"Toilsome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apt to creep insidiously into our lives. We should crown the man who has achieved distinction and advise him as to pitfalls. "No sadder proof," Carlisle has said, "can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." There is no royal road to a lasting eminence but the toilsome pathway of diligence, self-denial and high moral rectitude; surely not by turning sharp corners to follow that "will-o'-the wisp" transient success, at the expense of upright conduct. Neither suavity of manner nor the gilding of education will atone for disregarding ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... mountain or elevated table-land seen from this river shows the rough country of which these cascades and rapids are the proof. Here are the White-Mud Falls and other smaller cataracts. To the expert voyageur such a river has no terrors, but to the raw-hand the management of such boats is a most toilsome work. The birch-bark canoe is a mere trifle on the portage, but the heavy York boat capable of carrying three or four tons is a clumsy lugger. The cargo must be moved, the non-effectives such as the women and children and the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... wheeled slowly round and made for the open ocean. Florence remained motionless where she stood so long as a shadow of the vessel fluttered in sight. When it was lost in the horizon she turned slowly and walked toward the house, weary as one who returns from a toilsome pilgrimage. It was days and weeks before she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... next that gainst the morning rays Along the coasts of Asia have their seat, Arontes led them, whom no warlike praise Ennobled, but high birth and titles great, His helm ne'er made him sweat in toilsome frays, Nor was his sleep e'er broke with trumpet's threat, But from soft ease to try the toil of fight His fond ambition brought ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... it seemed to trust us, but presently it spread its wings and flew away, and it comes not again. Tell us, what shall we do to tempt the wild bird back?" And Paul, smiling in her face, said, "Oh, madam, the bird will return; but he leads, maybe, a toilsome life, gathering berries, and doing small businesses. The birds, which seem so free, live a life of labour; and they may not always follow their hearts. But be sure that your bird knows his friends; and some day, when he has opportunity, he will alight again. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... perhaps three-quarters of an hour conducted me to the edge of a mangrove-swamp; and I knew then that the creek must be at no great distance. Plunging boldly into the swamp, I made my way as best I could over the tangled roots in what I deemed the proper direction, and after a toilsome scramble of another quarter of an hour found myself at the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... had been; and all men knew him for a brave and well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear; except, maybe, upon such seasons when even a brave man might feel afraid and yet not be ashamed. Now, as this knight one day was pricking wearily along a toilsome road, his heart misgave him and was sore within him because of the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and of a monstrous size, hung high above his head, and like enough it seemed unto the knight that they should fall and he lie low beneath them. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... extraordinary stringency of the intellectual discipline now said to be given by means of Latin and Greek, I am satisfied that the feeling with both teachers and scholars is, that the process of acquisition is not toilsome to either party; less so perhaps than anything that would come in their place. Of the hundreds of hours spent over them, a very large number are associated with listless idleness. Carlyle describes Scott's novels as a "beatific lubber land"; with the exception of the "beatific," ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Naples,—with its enchanted islands, its jewelled city, its flowery villages, all bedecked and bedropped with strange shiftings and flushes of prismatic light and shade, as if they belonged to some fairy-land of perpetual festivity and singing,—when Father Francesco stopped in his toilsome ascent up the mountain, and, seating himself on ropy ridges of black lava, looked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... "This toilsome mode of travelling continued for many a year. John Ferguson, writing in 1788 from Fredericksburg, Bay Quinte, to a friend in Lachine, Lower Canada, says of his journey: 'After a most tedious and fatiguing journey I arrived here, nineteen ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Centreville, in the scorching heat and suffocating dust of this tropical July morning, slowly, but surely, along the Warrenton Pike and the cross-road to Sudley Springs Ford—a distance of some eight miles of weary and toilsome marching for raw troops in such a temperature—in this order: Burnside's Brigade, followed by Andrew Porter's Brigade,—both of Hunter's Division; then Franklin's Brigade, followed by Willcox's ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... poets and philosophers there lingered some dim half-conscious remembrance that some of these gods at least actually came out of the ritual dance. Thus, Plato,[48] in treating of the importance of rhythm in education says: "The gods, pitying the toilsome race of men, have appointed the sequence of religious festivals to give them times of rest, and have given them the Muses and ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... in the course of this volume, to the practical solution [FN: See Appendix A; likewise p. 310.] of that provoking enigma, which seems to perplex all anxious wanderers in an unknown land, namely, that finding themselves, at the end of a day's toilsome march, close to the spot from which they set out in the morning, and that this cruel accident will occur for days in succession. The escape of Captain O'Brien from his French prison at Verdun, detailed with ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... two or three hundred yards, but here they were in imminent danger of being lost themselves. One of them indeed declared that he could not return, and would have been lost had not his companions insisted on his struggling back with them. Human effort could do no more, and they made their toilsome way home prostrated ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... forbidding austerity, which had kept the hunter so long in ignorance of their true character. Every day, their appearance and behaviour approximated more nearly to that of the beings of ordinary life. One evening the hunter returned very late, after having spent the day in toilsome exertion. Again he deposited the product of his hunt at the feet of his wife, and again the silent females began to tear off the flesh as before, though with still greater rudeness and ill-breeding. The patience of the wife was completely lost, she could no longer controul her feelings, and suffered ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that had been foremost in the charge. It was only with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the Custom-House steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went; amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his trickery, had the impudence to follow us for some time, claiming his pay. A few more steep pulls, over deep beds of snow and patches of barren stone, and at length the summit ridge—a sharp, white wall, shining against the intense black-blue of the zenith—stood before us. We climbed a toilsome zig-zag through the snow, hurried over the stones cumbering the top, and all at once the mountains fell away, ridge below ridge, gashed with tremendous chasms, whose bottoms were lost in blue vapor, till the last ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... valuable to be lost, so they roused the sleeper, and slowly recommenced their toilsome way, following the same path that they had made in the morning. Fortunately, Hector had taken the precaution to bend down the flexile branches of the dogwood and break the tops of the young trees that they had passed between on their route to the lake; and by this clue ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... knight-errantry, I know, too, the infinite blessings that are attained by it; I know that the path of virtue is very narrow, and the road of vice broad and spacious; I know their ends and goals are different, for the broad and easy road of vice ends in death, and the narrow and toilsome one of virtue in life, and not transitory life, but in that which has no end; I know, as our great Castilian ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... went home; and priests, and monks, and all them that had served Siegfried, she bade tarry. Heavy were their nights and toilsome their days. Many a man neither ate nor drank, but they that desired it were bidden take their fill. Siegmund saw to that. No easy time had the Nibelungs. They say that all that could sing got no rest. What offerings were brought! The poorest was rich enow, for they ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... friendly darkness again returned, we moved forward, weary, hungry, and footsore, still governed in our course by the North Star. During all this toilsome way, but few words passed between us, and these generally in low whispers. So untiring was the search, and so thoroughly alarmed and watchful were the population, that we felt that our safety depended upon a bare chance. Again making our way from wood to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Pedro, for the first time in nearly a twelvemonth, had turned his back upon the mesa which he loved and set out on a toilsome path. In his hand he carried a curious, notched stick, upon which he sometimes leaned, but oftener bore upon his shoulder, as it were a precious possession that he must guard. Old as he was, his staff was older still. It had come to him when the valley mission ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... determined to work it alone. While she was coming back along the iron road on the top of the narrow embankment, Gilby could see her from where he sat—a stalwart young woman in homespun gown, stooping and rising with regular toilsome movement as she worked the rattling machine that ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... like a vision. It held the audience dumb; they never witnessed anything like it; neither did I. Palmer wouldn't let me speak the words; he said they must be delivered with great dramatic effect. The words are: "I see myself now at the end of my journey, my toilsome days are ended. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but I now go where I shall live by sight." But glorious it was to see how the open regions were filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and pipers, with singers and players upon stringed ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... tender heart did not fully take in, deep as was her sympathy for him; for his toilsome, lonely life, lived more in shadow than in sunshine, and with every temptation to the selfishness which is so apt to follow self-dependence, and the bitterness that to a proud spirit so often makes the sting of poverty. Yet he was neither selfish nor bitter; only a little ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... The wheelwright said: 'Your servant will look at the thing from the point of view of his own art. In making a wheel, if I proceed gently, that is pleasant enough, but the workmanship is not strong; if I proceed violently, that is toilsome and the joinings do not fit. If the movements of my hand are neither (too) gentle nor (too) violent, the idea in my mind is realized. But I cannot tell (how to do this) by word of mouth; there is a knack in it. I cannot teach the ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... current, the dusky boatmen found no special trouble in driving the craft eastward; but, as they progressed, the labor became severer, for the stream narrowed and the velocity of its flow became greater. The portages were long and toilsome, and, as the party advanced, many places were met where these portages became necessary on account of the rapidity of the current alone. All, however, bent resolutely to work, Victor and George taxing their strength to the utmost. Deerfoot seemed tireless, but he could ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... 'By such toilsome labour as this I got him here as my steward. And I wanted to see him your husband, Cytherea!—the husband of my true lover's child. It was a sweet dream to me.... Pity me—O, pity me! To die unloved is more than I can bear! ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Soyera hurried round to the back of the tent, picked up the child and wrapped it in her robe; and then when, after firing the place, the Mahrattas retired, she fell in behind them, and followed them in the toilsome climb up the mountains, keeping so far behind that none questioned her. Once or twice Sufder dropped back ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... which he was unaccustomed, more fatiguing than he expected. The lingering twilight served to show them through this Serbonian bog, but deserted them almost totally at the bottom of a steep and very stony hill, which it was the travellers' next toilsome task to ascend. The night, however, was pleasant, and not dark; and Waverley, calling up mental energy to support personal fatigue, held on his march gallantly, though envying in his heart his Highland attendants, who continued, without a symptom of abated vigour, the rapid and swinging ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and, at the close of a toilsome day's march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy. Clive was unable to steep; he heard through the night the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... to the place beyond which no man goes. These two, when they left the house on the night before the funeral, walked slowly and thoughtfully down the path together. They looked over every step of the way with to-morrow's slow and toilsome march in their minds. When they came to the turn by Pelatiah's mound ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... forth on its turbid bosom, plied their oars against the current, and slowly won their way upward, following the writhings of this watery monster through cane-brake, swamp, and fen. It was a hard and toilsome journey under the sweltering sun of August. now on the water, now knee-deep in mud, dragging their canoe through the unwholesome jungle. On the nineteenth, they passed the mouth of the Ohio; and their Indian guides made it an offering of buffalo-meat. On ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... steel, he screamed for terror, crying out that there was another way. So they rode back to the entrance of the valley, and the man began to lead them up a steep track among trees; and above the trees they came to a desolate, stony ridge; but still they could ride, though it was a very toilsome way. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the wretched fugitives were flying from the scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose persistent violence all the narratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved, half naked,—for most of them had escaped in their shirts,—they pushed their toilsome way amid the ceaseless wrath of the elements. A few sought refuge in Indian villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the Spaniards. The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the mouth ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... arrival, he at once applied to Captain John R. Hughes, commanding Company D of the Texas Rangers, who received him with great joy and ordered a detachment of the Rangers to meet the tug at Point Isabelle at the mouth of the Rio Grande River on the border of Mexico. In the meantime, Jesse started on a toilsome stage journey to Brownsville, across one hundred and seventy miles of desert, which occupied two days and nights, and necessitated his going without sleep for that period. During the trip Jesse heard no word of English and had as his associates only Mexican cattlemen. Every fifteen miles ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... mixed therein with what remained of his own. In less than an hour the key would fall, and the double stream would flow into and animate his young body, which would then wake to renewed life; while the cast-off shell beside it, worn to utter uselessness by a toilsome century, would be left to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... There is a hushed suspension on the air, And the slow bells summon unhurried feet To dim reclosures kept for praise and prayer. Drawn blinds have shut the merchant's wares away, Where two by two the goodly folk go by, Out of their toilsome days into this day Of special airs beneath ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... the doors of the other houses were closed. Even the forlorn Mrs. Starkey seemed to go back almost as happy as when she had issued forth in the evening with her newly found nephew. The sudden gleam of hope which his unlooked-for coming had let in upon a toilsome and thankless life—for we know more about her position in Mr. Manlius's household than we have been at liberty to disclose—had, indeed, gone out in darkness; but the Christmas merriment, and the kindness which for one evening had flowed around her, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... more of rugged, blinding ice—the sky blue in every part, the sun shining warm, the wind blowing light and balmy from the south. What with the heat, the glare, the uneven, treacherous path—with many a pitfall to engulf us—'twas a toilsome way we travelled. The coast lay white and forsaken beyond—desolate, inhospitable, unfamiliar: an unkindly refuge for such castaways as we. But we came gratefully to the rocks, at last, and fell exhausted in the snow, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... himself talking to himself on the road to Assos. For I defy even the apostle himself to have talked better or more boldly to himself even on the solid midday road than Standfast talked to himself in the bridgeless river. "I see myself," he said, "at the end of my journey now. My toilsome days are all ended. I am going now to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spat upon for me. I loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe in the earth I have coveted to set my foot also. His name ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... in lore of counsel tried, Our king Sugriva most relied. Your hearts, with strong affection fraught, His weal in every labour sought, And the true valour of your band Was blazoned wide in every land. Forth on the toilsome search you sped, By me—for so he willed it—led, To us, of every hope bereft, Death is the only refuge left. For none a happy life may see Who fails to do our king's decree. Come, let us all from food abstain, And perish thus, since hope is vain. Stern is our king ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... things!" said Rienzi. "What a cool and delicious prelude, in these early hours, to the toilsome day." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... After a toilsome and dangerous march through Lipans and Commanches we arrived on the upper Rio Grande, at El Paso, in time to spend the Fourth of July. El Paso at this time was enjoying an era of commercial prosperity. The Mexican trade was good. Silver ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... the Afric-American race, we would gladly wean them, at the cost of some additional ill-will, from the sterile path of political agitation. They can help win their rights if they will, but not by jawing for them. One negro on a farm which he has cleared or bought patiently hewing out a modest, toilsome independence, is worth more to the cause of equal suffrage than three in an Ethiopian (or any other) convention, clamoring against white oppression with all the fire of a Spartacus. It is not logical conviction of the justice of their claims that is needed, but a prevalent belief that they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of the late-earned rest of a very toilsome career, died Mr. Menteith, the earl's long-faithful friend, who had been almost as good to him as a father. He felt it sorely; the more so, because, though his own frail life seemed always under the imminent shadow of death, death had never touched him before as regarded other ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... interest for them in its repeated changes. They were in a different world. No one had seen the mountains which they saw. The Rockies, the Bitter Roots—these they had passed; and now they must yet pass through another range, this time not by the toilsome process of foot or horse travel, but on the strong flood of the river. The Columbia had made a trail for them ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... up a toilsome hill, down into the valley, up another hill on the farther side; then came a scattering of houses, a church, a narrow street lined with shops, and finally the station itself, the clock over the entrance showing a bare four ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it, and went in search of, amid a host of difficulties, sometimes on horseback, at others in a litter or by boat, the Dukes de Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, who escorted her to Bordeaux. One must turn to Lenet for all the details of that toilsome journey and of the insurrection at Bordeaux, which he has related with all the minutiae and animation of an eye-witness and an actor who more than once figured in the front rank. No longer timid, no longer awkward, in presence of danger the daughter of Marshal de Breze became the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... fruits; and the inhabitants would exclaim, while their countenances beamed with delight, "Ah, you have come at last; we have long wanted to see you!" He travelled more than one hundred miles, often through unfrequented and toilsome paths among the mountains, and was three times drenched with powerful rains, from which he had no sufficient shelter; but by the aid of an interpreter he preached seventeen sermons, and was cheered by finding the readiness of the people to receive his doctrines far exceed his ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... rode the mountains, and the way was toilsome and weary enough, for it was naught but a stony maze of the rocks where nothing living dwelt, and nothing grew, save now and again a little dwarf willow. Yet was there naught worse to meet save toil, because they were over strong for the wild men to meddle with them, whereas ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... outermost of a chain of crags which were connected together by a tongue of rock and cliff sufficiently continuous to allow a passage, but broken into sharp acclivities and descents which rendered the undertaking toilsome to all, and not without peril for those who were liable to be giddy, or who did not possess a good portion of activity. 'Surely,' said Hengist, as he followed Gryffhod, 'this ridge was much more even when I traversed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... toilsome journey the Breeds halted at the point where the path divided into three. Jacky and Bill sat on their horses and watched the scene. Then, slowly, something of Baptiste's intention was ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... There are toilsome days before you, Burdens that you may not shun, Clouds will gather darkly o'er you, Reeds will ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... fifty miles to their father's hut, And the dawn was bright when they rode away; At the fall of night when the shed was shut And the men had rest from the toilsome day, To the shed once more through the dark'ning pines On their weary steeds came the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... at them has been for years my only recreation and delight. Well, they were finished at last; I was only correcting them for the press; they would have gone to the printer in a month, and I should have lived to complete a toilsome and honourable task. Well, the dream is over, and a handful of ashes represents the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Armenians of the schism [62] to the obedience of the holy see, and presented their chiefs to his Holiness, Urban Eighth, who thanked him for his zeal by special favors and rewards. He was firm in spirit and of most courageous boldness. He took possession of that toilsome mission. With his industry, he reduced to a civilized and Christian life the remainder of those pagans, in a location called Bagac. There he built his church and dwelling, and there he gathered many scattered peoples. Afterward ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... shooting trip accompanied by my brother, whom I will designate as B. We had passed a toilsome day in pushing and dragging our ponies for twenty miles along a narrow path through thick jungle, which half-a-dozen natives in advance were opening before us with bill-hooks. This had at ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... as its objective that Israel Putnam abandoned his farm, early in the summer of 1755, just when it needed him most, and started on his second long journey away from home. He reached the rendezvous at Albany, after a toilsome march through the forests that intervened between the Connecticut and the Hudson, and there found three thousand other "Provincials" gathered for the defense of the colonies. Most of them were sons of the soil, like Putnam, and like him were yet to receive their baptism of ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... from nightly fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!" —Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array:— Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance; "To arms!" cried ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the silent shades of soft repose, Where fancy's boundless stream for ever flows; Where the enfranchis'd soul, at ease can play, Tir'd with the toilsome bus'ness of the day, Where princes gladly rest their weary heads, And change uneasy thrones for downy beds: Where seeming joys delude despairing minds, And where even jealousy some quiet finds; There I, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... they all set out by different paths in search of the carbuncle; but our thoughts accompany the steps of the young bride, as she makes one toilsome ascent after another until she feels ready to sink to the ground with fatigue and discouragement. They have already decided to return, when the rosy light of the carbuncle bursts upon them from beneath the lifting clouds; but they now feel instinctively that it ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the tangled, almost impassable, forest had been very slow and toilsome, and having been involved in its shadow from daybreak, they were, of course, quite unaware of the approach of the steamer or the landing of ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained. Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome efforts, is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has, necessarily, most of the grace of novelty. Milton, however it happened, had this prejudice, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... creek, now a scanty mill-stream at best, to bend away to the left, we followed the smaller and charged boldly up the mountain. The ascent is of course made by zig-zags, no other mode being practicable for carriages, so that, when we had traveled three toilsome miles, Airolo still lay in sight, hardly a mile below us. I judge the whole ascent, which with a light carriage and three hard-driven horses occupied two hours and a half, was about eight miles, though a straight line might have taken ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... morning slowly and carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time than she well knew how to spare,—for there were continual errands to be done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... this heavy work with absolute impunity. No, there was many a bruise and blow from falling trees, and even the shrubs were successful not only in tearing trousers and leggings, but also in doing considerable damage to skin and flesh. So toilsome was the labour, that at the close of one of the days they ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... directions, the men shouldered the stores, and the party commenced the toilsome march inland to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... boring away with renewed vigor. Presently the orifice was made. Into it I thrust an Alpen stock which had accompanied me in many a toilsome march through Switzerland, and lifting the lid, took from the cradle of the trunk a star-spangled banner made of silk, which had been presented to me by the Young Men's Christian Association of New York, prior ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... mayest sleep; thy toilsome warfare ended, The long, rough life-path has been nobly trod, And with our lost ones, thou sweet songs hast blended, To hail them found, beside the throne of God? ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... howler of Turabu or a member of the French Academy, man, in this penumbra of faith and doubt, of superstition and imagination, is much the same. 'The higher powers in us,' says Novalis, 'which one day, as Genii, shall fulfil our will, are for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.' And the jinn, the fairies, the angels, the muses, are as young and vivacious to-day as they were in the Arabian and Gaelic Ages ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... on the hill where the road rises towards the Mokotow. Kosmaroff turned to the right and went to the river, where he earned his daily bread, where his friends eked out their toilsome lives. Martin joined the silent, detached groups hurrying towards the city. He passed down the whole length of the Marszalkowska with the others slouching along the middle of the street beneath the gaze of the soldiers, brushing past the horses of the Cossacks stationed ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... of such interest to the composer Bizet that when he heard them he advised her parents to give her a complete musical training, and predicted a brilliant future for her. In spite of their fondness for the art, the parents had no inclination to see their child upon the thorny and toilsome path of a musical career. Meanwhile the young girl devoted herself to the piano with utmost ardour, and continued her efforts at composing. When at last some of her pieces were judged worthy of performance in the church at Vesinet, ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... the child goes through every hardship and success; with Abraham he lives in tents, seeks pastures for his flocks, and generously marches out to the rescue of his kinsmen. He should not read Caesar with a slow and toilsome drag (parsing and construing) that would render a bright boy stupid. If he goes with Caesar at all, he must build an agger, fight battles, construct bridges, and approve or condemn Caesar's acts. But we doubt the moral value of Caesar's Gallic wars. By reading Plutarch ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... of Watts when he gazed at the tea-kettle and began to dream of the steam-engine; we are just recognizing a new power and method destined to reconstruct and increase the efficiency of education, but only after a long and toilsome period of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... see each other. There is nothing in common between us. You are swallowed up by business, I by society. I have taken a fancy, it is true, for amusement, but in the depth of my heart I am often very gloomy. I feel lonely. My early life, as you know, was modest, poor, toilsome, and often it calls to me reproachfully. You do not know of this, for we have no time to exchange ideas. I am of those women who need to feel guardianship, to have near them an ear which might listen to their hearts, and a mind which would direct ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... one of those incidents, occurring now and then, the discovery of which repays the antiquary or the biographer for wading, with toilsome search, through a confused mass of uninteresting details, and often encourages him to persevere when he begins to feel ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... for the shelter of his command, and I continued the work of constructing the post as laid out by him. In those days the Government did not provide very liberally for sheltering its soldiers; and officers and men were frequently forced to eke out parsimonious appropriations by toilsome work or go without shelter in most inhospitable regions. Of course this post was no exception to the general rule, and as all hands were occupied in its construction, and I the only officer present, I was kept busily employed in supervising matters, both as ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... immigration from these two countries, and Lord Selkirk turned to Switzerland for new recruits. In 1821 a ship full of Swiss sailed for Fort York on Hudson's Bay, and late in the fall the party reached the Red River after a toilsome journey up the Nelson River and across Lake Winnipeg. Being artisans and city-dwellers they were unable to endure the rough agricultural labors in the bleak north. Cold, floods, grasshoppers, and uncongenial neighbors ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... the better for it. She wept bitter, heart-aching tears over her dear mother's grave, but turned steadily to the hard path traced out before her; but she was young and beloved, and a bright star beamed before her—the star of love—to gild her toilsome path; and a mother's smile seemed blended with its bright rays. A year or two rolled around—years of hard labor, which made Lizzie, who toiled untiringly, as her mother had done, old before her time. She was noted, however, all over the village for a thrifty, industrious, excellent girl. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... now performed the toilsome duties of a courier for two years, having been every where with orders and letters. I was tired of this troublesome and unbecoming business. I sent to the king petition after petition, asking for my discharge, and soliciting for ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... to qualify himself for his new position. Of the art and mystery of war the young scholar knew little, but he was no worse off than many another whom the exigencies of his country summoned from peaceful pursuits to the tented field and the toilsome march. It was probably the only office which he ever assumed without suitable qualifications. But it was not in his nature to undertake any duties without endeavoring to fit himself ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... exhibiting a character turning upon points more adapted to poetry than to the prose of real life. Their prince, young, valiant, patient of fatigue, and despising danger, heading his army on foot in the most toilsome marches, and defeating a regular force in three battles—all these were circumstances fascinating to the imagination, and might well be supposed to seduce young and enthusiastic minds to the cause in which they were found united, although wisdom and reason ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... quantities of the public lands be made to all citizens of the United States who have emigrated, or may hereafter within a prescribed period emigrate, to Oregon and settle upon them. These hardy and adventurous citizens, who have encountered the dangers and privations of a long and toilsome journey, and have at length found an abiding place for themselves and their families upon the utmost verge of our western limits, should be secured in the homes which they have improved by their labor. I refer you to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... count in this connection, for they did not understand—who stood beside him on occasion at the Holy Table, and gave him advice in his perplexities, and would bury him with honest regret when he died, and fight like wild cats that his widow and children should have their due. His toilsome journey was forgotten when Doctor Dowbiggin, in an interstice of motions, came across the floor and sat down beside him, and whispered confidentially, "Well, how are things going on at Kincairney?"—Dowbiggin really deserved his leadership—or when the clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... On both sides the war was conducted with savage ferocity; the Thracians destroyed the townships which they took and massacred their captives, and the Romans returned like for like. But no results of importance were attained; the toilsome marches and the constant conflicts with the numerous and brave inhabitants of the mountains decimated the army to no purpose; the general himself sickened and died. His successor, Gaius Scribonius Curio (679-681), was induced by various obstacles, and particularly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... have one's whole soul in his work, put all one's strength into, strain every nerve; spare no efforts, spare no pains; go all lengths; go through fire and water &c. (resolution) 604; move heaven and earth, leave no stone unturned. Adj. laboring &c. v. laborious, operose[obs3], elaborate; strained; toilsome, troublesome, wearisome; uphill; herculean, gymnastic, palestric[obs3]. hard-working, painstaking; strenuous, energetic. hard at work, on the stretch. Adv. laboriously &c. adj.; lustily; pugnis et calcibus[Lat]; with might and main, with all one's might, with a strong ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is like treason within the camp, against which no man can guard. It is a stab in the back, a cowardly assassination of the heart. Treachery like this usually means a sudden fall from the ideal for the deceived one, and the ideal can only be recovered, if at all, by a slow and toilsome ascent, foot by ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... camp; the men saw to their muskets, and the signs everywhere told of their eager preparations for the deadly struggle in the morning, while the cheery laugh and the snatches of song spoke well for the spirits of the men after the long, toilsome march ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... from this is that an artificial mode of life—a life maintained by improper food, and without a sufficient supply of pure air, or a due amount of exercise—has a most deleterious influence upon the process of labor; and not that a toilsome existence, embittered with all the pains and anxieties of poverty, gives comparative immunity from danger in the hour of childbirth.' One of the discomforts ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... steeled him against forebodings. He felt inspired to accomplish a national enterprise. 'What fancy,' he exclaimed later, 'could possess him thus to dispose of his whole substance, and undertake such a toilsome and perilous voyage, now that his constitution was impaired by such a long confinement, beside age itself, sickness, and affliction, were not he assured thereby of doing his prince service, bettering his country by commerce, and restoring his family to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... served in a measure to shield us from the icy wind which now swept over the mountain. We again partook of a little refreshment, by way of preparation for the most arduous part of our undertaking, and were now at the foot of the great cone. The ascent was toilsome in the extreme. Snow, melted beneath in many places by the heat of the mountain; sharp ridges of lava; loose sand, ashes, and cinders, into which last the foot sank at every step, made the ascent difficult as well as dangerous. The atmosphere was so rare that we had to stop every few ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... and sunny the short dry grass seemed to us after our long toilsome stay in the sub-aqueous gloom of the Skeena forests! We seemed about to return to the birds and ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... on board 160 men, mostly soldiers taken from the castles of Nero and Puloway, while the Swan had not above thirty able to stand to quarters, the rest being sick or lame, and all much worn out in toilsome labour at Puloroon, in landing the ordnance and constructing the two forts. Ten also of their complement had been left in Puloroon to defend the two forts, two of whom, Herman Hammond and John Day, were gunners. The Swan being thus ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... with wistful eyes. "There is a woman there," she said, and Landless heard her voice tremble for the first time in their long, toilsome and painful journey. "There is no need to pass them by, is there? It looks very fair and peaceful. May we not rest here for ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Louviers. Another long day's journey brought them to Evreux. On the 27th they came to Dreux, on the 28th to Chartres, and on the 29th to Chateaudun. On the 30th, having started an hour before sunrise, they were enabled after a toilsome journey to reach Blois at an hour after dark. Exhausted with fatigue, they reposed in that city for a day, and on the 1st April proceeded, partly by the river Loire and partly by the road, as far as Tours. Here they were visited by nobody, said Barneveld, but fiddlers and drummers, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Chipewyan down at the tents receiving his treaty money to-day and his grandfather before him trod these same trails and served The Company. Dusky feet trod these paths when good Queen Anne ruled in England, men made toilsome portages up these waterways, and here Crowfoot and Running Rabbit and Gaston Lamousette kept undisturbed the tenour of their way and matched wits with ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... her lover childless, for her womb is barren." And the Youth, glancing with a shudder at the figure in the mist, drew close to Life and echoed her words with trembling lip, "How uncanny and how cold!" Thus fared he on through many a toilsome year, to where no shadow falls to East or West—to manhood's glorious noon. He looked at the towering heights before him with undaunted eye, measuring his strength against the walls of stone. He glanced back, and a chill swept over him, for he was standing far up on the mountainside, he was ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... felt by all persons to quit for ever the land of their forefathers, the scenes of their earliest and happiest days, and to become aliens and wanderers in a distant country,—to form new ties and new friends, and begin, as it were, life's toilsome march anew, that their children may be placed in a situation in which, by industry and activity, the substantial comforts of life may be permanently obtained, and a landed property handed down to them, and their children ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... take upon us to say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were 'made like unto a wheel.' Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... different things when he worked his way out of here in a deck crew," suggested Bainbridge. "The real thug wouldn't have done anything so honestly toilsome as that." ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... schooling the deaf-mute must go through in order to become acquainted with the sensations of sight, touch, and movement that go with the sound, is unspeakably toilsome. ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer |
