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More "Pointless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had more result, but was not conducted with the finesse that Mr. Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy, had intended. Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman, when the moment came for talk, and so palpably were his pointless remarks mere efforts to delay an unpleasant subject, that Blake, always direct bluntly though not ill-naturedly asked him, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the same theme of a love that comes by waiting. Mrs. DUDENEY can handle this situation with unfailing charm. Her confessed comedies are by far the weakest things in the book; there is one of them indeed that seemed to me amazingly pointless. But with this exception I can commend her volume whole-heartedly, and only hope that the author will continue to send out goods of such excellent workmanship, "as per" (whatever that means) these ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... there were still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and the black fir-woods, all was cold and grey about our onward path. An infinity of little country by-roads led hither and thither among the fields. It was the most pointless labyrinth. I could see my destination overhead, or rather the peak that dominates it, but choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or northward along the margin of the hills. The failing light, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unintelligent, obtuse, stolid, loggerheaded, inapt, doltish, beetle-headed, blockish, sluggish; apathetic, unfeeling, insensate, callous; blunt, obtuse, dulled, pointless; dim, faint; tedious, uninteresting, prosaic, stupid, wearisome, jejune, depressing; lifeless, torpid, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... known that the county-counsellor, desperate over her stern refusals, was urging her to get a divorce from her husband and marry him. No one suspected, of course, that she had herself spread this rumour in order to render pointless the possible leaking out ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... his later days have pursued him beyond the grave. A small and threadbare sect of "liberals," as they call themselves,—men in whom want of skill, industry, and thrift has produced the usual results,—have erected an altar to Thomas Paine, and, on the anniversary of his birth, go through with a pointless celebration, which passes unnoticed, unless in an out-of-the-way corner of some newspaper. In this class of persons, irreligion is a mere form of discontent. They have no other reason to give for the faith which is not in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. In its own way suffering was a relief. It was the first time he had given it a chance since he had brought himself to facing squarely the fact of his useless, pointless love. He had always dodged it by finding something to be done, or choked it down by sheer force of will. Now he let it rush in on him, all through him, all over him, flooding his mind and spirit, making his heart swell and his blood ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Inconsistencies and carelessness of composition. 1. Pointless badinage and padded scenes. 2. Inconsistencies of character and situation. 3. Looseness of dramatic construction. 4. Roman admixture and topical allusions. 5. Jokes on the dramatic machinery. 6. Use of stock plots ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... object has been to extract what was odd and simple and most characteristic, in short, what was most human, and there is enough residuum for a horde of other miners. But I warn them that the dross is considerable. Ibn Khallikan's leniency to trivialities is incorrigible, and his pages are filled with pointless anecdotes, dull sayings, and poetry whose only recommendation is its richness in the laboured conceits that he loved. So much did he esteem them that were, say, all English intellectual effort in every direction at his disposal to descant upon, his favourite genius would ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... method of the work. To a eulogium of the professional skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought about ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... on human nature that the achievement of eminence brings with it the malice and spite of petty minds and no one of prominence can avoid becoming the target of stupid and unscrupulous attack. It would be pointless now to go into those carping and unjust accusations directed at me by irresponsible newspaper columnists. Another man might have ignored these mean assaults, but I am naturally sensitive, and while it was beneath my ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... little stream in their prison of ice. He told himself that when the spring came he would feel more settled; but when on one of his morning rides he came upon the first crocus, lifting its golden cup toward the sun, it only gave to his pointless restlessness a poisoned barb. Involuntarily his first thought was, "It would look like a spark of fire in the dusk of her hair." When he realized what he had said, he planted the great fore-foot of his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... looked at him and he looked at them without knowing much who they were, while the talk went on without much telling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing in particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and short terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places—names which, for our friend, had no great power of evocation. It was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... any of the other men I have mentioned, grounds his work firmly upon this sense of cosmic implacability, this confession of unintelligibility. The exact point of the story of Kurtz, in "Heart of Darkness," is that it is pointless, that Kurtz's death is as meaningless as his life, that the moral of such a sordid tragedy is a wholesale negation of all morals. And this, no less, is the point of the story of Falk, and of that of Almayer, and of that of Jim. Mr. Follett (he must ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... themselves, Falsethsa, meant "the people," or "us," or "the only race." To Commander Powers, fifty years old, with eleven of them in Survey work, the world was Planet Two of a star called something unpronounceable in the nebula of something else equally pointless. He had not bothered to learn the native name of Island Twenty-seven, because his ship had mapped one thousand three hundred and eighty-six islands, all small, and either rocky or swampy or both. Island Twenty-seven, to him, had only one ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... an indifferent humorist. He was of those who thought that fun could be imparted to a drawing by the simple expedient of grotesque exaggeration of expression; and as a great admirer of Seymour's "Cockney humour," he was frequently pointless and stilted. Personally he was highly popular with the Staff, for he was philosophically happy and jovial, and sang good songs, and was, moreover, greatly sought after at a time when comic artists were few. He was cartoonist, too, in a small way, in the second, third, and fourth ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... human life, he wondered? Were men and women created to suffer, to bear crosses which were not of their own making, to suffer injustices which seemed pointless?... ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... know is going forward round me. I see it gathering, crowding, driving on, In wild uncustomary movements. Well, In due time, doubtless, it will reach even me. Where think you I have been, dear lady? Nay, No raillery. The turmoil of the camp, The spring-tide of acquaintance rolling in, The pointless jest, the empty conversation, Oppressed and stifled me. I gasped for air— I could not breathe—I was constrained to fly, To seek a silence out for my full heart; And a pure spot wherein to feel my happiness. No smiling, countess! In the church was I. There ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... writer is never diffuse or vague or pointless, both his road and the end of it are always in view."—New ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... boiling waters roar, And smoky flames thro' fuming tunnels soar. Hether the Father of the Fire, by night, Thro' the brown air precipitates his flight. On their eternal anvils here he found The brethren beating, and the blows go round. A load of pointless thunder now there lies Before their hands, to ripen for the skies: These darts, for angry Jove, they daily cast; Consum'd on mortals with prodigious waste. Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... when Caesar reads to us a new book from the Troyad, thou, instead of crying out like a jackdaw, wouldst have to give an opinion that was not pointless." ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... done. The ground for believing that Neville had any such purpose when he wrote the book is too slight to be accepted. In 1668 the author had no call to convey a lesson in government to his countrymen by any means so frankly vulgar and pointless as the "Isle of Pines." If Neville had intended such a political object, a phrase would have sufficed to indicate it. No such key can be found in the text, and there is nothing to show that, politician as he was, he realized that such an intimation ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... Winn began, "there's not a word of truth in it, and it's perfectly pointless besides; still it's a queer place, this valley, and what's particularly odd is, that though you can find it easily enough sometimes, there are days when I'm blessed if it's there at all! Anyhow I've gone wrong times out of ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... following disingenuous fashion: "Mr. Seymour, our ex-artist, is much to be pitied for his extreme anguish at our having come to terms with the celebrated Robert Cruikshank in the supplying the designs of the caricatures in 'Figaro.' Seymour has been venting his rage in a manner as pointless as it is splenetic, and we are sorry for him. He ought, however, to feel, that notwithstanding our friendly wish to bring him forward, which we have done in an eminent degree, we must engage first-rate ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... particular version was sung to me by Capt. R.W. Robertson. It differs but slightly from the version which I originally learnt from Sir Walter Runciman. Very few of the words were printable, and old sailors who read my version will no doubt chuckle over the somewhat pointless continuation of the verses concerning Kitty Carson and Polly Riddle. They will, of course, see the point of my having supplied a Chopinesque accompaniment to such ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... the visitor's hand, leading him in and talking pleasantly in French until both had found chairs. The conversation continued in that tongue through such pointless commercial gossip as this: ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... that bears a warrior's fame To shun the pointless stroke of shame? Will he that propped a trembling throne Not stand for ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... the work. To a eulogium of the professional skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought about through Dr. Nichol "being the only ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... I'd come in from a disgusting and pointless expedition I expected to be called to the telephone. There was a dance at the hotel which I was unable to enjoy, as I have never learned any of the new dances, and some girls seem to have little appreciation ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... that comes by waiting. Mrs. DUDENEY can handle this situation with unfailing charm. Her confessed comedies are by far the weakest things in the book; there is one of them indeed that seemed to me amazingly pointless. But with this exception I can commend her volume whole-heartedly, and only hope that the author will continue to send out goods of such excellent workmanship, "as per" (whatever that means) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... enough of Parisian society: he could not bear the emptiness of it, the idleness, the moral impotence, the neurasthenia, its aimless, pointless, self-devouring hypercriticism. He wondered how people could live in such a stagnant atmosphere of art for art's sake and pleasure for pleasure's sake. And yet the French did live in it: they had beep, a great nation, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... for years foregathered were much given to realism of speech, as well as to picturesquely lurid verbal illustration. But this was different; the language of these men was crammed with filth for filth's sake, and flat, pointless profanity. I have no doubt that my inability to avoid expressing disgust made them worse than they otherwise ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... the men who played football across the open between the enemy's line of trenches and our own when it was raked by fire. When I had finished, a friend of mine, evidently waiting for the end of a pointless story, said, "What did they do that for?" (Oh, ye gods, have pity on men and women who suffer from fatty degeneration ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Chamberlain showed that, with allowance for payment from the Imperial purse of part of the cost of Irish police, the net initial contribution was about one-fortieth, and asked: "Is Irish patriotism a plant of such sickly growth that it has to be watered with British gold?" The taunt was as pointless as it was cruel, for although the Union had kept Ireland poor, Irish leaders, in spite of that poverty, had asked for a financial independence which Mr. Gladstone in neither of his Bills felt disposed to give her. Mr. Chamberlain had his way; the Union was maintained, and as a ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... of composition. 1. Pointless badinage and padded scenes. 2. Inconsistencies of character and situation. 3. Looseness of dramatic construction. 4. Roman admixture and topical allusions. 5. Jokes on the dramatic machinery. 6. Use of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... study. Unable to speak, and her hands trembling with rage, she gave the girl one glance of hatred, and then tried to eat; and Viveash, who had the sense to do so, at once began telling her some idiotic and pointless story about himself when he sang in a cathedral choir ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... surpassing far The love of all beneath, We find within our hearts, and dare The pointless darts ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... from the extracts we have given. Their humour is of a particularly juvenile and obvious character, and consists almost entirely in the childish device of clothing the personages with ridiculous but non-essential attributes, or in placing them in grotesque but pointless situations. Of the more subtle humour, which consists in the discovery of real but hidden incongruities, and the perception of what is innately absurd, there is no trace. The obvious abuses of the time are satirized ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... and not pursue them. At this moment Aias was weary, so many spears smote his armour, and he could hardly hold up his great shield, and Hector cut off his spear-head with the sword; the bronze head fell ringing on the ground, and Aias brandished only the pointless shaft. So he shrank back and fire blazed all over his ship; and Achilles saw it, and smote his thigh, and bade Patroclus make haste. Patroclus armed himself in the shining armour of Achilles, which all Trojans feared, and leaped into the chariot ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... a faint though dazzling ray of hope, I encouraged Max after this to visit the bridge over the moat, dangerous though it was; and each night I received an account of his doings. Usually the account was brief and pointless. He went, he stood upon the bridge, he saw the House under the Wall, he returned to the inn. But a night came when he had stirring ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... they assume masculine 'habits,' it is unreasonable to continue the stigma. In like manner, when the cloth belonged to the customer, it was allowable enough to suspect him of a little amiable weakness for cabbage; but now that he is himself the clothier, the joke is pointless and absurd. Tailors, however, can afford to laugh, as well as other people, at their conventional double—or rather ninth, for at least in our own day they have wrought very hard to elevate their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... barren mining hotel there happened to be a former Illinois River pilot named Ben Coon, a solemn, sleepy person, who dozed by the stove or told slow, pointless stories to any one who would listen. Not many would stay to hear him, but Jim Gillis and Mark Twain found him a delight. They would let him wander on in his dull way for hours, and saw a vast humor in a man to whom all tales, however ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero? Yet the critic's remark was not so pointless as Macaulay thought it. Sincerity and intensity are, indeed, to the modern reader, the most obvious characteristics of Demosthenes. His style is, on the whole, singularly free from what we are accustomed to regard as rhetorical embellishment. Where the modern orator would employ a wealth of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
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