[10] Solar list is of no use; but his two dynasties of Puru and Yadu of the Lunar race are excellent, that part of the line of Puru, from Jarasandha to Chandragupta, being the only correct one in print.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

In the meantime Juno looked down upon the midst of the fields, and wondering that the fleeting clouds had made the appearance of night under bright day, she perceived that they were not the vapors from a river, nor were they raised from the moist earth, and then she looked around to see where her husband was, as being one who by this time was full well acquainted with the intrigues of a husband who had been so often detected.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

Most men take no notice of what is plain, as if that were of no use; but puzzle their thoughts to be themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom.
— from Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources Including Phrases, Mottoes, Maxims, Proverbs, Definitions, Aphorisms, and Sayings of Wise Men, in Their Bearing on Life, Literature, Speculation, Science, Art, Religion, and Morals, Especially in the Modern Aspects of Them by Wood, James, Rev.

For a long time everything seemed to be of no use, but at length the burgomaster found an expedient.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

They are very seldom or never used but in other compositions, yet naturally they heat cold stomachs, help digestion, strengthen the heart and brain.
— from The Complete Herbal To which is now added, upwards of one hundred additional herbs, with a display of their medicinal and occult qualities physically applied to the cure of all disorders incident to mankind: to which are now first annexed, the English physician enlarged, and key to Physic. by Nicholas Culpeper

Properly a small kind of nails used by cobblers.—
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

The country is lost to their senses, they can neither discover it under its own nor under borrowed features, and they entrench themselves within the dull precincts of a narrow egotism.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville

But as Philopoemen condemned wrestling, wherein he excelled, because the preparatives that were therein employed were differing from those that appertain to military discipline, to which alone he conceived men of honour ought wholly to apply themselves; so it seems to me that this address to which we form our limbs, those writhings and motions young men are taught in this new school, are not only of no use, but rather contrary and hurtful to the practice of fight in battle; and also our people commonly make use of particular weapons, and peculiarly designed for duel; and I have seen, when it has been disapproved, that a gentleman challenged to fight with rapier and poignard appeared in the array of a man-at-arms, and that another should take his cloak instead of his poignard.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

It’s of no use bothering you with details, Wyvern, for I’ve heard you say one couldn’t shoot a man with a worse head for business than yourself even if you fired a shot-gun up and down the most crowded streets of London all day.
— from A Secret of the Lebombo by Bertram Mitford

three feet about, and twenty or thirty feet high, I must be allowed to say I believe nothing of; but as its navigation is of no use, because there is no trade that way, the Tartars, to whom alone it belongs, dealing in nothing but cattle; so nobody that ever I heard or, has been curious enough either to go down to the mouth of it in boats, or to come up from the mouth of it in ships; but this is certain, that this river running due east, in the latitude of sixty degrees, carries a vast concourse of rivers along with it, and finds an ocean to empty itself in that latitude; so we are sure of sea there.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) by Daniel Defoe

The Peach Springs route is the only other one now used by the public to any extent.
— from Titan of Chasms: The Grand Canyon of Arizona by John Wesley Powell

For I write not to such translators, but to men capacious of the soul and genius of their authors, without which all their labour will be of no use but to disgrace themselves, and injure the author that falls into their slaughter-house.
— from The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 18 Dialogue concerning Women; Characters; Life of Lucian; Letters; Appendix; Index by John Dryden

He had never heard of “nature unadorned”; but he knew, just as we 97 know, how banal and commonplace are the lives of many of the best men and women who have lived and worked for others, and he strove to portray them in colours which might make them interesting to a generation whose intelligence, so far as religion was concerned, had been chiefly moulded by Holy Scripture.
— from The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall: Divers Sketches and Studies by Thomas Taylor

I knew it was of no use, but held on in the weather mizen-rigging, and looked out to westward, against a wild break of light which the setting sun made through the troughs of the sea; once
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849 by Various

Following this water he came before very long to a place in the forest where there was little or no underwood, but only low trees and bushes scattered about, and all the ground moist and very green and fresh like a water-meadow.
— from A Little Boy Lost by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson