"Painstaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dance. There was a particularly painstaking little boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones from a Fraulein in the corner, who suited her actions to her words by ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... in a year has surely a fertile field. He sorted and classified in the light of experience: the honeyed, the acidulated, and bibulous-godly (mostly Scottish), the bibulous-ungodly (mostly English), the slut with a clean outside to things, the painstaking sloven, the peculative (here one majestic sample), the reduced in circumstances, the confidential, the reserved, the frisky, the motherly, the step-motherly—a most excellent assembly for ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... phonetic value lead to an important conception. Back of the purely objective system of sounds that is peculiar to a language and which can be arrived at only by a painstaking phonetic analysis, there is a more restricted "inner" or "ideal" system which, while perhaps equally unconscious as a system to the naive speaker, can far more readily than the other be brought to his consciousness as a finished ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... it is possible such a rug changes hands, but this is either the result of lack of knowledge on the part of the owner, or because he is in pecuniary straits. The rug derives its name from the ancient town of Ghiordium, and its form is that of a prayer rug. The weavers were most painstaking, and used the finest of dyes and designs. The hanging mosque lamp, or a tree form, is suspended from the high point of the niche, and a column appears on either side of the field, extending to the spandrels. Above is a horizontal panel, and there is generally ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... the business. What words can describe the brain that can forget the cruel preoccupations caused by hidden want, by the daily needs of a family and the daily drudgery of a printer's business, which requires such minute, painstaking care; and soar, with the enthusiasm and intoxication of the man of science, into the regions of the unknown in quest of a secret which daily eludes the most subtle experiment? And the inventor, alas! as will shortly be ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... "The conspicuous painstaking which the Modok squaw expends upon her baby-basket is an index of her maternal love. And indeed the Modok are strongly attached to their offspring,—a fact abundantly attested by many sad and mournful spectacles witnessed in the closing scenes of the war of 1873. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... painting. A pretty little studio was built, and Dora spent long hours in admiring both her husband and his work. He gave promise of being some day a good artist—not a genius. The world would never rave about his pictures; but, in time, he would be a conscientious, painstaking artist. Among his small coterie of friends some ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... From there they can see the little garden, where the darkness is gathering, and the black smoke which the chimney emits beneath the lowering clouds. Sigismond's window is the first to show a light on the ground floor; the cashier trims his lamp himself with painstaking care, and his tall shadow passes in front of the flame and bends double behind the grating. Sidonie's wrath is diverted a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of gentle unrest. The memory will not let him alone of that marvellous, that unprecedented experience of the afternoon. Unreservedly the grey-haired man's homage flies to the youngling who so easily outstrips them all, with their inveterate painstaking, their multitudinous canons. Not only without a shade of bitterness but with a tender elation, he lives over again the emotions created in him by that passionate song. To his true poet's heart it is a matter for exultation ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... went to work at once getting some traps that were hanging in the tilt in good working order. He set them and sprang them one after another, testing every one critically. They were practically all new ones, and Douglas, after his careful, painstaking manner, had left them in thorough repair. These were some additional traps that no place had been found for on the trail. There were only about twenty of them and Bob decided that he would set them along the shores of a lake beyond the tilt, where there were none, and ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... slow, painstaking course up the stream and began to fear they had been mistaken in their surmise, when Sinclair gave a shout. He had found the trail again, a telltale footprint with the patched sole. It broke upward on the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of whose literature exists only in the shape of detached papers, individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in everybody's mouth—yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study long ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... is no necessity to follow Mr. Rossetti any further as he flounders about through the quagmire that he has made for his own feet. A critic who can say that 'not many of Keats's poems are highly admirable' need not be too seriously treated. Mr. Rossetti is an industrious man and a painstaking writer, but he entirely lacks the temper necessary for the interpretation of such poetry as ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... not enumerated in any census. Not even the most painstaking statistician has meddled with the topic. Fancy takes bold leaps at the very suggestion of such an estimate, and begins to think at once of all things in the universe which are usually mentioned as beyond numbering. Probably one good way ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in the father of what, all through life, was the pre-eminent characteristic of Eugene, the inveterate painstaking, mirth-compelling practical-joker. But in Brattleboro, Newfane, and throughout Vermont everybody says, "That's jest like his uncle Charles Kellogg. There was never such another for jest foolin'. He'd rather play a hoax on ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... were days when the original horror bobbed up. It appeared on report cards and in school registers traced in the teacher's clear, painstaking hand: Christopher Mark Antony Burton; nevertheless she never troubled to address him in that fashion. Perhaps she hadn't the time. Life was a busy enterprise and the days were short. One could not stop to roll out ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... knew, Monsieur l'Abbe, that poor Salvat was a forsaken child, without father or mother, and had to scour the roads and try every trade at first to get a living. Then afterwards he became a mechanician, and a very good workman, I assure you, very skilful and very painstaking. But he already had those ideas of his, and quarrelled with people, and tried to bring his mates over to his views; and so he was unable to stay anywhere. At last, when he was thirty, he was stupid enough to go to America with an inventor, who traded on him to such a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... details of all enterprises that he particularly excelled. To everything he brought an almost infinite capacity of patient study and minute examination; his principle being that to achieve success the first desideratum is to avoid mistakes. Doubtless he owed this faculty of profound painstaking to the vicissitudes of his early life. The years that he passed under the control of the Imagawa and afterwards under that of Oda taught him patience and self-restraint, and made the study of literature obligatory for him, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... painstaking quest for police-type evidence to tell them what had happened, and how and why the Cerberus was missing, after a clumsy but safe landing on Procyron III and when all sanity demanded that it stay there, and when it was starkly impossible for ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... had never once set eyes on the Shoe-Bar. Bloss wrote frequent and painstaking reports which seemed to indicate that everything was going well. But all through the long and tedious journey ending at the little Arizona way-station, Stratton fumed and fretted and wondered. Even if Joe had failed to see his name amongst the missing, what must ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... recollection can be thrown off the track, appears to have been ignored on its theoretical side—that is, as establishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries, may be—and frequently ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... immediate. He trusted his reactions implicitly. Also, there is nothing that could possibly be called whimsical, nothing critical or self-critical, about him. Bonnard, on the other hand, must be one of the most painstaking artists alive. He comes at beauty by tortuous ways, artful devices, and elaboration. He allows his vision to dawn on you by degrees: no one ever guesses at first sight how serious, how deliberately worked out his ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... been told by the teacher to write compositions in which they must not attempt any flights of fancy, but should only state what was really in them. The star production from this command was a composition written by a boy who was both sincere and painstaking. ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... was stupid and painstaking, proffered this lucid explanation painfully, and then gasped; it seemed a liberty for her to explain anything ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... bowl with two fat hands, and held it out, tiltingly. Her round blue eyes shone in a painstaking hospitality. She was a good ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Gregory now proceeded to turn the pages of the kodak album, and to point out with painstaking geniality the charms and associations of each view, "Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin," expressed his thought, for he didn't believe that Madame von Marwitz, more than any person not completely self-abnegating, could tolerate looking at other people's kodaks. But since ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... systems. Verbal lessons seem as if they ought to be so deeply effective, if only the will and the throng of various motives which guide it, instantly followed impression of a truth upon the intelligence. And they are, moreover, so easily communicated, saving the parent a lifetime of anxious painstaking in shaping his own character, after such a pattern as shall silently draw all within its influence to pursuit of good and honourable things. The most valuable of Rousseau's notions about education, though ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, while sufficient to detain him in the place, was so slight, and advanced by such slow degrees, that it furnished no continued occupation to his restless mind. M. Renard was acute and painstaking. But it was no easy matter to obtain any trace of a Parisian visitor to so popular a Spa so many years ago. The name Duval, too, was so common, that at Aix, as we have seen at Paris, time was wasted in the chase of a Duval who proved ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her little room, she looked round proudly at the result of her own painstaking thoughtfulness. A bright fire burned in the small grate, and her mother's easy chair stood beside it—heavy as it was, Bessie had carried it in with her own hands. The best eider-down quilt, in its gay covering, was on the bed, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be wrong in my conclusions, of course; the cabinet ministers and the ambassadors and the generals in whose honor and truthfulness I believe may have deliberately deceived me, but, after a most painstaking and conscientious investigation, I am convinced that we have been misinformed and blinded by a propaganda against King Nicholas and his people which has rarely been equaled in audacity of untruth and dexterity of misrepresentation. To employ the methods used by certain Balkan politicians ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... which is in his possession. The edition which has served as a text for the present translation is that issued and edited by Don Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Mexico, 1849. This edition, like all of Icazbalceta's work, is painstaking. Professor Marshall Saville has been good enough to lend me his copy of this edition, which is very rare, in order that I might have it to work with. Finally, a small portion of Pedro Sancho's narrative was issued by the Hakluyt Society of London. ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... outside of his head, and at last he took all his fragments and with infinite consideration moulded them into unity. So studiously had he wrought that by the time of delivery he had unconsciously committed the whole speech accurately to memory. If so much painstaking seemed to indicate an exaggerated notion of the importance of his words, he was soon vindicated by events; for what he said was subjected to a dissection and a criticism such as have not often pursued the winged words of the orator. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Aunt Olivia went in and out. The things she brought out in her arms she folded carefully and packed, but not in the lank old valise. She put them all with tender painstaking into a quaint little carpetbag. When the work was done she set the bag away out of sight, and went about packing her own ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... frontier, when he suddenly dropped into a place as assistant quartermaster-general, useful and important enough, but stripped of the glory usually preferred by the hot blood of a gallant youth. In time, the faithful, efficient quartermaster became a plodding, painstaking lawyer, a safe, industrious attorney-general, and a dignified, respectable judge; but he had not distinguished himself, nor did he possess the striking, showy characteristics of mind or manner often needed in a doubtful and bitterly contested campaign. Heretofore place had sought ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Trunnion, he so well managed the affairs of the firm, that they felt bound to offer him a partnership in the business, to the success of which he had so greatly contributed. Notwithstanding his rise in the social circle, Nicholas Swab continued to be the same unostentatious, persevering, painstaking man which he had been from the first—upright in all his dealings, and generous to those ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... believed in premeditation, and always wrote and corrected his speeches with fastidious care. While such men knew that inspiration might come at the moment of speaking, they preferred to base their chances of success upon painstaking preparation. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... have sworn you'd try that trick," she remarked. "It was on the cards and you couldn't resist it. Permit me to say, Mrs. Orme, that you're a rather clever woman, and I admire cleverness even when it's misdirected. But my Daddy has taught me, in his painstaking way, not to be caught napping. A good soldier provides for a retreat as well as an advance. I've been on your trail for a long time and only this morning succeeded in winning the confidence of the cabman who drove ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... easily enough now, and ahead of them rode the Elder, his long whitey-brown holland coat fluttering behind him. In half an hour Bancroft had got the herd into the corral. The Elder counted the three hundred and sixty-two beasts with painstaking carefulness ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... I wish to express my thanks for the courtesy M. Juglar has extended me, and to state my appreciation of the motives, painstaking patience, and undoubted originality he has shown in explaining and executing so faithfully and with such genius a most laborious and yet spirited work. It is only justice that such an achievement should have been awarded a prize by the French Institute (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences) ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... better prices than the year before. She said that others were complaining of a drought, and that the fruit in consequence was generally inferior in size, so that those who, like myself, had been lucky enough, or painstaking enough, to secure a full crop, were doing better than ever. Then our little strawberry-peddler, Lucy Varick, was doing a thriving business. She established a list of customers among the great ladies in the city, who bought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... children, by the hand and leads us through all the turnings of his first symbolic lesson, lest in our inexperience we should miss our way. The Son of God not only gave himself as a sacrifice for sin; he also laboured as a patient painstaking teacher of the ignorant: he is the Apostle as well as the High Priest of our profession. His instructions have been recorded by the Spirit in the Scriptures for our use; we may still sit at his feet and listen to his voice. He has taken his seat on the deck of a fishing-boat ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... had stamped it, established his claim. Of course in all cases where bars of gold were found with the owners' names stamped on them, the property was at once handed over; but after all was done that could be done by means of the most painstaking inquiry, an immense amount of ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... answered the girl. She said no more, but she thought, "Especially when I am taught it by such a kind, painstaking teacher as you." ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... painful, what, though it be grievous, For so be all things at the first learning, Yet marvellous pleasure it bringeth unto us, As a reward for such painstaking. Wherefore come off, and be of good cheer, And go to thy book without any fear, For a man without knowledge (as I have read) May well be compared to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... was about to find herself; consequently, each resolved to call in the course of that morning to ask after her health, and take occasion, in bachelor language, to "press his point." Monsieur de Valois considered that such an occasion demanded a painstaking toilet; he therefore took a bath and groomed himself with extraordinary care. For the first and last time Cesarine observed him putting on with incredible art a suspicion of rouge. Du Bousquier, on the other hand, that coarse ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... other papers said, in various quarters (with some show of authority) to have been written by DE QUINCEY, it was necessary to act with extreme care. One was a painstaking list on the whole, but very inaccurate as regards certain contributions attributed to DE QUINCEY in Blackwood. I have had the kind aid of MESSRS. BLACKWOOD in examining the archives of Maga to settle the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Mr. Lovecraft's work in the professional magazines is of common occurrence. During the past year he has had charge of the Bureau of Public Criticism in THE UNITED AMATEUR, where he has proven himself a just, impartial and painstaking critic. That he will achieve a great popularity in the world of amateur letters is a foregone conclusion, and I do not think that I am indulging in extravagant praise in predicting a brilliant future for ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... this painstaking recital of all the disagreeable and repellent facts about Siddall an effort further to humiliate her by making it apparent how desperately off she was, how she could not refuse any offer, revolting though ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... is the tillage, how efficient and painstaking the garden fitting, and how closely the ground is crowded to its upper limit of producing power are indicated in Fig. 36; and when one stops and studies the detail in such gardens he expects in its executor an orderly, careful, frugal and industrious man, getting not a little satisfaction ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... Sternberg in 1880, then an army surgeon, was directly instrumental in exposing the swindle that was being perpetrated, putting an end, after the most painstaking investigation, to all the claims to discovery of the "germ" of yellow fever that had been made by several medical men in Spanish America. The experience which he obtained during a scientific excursion through Mexico, Cuba and South America gave him a wonderful ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... and the harmonious symmetry of the whole, in the general plan. Webster planned his orations, Newman planned his essays, Carlyle planned his Frederick the Great. Their works are not a momentary inspiration; they are the result of forethought, long and painstaking. The absolute essential in the structure of an essay, that without which it will fail to arrive anywhere, that compared to which all ornament, all fine writing, is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, that absolute essential is the total effect secured ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... mind reverted again to the cause of his imprisonment. As the long, weary hours dragged by, he studied the matter with the utmost care, giving painstaking thought to the slightest details and the most trivial acts. His points were, consequently, well made. They were reasonable, logical, probable. The scheme broadened as he progressed. What he had supposed to be a mere matter of revenge now loomed ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... and manuscripts, sometimes from the lips of wandering ascetics and minstrels—a large collection of poems and hymns to which Kabr's name is attached, and carefully sifted the authentic songs from the many spurious works now attributed to him. These painstaking labours alone have made ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... the Flathead Lake territory with trails marked upon them in red ink, the death-certificate of Frank Hillery, dated April 16, 1916, and a huge sheet of foolscap paper scrawled with labored characters in wavering lines. At the bottom two signatures were appended, the first in the same painstaking hand as the body of the document, but at the second Willa's breath caught again in her ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... be tedious to relate—the exact sequence and progression of argument in this interview and the dozen others that succeeded it. Mr. Cleveland became more and more interested in the Mormon people, their family life, their religion, and their politics. He was as painstaking in acquiring information about them as he was in performing all the other duties of his office. I might have been discouraged by the number and apparent ineffectiveness of my interviews with him, had not Colonel ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... machine, its planes and rudders covered with strongly sewn buckskin, stretched as tight as drum heads, its polished screw of the Chauviere type gleaming in the morning sun, stood waiting on the sands, while Stern gave it a painstaking inspection. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... customs, ideals and follies of past ages, than the art of building. This applies in a special sense to cathedrals and churches, which glorious relics reflect and perpetuate the noble aim, the delicate thought, the refined and exquisite taste, the patient and painstaking toil which have been expended upon them by the devout and earnest craftsmen ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... used to the animation of free human intercourse. He watched the clock in spite of himself. He made mistakes out of sheer weariness of spirit, and in the footing of the long columns of figures he could not summon to his assistance the slow, painstaking enthusiasm for accuracy which is the sole salvation of those who would get the answer. He was not that sort ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... stanzas, accepted as authentic by perhaps the most painstaking of Luis de Leon's editors, are thus Englished ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... believe that Heracles would have been allowed inside the pomoerium, had he been introduced by foreigners in the strict sense of the word. No doubt much has yet to be learnt about Hercules in Italy; but recent painstaking researches have made it possible for us to acquiesce in the belief that this Hercules of the ara came from a Latin city,—from that Tibur which by tradition was of Greek origin—"Tibur Argeo positum colono,"—and which, like ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... ruler, however conscientious and painstaking, can shoulder the entire burden of government. Louis XIV necessarily had to rely very much on his ministers, of whom Colbert was the most eminent. Colbert, until his death in 1683 A.D., gave France the best administration it had ever known. His reforming hand was ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... glide up to us twice a day with its fresh salt odors and flotsam of the ocean, and the rest of the time we wandered over the barrens or lay under the trees looking up into the wonderful blue above, listening to the winds as they rushed across from sea to sea. I was an artist, poor and painstaking: Christine was my kind friend. She had brought me South because my cough was troublesome, and here because Edward Bowne recommended the place. He and three fellow-sportsmen were down at the Madre Lagoon, farther south; I thought it probable we should see him, without ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... A painstaking German student, who has traced the history of humour back to its earliest foundations, is of the opinion that there are eleven original jokes known to the world, or rather that there are eleven ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... a glance at the various industries at which men are to-day engaged, intellectual, commercial, and mechanical, the painstaking exactitude everywhere practiced will be found to be a growing subject of wonder and admiration. The secret of this lies in the fact that perfection in any department of business not only enlarges that business but also enriches those engaged in it. For example: there are ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... their decree, and doubling his pay, asked him to come to complete his work. Verocchio consented to do so, but had not been long in Venice when he died. Verocchio is said to have spent much time in drawing from the antique, and his works prove him to have been diligent and painstaking; these qualities made him the sculptor that he was; but we see no traces in his work of the heaven-born genius which makes the artist great, and so inspires himself that his works fill all beholders with an enthusiasm in a degree akin to his ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... so that she was several times on the verge of discharging him, but how could she turn out so old an employee and one so painstaking in the duties assigned to him? Many a day she prayed for "a new foreman or night," but Hervey kept his job, and in spite of her best efforts, affairs went from bad to worse and the more desperately she struggled the more hopelessly ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... honor. Did you ever know a man addicted to drink to be so immaculately neat as he always is? Or so refined in manners and speech? Or so exact in his dealings? There is no one to whom I would more readily advance money, or with greater assurance that it will be faithfully repaid in his best, most painstaking work—to ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... did not well know why till on descending at Charing Cross, he found he was to have an interview with Mr. Renville, who was copying a picture in the National Gallery, and whom he found, to his great relief, to be no wild Bohemian, but a simple painstaking business- like man, who had married a German hausfrau, and lodged a few art students with unexceptionable references. Knowing Edgar already, he had measured his powers, and assured Felix that his talent was undoubted, though whether that talent amounted to genius could only be decided when the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... breakdown of Edison's faith in ultimate success—no diminution of his sanguine and confident expectations. The failure of an experiment simply meant to him that he had found something else that would not work, thus bringing the possible goal a little nearer by a process of painstaking elimination. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... nature to take defeat gracefully: defeat seldom came. "Never let even a pawn be taken," he gave me, a small boy, as a rule for the game. Even in little things he liked thoroughness,—a capacity for painstaking which is, I think, characteristic of ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... thoroughness in the introductory courses. Thoroughness is purely a relative condition anyway, since we cannot really master any type. It seems poor pedagogy, in an elementary class particularly, to emphasize small and difficult forms or organs because they demand more painstaking and skill on the part of the student. My own practice in the elementary course is to have a very few specially favorable forms studied with a good deal of care, and a much larger number studied partially, emphasizing those points which ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... window, where she went on with her copying till dinner was ready. Whatever the reason was, however, her pencil did not work smoothly; her eye did not see true; and she lacked her usual steady patience. The next morning, after an hour and more's work and much painstaking, the drawing was finished. Ellen had quite forgotten her yesterday's trouble. But when John came to review her drawing, he found several faults with it; pointed out two or three places in which it had suffered from haste and want of care; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... share have the ladies in procuring the happiness you seem so sensible of?' 'Why Sir,' continued the old woman, 'it is all owing to them. I was almost starved when they put me into this house, and no shame of mine, for so were my neighbours too; perhaps we were not so painstaking as we might have been; but that was not our fault, you know, as we had not things to work with, nor any body to set us to work, poor folks cannot know every thing as these good ladies do; we were half dead for want of victuals, and then people have not courage to set about any thing. Nay, all the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... learns a good many things by the way; at the very outset, that drawing accurate and clear must be the groundwork of any painting worthy the name. Both in the use of pencil and brush there must be a degree of painstaking observation, wholesome as a discipline and delightful in its harvests. How many of us, unused to the task of careful observation, can tell the number of the musk-mallow's petals, or mark on paper the depth of fringe on a gentian, or match from a series of dyed silks the hues of a common buttercup? ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... or strained antithesis, there is also evident a commendable desire to vary the diction and to avoid the repetition of the same word. To find four different terms for nearly the same idea "difference," "odds," "distinction," and "contrariety," involves considerable painstaking. While it is true that the term "euphuism" has come to be applied to any stilted, antithetical style that pays more attention to the manner of expressing a thought than to its worth, we should remember that English prose ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... possible in the manner of a crab. Stop, mister! Don't you know that a crab moves either backwards or sideways? It will not give enough vent to your animal spirits unless you move exactly as your model, the crab, does. Try it again, mister, and be painstaking in your imitation." ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... vast yet specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of old things as will adapt them to new uses. We know that the colored ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... his gratitude by painstaking attention to fagging. Lawrence became aware of faithful service: that his toast was always done to a turn, that his daily paper was warmed, as John had seen the butler at home warm the Times, that ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... was an honest, painstaking man, with a large family, and he came to sea for their benefit, after having ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... to be an insulation against both the oxygen of the enclosure and the paralyzing force of the overhead disk, for the Xollarian promptly thrust the three silver-coated arms through the wall and began handling the bodies of Mapes and Blake in a painstaking process of examination. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... kind many months were spent, for Foster was a painstaking worker. He finished all his paintings with minute care, having no capacity for off-hand or rapid sketching. During this period the engrossing nature of his work—of which he was extremely fond— tended to prevent his mind from dwelling too much on his condition of slavery, but it was chiefly the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... them, the tradition of their primitive worship still unbroken in its churches. Had the opportunities in which Pausanias was [153] fortunate been ours, how many haunts of the antique Greek life unnoticed by him we should have peeped into, minutely systematic in our painstaking! how many a view would broaden out where he notes hardly anything at all on his map ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... A painstaking observation of the courtesies due to ranks of other services is more than a sign of good manners; it indicates a recognition of the interdependence of the services upon one another. Failure to observe or to recognize the tables of precedence officially agreed upon among ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... from love of the art, but a little from a social motive. He had imagined that a written book and the praise of responsible journals would ensure him the respect of the county people. It was a quaint idea, and he saw the lamentable fallacies naked; in the first place, a painstaking artist in words was not respected by the respectable; secondly, books should not be written with the object of gaining the goodwill of the landed and commercial interests; thirdly and chiefly, no man should in ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... below. Peter picked up his splendid guitar and, sprawling upon the transom, gave himself up to soft humming and, presently, to the work of composition. Soon, after some little painstaking effort, he produced the following, to be rendered to the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... would have been as well kept secret; but as it is known, we must take care to get so close that their red shots may go through both sides, when it will not matter whether they are hot or cold." It is somewhat odd that the extremely diligent and painstaking Sir Harris Nicolas, in his version of this letter, should have dropped the concluding sentence, one of the most important and characteristic occurring in Nelson's correspondence ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the time he took his place among the line of Ministers on the Treasury bench he began to show signs of qualities unsuspected. Gone was his combativeness. He answered questions about his department with urbanity, replied to criticism with courtesy and painstaking detail. Out of the House he devoted himself assiduously to learning the intricacies of his department. Very soon reforms began to be manifested. The Board of Trade, an old and historic department, largely bound up with red tape, became the most unconventional ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... hand, judging by his clothes, began describing how he had done it, shivering with cold and continually throwing back his hair from his forehead as he talked. He told his story in a very proper and painstaking way. ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... warmth of Western hospitality. But Samson had learned long ago that appearance was all in his favor, and he reenforced it with beautiful buff riding-boots that drew attention to firm feet and manly bearing. It did him good to be looked at, and he felt, as a painstaking gentleman should, that the sight did spectators ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... feel amply repaid for the painstaking labor, care and expense which we have bestowed upon this little volume if its constant utility to you more firmly cements your good will ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... we have endeavored to make it as plain as possible. It is a deep subject and is difficult to treat lightly; we will treat it in our own way, paying special attention to all these points which bothered us during the many years of painstaking study which we gave to the subject. We especially endeavor to point out how theory can be applied to practice; while we cannot expect that everyone will understand the subject without study, we think we have made it comparatively ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... the maid, appeared to announce that the Howe motor car was waiting at the curb. A few moments later Mary was in her room adjusting her new hat before the mirror. Ordinarily, adjusting that hat would have been an absorbing and painstaking performance; just now it was done with scarcely a thought. How devoutly she wished that the Howe car and the Howe dinner were waiting for anyone in the wide world but her! She did not wish to meet ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he shouted, as the crowd began to cheer and hoot. "There is an additional announcement to be made. The committee has decided to offer a further reward of five dollars to Thomas Maloney, whose model shows evidence of praiseworthy and painstaking work." ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... may die, but the old must die," he reminded Mr. Williamson as he produced his pencil and tablet. Mr. Williamson gave a detailed account of his mother's early life, marriages first and second, and located all her children with painstaking accuracy. "Left to mourn her loss," ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... declined. And now Chanways was a force in the Church and the country, and was making things hum. If he, Conover, after fifteen years of Durdlebury, had accepted, he would have lost the power to make things hum. He would have made a very ordinary, painstaking bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury might possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder of spiritual beauty merely as a stepping-stone to higher sacerdotal things. Such a man, he considered, having once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral, would have been guilty ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... else—a precis in which all the literary merit has, with unvarying infelicity, been omitted. Nothing can be more childish than the punctilious euhemerism by which all the miraculous elements of the Homeric story are blinked or explained away, unless it be the painstaking endeavour simply to say something different from Homer, or the absurd alternation of fighting and truces, in which each party invariably gives up its chance of finishing the war at the precise time at which that chance is most flourishing, and which reads like a humorous travesty ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... with such a sketch of its various applications and developments as occurred to me at the moment—then copied on thin letter paper and sent off to Darwin—all within one week. I was then (as often since) the "young man in a hurry": he, the painstaking and patient student seeking ever the full demonstration of the truth that he had discovered, rather than to achieve ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... stayed about nine; a very capable practical chemist; had worked for some time in the factory of a Dutch rubber company. Sumatra, I think, or the Malay Peninsula. Tried unqualified dentistry after he came home, went broke and got an introduction to me. That's what he told me. An accurate and painstaking ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... versatility and omniscience over-much, and it may be taken for granted that the writer made no serious contribution to tactics, cookery, or scholarship. But being a man of a certain intelligence, passably honest, and reasonably painstaking, probably he produced reviews sufficiently useful and just to answer their purpose. On the new system we should have an article on General Hamley's work by Sir Garnet Wolseley, and one on the cookery-book from M. Trompette. It is not certain that this is all pure gain. There is a something ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... known as one of the most candid and painstaking of scriptural commentators; but it must always be remembered that he is an Episcopalian, and the ruler of an English diocese. He would be something almost more than human, were he to hold up the scales of testimony with strict impartiality when weighing ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... Lindsey, however," continued Wolston, "was a pious, painstaking, simple-minded woman, who devoted her whole attention to her domestic duties. Notwithstanding her fortune, she did not neglect the humblest affairs of the household, and thought only of making her husband pleased with his home. When she was told of the vagaries of Philipson, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Gold" is history with a fiction thread to string its episodes upon. Most of the characters are men and women who have lived and played their parts exactly as described herein. The background and chronology are as accurate as extensive and painstaking ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the charming beauty of Nature; country life, folk lore, and festivals; and similar light or familiar themes. Herrick's characteristic quality, so far as it can be described, is a blend of Elizabethan joyousness with classical perfection of finish. The finish, however, really the result of painstaking labor, such as Herrick had observed in his uncle's shop and as Jonson had enjoined, is perfectly unobtrusive; so apparently natural are the poems that they seem the irrepressible unmeditated outpourings of happy and idle moments. In ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... decorative and the idyllic which is to be noted as so strong in recent painting. On wall D are three works of George deForest Brush, a man who has been but little influenced by the more radical tendencies. "The Potter" is interesting for the painstaking and minute finish of ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... plowing, times of working the crop, and implements used. The cultivation, however, is as easy and simple as that commonly bestowed on Indian corn or beans, but must be a little more thorough and painstaking. That is all. None need shrink from planting this crop through any apprehension that they will not work it properly. The three essential points are: keep the soil loose, the grass down, and do no harm to the young pods as they ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... towards Bertie, who stood in painstaking scrutiny before one of the outlying pictures of his group. A pair of art students in their careless working clothes, stood a little apart with their eyes on ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... disreputable cad like you can't hurt me in any way, and well you know it," said Grey with painstaking distinctness. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army. But he was never the gay and light-hearted individual that most junior subs. are at the beginning of their career. Even then he had been a sober and serious individual, favourably noted by his superiors as being earnest and painstaking. And now he was well thought of by the Heads of his Department; for his plodding and methodical disposition and his slavish adherence to rules and regulations had earned him the reputation of being an eminently "safe" man. How such a gay, laughter-loving, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... which we all had a hand. Having got the sides and keel beautifully smooth in that way, Clump brought a kettle of pure grease, which was placed over a little fire of driftwood, and when the grease had become liquid, Walter, with a large fine paint-brush, anointed the entire boat's bottom in a most painstaking manner. We boys stood by, entering into the operation, which was supposed to prove wonderfully efficacious in increasing our boat's speed, with great interest, and Clump bent over the kettle, stirring the oil, and puffing at the short stern ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... Thang-li, one, Tsin Lung, lived beneath the sign of the Righteous Ink Brush. By hereditary right Tsin Lung followed the profession of copying out the more difficult Classics in minute characters upon parchments so small that an entire library could be concealed among the folds of a garment, in this painstaking way enabling many persons who might otherwise have failed at the public examination, and been driven to spend an idle and perhaps even dissolute life, to pass with honourable distinction to themselves and widespread ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... whom we are discussing is immediately ground into powder," continued the Highest, looking fixedly at a distant spot situated directly beyond his painstaking attendant. "But what follows? Henceforth no man can be allowed to whisper ill of us but we must at once seek him out and destroy him, or the obtuse and superficial will exclaim: 'It was not so in the days of—of So-and-So. Behold'"—here the Great One bent ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and the end and all that lay between them could easily have been compassed in three words by Quin. But there were things he had pledged himself to tell her before he even broached the subject that was shrieking for utterance. With painstaking exactness he set forth the facts that led up to his dismissal, trying to be fair to Mr. Bangs as well as to himself, and, above all, to claim no credit for taking ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... dwell upon the soil of Mexico, and speak the language in which Montezuma made his last harangue to the furious people. There is, moreover, a great mass of literature in Spanish, besides more or less in Nahuatl, written during the century following the conquest, and the devoted missionaries and painstaking administrators, who wrote books about the country in which they were working, were not engaged in a wholesale conspiracy for deceiving mankind. From a really critical study of this literature, combined with archaeological investigation, much may be expected; and a noble ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... studied it carefully, as he seems to have studied everything that he took in hand. Some of his letters to Arthur Young, a great English traveller, who was also a writer on farming, are very interesting. In reading them it is easy to forget the General and the public man, and to think only of the painstaking planter, eager to know what was the best way to plant his various crops, or to plough his different fields. He liked shade trees greatly, and had a great many kinds of them at Mount Vernon, set out under his own direction, and some of them with his own hand. Some of my readers may yet see ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... has been intimated, is only a defense of bibliomania itself as it actually existed in the middle ages, gives the reader but scant information as to processes of book-making at that time. But thanks to the painstaking research of others, these details are now a part of the general knowledge of the development of the book. The following, taken from Mr. Theodore De Vinne's Invention of Printing, will, we ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... family, polygamous or monogamous, could appear. Societies, bands, or tribes—not families—were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors. That is what ethnology has come to after its painstaking researches. And in so doing it simply came to what might have been foreseen by the zoologist. None of the higher mammals, save a few carnivores and a few undoubtedly-decaying species of apes (orang-outans and gorillas), live in small families, isolatedly straggling in the woods. All others live ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... of a bird, a flower, or an open-air incident, however painstaking and minute the record, teems with literary memories. The sight of the Scotch hills recalls ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... almost has the qualities of a work of art; and when the subject is naturally well formed,—tout faite, as they say,—and not artificially made up with what is called the taille de couturiere, their painstaking knows no bounds. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... With painstaking care they searched every nook and cranny of the large single room and were about to give up in despair when Tommy happened to observe an ivory button set into the wall at the only point in the room where there were no machines ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... arrangements for the conference to the governing board of the Bureau of American Republics, composed of the representatives of all the American nations in Washington. That board discharged the duty imposed upon it with marked fidelity and painstaking care, and upon the courteous invitation of the United States of Brazil the conference was held at Rio de Janeiro, continuing from the 23d of July to the 29th of August last. Many subjects of common interest to all the American nations were discust by the conference, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... artist five guineas (he would not have it as a gift, which little Christie meant), and plenty of verbal encouragement besides. Lady Latimer further invited him to paint her little friends, Dora and Dandy. He accepted the commission, and fulfilled it with effort and painstaking, but not with such signal success as his portrait of Bessie. That was an inspiration. The doctor hung up the picture in the dining-room for company every day in her absence, and promised that it should keep her place for her in all their hearts and memories until she ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... lectures, etc., increased, it became evident that something must be done to meet the emergency. Fortunately, just the right man was found. Rev. S. B. Halliday had seen considerable service in mission work in New York City, was a man of genial character, great sympathy, kindhearted, and painstaking in the performance of his duties. He came to Brooklyn in 1870 and remained there in pastoral duty until after Mr. Beecher's death. His work was chiefly among the poorer class, but there were many families of means that welcomed him to their homes. Perhaps the one word that best expresses the ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... be possible that she was the confederate of these painstaking agents who lurked with sinister patience outside the very gates of the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... brought to Jane the only touch of tragedy to the perfect joy of her visit to Alberta. Upon arrival at the mine she was given over by Larry to Mr. Switzer's courteous and intelligent guidance, and with an enthusiasm that never wearied, her guide left nothing of the mine outside or in, to which with painstaking minuteness he failed to call her attention. It was with no small degree of pride that Mr. Switzer explained all that had been accomplished during the brief ten weeks during which the mine had been under his care. For although ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... available facts as compiled by a trustworthy member of my staff, Assistant District Attorney Horace Wilkes, to whom I detailed the duty of making a painstaking inquiry. If I may hereafter be of service to you in this matter or any other matter, kindly command me. I have the honor ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... that there was not enough English in the first number. It contains only sixteen pages, and the majority of readers desire to read Esperanto matter, not English. One of our painstaking collaborators has promised to mark all words not to be found in the Textbook, and we will always give their meanings. In this manner we hope to please those who wish to see more in English, without limiting ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 2 • Various
... Such matters as these have been fought out by an expert in the archaeology of Cleveland—the late Canon Atkinson, who seemed to take infinite pleasure in demolishing the elaborately constructed theories of those painstaking historians of the eighteenth century, Dr. ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... Howe, in his painstaking efforts to obtain all probable information about the Mormon origin from original sources, secured the affidavits of eight of Spaulding's acquaintances in Ohio, giving their recollections of the "Manuscript Found."* Spaulding's brother, John, testified that he heard many passages of the manuscript ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... blue and pink for the girls; black, with dabs of white, for the white-collared, white-gloved boys; and sparks and slivers of high light everywhere as the glistening pumps flickered along the surface like a school of flying fish. Every small pink face—with one exception—was painstaking and set for duty. It was a conscientious ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... poor child, since it often involved hearing 'Wait a minute,' and a very long one, 'How can you be so stupid?' 'I told you so long ago'; and sometimes consisted of a gabbling translation, with rapidly pointed finger, very hard to follow, and not quite so painstaking as when Alexis deferentially and politely pointed out the difficulties, with a strong sense of the favour that she ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... girl is habitually careless about handling the dishes, and breaks, nicks, and cracks result, hold her responsible and deduct from her wages what you consider a fair equivalent for the loss. Such a course is astonishingly curative sometimes. The painstaking, careful girl seldom injures anything, and the occasional accident may be overlooked. Before your new maid arrives write out an itemized list of all crockery, silver, glass, and table linen which are to be in constant use, designating those which are defaced ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... looked inquiringly at her mother, and received a smile of assent. She then took her lute and sang a romaunt of the day. Although but twelve years old, she was a well-taught and painstaking musician. Her little claw swept the chords with Courage and precision, and struck out the notes of the arpeggio clear, and distinct, and bright, like twinkling stars; but the main charm was her voice. It ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... method of literary travail, the formation of his style, the labour of style, the art of writing, the pain of writing, and his infinitely painstaking manner of accumulating heaps of notes, and building his book from them. The Massis study, the most complete of its kind, may interest the student, not alone of Zola, but of literature in general. Not, however, as a ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... in his memory banks—a careful and painstaking job this time!—all the memories and knowledge appropriate to the boy his parents think him to have been, plus other information which will become available to him at the right time. Every day for eight years I gave him ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... before, he had moved into the large chamber, choosing among the bed linen, with a painstaking care that surprised the servants, the most worn sheets, which called up old memories with their embroidery. He did not find in this linen that perfume of the closets which had disturbed him so deeply; but there was something in them, the illusion, the certainty that ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
