"Toil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of October. And then suddenly, cold rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... How different from what I imagined poor people's lives to be! Nothing beautiful or graceful about it. Poets and novelists write such fine things about poverty and honest toil, and throw a halo of ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... wallflowers and lovely hyacinths. The birds were singing nursery lullabies over their nests in the Coombe Woods, and even the sleek donkeys, dragging up some invalids from the Parade in their trim little chairs, seemed to toil more willingly in ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there. It's wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil. I think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... extricated that thread from all its windings, just as one does an entangled whipcord. When I had thus disengaged a sufficient length, I cut that off, and repeating the like operation, in about three hours' time, but with no little toil, I made up my load of different lengths just to my liking. Having finished this task, I filled the gourd, brought for that purpose, with water; and having first viewed the whole remaining part of the rock, I returned over the stone bridge ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... Dorcas, rushing to the cellar door. Words cannot describe her feeling when she saw that her nice candle-wicks, the fruit of her day's toil, were burnt up. ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... so far. The number of geese he had called into being under adverse climatic conditions was considerably more than fourteen. The tale of volumes will never overtake the counting of heads, I am safe to say; but my ambitions point not exactly that way, and whatever the pangs the toil of writing has cost me I have always thought kindly ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... intelligence superior to, or other than, the labourer's own. In theory, at all events, therefore, this self-supporting multitude would be capable of choosing whether they would continue in this condition of industrial autonomy, with all its hardships, its scant results, and its unceasing toil, or would submit their labour to the guidance of a minority more capable than themselves. Such being the case, then, if by submitting themselves to the guidance of others they were to get nothing more than they could produce when left to their own devices, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... excessively young and naive. A man may heap up facts and facts on a given topic, and assort and label them, and have the trick of producing any particular fact at an instant's notice, and yet, despite all his efforts and honest toil, rest hopelessly among the profane. Churton Collins was such a man. He had no artistic feeling. Apart from the display of learning, which is always pleasant to the man of letters, his essays were arid ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... comrade climbed the precipice, and, after some minutes' severe toil, arrived at the summit, when they sat down to recover themselves. The sky was clear, although the gale blew strong. They had an extensive view of the coast, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag strained ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... just mind. He was wild in his caricatures, but very sane in his impressions. Many of his books were devoted, and this book is partly devoted, to a denunciation of aristocracy—of the idle class that lives easily upon the toil of nations. But he was fairer than many modern revolutionists, and he insisted on satirising also those who prey on society not in the name of rank or law, but in the name of intellect and beauty. Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... that of course I did. He had come down from Sitka to try and arrange for a treaty with the Spanish government that the poor men in the employ of the Russian-American Company might have breadstuffs to eat and not die of scurvy, nor toil through the long winter with no flesh on their bones. He brought a cargo with him to exchange for our corn and flour meanwhile. We had never seen any one so handsome and so grand and he turned all our heads, but he had a hard time with the Governor ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... sweetness! but 'tis lost to me, [He kisses her hand. Like food upon a wretch condemned to die: Another, and I vow to go:—Once more; If I swear often, I shall be foreswore. Others against their wills may haste their fate; I only toil to be unfortunate: More my own foe than all my stars could prove; They give her person, but I give her love. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... "Wilt thou not come to my castle and rest thyself there for the night? For thou must be aweary with all thy toil." And Sir Percival said, "I will go with thee." So Sir Percydes and Sir Percival rode away together to the castle of ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... allowances. The bee is as busy as a bee, and the beaver works like a beaver, but there their responsibility ends. The bee doesn't have to go about seeing that other bees are not crowded into unsanitary tenements or victimised by the sweating system. When the beaver's day of toil is over he doesn't have to discuss the sphere, the rights, or the voting privileges of beaveresses; all he has to do is to work like a beaver, and that ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the vermin-killer advertisement has it, 'pests of the household.' They come out only during business hours. The curse of the blood-relation, however, is that he infests your leisure moments; and you must notice the pathos of that verbal distinction: man measures his toil by 'hours' ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... have declined an immediate action, but he found it impossible to restrain the ardor of his men. The knights leaped from their sinking steeds and formed themselves on foot, and the infantry, forgetting their toil at the sight of the foe, continued to advance. They halted at length on the edge of the deep morass of Grona, in full view of the opposing army ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... accused, by the public opinion of many centuries, of meddling in these unhallowed matters. So deep-rooted has always been the popular delusion with respect to accusations of this kind, that no crime was ever disproved with such toil and difficulty. That it met great encouragement, nevertheless, is evident from the vast numbers of pretenders to it; who, in spite of the danger, have existed in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... brave in the Captain; but I will spare my Sense of it, and leave it to my Reader to judge as he pleases. It may be easily guess'd, in what Manner the Prince resented this Indignity, who may be best resembled to a Lion taken in a Toil; so he raged, so he struggled for Liberty, but all in vain: And they had so wisely managed his Fetters, that he could not use a Hand in his Defence, to quit himself of a Life that would by no Means endure ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... history of the older nations, we see an alignment of two fundamental classes. The one is born to toil, stunted by toil, and gets its class characteristics by toil. The other is characterized by the pleasures and arts of leisure, is physically and mentally developed by leisure, and proud and jealous of its leisure. This class is always class-conscious; its groups, however antagonistic, ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... peculiar. Description is quite unnecessary. They were not discovered without toil, and not secured without warfare. Once in possession they had no reason to complain. True, the conveniences of civilized life do not exist there—but who dreams ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... attaching to the words of a distinguished member of an honored profession, as well as the younger members of that same profession. They know something of the toil needed to achieve a worthy reputation, and of the talent implied by the capacity for toil. They know how to discriminate between the careful opinions of mature and deliberate judgment, and the headlong assertions of rash busy-bodies and amateurs. They understand, because they feel, the inevitable ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... returning colour gave her at once a more natural appearance. So far as the eye could reach, the white level road, with its fringe of elm-trees, was empty. Away off in the fields the blue-smocked peasants bent still at their toil. They had heard nothing, seen nothing. A few more minutes, and ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was well; for as the day grew towards noon, the ice was melted in the midst of the river, and the people fell through, one upon the other, and perished miserably, so that he might be counted happiest that died most speedily. But such as remained fled across the plains of Thrace with much toil and trouble, and are now come to our homes, being but a ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... after a rough day Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay! The very Suicide that pays his debt At once without instalments (an old way Of paying debts, which creditors regret), Lets out impatiently ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... I see that we get a little more destitute every day: that the boarders are melting away; that I am reduced to unthinkably sordid hackwork, and you to the grind of uncongenial toil; that Peggy can't afford to keep a cook who can boil a potato respectably (they were like walnuts to-day) that she and the children go about with their clothes dropping off them. I see that; and I see these Urquharts, closely connected with our family, rolling in unearned ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Earth attest my prayer, For whom I toil. Thou, Jove, supreme in sway, And thou, great Juno, pleased at length to spare. O mighty Mars, whose nod directs the fray; Springs, Streams, and Powers whom Air and Sea obey. If Turnus win—O let the vow remain— Humbly to King Evander, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... This son of toil who had driven his family thirty miles across the prairie, blanketed his tired horses and slept on the ground the night before, who was willing to stand all through the afternoon and listen with pathetic eagerness to this debate, must be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were a species of gnomes, who haunted the dark and solitary places, and were often seen in the mines, where they seemed to imitate the labours of the miners, and sometimes took pleasure in frustrating their objects and rendering their toil unfruitful. Sometimes they were malignant, especially if neglected or insulted; but sometimes also they were indulgent to individuals whom they took under their protection. When a miner, therefore, hit upon a rich vein of ore, the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... hat-box, locked and strapped, and a gorgeous gold and quartz handled ebony "presentation" walking stick. There was a certain dramatic suggestion in this revelation of the sudden and hurried transition from a life of ostentatious luxury to one of hidden toil and privation, and a further significance in the slow and gradual distribution and degradation of these elegant souvenirs. A pair of silver boot-hooks had been used for raking the hearth and lifting the coffee kettle; the ivory of the brushes ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... so much, that I fear he will overwork himself. He is at this present time out in the little field, opposite my window, digging up the docks, which are very hard to conquer; he has made a brave large heap of them, but I wish to my heart he would not toil so desperately. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... knew not where to put it—I dared not leave it lying there. I examined my purse to see if it would hold it,— impossible! Neither of my windows opened on the sea. I had no other resource but, with toil and great fatigue, to drag it to a huge chest which stood in a closet in my room; where I placed it all, with the exception of a handful or two. Then I threw myself, exhausted, into an arm-chair, till the people of the house should be up and stirring. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... for a moment like a flitting cloud on the face of Ashweesha. Gladly would she have exchanged her high estate, with all its costly and gorgeous array, for a life of humble toil accompanied with peace and security—for she was of gentle nature—but this ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... I slept on it, and arrived at the conclusion this morning that my old Richie stood in imminent jeopardy of losing the fruit of all my toil. The good woman will advance the money to her husband. When I pledged my word to the squire I had reason to imagine the two months a sufficient time. We have still a couple of days. I have heard of men who lost heart at the eleventh hour, and if they had only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Cuchulain spoke truth. When the young warrior was come up to Cuchulain he bespoke him and condoled with him [2]for the greatness of his toil and the length of time he had passed without sleep.[2] [3]"This is brave of thee, O Cuchulain," quoth he. "It is not much, at all," replied Cuchulain. "But I will bring thee help," said the young warrior. "Who then art thou?" asked Cuchulain. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... time it was so late and so dark, that Captain Truck determined to suspend his labours until morning. In the course of a few hours of active toil, he had secured all the yards, the sails, the standing and running rigging, the boats, and many of the minor articles of the Dane; and nothing of essential importance remained, but the three lower masts. These, it is true, were all in all to him, for without them he would ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... We toil assiduously to cram something more into those scrap-bags of knowledge which we fondly call our minds. Seldom do we rest tranquil long enough to find out whether there is anything in them already that is of real value,—any native feeling, any original thought, ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... its house's inmates (and intimates) in things of nature so refined as to inspire and satisfy their happiest moods. Therefore no garden should cost, nor look as if it cost, an outlay of money, time or toil that cramps the house's own ability to minister to the genuine bodily needs and spiritual enlargements of its indwellers; and therefore, also, it should never seem to cost, in its first making ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... the way for grosser reason. They discussed the mutuality of interests that would be theirs, a lesson of supreme worth to a conventional world. They arranged philanthropic schemes for the betterment of conditions for the little brothers and sisters who gained a sustenance by toil at their behest. But, most of all, they talked those divine absurdities that are the privilege of all true lovers. The husband bewailed the incredible stupidity that had led him into neglect of the most adorable being in the universe; the wife mourned ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... It is not unworthy of notice, that the ladies of Baltimore charged themselves with the toil of immediately making up the summer clothing for the troops. Innumerable instances of their zeal in the common cause of their country were given in every state ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Braddock insisted upon fighting foes concealed behind trees, as if he were in the open field. After the English general's inglorious defeat and death, Washington continued in active service as commander of the Virginia forces for two years, until toil, exposure, and hardship produced an illness which compelled him to withdraw for several months from active service. When at the close of the war he returned to private life, Colonel Washington had won a name as the most efficient commander in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... of the English wars new life began to gleam out on France; the people grew more tranquil, finding that toil and thrift bore again their wholesome fruits; Charles VII. did not fail in his duty, and took his part in restoring quiet, order, and justice ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." And old men remember the sorrowful things of their life, and how little happiness measured up to the misery and toil of life, and they had hoped.... But there were the words of the preacher: "Neither have they any more a reward".... And secretly and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the only heritage John Graham had left the daughter for whom, most cheerfully, he would have laid down his life. The village people had been kind after their homely way; but they, working hard all day with their hands, and eating at eventide the substantial bread of their honest toil, were possessed of a great contempt for the worn and haggard man who tramped their meadow-ways with his sketch-books under his arm, his daughter always with him, preserving still the look and manners of the gently born, though they wore the shabbiest of shabby ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Koheleth, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my mind to searching out and exploring wisdom, all that is done under heaven: it is an evil task that God hath given the children of men at which to toil. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, the whole is vanity and a striving after wind. The crooked cannot be made straight; and the wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with myself, saying, Behold, I have increased ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Barrett and demanded food. Mrs. Barrett served them as well as she was able, and when she was offered compensation, refused it, saying gently, "We are commanded if our enemy hunger to feed him." So, in toil or suffering or anguish the women endured their share of the sorrows of that day. Do they not deserve a share of its glories also? The battles of Lexington and Concord form an era in our country's history. When, driven to desperation by a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... fair enough To please your eye, range where you list abroad, Only, at coming home, speak me but fair: If you delight to change, change when you please, So that you will not change your love to me. If you delight to see me drudge and toil, I'll be your drudge, because 'tis your delight. Or if you think me unworthy of the name Of your chaste wife, I will become your maid, Your slave, your servant—anything you will, If for that name of servant and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the remains of a Roman tower;—the rifted stones rolled down the hill, and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and, awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a physical enemy, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the general season of haymaking. Bands of mowers, in their light trousers and broad straw hats, are astir long before the fiery eye of the sun glances above the horizon, that they may toil in the freshness of the morning, and stretch themselves at noon in luxurious ease by trickling waters, and beneath the shade of trees. Till then, with regular strokes and a sweeping sound, the sweet and flowery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... set, or with gayer young friends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that damp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading, and turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away his law-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up, as he had told her he often did, by a run in the Temple Gardens, taking in the while the grand inarticulate mighty roar of tens of thousands of busy men, nigh at hand, but not seen, and catching ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... nothing in the ocean, With six fins about that roweth, Or with eight to move delighteth, But repair'd to hear the music. E'en the briny water's mother {38} 'Gainst the beach, breast-forward, cast her, On a little sand-hill rais'd her, On her side with toil up-crawling. E'en from Woinomoinen's eye-balls Tears of heart-felt pleasure trickled, Bigger than the whortle-berry, Heavier than the eggs of plovers, Down his broad and mighty bosom, Knee-ward from his bosom flowing, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... whose occasion is urgent and those who are compelled thereunto [by need]. As for thee, O my son, thou enjoyest ample fortune; so do thou content thyself with that which God hath given thee and be bounteous [unto others], even as He hath been bounteous unto thee; and afflict not thyself with the toil and hardship of travel, for indeed it is said that travel is a piece of torment."[FN5] But the youth said, "Needs must I travel to Baghdad, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... understand one another better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that "understands itself"—namely, a nation. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly—the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... suasory example it is for those, who through some freak of fortune, being enabled to shake off the dust of honest toil and industry, are very ready to look downward with contempt upon the rank they have just left. What must they think of our noble, hospitable Governor, and Her Royal Highness Princess Louise, who so amiably and courteously receive social inferiors within their home? How can they ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... in going out at all the nets must be looked to and lowered and hauled in. Even on Sundays there's things to be attended to by the lads, and though I don't say as 'ow boys is made to do useless work, yet, when they're there on that day, they toil pretty ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... state whether they know that, because of the small pay and the dearness of food, and because of their discomfort and their heavy toil in mounting guard and in sentinel duty, many fall sick daily and die; and that for this reason, the said hospital always contains more sick men than it can ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... a fountain, which they call Cleite,[1] the illustrious name of the hapless maid. Most terrible came that day from Zeus upon the Doliones, women and men; for no one of them dared even to taste food, nor for a long time by reason of grief did they take thought for the toil of the cornmill, but they dragged on their lives eating their food as it was, untouched by fire. Here even now, when the Ionians that dwell in Cyzicus pour their yearly libations for the dead, they ever grind the meal for the sacrificial cakes ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... terror half wild, He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child; He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,— The child in his ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... of Athens, that all these strongholds were prizes of war, displayed for competition. He saw that in the nature of things the property of the absent belongs to those who are on the spot, and that of the negligent to those who are ready for toil and danger. {6} It is, as you know, by acting upon this belief, that he has brought all those places under his power, and now holds them—some of them by right of capture in war, others in virtue of alliances and friendly ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... nicely adjusted to our strength and our weakness, giving freer opportunity to individual effort, and more firmly establishing national prosperity, better able to resist sedition or foreign assault, than any which painful toil has created, or the imaginations of the benevolent conceived, from the days of Plato ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... beautiful scenery, works of art, splendid architecture and fine clothing should not be pursued for their own sake, but only so far as they may be necessary to relieve the tedium and monotony of toil and labor, or as a curative measure to dispel gloom and low spirits or a tendency to melancholy. The same thing applies to the arts and sciences. Medicine is of assistance in maintaining bodily health and curing it of its ills. The logical, mathematical ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... then, and endured, the recital of men (unconsciously telling their own heroism) would be the proper record of these stirring and memorable months. They could tell how, worn out with days and nights of toil, the brief repose was at length welcome with so much joy. Frequently the rain and sleet would beat in their faces as they slept, and the ice would thicken in their very beds. Happy were the men who had blankets in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... but satisfy their longing. You behold the Irish nation, Who expect to hear God's truth From your lips. Oh, chosen youth, Leave your slavery. The vocation God has given thee is to sow Faith o'er all the Irish soil. There as Legate thou shalt toil, Ireland's great Apostle. Go First to France, to German's home, The good bishop: there thou'lt make Thy profession: there thou'lt take The monk's habit, and to Rome Pass, where letters thou'lt procure For that mighty work of thine, In the bulls ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... saw the first little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her—save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of mind, and the impulse to halt this hardship. He knew not ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... many a wayward and unprofitable ploy. Our predilections for taming wild birds—the wilder by nature the better—seemed boundless; and our family of hawks, and owls, and ravens was too large not to cost us much toil, anxiety, and even sorrow. We fished in the Ettrick and the lesser streams. These last suited our way of it best, since we generally fished with staves and plough-spades—thus far, at least, honourably giving the objects of our pursuit ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... or an hired servant venture his life for his new master that will scarce give him his wages at year's end; A country colon toil and moil, till and drudge for a prodigal idle drone, that devours all the gain, or lasciviously consumes with fantastical expenses; A noble man in a bravado to encounter death, and for a small flash of honour to cast away himself; A worldling tremble at an executor, and yet not fear ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... had decided that honesty on this occasion was the best policy, as "a political niblick, always employed to get his party out of bad lies," won me more applause and popularity in a House of enthusiastic golfers than endless weeks of honest toil behind ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... and observe how it moves in him the sense of responsibility, and the prayer, that if he has in any matter wandered from the right road, if he has forgotten the simplicity of childhood in the toil of life, he may, from this time, remember the vow that he now records—from this time to press on towards the things that are unseen, but which are manifested through the things that are seen. I refer you likewise to the poem ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the ice was loose when I came to this island. It is now closed. The white men must toil, toil, toil—very slow over the ice for three days, then they will come to smooth ice, where the dogs may run for three days. Then they will come to another island, like this one, on the far-off side of which there is no ice— ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Zeno's death he actually was his successor in his school; and, if my memory does not play me false, he is the author of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which is one of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical poetry. Yet, even when he was the head of a school, he continued in his illiberal toil as if he had been a monk; and, it is said, that once, when the wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, he was discovered to have no other garment at all;—something like the German student who came up to Heidelberg ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... English. The first belongs to the party of the right among the Do-Nothings—the older teachers who come from the generation which sent only picked men to college; the second, to the party of the left—the younger men who are distressed by the toil, the waste, the stupidity which accompany so ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... been of lasting ease, Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, Or merely silent ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... little more toil on our part, the great race is won, and our Government stands regenerated, after four ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up trap- stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty holes—what think ye did they collect? Not one bodle—not one coin of copper! This one was out of work;—and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... made, that the Central army of workers heard of it, and that they determined to make good the pledge given in their name. So a day was fixed for the attempt. From the Union side men came to take note of the work and to measure it, and their verdict at the close of the day's toil was that not only had the promised ten miles been constructed, but that the measurement showed two hundred feet over! And this, on the words of an authority, is how it was done:—When the car loaded with rails came to the end of the track, the two outer rails on either side were seized ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... works for God; it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing." The Rovuma was found to have changed greatly since his last visit, so that he had to land his goods twenty-five miles to the north at Mikindany harbor, and find his way down to the river farther up. The toil was fitted to wear out the strongest of his men. Nothing could have been more grateful than the Sunday rest. Through his Nassick boys, he tried to teach the Makonde—a tribe that bore a very bad character, but failed; however, the people were wonderfully civil, and, contrary to all previous usage, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... head that lay so often upon his bosom, covered with the cold earth! The minister thinks her very lovely, as she lies there so free from spot of sin, and he almost wonders they can weep over her early release from a world of effort, and toil, and care; but he knows what a struggle it is to give up a parent's richest possessions, for there are little ones that used to call him father, now lying beneath the snow, and he weeps with the afflicted, as he reads the ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... in the light of countless tapers, on his mound of flowers—offerings not only from royal terraces—for his mother had willed it so—but the gifts which his people had brought, lay there together, rare exotics and the flowers of the field and forest, crushed and mangled, perchance, in some toil-worn hand ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... ecstasy; and, drawing off her sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den. Here, powerless and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to themselves.—Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle.—Thank you, sir!—My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the manifestation of His love. We do not need to be brilliant, we do not need to be clever, we do not need to be influential, we do not need to be energetic, we do not need to be anything but quiet, waiting souls, in order to have Christ showing Himself to us, as we toil wearily through the darkness of the night. Undistinguished disciples have a place in His heart, a sphere and a function in His Church, and a share in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... and prosperous system which opens the way to all—gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress, and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty—none less inclined to touch or take aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... an interesting study, these two old men. Their forms were bent with long years of hard and honourable toil. Their faces were rugged and weatherbeaten, wrinkled with age, and furrowed with care. They had come out together from the Homeland years and years ago. They had borne each other's burdens, and shared each ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the west in its majestic course and Tharon, the noon work over, drew up the spindle-legged stool and sat down to play to herself and Anita. The old woman, half Mexic, half Indian, drowsed in a low chair by the eastern window, her toil-hard hands clasped in her lap, a black reboso over her head, though the day was warm as summer. A kitten frisked in the sunlight at the open door, wild ducks, long domesticated, squalled raucously down the yards, some cattle slept in the huge corrals and the little world of Last's Holding ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... are on commissariat and quartermaster's service. They are bringing up their provisions and fortifying their camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and Paixhans in an arsenal, and are ready for a winter of stout toil and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of intemperance can be traced back to a connection with monopoly. Who shall blame the tired laborer, if after a week with sixty hours of unremitting toil, he takes refuge from the dreariness and lassitude of physical exhaustion, the hopelessness of ambition-quenched life, and perhaps the discomforts and disquiet of the place he calls home, in a long draught of that ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... imagination these women have a right, while they toil, to watch the shell complete their work. The smith who forges the chain for the ship's anchor has a right to exult when he looks out through his imagination upon the great boat held firm by his chain in the hour when the storm threatened to ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... race, my mother and father were born slaves, but were not contented to live and die so. My father purchased himself in early manhood by hard toil. Mother saw no way for herself and children to escape the horrors of bondage but by flight. Bravely, with her four little ones, with firm faith in God and an ardent desire to be free, she forsook the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... truth, and honor. When we have recovered a little more from the infatuation which invests "public men" with supreme importance, we shall better know how to value those heroes of the apron, who, by a life of conscientious toil, place a new source of happiness, or of force, within the reach ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... associations that bind us together go back many, many years. We were boys together in sunny months full of frolic, plans and hopes. The merriment and the seriousness, the toil and the ambition of those days all cluster round him as memory brings him to me in the flush of his youth. I have seen little of him of late years, as you know, but the roots of our friendship needed no constant care; they were too strong to die or wilt, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... price in money. If he can get back soon enough he goes out again, after a hurried meal, to the sweetmeat seller's, where he assists in beating sugar for wafers. As soon as he comes home he sits at his shell-bangle making, plodding on often till midnight. All this cruel toil does not earn, for himself and his family, a bare two meals a day during much more than half the year. His method of eating is to begin with a good filling draught of water, and his staple food is the cheapest kind of seedy banana. And yet the family has to go with only one meal a day for the rest ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... comrades there—another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes—was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-Horse Gulch. He was forty-six, grey as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the task of amassing the remaining half of the prenuptial sinking fund by accepting an assignment to deliver a milch cow, newly purchased by Mr. Dick Bell, to Mr. Bell's dairy farm three miles from town on the Blandsville Road. This was a form of toil all the more agreeable to Red Hoss—that is to say, if any form of toil whatsoever could be deemed agreeable to him—since cows when traveling from place to place are accustomed to move languidly. By reason of this common sharing of an antipathy against ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... these articles." A style like this resembles a paunchy man who can be relied on not to pick the daisies. At times Borrow writes as if he were translating, as in "The anvil rings beneath the thundering stroke, hour succeeds hour, and still endures the hard sullen toil." He adds a little vanity of no value by a Biblical echo now and again, as in the clause: "And it came to pass, moreover, that the said Fajardo . . . " or in "And the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengro, stood before the encampment. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Lake, where our first day's drenching resulted so happily in a slight illness that detained us in that lovely spot, and showed us, in the new colony lately settled on this and the adjacent lakes, how refinement and cultivation, lending elegance to rude toil and harsh privation, may realize ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... be o'erburdened with care, Though poverty fall to my lot, Though toil and vexation be always my share, What care I—they trouble me not! This thought maketh life ever joyous and Sweet: There's a dear little home in ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... Tsz-hia, he replied: "The manner is the difficulty. If, in the case of work to be done, the younger folks simply take upon themselves the toil of it; or if, in the matter of meat and drink, they simply set these before their elders—is this to be taken ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... the truck. I wheeled it without accident to the landing place, where, by placing the shafts of the truck upon the stern of the boat and lifting the foot by main strength, I succeeded in embarking my load after twenty minutes' toil, during which I got covered with clay and perspiration, and several times all but upset the boat. At the southern bank I had less difficulty in getting the coffin ashore, dragging it up to ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... degrees. The third chapter of this section, concluding the Epistle, then continues with the description of a perpetual motion wheel, "elaboured with marvellous ingenuity, in the pursuit of which invention I have seen many people wandering about, and wearied with manifold toil. For they did not observe that they could arrive at the mastery of this by means of the virtue, or power of ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... dialect stories, and amateur photographs, taken by visitors, should be hung upon the wall. Between times the prisoner might be employed in washing dishes for a cooking school and testing the products of pupils. After two months of unremitting toil, according to this itinerary, he might be safely liberated, if life remained, and it is safe to say that his experience, when related to associates, would have a more deterrent effect upon the 'profesh' than several kinds of death penalties could ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... far away Highland hills; eastward, rise the bold contours of Arthur's Seat and the rugged crags of the Castle rock, with the grey Old Town of Edinburgh; while, far below, from a maze of crowded thoroughfares, the hoarse murmur of the toil of a polity of energetic men is borne upon the ear. At times, a man may be as solitary here as in a veritable wilderness; and may meditate undisturbedly upon the epitome of nature and of man—the kingdoms of this world—spread ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... darkness drove them into camp. The current was swift and the rapids great surging torrents of angry water that seemed bent upon driving them back. One after another the Horseshoe, the Ninipi, and finally, after much toil, the Mouni Rapids were met ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... by which they were invested with a life and splendor till now unseen. But it was his noble sentiments, his generous human sympathies, his ardent aspirations after honorable distinction to be won by toil and self-denial, which woke my heart as by an electric touch. My own unshaped, half-conscious aims and aspirations, stirred with life, took wing and soared with his into the pure upper air. Ah! it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various |
