"Drudging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evidence of being human and alive; they were beginning to act now and then spontaneously, beginning to say and to do things after the manner of human beings; the long vista before me, the months of laborious drudging toil and pain, the long agony of effort necessary to write any book, even a poor one, was beginning to appear less weary, less futile; there was the first faint glow of the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... centuries run. In his palm the lakelet lingers, in his hair the brooklets hide, Grasped within his thousand fingers lies a continent fair and wide— Yea, a mighty empire swarming with its millions like the bees, Delving, drudging, striving, storming, all their lives, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... fairies, but this is the first time I have ever caught one napping under the trees. I wonder who she is anyhow? Surely she can not be some drudging farmer's daughter with a form and face like that?" he mused, suspiciously eying the basket of freshly laundered laces against which the flushed cheeks and waving golden ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... While drudging in the cause of the New Light controversialists, Burns was not unconsciously strengthening his hands for worthier toils: the applause which selfish divines bestowed on his witty, but graceless effusions, could ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... her visible and sensuous colleague, the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road and drudging trade ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round—and what is it all for? A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... first real crop they had raised. For years they had struggled and pinched. Sometimes Dorian was for giving up and moving to the city; but the mother saw brighter prospects when the new canal should be finished. And then her boy would be better off working for himself on the farm than drudging for others in the town; besides, she had a desire to remain on the spot made dear by her husband's work; and so they struggled along, making their payments on the land and later on the canal stock. The summit of their difficulties seemed now to ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... school-slave, rather than a schoolmaster. Only conceive him in blessed weather like this, in his close school, teaching children to write in copy-books, 'Evil communication corrupts good manners.' . . . Only conceive him, I say, drudging in such guise from morning till night, without any rational enjoyment but to beat the children. Would you compare such a dog's life as that with your own—the happiest under heaven—true Eden life, as ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... which at last has no other quality than a look of intense, and peculiar rurality, - the characteristic, even when it is not the charm, of so much of the landscape of France. This is not the appearance of wildness, for it goes with great cultivation; it is simply the presence of the delving, drudging, economizing peasant. But it is a deep, unrelieved rusticity. It is a peasant's landscape; not, as in England, a landlord's. On the way to Cham- bord you enter the flat and sandy Sologne. The wide horizon opens out like ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... told by Mrs. Desmoulins, who, before her marriage, lived for some time with Mrs. Johnson at Hampstead, that she indulged herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while her husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no means treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife. But all this is perfectly compatible with his fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high opinion ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of using less pressure adds zest to our work, however it may have seemed like drudging before, and the possibility of resting while we work opens to us much that is new and refreshing, and gives us clearer understanding of how to rest more completely ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... know why?" Nance challenged him in instant loyalty to her friend. "Besides, who else have I got to run with? Maybe you think it ain't stupid drudging around home all day and never having a cent to call my own. I want to get ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... fro through the sort of street or highway. Many of the warriors were gathered in groups, and reclined upon the ground, lazily chatting; while their far better halves were patiently toiling and drudging at the most ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... millers trade: Thus must we mask to save our wretched lives, Threatned by Conquest of this hapless Yle, Whose sad invasions by the Conqueror Have made a number such as we subject Their gentle necks unto their stubborn yoke Of drudging labour and base peasantry. Sir Thomas Godard now old Goddard is, Goddard the miller of fair Manchester. Why should not I content me with this state, As good Sir Edmund Trofferd did the flaile? And thou, sweet Em, must stoop ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... his drudging rise in business, since his father's old partner had set his life work out before him, when the lonely boy had finished with honor ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... remunerative, attainable quality in every study and pursuit is the quality of attention," said Charles Dickens. "My own invention, or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention." When asked on another occasion the secret of his success, he said: "I never put one hand to anything on which I could throw my whole self." "Be a whole man at everything," wrote Joseph Gurney to his son, "a whole man at study, in work, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... which would have broken the hearts of some. But our author was of a most noble spirit, and little regarded whatever afflictions he lay under, whilst he was conscious to himself of doing nothing but what he could answer. At length after he had, by continual drudging, worn out his body, he left this world contentedly, by a stoppage of his urine, anno domini 1695, and was buried in the east corner of the north side of St. John's Church, adjoyning to Merton College, and in the wall is a small monument ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... children were born to him; and not only his responsibilities but his expenses increased, while, do what he could, his earnings remained too small for his needs. It was therefore necessary for him to bestir himself. Probably he felt capable of better things than drudging in an employment so precarious as glass-painting; and hence he was induced to turn his attention to the kindred art of painting and enamelling earthenware. Yet on this subject he was wholly ignorant; for he had never seen earth ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... labor hard for a living. But they will rob themselves of necessities and needed rest to get the means to follow his demands. Often it takes them a long time to do this, and perhaps just as they have accomplished the weary task he suddenly proclaims a new law, and all this toiling and drudging and stinting must begin over again. In this way the unhappy creatures have never a breathing spell. It is utterly impossible for them to conform to the new law when it is first proclaimed by the god, and so they are always struggling to keep up. Their chains are never ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... himself and for us all! Alas, is there no noble work for this man too? Has not he thickheaded ignorant boors; lazy, enslaved farmers, weedy lands? Lands! Has not he weary heavy-laden ploughers of land; immortal souls of men, ploughing, ditching, day-drudging; bare of back, empty of stomach, nigh desperate of heart; and none peaceably to help them but he, under Heaven? Does he find, with his three-hundred thousand pounds, no noble thing trodden down in the thoroughfares, which it were godlike to help up? ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... we merely know: the imperious demand for beauty, for harmony will be applied no longer to our mere material properties, but to that other possession which is always with us and can never be taken from us, the images and feelings within our soul. Now, that other human beings should be drudging sordidly in order that we may be idle and showy means a thought, a vision, an emotion which do not get on in our mind in company with the sight of sunset and sea, the taste of mountain air and woodland freshness, the faces and forms of Florentine saints and Antique gods, the serene poignancy ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... interesting chapter on this subject in Dr. Feilberg's "Jul."{27} I may mention just one familiar figure of the Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a sort of genius of the house corresponding very much to the "drudging goblin" of Milton's "L'Allegro," for whom the cream-bowl must be duly set. He may perhaps be the spirit of the founder of the family. At all events on Christmas Eve Yule porridge and new milk are set out for him, sometimes with other things, such as a suit of small clothes, spirits, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... are hastening rapidly toward their decease. They have gone through crises in business that shattered their nervous system, and pulled on the brain. They have a shortness of breath, and a pain in the back of the head, and at night an insomnia that alarms them. Why are they drudging at business early and late? For fun? No; it would be difficult to extract any amusement out of that exhaustion. Because they are avaricious? In many cases no. Because their own personal expenses are lavish? No; a few hundred dollars would meet ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Is not this very Wilson G. Hunt a triumph of human laziness, vindicating its claim to be the lord of matter by an ingenuity doing labor's utmost without sweat? After all, nobody but a fool drudges for other reason than that he may presently stop drudging. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... out to attend on the wounded soldiers in the exceptional hospital at Scutari. But whatever was its origin, the rule was established that nursing even day-labourers and mechanics with their wives and children, was something very different from being a drudging governess or broken-down companion. It was like being a member of the Kyrle Society, with which one of the princes had to do, or like singing in an East of London concert-room, quite chic, perfectly good form, anybody might take it up and gain ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... be, if we weren't applying a salve to somebody's sore; and I suppose that's what almost all work amounts to—salving somebody's sore, easing the wheels of life somewhere," was that gentleman's reply. "And the humdrum drudging of a schoolboy, in learning and unlearning, is but the easing the wheels ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... distance, but found no end and no break in them. They could arrive at no decision. There was nothing in the records of science that mentioned anything of this kind. But at last the bald and venerable geographer, Professor Mud Turtle, a person who, born poor, and of a drudging low family, had, by his own native force raised himself to the headship of the geographers of his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
