"Tediousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was also the author of "The State of Ireland;" and if they shall quote against me with a sneer Lilly's "Euphues" itself, I shall only answer by asking—Have they ever read it? For if they have done so, I pity them if they have not found it, in spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as man need look into: and wish for no better proof of the nobleness and virtue of the Elizabethan age, than the fact that "Euphues" and the "Arcadia" were the two ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... these days' covers thirty years. John leaps, as it were, into the arena full grown and full armed. His work is described by one word—'preaching'; out of which all modern associations, which have too often made it a synonym for long-winded tediousness and toothless platitudes, must be removed. It means proclaiming, or acting as a herald, and implies the uplifted voice and the brief, urgent message of one who runs before the chariot, and shouts, 'The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... trophies, and war dresses, and the skins of various wild animals, and hung round with pictures of Indian games and ceremonies, and scenes of war and hunting. In a word, the captain was beguiling the tediousness of attendance at court, by an attempt at authorship; and was rewriting and extending his travelling notes, and making maps of the regions he had explored. As he sat at the table, in this curious apartment, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... besides, there was nothing in my "Diary" that could have compromised me in any way. And if I have destroyed it now it is due solely to my desire to throw my past into oblivion and to save my reader from the tediousness of long complaints and moans, from the horror of sacrilegious cursings. May ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... and sometimes threw a glance of mingled awe and curiosity round the gloomy apartment; while the Count gradually ceased to converse, and sat either lost in thought, or reading a volume of Tacitus, which he had brought to beguile the tediousness of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... got a heavy piece of wood at first, but at last bethought myself of one of the iron crows; which, however, though I found it, made driving those posts or piles very laborious and tedious work. But what need I have been concerned at the tediousness of anything I had to do, seeing I had time enough to do it in? nor had I any other employment, if that had been over, at least that I could foresee, except the ranging the island to seek for food, which I did, more or ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... and scan to a tiresome extent; then came mathematical demonstrations. Every conceivable variety of lines and angles adorned the blackboards; and next in succession were classes in rhetoric and natural history. There was a tediousness in the examinations incident to such occasions, and, as repeated inquiries were propounded, Beulah rejoiced at the prospect of release. Finally the commissioners declared themselves quite satisfied with the proficiency attained, and the graduating class ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... most fatal of all faults; negligences or errours are single and local, but tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are censured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself. He that is weary the first hour, is more weary the second; as bodies forced into motion contrary to their tendency, pass more and more slowly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of the great father of microscopics. It may have been biology; but this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip—still concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes—a series of questions, which, to avoid tediousness, I shall place with the responses, in the order in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... presume (Pyrophilus) have taken notice, that in this whole Treatise, I purposely decline (as far as I well can) the mentioning of Elaborate Chymical Experiments, for fear of frighting you by their tediousness and difficulty; but yet in confirmation of what I have been newly telling you about the possibility of Varying the Colours of Liquors, better than the Water-drinkers are wont to do, I shall add, that Helmont ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... or the Stragler.] Euen so againe, as it is wisdome for a perswader to tarrie and make his aboad as long as he may conueniently without tediousness to the hearer, vpon his chiefe proofes or points of the cause tending to his aduantage, and likewise to depart againe when time serues, and goe to a new matter seruing the purpose aswell. So is it requisite many times for ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... it at all probable that an uncultivated woman like Mrs. Vulpes should know even the name of the great father of microscopies. It may have been biology; but this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip—still concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes—a series of questions which, to avoid tediousness, I shall place with the responses, in the order in ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.[2] The tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another!—In my early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... at any rate it points the better way. The speech itself has a close, direct, sinewy quality, a complete freedom from anything vague or involved; and shows for the first time a perfect mastery of the art of handling detail upon detail without an instant of tediousness, and holding the attention of listeners sustained and unbroken. It was a remonstrance against false allegations of the misbehaviour of the planters since the emancipating act, but there is not a trace of backsliding upon the great ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... but wraps her rebuke in a compliment. Art, so-called, in speech, was much favoured in the time of Elizabeth. And as a compliment Polonius takes the form in which she expresses her dislike of his tediousness, and her anxiety after his news: pretending to wave it off, he yet, in his gratification, coming on the top of his excitement with the importance of his fancied discovery, plunges immediately into a very slough of art, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... perfect directions by your letters, confirming the former instructions and commandments delivered by yourself at our leaving the river of Thames. And I think it a matter both unnecessary, for the manifest discovery of the country, as also for tediousness' sake, to remember unto you the diurnal of our course, sailing thither and returning; only I have presumed to present unto you this brief discourse, by which you may judge how profitable this land is likely to succeed, as well to yourself, by whose direction and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... was the change from their natural climate, coming as they did out of shady and hilly countries, abounding in means of shelter from the heat, to lodge in low, and, in the autumn season, very unhealthy ground; added to which was the length and tediousness of the siege, as they had now sat seven months before the Capitol. There was, therefore, a great destruction among them, and the number of the dead grew so great, that the living gave up burying them. Neither, indeed, were things on ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... few lives, perhaps no worthy ones, without tasks that often seem monotonous and become matters of dull grinding that bring weariness and longing for relief. All worth while work involves much tediousness, painstaking exertion. All great things stand for so much life poured out, and life is never poured out ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... stanzas is that imported from Italy and called ottava rima, abababcc. It has been charged with tediousness, and tedious it may become if not sedulously varied. It was introduced, along with so much else from Italy, by Wyatt, and was then employed for different purposes by Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, and others.[57] At the close of the eighteenth century it enjoyed a rebirth. "It had already ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... stuff I will proceed to what will interest you more,—the excitements and tediousness of flights over enemy country. Three hours ago I returned from a patrol round Mossy-Face Wood, where one seldom fails to meet black-crossed birds of prey, so I will begin with the subject of a hunt ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the way, he informeth you of the particularities; as well of the tediousness of the way, as of the pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is ended, as of the many by-turnings that may divert you from your way. But this is to no man but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive studious painfulness. Which constant ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... which occurred in that Arcadian parish, would be to overstep the bounds of permissible tediousness. In such places all events move slowly and take long to develop to their results. The passions which in our own quickly moving world spring up, flourish, wither and are cut down in a month require, when they are not stimulated ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... the funeral of the dead Pope and with the choice of his successor are described at great length, and the eye of the artist was fascinated by the wealth of color and the pomp, while his Protestant soul was wearied and disgusted by the tediousness and mummery ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... be received and treated with the utmost courtesy. But if a tiresome fellow, after wearying all his friends, becomes weary of himself, and arrives to bestow his tediousness upon you, pull out your watch with restlessness, talk about your great occupations and the value of time. Politeness is one thing; to be made a convenience of ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... may, without much harm, miss the next seven paragraphs, and go on at the twenty-first. Yet there is one point, in a Turner drawing presently to be examined, which I cannot explain without inflicting the tediousness even of these ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... circumstances could do little to lighten the insufferable tediousness of his confinement. Probably, however, such changes and modifications as may have been in progress in his nature, attained quicker and easier development by reason of his physical prostration. The alteration in his bodily habits and conditions paved the way for an analogous moral ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... stratagem. Having been allowed some liberty for amusing himself in the corridors in the neighbourhood of his apartment, he had invented a game of hop, skip, and jump up stairs and down, which he was wont to play with the soldiers of the guard, as a solace to the tediousness of confinement. One day he hopped and skipped up the staircase with a rapidity which excited the admiration of the companions of his sport, slipped into his room, slammed and bolted the doors, and when the guard, after in vain waiting a considerable tine for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is absolutely necessary, if the narration of sports in foreign countries is supposed to interest those who have never had the opportunity of enjoying them. The want of graphic description of localities in which the events have occurred, is the principal cause of that tediousness which generally accompanies the steady perusal of a sporting work. You can read twenty pages with interest, but a monotony soon pervades it, and sport then assumes an ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... with seeing his wife so happy, that, forgetting all his fears of tediousness, he partook the enjoyment of her anticipations. He was the first, when they came in sight of a mountain, to lift Johnnie on his knee and tell him it was Helvellyn; and mamma's resentment at the grievous error was one of the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the soporific appliances—and that "virtue," in my opinion, has been MORE injured by the TEDIOUSNESS of its advocates than by anything else; at the same time, however, I would not wish to overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals, and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not some day become interesting! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of traps requires more forethought than the invention of weapons and was at a later date. The accidental catching of animals in natural traps, such as vines, pot-holes, soft places in the marshes and cliffs, offered a suggestion; and the tediousness of lying in wait, on the one hand, and the danger of a direct conflict with large animals, on the other, offered a strong motive for the use of nature's suggestions in the way of traps. Undoubtedly women made a large use of traps in catching the smaller animals before men gave much ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... with a great deal of trifling and delay, as with us, but very cheap. Those excellent authors, Mounsieur Maimbourg, Mounsieur Varillas, Monsieur le Grand, tho' they were all guilt on the back and would have made a very considerable figure in a gentleman's study, yet, after much tediousness, were sold for such trifling sums that I am ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... perhaps not without some tediousness of detail, shown, if I am in error on the subject of internal improvement, how, and in what company, I fell into that error. If I am wrong, it is apparent who ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... improve the quality of the leaves, the shrub is pruned, so as not to exceed the height of from two to three feet, much in the same manner as the vine is treated in France. They pluck the leaves, one selecting them according to the kinds of tea required; and, notwithstanding the tediousness of the operation, each labourer is able to gather from four to ten or fifteen pounds a day. When the trees attain to six or seven years of age, the produce becomes so inferior that they are removed to make room for a fresh succession, or they are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... teujo. Tea caddy teujo. Tea plant tearbeto. Teapot tekrucxo. Teach instrui. Teacher instruisto. Teaching instruo—ado. Tear sxiri. Tear in pieces dispecigi, dissxiri. Tear (a rent) desxirajxo. Tear larmo. Tease inciteti, tedi. Teat mampinto. Technical teknika. Tedious teda. Tediousness tedeco. Teem suficxegi. Teeth dentoj. Telegram telegramo. Telegraph telegrafi. Telegraph (instrument) telegrafilo. Telegraphic telegrafa. Telegraphist telegrafisto. Telegraphy telegrafo. Telephone ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Queen,' 'Gondibert,' and the 'Polyolbion,' annually, as they cheeringly averred, through and out. Photography, steam, and electricity make us otherwise, and Patience has fled to the spheres; therefore, if feasible, shall "brevity be the soul of wit," and we will eschew "tediousness and outward flourishes" in compressing 'The Flower ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... beholding a number of peasants who would be much better if the washing extended above their feet, engaged in gulping down an unsavoury repast. The whole charm of the thing rests in the idea, and this idea is quite extinguished by the extreme length and tediousness of the whole proceeding. The feet have too evidently been washed before, and the pilgrims are too palpably got ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... say) assuaged the tediousness of his labors, which he sustayned in open and common games, with playing. This Hercules, I say, being an incomparable warriour, and the sonne of Jupiter and Latona, made himselfe a playfellowe with boys. Euripides the poet introduceth, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... being Oppressed with a great Dearth and Famine, in the time of Atis, one of the Progenitors of Omphale, they Devised these Games, that every second day playing at them, they might beguile their Hungry Bellies, and drive away the Tediousness of the Famine. And indeed, according to its Original institution, of infinite use for the diverting Melancholly, for Exercise of the Body, by runing and stirring in this Game, for helping likewise sundry Bodily Infirmities, as the Stone, Gravel, Reins, &c. For which aforesaid ends ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... The tediousness of singing without proper separation of the syllables is not appreciated till it has been learned how to divide the consonants. The nasal close of itself brings a new color into the singing, which must be taken into account; and moreover, ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... reason was classic; not only the aptitude but the documents which enable it to comprehend tradition were absent. In the first place, there was no knowledge of history; learning was, due to its dullness and tediousness, refused; learned compilations, vast collections of extracts and the slow work of criticism were held in disdain. Voltaire made fun of the Benedictines. Montesquieu, to ensure the acceptance of his "Esprit des lois," indulged in wit about laws. Reynal, to give an ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... cleverness and charm cannot do his arrogance and his effrontery assuredly will not do. And yet I said that this book gave me a wholesome shock. Far from deteriorating, Mr. Chesterton is improving. In spite of the awful tediousness of his mannerism of antithetical epigram, he does occasionally write finer epigrams than ever. His imagination is stronger, his fancy more delicate, and his sense of beauty widened. There are things in this book that really are very excellent indeed; things that, if they ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... hermetically sealing these chinks and crevices has yet been invented. The attempt to close them up by increasing the formalities and multiplying the courts of appeal and revision merely adds to the tediousness of the procedure, and withdraws the whole process still more completely from public control. At the same time the absence of free discussion between the contending parties renders the task of the judge enormously ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... uses an elastic ligature, which he introduces into the dorsal aspect of the prepuce by means of a curved needle. This he ties in front, and in three or four days it cuts its way through. Although Hue reports a large number so operated upon, the tediousness of the procedure and the swelling and oedema, as well as the active pain that must necessarily accompany the operation, will hardly recommend the ligature in preference to ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... White Village, between Sidon and Berytus, on the seacoast, where he waited for the arrival of Cleopatra. And, being impatient of the delay she made, he bethought himself of shortening the time in wine and drunkenness, and yet could not endure the tediousness of a meal, but would start from table and run to see if she were coming. Till at last she came into port, and brought with her clothes and money for the soldiers. Though some say that Antony only received the clothes from her, and distributed his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... curious and diverting information; but for me the real author of The Arabian Nights is called not Burton nor Payne but Antoine Galland. He it was, in truth, who gave the world as much exactly as it needed of his preposterous original: who eliminated its tediousness, purged it of its barbarous and sickening immorality, wiped it clean of cruelty and unnaturalness, selected its essentials of comedy and romance, and set them clear and sharp against a light that western eyes can bear and in ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the dangers and tediousness of which can hardly be described. Stanley and his men were often obliged to wade through swamps filled with alligators. Crawling on hands and knees, they forced their way through miles of tangled jungle, breathing ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... be the demand for them. After spending three years in Colorado gold mines, he returned and built two cars which cost $18,000 each. Everybody laughed at "Pullman's folly." But Pullman believed that whatever relieved the tediousness of long trips would meet with speedy approval, and he had faith enough in his idea to risk his all ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... these festive devices have come down to our times. They were conducted on a scale of grandeur and expense which may still surprise; but taste as yet was in its infancy, and the whole was characterized by the unmerciful tediousness, the ludicrous incongruities, and the operose pedantry of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of France dreamed life away in a pleasant idyl, in a joyous pastoral amusement; there, she tried to forget that she was queen, that is to say, that she was the slave of etiquette; there she tried to indemnify herself for the tediousness, the emptiness, the heartlessness of the great festivals in the Tuileries and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... matters of work and in matters of social life, to encourage our friends to believe in themselves. We must not, of course, encourage them in vicious and hurtful enjoyment, and there are, of course, bores whose tediousness is not only not harmless, but a positively noxious and injurious quality. There are bores who have but to lay a finger upon a subject of universal or special interest, to make one feel that under no circumstances will one ever be able to allow one's thoughts to dwell on the subject again; and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... means equal to the reputation it once had, the poem is not without merit. The diction is much less stilted than Seneca's or Persius's; the thoughts mostly correct, though rather tame; and the descriptions accurate even to tediousness. The arrangement of his subject betrays a somewhat weak hand, though in this he is superior to Gratius Faliscus; but he has an earnest desire to make truth known, and a warm interest in his theme. The opening invocation is addressed to Apollo and the Muses, asking ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... speaker or writer is a most effective tone for a large public. It gives them confidence in their man, and prevents tediousness—except to those who reflect how delicate is the poise of truth, and what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified propositions. To such persons, a writer who is trenchant in every sentence of every page, who never lapses for a line into the contingent, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... cavalier of birth, and possessed of some truly noble qualities, he had gained deserved ascendency over his commander. Alvarado had frequently visited Hernando Pizarro in his confinement, where, to beguile the tediousness of captivity, he amused himself with gaming, - the passion of the Spaniard. They played deep, and Alvarado lost the enormous sum of eighty thousand gold castellanos. He was prompt in paying the debt, but Hernando Pizarro peremptorily ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... born about 1328, and died about 1380; and although he had, both in Scotland and England, contemporaries and immediate successors, no one of them can be compared with him for a moment. The "Moral Gower" was his friend, and inherited his tediousness and pedantry without a sparkle of his fancy, passion, humour, wisdom, and good spirits. Occleve and Lydgate followed in the next generation; and although their names are retained in literary histories, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... gate was opened to the sound of music; and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and to lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately gratified. Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds. |
