What is "worthlessness"

Usage examples of "worthlessness".

An example from each of three eminent authors has been taken to illustrate the worthlessness of a vast body of anthropologic material to which even the best writers resort.

I suppose you think the stream, which is making such a fine display, yonder, is some idle brooklet, ending a long course of error and worthlessness by that spectacular plunge.

The pertinence of this reference will also appear when attention is drawn to the fact that the tendency of the rate to criminality, hence, to moral worthlessness, is more largely hypothecated upon this than upon any other single crime.

Cluthe soon saw the utter worthlessness of all the trusses then in existence.

The molecule may be enzymatically active in one shape and inert in the other, like a shoehorn that sometimes warps into worthlessness.

Cole was given either because of its supposed worthlessness, or to distinguish it from the Mercury Goosefoot aforesaid.

He found little to help him in the court religion of the age, but he was immensely impressed with the Jansenist conception of the frailty and worthlessness of the natural man.

Calhoun the utter worthlessness of simple paper constitutions, on which Mr.

Knew ye not that ye could not appear in a mask more fashioned to move my bile than in that of these gilders and lackerers of the smooth surface of worthlessness, that bring the gold of true valour into disrepute, by stamping the baser metal with the fairer im-pression?

Were all the hospital physicians of Europe and America to devote themselves, for the requisite period, to this sole pursuit, and were their results to be unanimous as to the total worthlessness of the whole system in practice, this slippery delusion would slide through their fingers without the slightest discomposure, when, as they supposed, they had crushed every joint in its tortuous and trailing body.

When he saw that it was to the same effect as Esther's, though differently expressed, he had no longer any doubts as to his daughter's skill, and hastened to go and test the pretended diamond, and to advise his associates to say nothing about the matter after they had received proofs of the worthlessness of the stone.

But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises—because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him.

And this miserable, lick-spittle Parliament, in its dastardliness and worthlessness, always condemns and sentences, because it knows that the king is always thirsty for blood, and always wants the fires of the stake to keep him warm.

The self-sufficiency of egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellowcreatures given by the dogmatists who have "gone back," as the vulgar phrase is, on their race, their own flesh and blood.

It impressed me most disagreeably to hear my mother forever talking of the miserableness and worthlessness of the earthly life, and of the blessedness hereafter as the only thing deserving of our attention, and at the same time observe how with unconscious motherly matchmaking and secret strategy she sought to arrange a rich marriage for her son.