Crook was at Lewisburg, and then to have made a fresh combination of movements. Our experience only added another to the numerous proofs the whole campaign furnished, of the futility of such combined operations ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... ambitions and the futility of the goat, and the present speaker's late advice is so obvious that only the illogicalness of woman can account for my cherishing a hope that I may be spared the fate of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... where he had made his last stand against age and poverty, were to claim him, now that he had given up the struggle in their midst. The two or three old slaves about the place, stricken with a sense of the futility of the fight their master had made, mourned for him and for themselves, but of his own blood and class none ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Rhoda turned toward the desert. The sun had all but touched the far horizon. Crimson and gold, purple and black, desert and sky merged in one unspeakable glory. But Rhoda saw only emptiness, only life's cruelty and futility and loneliness. And once more she ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... McClellan, driven out of the Peninsula, had been removed, and August saw the Northern army pressed back from Virginia soil. It was now Washington and not Richmond that seemed in danger of capture. Surely the North must soon realize the futility of further effort, and the reports early in July from Washington dilated upon the rapid emergence of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... the report of the Consuls would have been published in London at a time when all England was shaken with the revelations made by Miss Hobhouse and the agitation of the pro-Boers was at its height, then one cannot help realising the futility of fighting against Fate. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Everything in London and its vicinity has been depleted innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images; it is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative truth to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often been more successful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... character. The risks that they run through this confidence have often been pointed out, but it should also be remembered that by their reluctance to act on theory they have often been saved from the elaborate futility and expense of acting on a false theory. The disaster which has befallen Germany cannot but strengthen them in their belief that it is dangerous to devote care and thought to preparing for all imaginable ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... doubling his fortune by the dissolution of his business. Ambition: More churches, colleges, and less competition. Also another Supreme Court decision. Recreation: Golf, the coiffeurs, and telling young men of the futility of competition. Address: Courts and church. Clubs: Y. M. C. A., when he can spare the time from his ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... Great War found me in Europe as a general tourist, and not in the capacity of war-correspondent. Hitherto I had essayed a much less romantic role in life, belonging rather to the crowd of uplifters who conduct the drab and dreary battle with the slums. The futility of most of these schemes for badgering the poor makes one feel at times that these battles are shams and unavailing. This is depressing. It is thrilling, then, suddenly to acquire the glamorous title of war-correspondent, ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... nothing could matter any more, my idea of that country was such that the contrast of those ledger accounts was uncanny and unbelievable. Yet amid all the misery and horror of the Somme, with its shattering reminder of finality and futility at every step whichever way you turned, that ledger in the road, with none to read it, was the gospel promising that life should rise again; the suggestion of a forgotten but surviving virtue which would return, and cover the dread we knew, till a ploughman ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... restless than most boys, ever longing, yet with no definite object, I believe I should always have remained in the place of my birth, except for family exigencies, for I had no ambitions, no special talent nor practical faculty. When I reflect on the futility of literature without genius, or the miserly rewards of scholarship, or the disastrous conclusion in a majority of business enterprises, I confess the life of a New England farmer is to be preferred. It was so ordered that opportunities, which ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... the purchase in a very careful leisurely way which, in any one else, would have exasperated the highly strung Erebus to the very limits of endurance; but where the Terror was concerned she had long ago learned the futility of exasperation. He began by an exhaustive examination of every make of bicycle in the shop; and he made it with a thoroughness that worried the eager bicycle-seller, one of those smart young men who pamper a chin's passion for receding by letting ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... waited for this futility to pass; then with an air suggesting, "Now, shall we talk sensibly?" she resumed: "I approve the action of the school-board. It did well in dismissing Professor Ashton. May I speak about Mr. Clinton? He urges me to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... insatiable universe. This very lake, with its countenance covered with rippling smiles, is only a cruel monster waiting to devour. Everything, even the most beautiful, typifies the inexorable laws of Fate and the futility of man's struggle with the forces he ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... panting, but he felt he had scored a point; when to his amazement he saw the man coming toward him, and now on snow-shoes. He plunged forward, and relentlessly "Scotty" followed. Hour after hour the chase continued, until Fisher realized, at length, the futility of it all; and thoroughly exhausted, crouched shivering in the snow, waiting for the punishment that lay in the coils of the long black whip ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... would stake his life to save twenty yards of distance. There was no discretion in his valor. Blithe young gambler that he was, he would do the thing in his own way. No one could tell him. Tom knew the utter futility of shouting any last warnings ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... North America with peoples or so-called races of antiquity in other portions of the world. A brief review of some conclusions that must be accepted in the present status of the science will exhibit the futility of these attempts. ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... a wide, shallow, muddy stream with brakes on the opposite bank extending like a green and yellow wall. Duane perceived at a glance the futility of his trying to cross at this point. Everywhere the sluggish water raved quicksand bars. In fact, the bed of the river was all quicksand, and very likely there was not a foot of water anywhere. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... constitutional body, having for its chief object the removal of the frightful oppressions by which the Catholic people of Ireland were tortured and disgraced; but in the troubled and portentous condition of home and foreign politics, the society could not long retain this character. The futility of seeking a redress of the national grievances by parliamentary means was becoming apparent to every understanding. The system of outrage and injustice towards the Catholics, unabating in its severity, continued to exasperate the actual sufferers and ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... difficulty—the futility of attempting to fasten on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... from any argument, feeling the futility of words in her distraught condition. In the darkened tent he brooded over his difficulties while his eyes strayed with jealous yearning to the slim form in the gaudy kimono. Instead of isolation in a canvas ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... that I can realize how much they might always have meant to me. They were both living in my time in Italy, and they were two men whom I should now like very much to have seen, if I could have done so without that futility which seems to attend every effort to pay one's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Thomas, at the excommunications. In vain the Pope sought to moderate his zeal. In the summer of 1169 two legates were sent to settle the dispute, of whom one was pledged to the king and the other to the archbishop. Henry, like every one else, saw the futility of their mission, and "led them for a week," as one of them complained, "through many windings both of road and speech." With a scornful taunt that "he did not care an egg for them and their excommunications," he finally mounted his horse to ride off from the conference. ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... time he took for deliberation was short. He had hoped to find a way to spare her, by sparing Calendar; but momentarily he was becoming more impressed with the futility of dealing with her save in terms of candor, merciful though they ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... and the trunk fastened on a cross that all may see it. And you, Mardonius," addressing the bow-bearer, "ride back to the hillock where these madmen made their last stand. If you discover among the corpses any who yet breathe, bring them hither to me, that they may learn the futility of ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of acting and enjoying, natural (to the non-enlightened soul), are not stultified.—That, however, the absolute unity of the Self is the real purport of the /s/astra's teaching, the Sutrakara declares, for instance, in I, 1, 30[190]. The refutation of the reproach of futility raised against the injunctions of works has already been set forth by us, on the ground of the distinction between such persons as possess full knowledge, and such ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... All at once he was conscious of its futility. Nobody heard him. Nobody heeded him. He was only an unnoticed spectator of a great event. He stood still now, back to the tree, gazing toward the river and the advancing force. Something wet dropped into his eye and he winked it away. It ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... carry the master's thought a stage further was a pleasure, if any moment of his present life could be called pleasurable. He heard these sayings first in Alexandria, and, looking towards Jerusalem, he tried to recall the exact words of the sage regarding the futility of sacrifice. Our priests try, said Heraclitus, to purify themselves with blood and we admire them, but if a filthy man were to roll himself in the mud in the hope of cleaning himself we should think he was mad. In some such wise Heraclitus ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... back toward the town. He did so with a feeling of futility in the act. Where should he go? What should he do? How was he to deal with this new, extraordinary feature in the case? It was impossible to return to Tory Hill, as if the Marquise had told him nothing, and equally impossible to make what she ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... many-sidedness, that makes me at times impatient with him beyond restraint. In his profession he is successful. His ambition makes him work, but a weariness of things, of the unworthwhileness of human effort, the futility of striving, the emptiness of achievement, possesses him frequently, and in his dark days he pays the penalty of his points of view. If only he could ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... "grand army" of a hundred and fifty thousand men marches direct on the capital. The ttes-du-pont on the Niemen, and the entrenched camp which it had cost Russia two years to fortify, were turned in the first march of the French; and the futility of the whole costly and rather timorous system was exhibited in the fact, that the crowning battle was fought within ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a brave man, but he shuddered at the maniacal ferocity of the older man, and shrank back. The futility of argument was apparent, and he turned ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... after this long, expensive, and sanguinary war, things were established just on the footing they had been by the peace of Nimeguen; and a great, though unavailable lesson, read to the world on the futility and wickedness of those quarrels in which the personal ambition of kings leads to the misery of the people. Had the allies been true to each other throughout, Louis would certainly have been reduced much lower than he now was. His pride was humbled, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... field, and at the best an unmanageable weapon; a standing army of mercenary soldiers would have called for taxation heavier and more regular than any ruler dared to demand, or any people could afford to pay. The wars of the Middle Ages have therefore, with few exceptions, a stamp of futility and pettiness. Ambitious enterprises were foredoomed to failure, and powers apparently annihilated by an invading host recovered strength as soon as it had rolled away. In short, on the European and on the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... this flits through the mind of the murderer. The result, to divert him from his half-formed resolution— perceiving its futility. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... age of twelve Bjoernson was sent to the Latin school at Molde, where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature could brook ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... critic arose, who, in one of the most judicious and spirited essays that our nation has produced, on a point of classical literature, completely overturned this ill-founded edifice, and exposed the arrogance and futility of its assuming architect." He even condescends to justify an acrimony of style, which had been gently blamed by the more unbiassed German; "Paullo acrius quam velis - - -,perstrinxit." But I cannot ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Atlanta editor) who boasted that sixteen thousand of these books had been sold in the South! This last damning fact ought to have been concealed at the risk of life, limb, and fortune." Lanier himself saw the futility of such praise of his own work by the Southern people. Referring to the defense made of his Centennial poem by Southern newspapers, he wrote from Macon: "People here are so enthusiastic in my favor at present that they are quite prepared to ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the boat, the ship would have gone on without us, which would have been an appalling disaster. So I stirred them up, and we were soon under way again and out to sea. By-and-by I saw the lights of the steamer, which looked about three miles off. Knowing the independence of these captains and the futility of complaints, I trembled lest the steamer should put farther to sea, and determined that no effort of mine should be spared to ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... each other!" said Sanford sardonically. "Our first job is more futility—to get the guided missiles you've brought us into the launching tubes. A ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster |
