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More "Irksome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wish to hold him in thraldom now. It was irksome for him to go where she was, to passively receive her caresses as well as attempt to stay her burning tears, and to be obliged to assure her over and over again, with every breath, that he would be sure to be ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... conventional motive force to the school children goes by the name of Discipline. If the pressure at each tap is steady, constant, and otherwise effective, the discipline is good. If it is variable, intermittent, and otherwise ineffective, the discipline is bad. The life of the routine-ridden school is so irksome to the child, that if he is healthy and vigorous he will long to find a congenial outlet for his vital energies, which are as a rule either pent back (as when he sits still listening to a lecture), or forced into uninteresting and unprofitable channels. When this desire masters him during ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... but the tender sapling is more easily impressed, and there are peculiar promises to bless the instruction of children, and to encourage to a patient and proper performance of a very trying, and not unfrequently a very irksome task. But while the brethren communicate to their interesting charge the elements of knowledge, they employ as the grand instrument for shaping their characters, the word of the gospel of Christ, ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of a permanent mental endowment. When, by a repetition of efforts of this kind, we have more fully developed the scientific faculty, the exercise of this faculty in detecting scientific principles in nature, and in directing practice by theory, is no longer irksome, but becomes an unfailing source of enjoyment, to which we return so often, that at last even our careless thoughts begin to run in a ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... finally, if the bad weather was very obstinate and would not come, he would hold out again for more payment. In this manner my old sorcerer was very seldom mistaken in his forecasts, and the influence he exerted over the clerk of the weather must have been very irksome to that functionary. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... goin' home now," Joe Durgan replied tersely, with the abruptness of one who has done an irksome duty and would avoid ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... as days have passed me, Fretting never lifts the load; And worry, much or little, Never smooths an irksome road; For do you know that somehow, always, Doors are opened, ways are made; When we work and live in patience Under all the cross ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Servia with troops should this eventuality come about. We half expect some of us will be withdrawn from here and landed in Greece or wherever it is most suitable for a march on the Bulgars. Many of us would go right gladly, the monotony of living all these months on a small patch of ground gets more irksome as time ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism, effective enough among the whites, was with the negroes a perfect contagion. With some of these the conversion brought lasting change; with others it provided a garment of piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" and doffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added to the joys of life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by pleasurable "sin," to give place to fresh conversion when the furor season recurred. The rivalry of the Baptist and Methodist churches, each striving by ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... are "true." The folkways are necessarily "true" with respect to some world philosophy. Pain forced men to think. The ills of life imposed reflection and taught forethought. Mental processes were irksome and were not undertaken until painful experience made them unavoidable.[63] With great unanimity all over the globe primitive men followed the same line of thought. The dead were believed to live on as ghosts in another world just ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the many Absurdities that are taught by the Church of Rome, the little Claim which Popes can lay to Infallibility, and the Priestcraft there is in what they say of purgatory and all that belongs to it. But to persuade him likewise, that the Gospel requires no Self-denial, nor any Thing that is irksome to Nature, and that the Generality of the Clergy of England are sincerely endeavouring, in their Lives and Doctrine, to imitate the Apostles, as nearly as Human Frailty will let them, and is consistent with the Difference of the Age and Manners between their Time and ours; to persuade, I say, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... for their punishment, shame; and for their reward, praise," p. 24. "Wherefore I cannot but commend the custome of their schools in the Low-countries, where for the avoyding of this tedious sitting still, and with irksome poring on the book all day long, after the scholler hath received his lecture, he leaveth the school for an houre, and walkes abroad with one or two of his fellows, either into the field or up among the trees upon the rampire, as in ANTWERP, BREDA, VTRECHT, &c., ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... enjoyed it in peace. The sweet morning air was exceeding sweet, and the summer light fell upon a perfect luxuriance of green things. Out of the carriage Fleda's spirits were at home, but not within it; and it was sadly irksome to be obliged to hear and respond to Mrs. Carleton's talk, which was kept up, she knew, in the charitable intent to divert her. She was just in a state to listen to nature's talk; to the other she attended and replied with a patient longing to be left free that ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... on no business whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and see how he was getting on with his duties. These interviews were rather formidable, being characterized by a certain stiffness which I felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a native tendency to organization, generally halted outside of the door to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Papacy. The former were seafarers; the latter, farmers. The sympathies or affiliations of the Dutch were with the English and the Germans; those of the Belgians were with the French. Moreover, the Dutch were inclined to act oppressively toward the Belgians, and this disposition was made the more irksome by the fact that King William was a dull, stupid, narrow and very obstinate sovereign, who thought that to have a request made of him was reason sufficient ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the full that which was exacted of him. But he worked without the brilliancy and enthusiasm of a few months past—as a man steadied by some great sorrow, striving more strenuously to give of his best where honor is concerned, because he is conscious that the heaviness of his heart makes all duty irksome. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... hostile to the franchise agitation, and the most fanatical Suffragettes began to wonder what they had found so attractive in the prospect of putting ballot-papers into a box. In the country districts the task of carrying out the provisions of the new Act was irksome enough; in the towns and cities it became an incubus. There seemed no end to the elections. Laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their work to vote, often for a candidate whose name they ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... that if they began to speak as though they remembered the past—if they looked at each other with full recognition—they must take fire again. So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... (she asked herself) to get ready for bed? No! The sense of drowsy fatigue that she had felt half an hour since was gone. She returned to the dull employment of unpacking her boxes. After a few minutes only, the occupation became irksome to her once more. She sat down by the table, and took up a guide-book. 'Suppose I inform myself,' she thought, 'on ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed her existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture and growth ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... perhaps, be found in the army such a number of men, who have ever condescended to pass through the labours, and irksome forms of education in use, among the lower classes of people, or submitted to learn the mercantile and plebeian arts of writing and reading. I must own, that though I entirely agree with the notions of the uselessness of any such trivial ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the narrow world of home and school into another that had seemed at first vastly larger, if only on account of its freedom from the perpetual achievement of small economies. Hitherto the urgent necessity of these had filled life with irksome precautions and clipped the wings of every dream. This new life into which Sir Isaac led her by the hand promised not only that release but more light, more colour, more movement, more people. There was to be at any rate so much in the way ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... forded the Tugela, en route to Ladysmith. That their plunge might stimulate Methuen to burn his boots and brave the turgid waters of the Modder, was the fervent wish of Kimberley at the end of fourteen weeks of irksome, emaciating duress. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... embracing the Christian religion, being baptized under her auspices with the name of Don Juan de Granada. He even carried his zeal for his newly-adopted creed so far as to become a Franciscan friar. By degrees his affected piety grew cool and the friar's garb became irksome. Taking occasion of the sailing of some Venetian galleys from Almeria, he threw off his religious habit, embarked on board of one of them, and crossed to Africa, where he landed in the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... its distinctive title from the Greek words, cheen, a goose, and pous, a foot, in allusion to the resemblance borne by its leaves to the webbed members of that waddling bird which raw recruits are wont to bless for their irksome drill of the goose-step. Incidentally, it may be said that goosegrease, got from the roasted bird, is highly emollient, and very useful in clysters; it ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... this irksome self-consciousness that is the permanent affliction of the physically small man. Indeed, it is the affliction of any one who has any physical peculiarity—a hare-lip, for example. Byron raged all his life against his club-foot, and doubtless ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... besieged, they were each day called together to oration. On this morning, however, their reunion was earlier than usual: since it had for its object not only the ordinary prayers, but preparation for the combat that was to decide the issue of a long and irksome siege. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... exhibited anything but docility. The elephant was not running amuck, though he might eventually work himself into that blind ungovernable rage. Off like that, without the slightest warning! If Kathlyn could only keep him clear of the trees, for the old rogue would do his best to scrape off the irksome howdah. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... bosomed. There was life and laughter in that calm Greek face, and the vivid, delicate colour of it maddened him. The great crown of black hair was just what her brow needed for its royalty. He could find no fault in the irksome wench. Even her dress, dark grey as her eyes, perfectly became her, perfectly pleased in its generous modesty. And she knew of her power too. There was a mocking confidence in every ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... long range, and this thought of life and safety Garrison did not at all relish. They grew more and more irksome to his fearless and earnest spirit. For his was a "pine-and-fagot" Abolitionism that knew not the fear of men or their wrath. But now he must needs have a care for the peace of mind of his young wife, who was, within a few months, to give birth to a child. And ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... those terrific magistrates whose grim decrees gave New England naughty children the nightmare a century after the stern-browed promulgators of them were dust. The early laws against crime in New England were severe, though death was seldom or never inflicted save for murder. But more irksome to one used to the lax habits of to-day would have been the punctilious rigidity with which they guarded the personal bearing, speech, and dress of the members of their community. Yet we may thank them for having done so; it was a wise precaution; they knew ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to get better every day. Although her remembrances were bitter and her thoughts most distressing, yet there was something in her present situation which was, on the whole, conducive to health. For the first time in many months she felt herself free from that irksome and galling control which had been so maddening to her proud nature. Her life in Dalton Hall had been one long struggle, in which her spirit had chafed incessantly at the barriers around it, and had well-nigh worn itself out in ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... tyrant; who suspended the execution of his revenge till he should return victorious from the Persian war. They expected, that as soon as he had triumphed over the foreign enemies of Rome, he would lay aside the irksome mask of dissimulation; that the amphitheatre would stream with the blood of hermits and bishops; and that the Christians who still persevered in the profession of the faith, would be deprived of the common benefits of nature ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... O. Henry's incident now, and must use his leader-material, so the next situation must be broken into various "close-up" views to prevent having too long a scene and too irksome a run of spoken matter ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... she looks forward to withdrawing more or less from society, and confining her thoughts to family matters. In France, Spain, or Italy, in the wealthier classes, precisely the contrary is the rule. Marriage brings deliverance from an irksome espionage and numberless fetters; it is the avenue to a life in public and independent action. How injurious to domestic happiness this is, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... order to avoid it we altered our course during the night. From this moment no light was permitted in the great cabin, to prevent our being seen at a distance. This precaution, which was at the time prescribed in the regulations of the packet-ships of the Spanish navy, was extremely irksome to us during the voyages we made in the course of the five following years. We were constantly obliged to make use of dark-lanterns to examine the temperature of the water, or to read the divisions on the limb of the astronomical instruments. In the torrid zone, where twilight lasts ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... meaning of escape from his lessons. By failing to fit studies to a student's interest, or by failing to insure a student's interest in his studies, schools and colleges miseducate young men and young women to look upon all work as tasks, as discipline, necessary but irksome, and to be avoided if possible. Just as there is a way of turning all the energy of the play instinct into school work, so there is a way of interesting the factory and office worker in his job. However mechanical work may be, there is always the interest in becoming the most efficient worker ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... this did not suit Ramsay's feelings or nature, and he courteously bowed to the decision of the managers, and returned to Frome, where his income from both curacies was L100 a year,—a poverty the more irksome to a man of culture and ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... days' voyage by boat and rail was irksome. I bought my kit at Sainte Croix, on the Central Pacific Railroad, and on June 1st I began the last stage of my journey via the Sainte Isole broad-gauge, arriving in the wilderness by daylight. A tedious forced march by blazed trail, freshly spotted on the wrong ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... unhappy people patiently submitted. But in vain. The very existence of the subjugated race had become irksome to their oppressors. A cruelty yet more intolerable to which the history of the world affords no parallel, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... overthrown the political tyranny of Charles, but in attempting to build up by force a kingdom of the saints on earth, they had established a spiritual tyranny, quite as irksome and quite as perishable, of their own. Meanwhile they had failed to preserve the reputation for sanctity which formed the chief basis of their authority. As soon as they had attained power, they were joined by men who professed their principles merely for selfish ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... pinnacle of learning so that I could neither fly nor fall, I could at least watch Tim as he struggled higher and higher. And Mary was watching with me! That was what made my work that day seem doubly irksome and the hours trebly long; for she was waiting to hear from him, and when the sun seemed to rest on the mill gable I should be free to go to her. So the minutes dragged. It made me angry. Ordinarily I speak quietly ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... of your return. The uncertainty makes it more irksome. The company you speak of will be as welcome as any at this juncture; but my health and mind seem to require the calm recreation of friendly sympathy; the heart that has long been united to mine by the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... serious matter brought into violent collision the three parties whose characteristics and dispositions have just been described. The supremacy of the Guises was insupportable to the Reformers, and irksome to many lukewarm or wavering members of the Catholic nobility. An edict of the king's had revoked all the graces and alienations of domains granted by his father. The crown refused to pay its most lawful debts, and duns were flocking to the court. To get rid of them, the Cardinal of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said my father. 'All that Tom needed to make him a good rubber was enthusiasm. I am strongly of opinion that without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome, except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the thighs, the most numbing for the fingers. It is a profession, Henry, demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... household gods, than to go publicly into exile? Our forefathers, strangers and shepherds, when there was nothing in these places but woods and marshes, erected a new city in a very short time; do we, with a Capitol and citadel safe, and the temples of the gods still standing, feel it irksome to build up what has been burnt? and what we individually would have done, if our private residence had been burned down, shall we as a body refuse to do in the case ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... well in Paris was Necker. His wife had very possibly begun by this time her rather austere salon, where free-thinking was strictly tabooed, and Morellet, her right-hand man in the entertainment of the guests, confesses the restraint was really irksome; and if she had, Morellet would probably have brought Smith there. But anyhow Sir James Mackintosh, who had means of hearing about Smith from competent sources, states explicitly that he was upon intimate terms with Necker during his residence in the French capital, that he formed ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... had charmed the Queen, had, by saving her life, made England her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded by other destructive emotions. It was true that Angele had saved her life, but Michel had charmed her eye. He had proved himself a more gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... All this chattering grew irksome to me; and since I still felt strongly agitated, I rose at last from table, saying that I wanted to go and get new clothes of blue silk and stuff for him and me; adding that I meant to walk in procession after four days at the feast of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... because, even with the quietest animal, the two hands may be needed for control or guidance. Besides, an even feeling on the reins when they are held in one hand, can be maintained only by keeping the hand in the centre-line of the horse's body, which is naturally a more or less irksome task for the rider. With only one hand on the reins, the rider's available strength is reduced by nearly one-half, and the reins have to be held much shorter than if both hands were on them. One-handed riding is all right for military men, who have to wield a sword or ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... fact that they had succeeded in promoting by proxy the mission which had brought them to Belgium, the Americans found the next day an exceedingly irksome one. In the company of Lieutenant von Holtz they were permitted to walk about the city, but they found little pleasure in that, owing to the bustle of outgoing troops and the arrival of others ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... no real pleasure and comfort. Listlessly Amy wandered about, having no zest for any of her former amusements, and feeling thoroughly unhappy. She began to long for the very duties which had seemed so irksome to her; she could hardly keep from tears when she saw others busy over lessons, or her mother doing work which had ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... she presently retired Where Anselm had so earnestly desired; The lovers came, but they were soon dismissed, And told, from visits they must all desist; Their assiduities were irksome grown, And she was weary of their lovesick tone. Save one, they all were odious to the fair; A handsome youth, with smart engaging air; But whose attentions to the belle were vain; In spite of arts, his aim he could not gain; His name was Atis, known to love and ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... place, they were not very satisfactory, for Anna and her grandfather were seldom left alone. She did not, therefore, grow to be any fonder of Back Row, or to associate her visits there with anything pleasant. Indeed, few as they were, she soon began to find them rather irksome, and to be relieved when they were over. This was the only subject on which she was not perfectly confidential to her new friend, Delia, who was now her constant companion, for although Anna went very seldom to Dornton, Mrs Forrest made no objection ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... capricious; I am much obliged for all favors bestowed, Mr. Hamilton. Perhaps you considered me too lazy to look out for another friend; I am active enough, I assure you, to provide myself with one, and to release you from the irksome ties your indolence has imposed ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... worse than yesterday. I felt as if imprisoned. Dr Johnson said, it was irksome to be detained thus: yet he seemed to have less uneasiness, or more patience, than I had. What made our situation worse here was, that we had no rooms that we could command; for the good people had no notion that a man could have any occasion but ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... for offices, and other matters incidental to the commander-in-chief, that, without assistance, I must abandon all idea of accomplishing this necessary work before I embark in new scenes, which will render them more voluminous, and, of course, more difficult; a measure which would be extremely irksome to me to submit to, especially as it respects my accounts, which are yet in confusion; my earnest wish and desire being, when I quit the stage of human action, to leave all matters in such a situation as to give ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... older, the seclusion to which he was subjected by his guardian, Meinhard, Count von Goertz, became so irksome to him that he gladly accepted a proposal from the Italian Ghibellines to put himself at their head. In 1267 he set out, in company with Frederick, and with a following of some ten thousand men, and crossed the Alps to Lombardy, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... order of secularization, and a little later the domination of the Americans. Those opposed to the control of the fathers are to set the Indians free. They are to be "removed from under the irksome restraint of cold-blooded priests who have held them in bondage not far removed from slavery"!! They are to have unrestrained liberty, the broadest and fullest intercourse with the great American people, the white, Caucasian American, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... efficiency of the workhouse-test. On the other hand, it is to be remembered that the Irish are naturally or by habit a migratory people, fond of change, full of hope, and eager for experiment. They had never been tied down to one limited settlement, and consequently confinement of any kind would be irksome, and therefore the test of the workhouse is likely to prove fully as efficient in Ireland as in England. With respect to the' supply of local machinery for the execution of the law, Mr. Nicholls considered that by making the unions sufficiently large, there would be no difficulty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... high sealskin boots with large, soft moccasin bottoms. It was their expectation that we should remain in camp until they got back with other things to aid my journey out; but, although I was still very ill, and the heated tent was comfortable, I found waiting irksome, and at daylight the next morning (Sunday, November 1st) the boys and I pulled up stakes. To protect my hands during the journey I made a pair of mittens from a piece of blanket duffel that had been brought back from ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Colmache, however, does not think so, and all but abuses the king for an act which, being spontaneous, has the look, if it had not the reality, of benevolence. His manner was, it seems, constrained, the task itself was irksome, and his "bearing," as compared with that of the dying statesman, tant son peu bourgeois. "Despite the old faded dressing-gown of the one, and the snuff-colored coat, stiff neckcloth, and polished boots of the other, the veriest barbarian could have told at a glance ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... unpleasant consequences arising out of his silence. Had he ventured to oppose the plans of his confederates they would have immediately turned upon him, and ... There were, perhaps, past facts which he did not wish the world to remember. His frequent fits of raging temper arose from this irksome feeling, and was his way—a futile way—of revenging himself on his jailors for the durance in which they kept him. The man who believed himself to be omnipotent in South Africa, and who was considered so powerful ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... intellectual short-sightedness on the part of the positivist man of science, if he did not recognize the historical accomplishments, which his predecessors on the field of science have left behind as indelible traces of their struggle against the unknown in that brilliant and irksome domain. For this reason, the adherents of the positive school of criminology feel the most sincere reverence for the classic school of criminology. And I am glad today, in accepting the invitation of the students of Naples, to say, that this is another reason why their invitation was ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... you do not know how I love you! The day that first I saw you, the dark world Grew shining, for your eyes lighted my gloom. Since then, all things have changed; to me you are Some brightest, unknown creature from the skies. This irksome life, 'gainst which my heart rebelled, Seems almost fair and pleasant; for, alas! Till I knew you wandering, alone, oppressed, I wept and struggled, I had ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... hand pointed to nine he rose for the benediction. And never did a crowd of imprisoned schoolboys show more glad exultation at their release than was generally indicated by these brethren and sisters when the words of benediction dismissed them from their period of irksome restraint. Every man, and every woman, too, found a tongue. We broke up into little knots. A busy hum of many voices replaced the dead silence. The "social meeting" commenced when the "prayer-meeting" ended. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... the end than to fight the quiet and resolute creature who cooed so softly in his ears, and rode him with such iron resolution. Moreover, he knew now as the result of experience that if it came to a struggle he would be worsted in the end if it took all day. It would certainly be less irksome, and more gracious, to get the thing behind you. To jump, and to pretend you liked it, was the generous and the politic thing to do. Moreover, it was all in the direction of home and bran-mash; while there was Banjo golly-woshing ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... thought it. She seems a sociable, bright sort of girl. Don't you want to talk to her? I know you do. I see it in your face. You think it will be irksome for me, but, never mind, we need not stay long. I must not be selfish nor indulge in the wish to keep you all to myself. I know you want to talk to Miss Meadowsweet, and so you shall,—I won't ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... who know the peasantry of Ireland, judge of his riches! He now commenced a regular exhibition of his person, which he continued until the last two years of his life, when, having realized a sufficient fortune to keep a carriage and live in good style, he declined what was always exceedingly irksome to his feelings. He was unoffending and amiable in his manners, to his friends and acquaintance, of whom he had latterly a large circle; and he was neither averse to a cheerful glass nor pleasant company. He had naturally good sense, and his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... at length. Is he going to love and cherish her as some irksome duty? He has never proffered love. In that old time all was demanded and given. Violet will demand nothing and be content. He draws her to him, the round, quivering chin rests in the palm of his hand, the eyes are tearful, entreating. He kisses the red, tremulous lips, not ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... irritation the more lively that this shore life began to be irksome. Not that his conscience disturbed him any more than in the treatment of the blacks; he thought it as honorable to war with the Spaniards in the New World, as to be beaten by them in the Old; but he compared his present chief, Captain Stradling, with his former commander, the noble ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... ordered a dyke to be constructed, which, by uniting Salamis to the mainland, would enable him to oust the Athenians from their last retreat. But he had never exhibited much zest for the war; the inevitable fatigues and dangers of a campaign were irksome to his indolent nature, and winter was approaching, which he would be obliged to spend far from Susa, in the midst of a country wasted and trampled underfoot by two great armies. Mardonius, guessing what ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a day three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, with the same person, in the same room, at the same table, is unspeakably irksome to him. He may love that other person with completeness and constancy, but he occasionally demands what Bernard Shaw calls "domestic ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... was almost appalled at the condition in which he found himself. It more than equalled all the descriptions which he had read of unquenchable love. He could not eat; he could not occupy himself with any affairs: all business was tedious to him, and all society irksome. He lay awake long hours, seeing the arch black eyes and rosy cheeks and piquant little mouth; worn out by restlessness, he slept, only to see the eyes and cheeks and mouth more vividly. It was all to no purpose that he reasoned with himself,—that he asked himself ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... them, and it was this: Take, saith he, a great many of the foulest tobacco-pipe heads you can get, and boil them in milk, and make a posset of that milk, and make your daughter drink the posset-drink up. He did so, and gave his girl it, and made her drink it up; the which became so irksome and nauseous to her stomach, and made her so sick, that she could never abide to meddle with tobacco-pipe heads any more, and so was cured of that disease. Thou lovest thy sin, and neither rod nor good words will as yet reclaim thee. Well, take heed; if thou wilt not be reclaimed, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... can't go there with any comfort or pleasure," he answered, apologetically; "I can't go there; each year as I visit the place, their ways seem more strange and irksome to me. Whilst enjoying her company, I must of course come in familiar contact with those by whom she is surrounded. Sustaining the position that I do—passing as I am for a white man—I am obliged to be very circumspect, and have often been compelled to give her pain ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... The practice of agriculture to a point where it shall prove the main and constant supply of a people, however, implies a degree of sedentariness to which our Indians as a rule had not attained and an amount of steady labor without immediate return which was peculiarly irksome to them. Moreover, the imperfect methods pursued in clearing, planting, and cultivating sufficiently prove that the Indians, though agriculturists, were in the early stages of development as such—a fact also attested by the imperfect and one-sided division ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... thought, Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to protect,—honest, manly toil,—honest as the day is long,—that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweet,—which all men respect and have consecrated: one of the sacred band, doing the needful, but irksome drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed this from the window, and was not abroad and stirring about a similar business. The day went by, and at evening I passed the yard of another neighbor, who keeps many servants, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... during his captivity in Italy as a Peloponnesian hostage, he solicited old Cato to intercede with the Senate for his release, and that of his countrymen: this old politician told him that he had better continue in his present condition, however irksome, than apply again to that formidable authority for their relief; that he ought to imitate the wisdom of his countryman Ulysses, who, when he was once out of the den of the Cyclops, had too much sense to venture again into the same cavern. But I conceive too high an opinion of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mentioned and I sat in the master's desk, which he rarely, if ever, occupied himself; and although we were diligent upon the whole, yet occasionally our industry and conduct as learners were far from deserving approbation. To me the confinement was frequently irksome and oppressive, especially when the days were bright with the beauty of sunshine. There were ways, woods, and even wilds, not far apart from the village, which seemed eternally wooing the step to retirement, and the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and more irksome. It seemed to Orme as though he had been behind the panel for hours. After ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... doubts and dreads, that by their very dumbness were becoming real to him, too. If only she could tell him what she feared! It could not be poverty—that was not like her—besides, he had enough for both. It could not be loss of a social position, which was but irksome to her! Surely it was not fear that he would cease to love her! What was it? In ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I mind me, something of the kind Did surely haunt that day the mother's mind, Making it irksome to bide all alone By her own quiet hearth. Tho' never known For idle gossipry was Jenny Gray, Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay At home with her own thoughts, but took her way To her next neighbour's, half ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the scenes which had for a thousand miles rendered the passage irksome, began to break as we approached Natchez. This place takes its name from the Natch-i-toches, or Red River, which falls into the Mississippi, the abbreviation being a corruption of the original Indian ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... in the day time, was not unpleasant for prisoners of war. Confinement is disagreeable to all men, and very irksome to us, Yankees, who have rioted, as it were, from our infancy, in a sort of Indian freedom. Our situation was the most unpleasant during the night. It was the practice, every night at sun-set, to count the prisoners as they went down below; and then the hatch-ways were ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... man, unless he is in strong health or enjoys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a cool corner of a house and sit upon the chairs of civilisation. About that time, the sharp stones, the planks, the upturned boxes of Silverado, began to grow irksome to my body; I set out on that hopeless, never-ending quest for a more comfortable posture; I would be fevered and weary of the staring sun; and just then he would begin courteously to withdraw his countenance, the shadows lengthened, the aromatic airs awoke, and an indescribable but happy change ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distance from the madding crowd, in a wood; and I blush to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges entailed by the situation. As I was (and am) naturally of a frank and open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new regime I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I finally adopted to free myself from the consequences of my own powers excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... pleasures. Another, who possessed the same, or even a more infamous, title to favor, was invested with the consulship. A confidential secretary, who had acquired uncommon skill in the art of forgery, delivered the indolent emperor, with his own consent from the irksome duty of signing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... without eagerness, to our personal wants. Whilst he was engaged in providing thus kindly for us, how came it that in spit of ourselves we felt our gratitude die upon our lips? It is that our host whilst he performs the duties of hospitality, seems to be obeying an irksome necessity of his condition: he treats it as a duty imposed upon him by his situation, not as a pleasure. By the side of the hearth sits a woman with a baby on her lap: she nods to us without disturbing herself. Like the pioneer, this woman is in the prime of life; her appearance ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school. It was not long before the routine of an American private school became irksome to her venturous spirit, and she conceived the idea of touring Europe with rich girls who had nothing else to do. From this developed the Neuilly scheme, which provided for the needs of that increasing ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... stayed on. His promises to his old master, his love of power, his distrust of the capacity of others, all made it hard for him to withdraw when he still might have done so with dignity. We cannot doubt that his presence was irksome to his master; his influence and authority were too great; before them, even the majesty of the Throne was dimmed; the Minister was a ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... about to give a discourse, and much as she admired him, this idea prompted her to quit the church; for, though she could sit still for hours to hear music, she found nothing more irksome than to be compelled to listen for any length of time to a speech she might not interrupt. She was therefore rising to leave; but Papias held her back and entreated her so pathetically with his blue baby-eyes not to take him away ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Mrs. Morton to luncheon, and soon after that the nursery dinner was served. Hannah waited upon us very nicely, and then took her place at the table. She was a thoroughly respectable girl, and her presence was not in the least irksome to me. I always thought it was a grand old feudal custom when all the retainers dined at the baron's table, taking their place below the salt. Surely there can be nothing derogatory to human dignity in that, seeing that we shall ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... that German should not simply be spoken but spoken "out loud." He invariably prefaced his inquiries with the word "Please," and he insisted upon ascribing an omniscience to his employer that it was extremely irksome to justify after a strenuous morning of enthusiastic literary effort. He now took the opportunity of a lull in the solicitudes and congratulations that had followed Mr. Direck's appearance—and Mr. Direck was so little shattered ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... credulous. That was when I had reached the age when I was older, I hope, than I shall ever be again. There is no such certainty of knowledge on all subjects as one holds at eighteen and at eighty, and at eighteen I found his care and solicitude irritating and irksome. With the intolerance of youth, I could not see the love that was back of his anxiety, and which should have softened it for me with a halo and made me considerate and grateful. Now I see it—I see it now that it is too late. But surely he understood, he knew how I looked up to him, how I ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... remain. I beg of you not to refuse; do me this favour. I have assured him that I am incapable of filling your office. It does not suit my habits; and besides, to tell you the truth, the business is too irksome for me." I proceeded to the cabinet without replying to Duroc. The First Consul came up to me smiling, and pulling me by the ear, as he did when he was in the best of humours, said to me, "Are you still in the sulks?" and leading me to my usual seat ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... serf, as has been shown, [22] might not leave the manor in which he was born, he might not sell his holdings of land, and, finally, he had to give up a large part of his time to work without pay for the lord of the manor. This system of forced labor was at once unprofitable to the lord and irksome to his serfs. After the revival of trade and industry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had brought more money into circulation, [23] the lord discovered how much better it was to hire men to work for him, as he needed them, instead of depending on serfs who ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... myself, I mind me how very pitiful you are all by nature, so often do I recognize that this present work will, to your thinking, have a grievous and a weariful beginning, inasmuch as the dolorous remembrance of the late pestiferous mortality, which it beareth on its forefront, is universally irksome to all who saw or otherwise knew it. But I would not therefore have this affright you from reading further, as if in the reading you were still to fare among sighs and tears. Let this grisly beginning be none other to you than is to wayfarers a rugged and steep mountain, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in every respect, all the happiness which one feels when those beloved beings from whom one had been long severed, and who formed the last living ties of affection for an unhappy being who had been severely tried by a capricious destiny. But the want of excitement in which I lived soon became irksome; my life had been too active, so that the sudden transition could not fail to prove injurious to my health, and the idea of submitting during the remainder of my existence to a life sterile and monotonous became intolerable. Not knowing how to employ myself, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... employed do, no doubt, find in some trades to-day that their relations are strained and irksome. They would do well to take a lesson from the Army, where, with very few exceptions, there is harmony and understanding between those who take orders and those who give them. It is only in the Army that you can see realized the ideal ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... residence in the district. To the closely-confined and overworked residents in towns the crispness and buoyancy of the atmosphere impart a feeling of lightness and exhilaration rarely experienced except in a highland district, making mental and physical labour less irksome and life more enjoyable. ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... Italians feared to be overheard by these enemies; but it was good dimostrazione to be silent before the oppressor, and not let him know that they even enjoyed their dinners well enough, under his government, to chat sociably over them. To tell the truth, this duty was an irksome one to Tonelli, who liked far better to dine, as he sometimes did, at a cook-shop, where he met the folk of the people (gente del popolo), as he called them; and where, though himself a person of civil condition, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... sat still in anxious suspense about the non-arrival of our drays—the ground having been so good. With a country so interesting before us, this delay was doubly irksome, and as the cattle could only be watered by coming forward, why they did not come was the question; and this was not solved until evening, when a messenger came forward to ask if they might come, and to inform ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... was accustomed to make quick decisions without consulting any one, and he should find a partner irksome, but he was beginning to realize acutely that business, even to an American brain, packed with its traditions and energies, was not even the half of life, should be a means not an end; he set his teeth as he walked rapidly along Montgomery ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... works with which he had voluntarily made himself familiar, he yet resolutely sat himself down to study; and though it was clearly against the grain, I augured the more favorably from tokens of a determination to do what was at the present irksome for a purpose in the future. Yet whether I should have approved the purpose had I thoroughly understood it, is another question. There were abysses, both in his past life and in his character, which I could not penetrate. There ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ladies, by whom he was called Beau Law, while the other sex, despising his foppery, nicknamed him Jessamy John. At the death of his father, which happened in 1688, he withdrew entirely from the desk, which had become so irksome, and being possessed of the revenues of the paternal estate of Lauriston, he proceeded to London, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... conclusion of hostilities, peace was declared, the crew of a privateer found it exceedingly irksome to give up the roving life, and were liable to drift into piracy. Often it happened that, after a long naval war, crews were disbanded, ships laid up, and navies reduced, thus flooding the countryside with idle mariners, and filling the roads with begging and starving seamen. These ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... were, also, a few low bushes. Although the plain is nearly three thousand feet above the sea, the sun was very powerful; and the heat as well as the clouds of impalpable dust, rendered the travelling extremely irksome. Our course during the day lay nearly parallel to the Cordillera, but gradually approaching them. Before sunset we entered one of the wide valleys, or rather bays, which open on the plain: this soon narrowed into a ravine, where a little higher up the house of Villa Vicencio is situated. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... natural aptitude or inclination, he made himself an educator by choice; and, having once chosen his profession, he gradually developed an interest in it, a pride in it, a love of it which astonished some of his friends. How irksome it was to him at the beginning we saw just now in his address to the Teachers. How irksome in many of its incidents it remained we can see in his ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the system is diffused over the whole life. To the majority of mankind, such a state is evidently unattainable. They must, perforce, pass a large part of their lives in employments both irksome and toilsome, demanding an expenditure of energy which exhausts the system, and yet consuming that energy upon subjects incapable of interesting the nobler faculties. When such employments are intermitted, those noble instincts, fancy, imagination, and curiosity, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... all alone at Nohant as you are all alone at Croisset. Maurice and Lina have gone to Milan, to see Calamatta who is dangerously ill. Should they have the misfortune to lose him, they will have to go to Rome to settle his estate, an irksome task added to a sorrow, it is always like that. That sudden separation was sad, my poor Lina weeping at leaving her daughters and weeping at not being with her father. They left me the care of the children whom I rarely leave and who only let me work ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... discords, or by the invasion of new nomadic tribes of a different race who drove the old settlers before them to take possession of their settlements, massacred them if they resisted and reduced those who remained to an irksome subjection. Such invasions, of course, might also be perpetrated with the same results by regular armies, led by kings and generals from some other settled and organized country. The alternative between ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... though the Guaranis at first entered into the Jesuit reductions as a refuge against their persecutors, the Portuguese and Spaniards, soon, as was only natural to men accustomed to a wild forest life, they found the Jesuit discipline too irksome, and often fled back to the woods. Then the poor priest, left without his flock, had to take up the trail of the flying neophytes, follow them to the recesses of the forests, and ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... neglected all the studies that did not appeal to him, to read with avidity English poetry and fiction, Scottish legend and history. During his summer vacations he worked at lighthouse engineering. The out-of-door life was just what he liked; but the office work was irksome to him. When finally he made his dislike known, his father, although bitterly disappointed at his son's aversion to the calling followed by two generations of Stevensons, nevertheless consented to a change; and they compromised on the law. In 1875 Stevenson succeeded in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... you to shoot at a popinjay,' I answered, laughing; 'but as to the Mayor's offer, we can but go to meat with him now, and should it prove irksome it will be easy for you to plead some excuse, and so get honourably quit of it. But bear in mind, Sir Gervas, that such households are in very truth different to any with which you are acquainted, so curb your ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... particular writers and works. Still in an inaugural lecture it is customary to take some wider subject; and so I fear you may have to-day to lament the truth of Addison's remark: 'There is nothing in nature so irksome as general discourses, especially when they turn chiefly upon words.' Mine ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... Northern States, came to him marks of admiration and respect. Just at this time he received many applications for his photograph with autograph attached. I believe there were none of the little things in life so irksome to him as having his picture taken in any way, but, when able to comply, he could not refuse to do what was asked of him by those who were willing and anxious to do so ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the equal shadows morning and evening supply an excellent meridian for a thirteen-year-old astronomer. But these meridians disappear, it takes time to trace them, and you are obliged to work in one place. So much trouble and attention will at last become irksome. We foresaw this ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... attractiveness, none who would have sought her could meet the high requirements of her ideality; she never saw her hero,—and so never married. Family cares, the tending of young children, she often confessed, were peculiarly irksome to her. She had the head of a student, a passionate love for the world of books. A Protestant convent, where she might devote herself without interruption to study, was her ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest appreciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... standing by his side, and, it being my turn, he made way for me, and I said: "During the last few days and nights of agreeable, though rather irksome, intercourse, I have learned to love General Butler, but I must declare that in an option between him and the Almighty I have a prejudice in favor ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... she seems to be sleeping. She has been excused from school this afternoon, on account of a sick, nervous headache, to which she has recently been frequently subject. Finding the solitude of her own chamber rather irksome, she had sought Mrs. Miller's room, where she was ever a welcome visitor. To Kate she had imparted a knowledge of the letter which she supposed ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... rain, and exchanging the dull lowering sky for the clear dark-blue starlight, proved enough to renovate their drooping hearts, and to excite them to make the best use they could of their limbs; so that by persevering they at last reached a part of the waste where the travelling became less irksome, the drifting sand having, in this particular part, formed itself into larger hills, which, in course of time, had become coated with short grass, and thus afforded very pleasant ground to walk over. But this relief from fatigue was attended with increased peril to the erring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... world opened to Ivy Geer. It was as if a corpse, cold, inert, lifeless, had suddenly sprung up, warm, invigorated, informed with a spirit which led her own spell-bound. Grammar,—Grammar, which had been a synonyme for all that was dry, irksome, useless,—a beating of the wind, the crackling of thorns under a pot,—Grammar even assumed for her a charm, a wonder, a glory. She saw how the great and wise had shrined in fitting words their purity, and wisdom, and sorrow, and suffering, and penitence; and how, as this generation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... How irksome, to have to entertain a young lady; to be obliged to talk when I did not feel inclined; to listen when I was impatient and weary; to have to thank her, perhaps fifty times a day, for meaningless expressions of condolence or affected pity; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... extremely averse to active occupations. An active disposition is generally a pretty safe gauge of mental capacity. Intellectual vigor leads to action. To a person of mental resources inactivity is more irksome than the hardest work, and sluggishness is justly used as a synonyme of imbecility. Exertion under the pressure of want is, however, not incompatible with an inert disposition, and spontaneous activity, the love of busy-ness for its own sake, can be ascribed only to men and monkeys; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the Doctrines, such the Lessons, which are endeavoured to be inculcated in the following Sheets by an Example in natural Life. The more unfashionable, the more irksome, these Doctrines, these Lessons, are to the Young, the Gay, and the Healthy, the more necessary are they to be inculcated. Religion never since the Reformation was at so low an Ebb as at present: And if there ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... exceedingly important that the teacher should see that these written exercises are not made distasteful to the pupil. They are very valuable if they are not considered irksome. The object is not so much to give skill in composition as to create a taste for wide and excellent reading. It would be better to allow this written reproduction to drop rather than to associate the pleasures of literature with ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Even now, she speaks with pleasure of being in Mansfield in June; but June is at a great distance, and I believe I shall write to her. I have nearly determined on explaining myself by letter. To be at an early certainty is a material object. My present state is miserably irksome. Considering everything, I think a letter will be decidedly the best method of explanation. I shall be able to write much that I could not say, and shall be giving her time for reflection before she resolves on her answer, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... must have been hard for him who spent his mornings at the pier, surrounded by admiring throngs of people, who at every turn addressed him as "Emperor," to drop his royal air the moment he set foot in his own house. It cannot be denied that he found it a bit irksome having to fetch wood and water for Katrina and then to be spoken to as if he had gone backward in life ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... many years of his life had old Isaac Mole led a wandering career, that he found it exceedingly difficult, not to say irksome, to settle down to the prosy existence which they had all ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... said that "attention to the punctilios of politeness is a proof at once of self-respect, and of respect for your friend." Though irksome at first, these trifles soon cease to be matters for memory, and become things of mere habit. To the thoroughly well-bred they are a second nature. Let no one neglect them who is desirous of pleasing in society; and, above all, let no ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... various amusements, and, above all, the beauty of the women; for they had been captivated by the naked charms of the dancing nymphs of Xaragua. In this delightful region, emancipated from the iron rule of the Adelantado, and relieved from the necessity of irksome labor, they might lead a life of perfect freedom and indulgence, and have a world of beauty at their command. In short, Roldan drew a picture of loose sensual enjoyment, such as he knew to be irresistible with men of idle and dissolute habits. His followers acceded with ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... this style is pleasant enough, but when the unhappy traveller has to live, and cook, &c., for days together in one of these craft it becomes very irksome and trying to the temper. Moreover, the smell from the remnants of the crew's meals, such as stale fish and decayed fruit and vegetables—which they will not take the trouble to throw overboard, but invariably drop under the "lanties" or bamboo ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... darkness where the gaps between their red trunks showed a way into the wood, increased the gloom of the weary travellers. Yet they rode on, Sholto eagerly, Malise grimly, and the Lord James with the dogged resignation of a good knight who may be depended on to see an adventure through, however irksome it may be proving. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... ruined peasantry, whom Duckworth had gathered together to serve the purposes of his revenge, some of the boldest and the most experienced in war had volunteered to follow Richard Shelton. The service of watching Sir Daniel's movements in the town of Shoreby had from the first been irksome to their temper, and they had of late begun to grumble loudly and threaten to disperse. The prospect of a sharp encounter and possible spoils restored them to good humour, and they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... early years of the administration of the Government the personal direction of appointments to the civil service may not have been an irksome task for the Executive, but now that the burden has increased fully a hundredfold it has become greater than he ought to bear, and it necessarily diverts his time and attention from the proper discharge of other duties ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... paid the full market price for them. He had walked home because it was impossible to keep warm driving, and felt tired and morose. The man had passed his prime and was beginning to find the labour he had never shirked more irksome than it had been, while he dispensed with a hired hand in winter, when there was less to be done. Clarke neglected no opportunity of saving ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... wills yield to His, and, under the hand of His Holy Spirit and the hammer of His mighty word, take the fashion and form of His own. Thus, His will and their wills being brought into perfect harmony, His people feel their duty to be their delight, and regard His holy service as no irksome bondage, but the truest liberty and ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... in perfect serenity (for the simple reason that it doesn't require a "humorist" to paint himself striped and stand on his head every fifteen minutes.) The trouble was, that I was only bent on "working up an atmosphere" and that is to me a most fidgety and irksome thing, sometimes. I avoid it, usually, but in this case it was absolutely necessary, else every reader would be applying the atmosphere of his own or sea experiences, and that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no anger about it. The stone had been slung leisurely. Before that, the boy had been brought in from his sheep-herding to be anointed king. Samuel had seen it in a vision, and not otherwise.... David found Saul's armor irksome, took up his staff, and went to the brook for good, sizable stones, just as if he had spied a wolf slavering at the herds from the brow of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... clerk Monroe, and reinstated him with an increased salary. Great was the sorrow in the ragged school at the loss of the teacher; and it was with some regret that he abandoned the place. He felt no especial vocation to the career of a missionary; but his duties had become less irksome than at the beginning, if not absolutely pleasant. His own position, however, was such that he could not afford to continue in his self-denying occupation. Easelmann was one of the first to congratulate him upon his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... as much as possible "on their own" or, if partnerships are made, they should not be of a binding or restricting order, and provision should always be made for the partnership to be dissolved when it has become irksome. ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... though little suited either to the taste or inclination of Sophia, were, however, less irksome to her than her own thoughts, that formed the entertainment of the night, during which she never once ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... she was in appearance having her will subdued to mine, I always chose a moment when I foresaw she would soon be tired of play. There was sufficient resistance to make restraint pleasurable, not enough to render it irksome. In my punishments I acted on a similar principle. I used to tie her hands behind her (like the man in Krafft-Ebing's case), but only for a few moments; I once shut her in a sort of cupboard-room, also for a very short time. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was worth any number of pictures, as if he were blind to the artistic quality in a painted portrait. But this was generally said in his attempts to persuade us to give up the idea of having his portrait painted, an operation very irksome to him. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... in his talents and discretion. In 1821, he took the command of a squadron, for the protection of our trade in the Mediterranean, in which he continued for three years. On his return he was offered a seat in the Board of Navy Commissioners, but, finding bureau duties irksome, he accepted, in 1826, the command of our navy in the Pacific, where he also continued three years, Afterward he was placed in command of the Baltimore station, where he remained, with the exception of a short interval, until transferred to the harbor of New York. Since 1847, he had held the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... Then came the Major's leave-taking, and truth to tell our friend Pen was not sorry when he was left alone to enter upon his new career, and we may be sure that the Major on his part was very glad to have done his duty by Pen, and to have finished that irksome work. Having left Pen in the company of Harry Foker, who would introduce him to the best set at the University, the Major rushed off to London and again took up ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... least support life, and he promised to do so, begging me to stay with him until I should be independent. The day following I was engaged to pull a punkah in the house of an English lawyer connected with an immense lawsuit involving one of the Mohammedan principalities. For this irksome work I was to receive six rupees—twelve shillings—monthly, but before the month was up I was transferred, by the kindness of the English lawyer and the good offices of my co-religionist the moolah, to the retinue of the Nizam of Haiderabad, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... finding independent work? Will not many women now engaged in domestic work under circumstances which make it repugnant to them, abandon it and seek employment under other circumstances? As unhappiness in marriage is almost the only discomfort sufficiently irksome to induce a woman to break up her home, and economic dependence the only compulsion sufficiently stringent to force her to endure such unhappiness, the solution of the problem of finding independent employment for women may cause a great number of childless unhappy marriages to break up spontaneously, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... majority of mankind still require to be released from the drudgery of irksome, physical exertion, which, when power has been cheapened, will be seen to be to a very large extent avoidable. Pleasurable exercise will be substituted for the monotonous, manual labour which, while it continues, generally precludes the possibility of mental improvement. ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... response in church, which one is in a hurry to get over, and which has almost the suggestion of an imperious law, to which one is bound to submit, and of a state of bondage, which will, perhaps, be very irksome, since the whole of existence ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... ninth day Spurlock was up and about; that is, he was strong enough to walk alone, from the companion to his chair, to lean upon the rail when the chair grew irksome, to join Ruth and his employer at lunch and dinner: strong enough to argue about books, music, paintings. He was, in fact, quite eager to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... nothing more to add: and whether intelligence, such as this, or total suspense, would be least irksome, I know not. If my mother bears her journey tolerably well, I have yet one more effort to make; and of that the success or the failure will be instantly communicated to Miss Beverley, by her ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... found for Watts a bride in the person of Miss Ellen Terry. The painter and the youthful actress were married in Kensington in February of that year, and Watts took over Little Holland House. The marriage, however, was irksome, both to the middle-aged painter and the vivacious child of sixteen, whose words, taken from her autobiography, are the best comment we ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... been drilled to write by certain fixed and unchangeable rules of rhetoric and grammar will produce similar compositions. They have no literary style, for style is individuality and character—the style is the man, and grammar tends to obliterate individuality. No study is so irksome to everybody, except the sciolists who teach it, as grammar. It remains forever a bad taste in the mouth of the man of ideas, and has weaned bright minds innumerable from a desire to express themselves through ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... rein-deer moss being purely white, like hoar frost, the scarlet colour of the strawberry mingling thickly with it, conveyed pleasure to the eye, and a feeling of delicacy to the mind. Our path did not become less irksome now we had left the gravel behind, for the moss yielded with its softness so much to the feet, that it sometimes covered our ankles; but panting with desire to ascend the supreme brow of the mountain, fatigue succumbed to the resuscitation of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Maimonides endeavors to reconcile the conclusions of philosophy with biblical laws and Talmudical traditions. His method is both original and valuable; indeed, this deserves to be considered the most important part of his work. Detailed exposition of his reasoning may prove irksome; we shall, therefore, consider it as briefly ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the System here mentioned cannot be questioned; and it is much to be regretted that it is not strictly enforced in every regiment in the service. Young officers may find it irksome at first; but they soon become sensible of the advantages, and learn to applaud the commandant who has had the firmness to consult their permanent interests more than their present inclinations. [W. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the next morning, Charteris riding out to take up again the nomadic life and open-air work that he loved, while Gerrard remained to begin his irksome task of trying to induce the Regents, the Durbar, the army and the citizens to lay aside their differences and aim at the common good. The Rani's one idea was to safeguard her son's position by securing the loyalty of the army at all costs. The faintest sign of discontent among the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... find it grows irksome to be coddling one's own soul indefinitely," he confided to me with the pretty gentleness which breaks through his Scotch manner once in a while. "One gets tired of one's self, the spoiled body. I hungered to do something for somebody besides ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... be developed. He discovered that she was more receptive and more effective under a pleasant stimulus than she was under the gray grind which she considered her salvation. She was still Methodist enough to believe that if a thing were hard and irksome, it must be good for her. And yet, whatever she did well was spontaneous. Under the least glow of excitement, as at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's, he had seen the apprehensive, frowning drudge of Bowers's studio flash into a resourceful and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Larry stood moveless where Casey had left him. Then fierce purpose, and a cautious recklessness, surged up and took mastery of him. It had required what Casey had told him to end his irksome waiting and wavering. No longer could he remain in his hiding-place, safe himself, trying to save Maggie by slow, indirect endeavor. The time had now come for very different methods. The time had come to step forth into the open, taking, of course, no unnecessary risk, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... solemn assurances of the innocence of her unhappy mistress: she was listened to with impatience, and dismissed with an abruptness which left no room for hope.[297] Meanwhile the captivity of Marie de Medicis became each day more irksome, through the unrestrained insolence of De Vitry, who caused her apartments to be searched by the officers under his command, her chests to be emptied, and even her bed to be displaced. The Queen devoured her mortification, and bore the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... consulship. 31. Thus the people, who could not bear the very name of king, readily submitted to a magistrate possessed of much greater power; so much do the names of things mislead us, and so little is any form of government irksome to the people, when it coincides ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... appalled at the condition in which he found himself. It more than equalled all the descriptions which he had read of unquenchable love. He could not eat; he could not occupy himself with any affairs: all business was tedious to him, and all society irksome. He lay awake long hours, seeing the arch black eyes and rosy cheeks and piquant little mouth; worn out by restlessness, he slept, only to see the eyes and cheeks and mouth more vividly. It was all to no purpose that he reasoned with himself,—that ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... under pressure for quality, yet the pressure is not irksome, because the worker understands exactly what quality is desired, and what variations ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... them, I have not the smallest doubt, if the war is to be prosecuted, of their following us in it, and justifying the measure upon our own ground. The contest then must be who can arm fastest, and where are our arms? Besides I am not clear that a discrimination will not render slavery more irksome to those who remain in it. Most of the good and evil things in this life are judged by comparison; and I fear a comparison in this case will be productive of much discontent in those, who are held in servitude. But, as this is a subject that has never employed much of my thoughts, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... me. Our unhappy marriage had taken place three years before. We brought to one another youth, wealth and position. Yet our marriage was a failure. My wife—for what reason I cannot guess—seemed to find my society irksome. In vain I tried to interest her with narratives of my travels. They seemed—in some way that I could not divine—to fatigue her. "Leave me for a little, Harold," she would say (I forgot to mention ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... people, nor court of judicature could meet, in which he was not heard to talk of Catiline and Lentulus. Indeed, he filled his books and writings with his own praises, to such an excess as to render a style, in itself most pleasant and delightful, nauseous and irksome to his hearers. This ungrateful humor, like a disease, always clove to him. Still, though fond of his own glory, he was very free from envying others, but was, on the contrary, most liberally profuse ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... when one is talking to a friend, to hedge in an odd word by way of counsel now and then; but there is something mighty irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, where one ought only to see kind words and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... were never irksome. The pair took it in turns to sit with the patient every other night, and it was only then that the hours in the green-shaded night-light seemed never ending. By day she found Bracondale always interesting ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... mornings must be spent in my studio, your afternoons devoted to continuing your studies; but I want you clearly to understand, lad, that you are not coming to visit or to play, but to learn a profession—and an honourable profession. You will find many things irksome perhaps, and have to perform many unpleasant duties, but if you work with a single heart, and try to make the best of everything, you will find, taking the rough with the smooth of it, that art is a noble profession. But I cannot ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... reputation, he was paid by the sheet, a price sufficient to keep him from starving, and that was all. To such distress must that man be driven, who is destitute of prudence to direct the efforts of his genius. In this work Mr. Boyse discovers how capable he was of the most irksome and laborious employment, when he maintained a power over his appetites, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... untoward event formed an ornament without any such stain. You will, therefore, be imprisoned as a first-class misdemeanant for the space of one calendar month; and I trust that during the retirement thus enforced upon you, which to a person of your resources should not be very irksome, you will reflect on the rashness, the incaution, the impropriety, in one word, of your conduct, and that you will never be discovered again appropriating to your personal use money which has been entrusted to your care ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... and kindly accepts of what we do. From some of our festivals we exclude the flute and garland; but if God be not present at the sacrifice, as the solemnity of the banquet, the rest is but unhallowed, unfeast-like, and uninspired. Indeed the whole is but ungrateful and irksome to such a man; for he asks for nothing at all, but only acts his prayers and adorations for fear of the public, and utters expressions contradictory to his philosophy. And when he sacrifices, he stands by and looks upon the priest as he kills the offering but as he doth upon a butcher; and when ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... his big carved chair, and touched without removing his cap, to greet the alderman, as he observed, without the accustomed prefix of your worship—"So, you are come about your prentice's fees and dues. By Saint Peter of the Fetters, 'tis an irksome matter to have such a troop of idle, mischievous, dainty striplings thrust on one, giving more trouble, and making more call and outcry than twice as many ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indeed in intention, were crammed into the pupil, the process being repeated until they often became irksome, and he was expected to become moral and religious. I saw that precepts were of little use unless those whom they were meant to benefit were educated, fortified, and disciplined in the practical means ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... regiment faulty in my grammar and doubtful in accent, ignorant especially of those things which in every civilisation are taken for granted but never explained in full; I was ignorant, therefore, of the key which alone can open that civilisation to a stranger. Things irksome or a heavy burden to the young men of my age, born and brought up in the French air, were to me, brought up with Englishmen an Englishman, odious and bewildering. Orders that I but half comprehended; simple phrases that ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... writing accounts of her outward life: "What do I care whether you live in one room or six? I want to know what your spirit is doing. What are you thinking, feeling, and reading?... My task here is irksome enough. Your father will tell you that it was not zeal for the cause, but love for my husband, which brought me hither. But since it was necessary for me to leave home to be earning somewhat, I ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... of Ahab, Hamilton, Have you, in the last region of your dreaming, To do with "people"? You may be the devil In your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoals Are waiting on the progress of our ship Unless you steer it, but you'll find it irksome Alone there in the stern; and some warm day There'll be an inland music in the rigging, And afterwards on deck. I'm not affined Or favored overmuch at Monticello, But there's a mighty swarming of new bees About the premises, and all have wings. If you hear something buzzing before long, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was the liaison between organized labor, which was conservative in the main, and the radical element, both in and out of the organization. He played a double game, and his work was always the same, to fan the discontent ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... distinction than that of being the tyrant of childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which a solitary walk, in the cool of a fine summer evening, affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so many hours, in plying the irksome ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing to say, he had better keep his pen wiped and his tongue still. There needs an infusion of strong Anglo-Saxon into religious literature, and a brawnier manliness and more impatience with insipidity, though it be prayerful and sanctimonious. He who stands with irksome repetitions asking people to "Come to Jesus," while he gives no strong common-sense reason why they should come, drives back the souls of men. If, with all the thrilling realities of eternity at hand, a man has nothing to write which can ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... use his foot," Grizel maintained, "if you once let him rise from his chair; you know they all do." And Gemmell agreed that she was right. So she managed to give Tommy as irksome a time as possible. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... circumstance which procured Chatterton's release from his irksome apprenticeship—his threat of suicide. He had often been heard to speak approvingly of suicide, and there is a story, which has, however, little authority, that once in a company of friends he drew a pistol from his pocket, put it to his head, and ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... Latin to the effect that cracking a flea and killing a camel are equally guilty. Dr. Edersheim evidently refers to the same authority in a footnote. On the whole this regulation against the killing of vermin must have been very irksome, and if the fleas were aware of it, they and the Jews must have had a lively time on the Sabbath. We cannot ascertain whether the prohibition extended to scratching. If it did, curses not loud but deep must have ascended to the throne of the Eternal; and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... disposition. Longing to see foreign lands, he had run away to sea; and by an unlucky accident, through sheer ignorance of her character, had chosen the Pandora in which to make his initiatory voyage. From the cruel treatment he had been subjected to on board the bark, he had reason to see his folly. Irksome had been his existence from the moment he set foot on the deck of the Pandora; and indeed it would have been scarce endurable but for the friendship of the brave sailor Brace, who, after a time, had taken him under his ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... each soft effusion of thy mind, Flowing thro' thy free pen, shows thee endu'd With taste so just for all of wise, and good, As bids me hope thy spirit does not find, Young as thou art, with solitude combin'd That wish of change, that irksome lassitude, Which often, thro' unvaried days, obtrude On Youth's rash bosom, dangerously inclin'd To pant for more than peace.—Rich volumes yield Their soul-endowing wealth.—Beyond e'en these Shall ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Harvard College passed in 1734, which is given above, he remarks as follows. "Our laws of 1745 contain the same identical provisions. These regulations were not a dead letter, nor do they seem to have been more irksome than many other college restraints. They presupposed originally that the college rank of the individual towards whom respect is to be shown could be discovered at a distance by peculiarities of dress; the gown ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Ruth, while just as faithful, taught because it was the best thing she could do, rather than from choice. But the duty was irksome, and often she longed to throw the book from her and give the scholars their dismissal. When such feelings possessed her, she "did penance," as she said, by giving special attention to the lessons, "for it would not do to have the ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... thoughts were thus beyond my control, my duties were not altogether irksome to me. I remembered that they kept me near her; and although I could not learn, I found that I could ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... heaven. We are none of us so little that we can do nothing; we are all necessary to the good of the whole. The highest individuality and freedom should generate the widest social love and charity. No labor is really irksome that helps the masses of our fellow men. If we have the Promethean fire, let it burn to light and warm them. The race is one, nor can we be happy while its members suffer. The moment we have done one duty faithfully, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... been at the fort about a month, a call for volunteers was made to form a guard to some thirty Indian prisoners and take some cattle to Sauk Center. I was one of the four from our company; not that I was more brave or reckless than many others, but I preferred almost anything to doing irksome guard and fatigue duties at a fort. So a little train of wagons in which to carry our camping outfit, our provisions and the few squaws and children, was made up. The guards, cattlemen and Indian men had to walk. While on this trip we did not suppose there was an Indian in the whole ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... relation I bear to her and the family, a message delivered to me is the same in effect as if given to her. I told her I did not think you would, as a gentleman, wish to hold her to any promises that might be irksome to ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the Sabbath day of the Shipley family. With what a sense of relief had she often sat and chatted with Col. Baker at the close of what had been to her an irksome day, and felt that at last the sense of propriety would not be shocked if they laughed and ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... one of them, "we are forced into discussion; we are called upon to prove, for example, the utility of prayer to an unbeliever in God, and the necessity of fasting to a man who has all his life denied the immortality of the soul; the effort is very irksome, while those who laugh are not on our side." It is not long before the continued scandal of confession tickets and the stubbornness of the bishops in not allowing ecclesiastical property to be ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Wyrd inexorable; And the storms strike down on the stony cliffs; The snows descend and seize all the earth In the dread of winter; then darkness comes And dusky night-shade. Down from the north 105 The hated hail-storms beat on heroes with fury. All on earth is irksome to man; Oft changes the work of the fates, the world under the firmament. Here treasure is fleeting; here true friends are fleeting; Here comrades are fleeting; here kinsmen are fleeting. 110 All idle and empty the earth has become.' So says the sage one in mind, as ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... battle-ground swaggered through the streets. The change from a diet of pork and beans and army hard tack was so marked that Uncle Sam's young men threw restraint to the winds, took the mask balls by storm and gallantly assailed and made willing prisoners of the fair sex. Eager to exchange their irksome life in camp for the active campaign in Mexico, it was small wonder they relieved their impatience by many a valiant dash into ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... requires great attention; to stand idle on a fine morning, unable to proceed, until by some fortunate chance, stray cattle or horses are discovered in a boundless forest, is like a calm on the line, irksome enough; but there is also the risk of losing the men sent in pursuit who, even after coming on the objects of their search, may be unable afterwards to find the camp, especially when there may be no watercourse to lead them ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... fought, and though he got the best of it, he suffered so severely that he never again attempt to interfere with me. I thus gained all the advantage a victory could have given me. I was not unhappy at the school; but I found the life rather irksome after the freedom I had been accustomed to enjoy, and I studied as hard as I was able, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... of the child not allowed to go out into the yard, but required to remain in the house in sight of his mother, the mother should not try to make the punishment more heavy by speaking again and again of his fault, and evincing her displeasure by trying to make the confinement as irksome to the child as possible; but, on the other hand, should do all in her power to alleviate it. "I am very sorry," she might say, "to have to keep you in the house. It would be much pleasanter for you to go out and play ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... long and so supremely in this country that the Hindu accepts it without questioning; and it has become more than a second nature to him, even a necessity of his being. What would be intolerably irksome to a Westerner is to the Hindu a matter of course. To the rank and file of the Hindus, caste has ceased to be a matter of question. It is the only order of life with which he is conversant; and while he may be ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... they had inspected it pretty thoroughly, and were ready to proceed, an elderly gentleman entered the hall, and, seeing Hammond, addressed him in a kindly, familiar way; not indeed as an equal friend, but with a pleasant and not irksome conversation. "I am glad to see you here again," said he. "What? I have an hour of leisure; for, to say the truth, the day hangs rather heavy till the shooting season begins. Come; as you have a friend with you, I will be your cicerone myself about the house, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had made so decided a break in the routine that Keith found himself thrust quite outside it. He had worked feverishly all the week, at about double speed; and in ordinary course would have gone on working feverishly at double speed for another week. Now, suddenly, the thought was irksome. He did not analyze this; but, characteristically, discovered an irrefutable reason for not going on with it. They rescued Gringo from Sam's care, and drove up to the house. On ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... grew more and more irksome. It seemed to Orme as though he had been behind the panel for hours. After a while ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of the imagination ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society; ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... life was not without its pleasures and excitements, yet it began to grow very irksome both to Don Pablo and Dona Isidora. Life in the wilderness, with its rude cares and rude enjoyments, may be very pleasant for a while to those who seek it as amateurs, or to that class who as colonists intend to make it a permanent thing. But neither Don Pablo nor ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see plainly that as soon as you discover obedience or disobedience in their conduct, the former is an advantage and the latter a disadvantage to them. But you ask of them only what is distasteful to them; it is always irksome to carry out the wishes of another, so by stealth they carry out their own. They are sure that if their disobedience is not known they are doing well; but they are ready, for fear of greater evils, to acknowledge, if found out, that they are doing wrong. As the reason for the duty ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... was through with the school that he hated, the boy went down to his father's store and took his turn behind the counter. Irksome as was this work, it was not without a thrilling compensation, because into the shop came many of the theatrical personages of the time to buy their cigars. They included Tony Pastor, whose name was then a household word, McKee Rankin, J. K. Mortimer, a popular ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... succeeding. A great unrest was upon me; and when I received a letter from Dick Barnard announcing his arrival at Madeira, homeward bound, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no plans for the future, but I longed to be rid of the, now irksome, routine of the practice—to be free to come and go ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... me. I will but continue to stumble into more and more serious pitfalls. The man-made restrictions are irksome. I feel always that I am a prisoner. I cannot endure it, my friend, and so I think that I shall go back to my own jungle, and lead the life that God intended that I should lead when ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unhappy. Of course, that is a poor consolation to them—only the fact remains that such is the case. In my early youth, from the moment I ceased to be under the guardianship of my relations, I began madly to enjoy all the pleasures which money could buy—and, of course, such pleasures became irksome to me. Then I launched out into the world of fashion—and that, too, soon palled upon me. I fell in love with fashionable beauties and was loved by them, but my imagination and egoism alone were aroused; my heart remained empty... I began to read, to study—but sciences also ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... by piety or by passion, into their region. And no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. Like a new soul, they renew the body. We become physically nimble and lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be so. No man fears age or misfortune or death, in their serene company, for he is transported out of the district of change. Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the difference between ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... still the father stood, observing the scene with displeasure, Looked on the weeping girl, and said in a tone of vexation: "This then must be the return that I get for all my indulgence, That at the close of the day this most irksome of all things should happen! For there is naught I can tolerate less than womanish weeping, Violent outcries, which only involve in disorder and passion, What with a little of sense had been more smoothly adjusted. Settle the thing for yourselves: ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the youth. Old trees are ill to bend, but the tender sapling is more easily impressed, and there are peculiar promises to bless the instruction of children, and to encourage to a patient and proper performance of a very trying, and not unfrequently a very irksome task. But while the brethren communicate to their interesting charge the elements of knowledge, they employ as the grand instrument for shaping their characters, the word of the gospel of Christ, and subject their pupils to a moral training, without which, ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... master, producing a paper. We could not help noticing that Tempest's name was mixed in along with ours, and that no difference was made on account of his age or status. We were then formed into double rank, and fours, and open order, and put through a hideous series of extension exercises, irksome enough at any time, but under present circumstances specially so. I heard Dicky Brown beside me groan as he stood leaning over with his left knee bent, his right leg stretched out behind, and his two arms ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... should, by going out from the forts, when the Indians were so generally watching around them, expose themselves to captivity or death, may at first appear strange and astonishing. But when the mind reflects on the tedious and irksome confinement, which they were compelled to undergo; the absence of the comforts, and frequently, of the necessaries of life, coupled with an overweening attachment to the enjoyment of forest scenes and forest pastimes, it will perhaps be matter of greater astonishment that they did not more ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... rarely, if ever, occupied himself; and although we were diligent upon the whole, yet occasionally our industry and conduct as learners were far from deserving approbation. To me the confinement was frequently irksome and oppressive, especially when the days were bright with the beauty of sunshine. There were ways, woods, and even wilds, not far apart from the village, which seemed eternally wooing the step to retirement, and the mind ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... are seeking freedom from your allegiance to one man, in order to swear fealty to another. That your vows to me are irksome because they prevent your taking other vows to Cecil Cumberland. I pass over the moral aspect of the affair; that must rest with your own conscience," (it is astonishing how exemplary Thorne felt in administering the rebuke); "that rests with your ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... his late niece—the prisoner, who on leaving school had been taken into his uncle's office, lodged in the house, and became one of the family. It would, however, be shown by witnesses that the situation had been extremely irksome to the young man; and that he had not been in it many months before he had expressed his intention of absconding, provided he could obtain the means of making his way in one of the colonies. Then followed a summary of the deductions resulting from the evidence about to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... master, little careful of rights or engagements, led by the arbitrary instincts of his own mind, susceptible by nature or by policy, and always disposed to use his advantages imperiously. Peace was already beginning to be irksome to him; he cherished hopes of new conquests; his temper became every day more exacting, and the feebleness of the English minister furnished him with occasions of quarrel. A stranger to the liberal spirit of the English constitution, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... for use in Field hospitals, the only point needing care being to ensure that the bandaging is not too tight. It is much more reliable than are ordinary splints if transport is unavoidable, and is much lighter and less irksome to the patient. With such strips of cardboard, a few of the gauze splints (fig. 54), and a few angular and wooden splints, I believe a Field hospital is fully equipped for the treatment of any fractures ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... in the forest, maintaining an irksome silence, and continually on our guard against intrusion. Uncle Moses told me that the wagons would not leave Dry Harbor on their return journey until the heat of the day was past—a circumstance which favored ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... must be ready to face fever exactly as they were to face bullets; that they were to obey unquestioningly, and to do their duty as readily if called upon to garrison a fort as if sent to the front. I warned them that work that was merely irksome and disagreeable must be faced as readily as work that was dangerous, and that no complaint of any kind must be made; and I told them that they were entirely at liberty not to go, but that after they had once signed there could then be ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... by this time rather tired of remaining in a recumbent position. It was that to which they had been too long constrained while in the boat, and it felt irksome; moreover, the oyster, wonderfully restoring their strength, had brought back their wonted juvenile vigour, so that they felt inclined for moving about a bit. For a time they indulged this inclination by walking to and fro around the trunk of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... open before the devoted and successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of the class, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... hardships of his lot with patience, and he derived satisfaction from the faithful performance of the duties which he had undertaken, irksome as they were. The greatest pain he endured, next to his separation from his parents, was the discovery that several of his master's pigs were infected with the same loathsome disease under which he was laboring; and this he feared would draw upon him the displeasure of ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... commenced the duty of first lieutenant, and pretty hard duty it was; but it is a satisfaction to me to feel that I never refused, during the whole course of my naval career, any duty offered me, however hard or irksome it ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... of this plot Beric found his position more and more irksome in spite of the favour Nero showed him. Do what he would he could not close his ears to what was public talk in Rome. The fabulous extravagances of Nero, the public and unbounded profligacy of himself and his court, the open defiance of decency, the stupendous ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... every life that are irksome. Young people sometimes find school work dull. There are faithful mothers who many a day grow weary of the endless duties of the household. There are good men who tire ofttimes of the routine of office, or store, or mill, or farm. There comes to most of us, at times, the feeling ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... Monsieur Bruin's family? Well, we must do our best, and procure them for him. It is not for us to inquire into the motives of our dear father. It is our duty to obey his orders—even though the task be ever so irksome or difficult." ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... This narrative was originally composed in the third person; but so much of it consists of my own personal intercourse with Mr. Smith, that the use of that circuitous form of expression became as irksome to the writer, as he thinks it would have proved tedious and irritating to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... instrument of our Lord Jesus's blessed passion, and was miraculously supported under its weight. If we are not blessed with equal strength, still we are all capable of enduring much more than is demanded of us for gaining heaven. Is not the life of a worldling more irksome and more painful than that of a mortified religious man? How many heart-burnings, and aching heads, and palled appetites, and disordered faculties, and diseased frames, could bear out this assertion,—that the way to heaven would be easy on the score of mortification, if men could consent to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... MD is equal to any whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella's half. But the sentimentalist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He has disliked her, shirked her, misconceived her, and effaced her. Sly sentimentalist—he finds her irksome. Through one of his most modern representatives he has but lately called ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Paul some twelve days, detained there from day to day awaiting the arrival of letters from Canada relative to the future supply of the Expedition. This delay was at the time most irksome, as I too frequently pictured the troops pushing on towards Fort Garry while I was detained inactive in Minnesota; but one morning the American papers came out with news that the expeditionary forces ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... glided slowly towards the bay, by very might and majesty holding her way serene and undisturbed, on a nobler errand. Honora thrilled as she gazed, as though at last her dream were coming true, and she felt within her the pulse of the world's artery. That irksome sense of spectatorship seemed to fly, and she was part and parcel now of the great, moving things, with sure pinions with which to soar. Standing rapt upon the forward deck of the ferry, she saw herself, not an atom, but one whose going and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the privilege of republishing in America one day after we publish here. Not bad?" . . . He had to struggle at the opening through a sharp attack of illness, and on the 9th of July progress was thus reported. "I have been getting on in health very slowly and through irksome botheration enough. But I think I am round the corner. This cause—and the heat—has tended to my doing no more than hold my ground, my old month's advance, with the Tale of Two Cities. The small portions thereof, drive me frantic; but I think ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... woman, who seemed to assert a claim upon him, this model whom he never had loved, and whom he could now scarcely tolerate, since he had ceased to respect her. He cursed himself vehemently after the fashion of such offenders, when eager, vibrating passion has given place to a sense of irksome obligations, but more vigorously still did he upbraid fate, to whose score ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the wood, From slaughter lately made of kine to staunch her bloody thirst With water of the foresaid spring. Whom Thisbe, spying first Afar by moonlight, thereupon with fearful steps gan fly And in a dark and irksome cave did hide herself thereby. And as she fled away for haste she let her mantle fall, The which for fear she left behind not looking back at all. Now when the cruel lioness her thirst had staunched well, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... coin-robbery the older acquaintances of Mr. Mickley noticed a decided change in him. On the subject of coins, once so voluble, he grew very reticent. His business, which had for many years appeared rather a pastime than a task to him, grew irksome. After a period of uncertainty, he finally decided to close up his affairs and spend some years in foreign travel. In spite of advanced age, he was both physically and mentally well equipped for such a journey. His health had always been good. His temper seemed never to be ruffled. Of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... also, that while George Melville evinced an aptitude for teaching, Herbert showed an equal aptitude for learning. The tasks which he voluntarily undertook most boys would have found irksome, but he only found them a source of pleasure, and had the satisfaction, after a very short time, to find himself able to read ordinary French and German ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
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