unprofitable

Do you, while receiving benefits from me and resting under my shade, dare to describe me as useless, and unprofitable?'

Other generalisations proving equally unprofitable, I began scientifically to consider in detail the attributes of the supposititious paragon,--attributes of body and mind and heart.

Little of the book read for a purpose stays with the reader, and this is one reason why reading for review is so vain and unprofitable. I have done a vast deal of this, but I have usually been aware that the book was subtly withholding from me the best a book can give, since I was not reading it for its own sake and because I loved it, but for selfish ends of my own, and because I wished to possess myself of it for business purposes, as it were.

My companion and I being undeceived by this terrible relation, thought it would be the highest imprudence to expose ourselves both together to a death almost certain and unprofitable, and agreed that I should go with our Abyssin and a Portuguese to observe the country; that if I should prove so happy as to escape being killed by the inhabitants, and to discover a way, I should either return, or send back the Abyssin or Portuguese.

Fitzpatrick and his colleague now lost all patience; since the others persisted in following them, they determined to give them an unprofitable chase, and to sacrifice the hunting season rather than share the products with their rivals.

The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts almost insane- unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs- made some concessions.

It is true that, at times, it needed all his strength of mind to keep his thoughts from wandering back into that unprofitable and most distasteful past - in the middle of the night even, he had woke up suddenly with an old man's cry in his ears - or was it the whispering of the night-wind in the tall elms?

He made a patent-medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger.

Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle.

He had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in question-- of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not have forgotten my revered father's intentions.

Barrington," he added, "You must forgive me if I remind you that this is a somewhat unprofitable discussion."

293-319) That man is altogether best who considers all things himself and marks what will be better afterwards and at the end; and he, again, is good who listens to a good adviser; but whoever neither thinks for himself nor keeps in mind what another tells him, he is an unprofitable man.