not to the purpose

“Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,” returned Mr. Jaggers.

This question, however, is not to the purpose of our present work, which respects landscape-painting only; it must be one of those left open to the reader's thoughts, and for future inquiry in another place.

This was not to the purpose, as both of them felt, but it gave the other man the opening for which he had been looking.

That is true, but it is not to the purpose.

That these privileges were not really beneficial to her is not to the purpose.