"Thankless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brother, Don John of Austria, the famous victor of Lepanto, as Requesens' successor. But Don John, who was then in Italy, had other ambitions, and looked with suspicion upon Philip's motives in assigning him the thankless task of dealing with the troubles in the Low Countries. Instead of hurrying northwards, he first betook himself to Madrid where he met with a cold reception. Delay, however, so far from troubling Philip, was thoroughly in accordance with the whole bent of his character and policy. For ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... paper an' puttin' on his specks, an' at the same time as thankless after his nose-paint as if he'd been refoosed the beverage; 'no, it don't put me in mind of nothin' nor nobody. One thing shore, an' you-all hold-ups can rope onto that for a fact, it don't remind me none ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 'large hours' toward the longer 'small hours' trend, With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat, Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street — Sinking down, sinking down, Battered wreck by tempests beat — A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... to his neck now, wild-eyed like a Maenad. He felt pitifully ridiculous. The role of Joseph is so thankless and humiliating. A month ago he would have ordered her sternly to get out of the room and behave herself. But the hot month in Tokyo had relaxed his firmness of mind; and familiarity with Reggie's bohemian morality has sapped his fortress ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... great mind's expected pain, Calphurnia, To labour for the thankless.—He who seeks Reward in ruling, makes ambition guilt; And living ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... cold and crafty world: I scorn your thankless thanks and hollow praise. Wiser than seer or scientist—content To tread no paths beyond these bleating hills, Here let me lie beneath this dear old elm, Among the blossoms of the clover-fields, And listen to the humming ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... perplexing and least successful part of the Bureau's work lay in the exercise of its judicial functions. In a distracted land where slavery had hardly fallen, to keep the strong from wanton abuse of the weak, and the weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized and imprisoned, and punished over and again, with scant courtesy from army officers. The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... be always setting other people right. This is a thankless as well as useless task. They probably do not want your assistance, or they would ask for it. Besides most people are sensitive about their shortcomings, and prefer to get help and counsel ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... great reformers and reconstructors of Capitalism, sweeping onward to their scientific triumphs and caring for none of these things, to murmur at our vain indignation. At least if it is vain it is the less venal; and in so far as it is hopeless it is also thankless. They have their great campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions, and the records of science and progress. They need not be angry with us, who plead for those who will never read our words or reward our effort, even with gratitude. They ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... ground to powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,—but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation; veritas odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be busie with voe vobis, let him looke shortly for ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... waited in vain to see her man return; he would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ill ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of replying to that very explicit statement. "There is none here," he said, "that is not grateful for the benevolence he has received at the hands of the Tokugawa. If there be such a thankless and disloyal person, and if he conceive treacherous designs, I, Masamune, will be the first to attack him and strike him down. The shogun need not move so much as one soldier." With this spirited ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... began suddenly, "ye are a missionary to the Lone Moose Crees. It will be a thankless task; a tougher one nor I'd care to tackle. I ha' seen the job undertaken before by folk who—beggin' your pardon—ha' little conception of the country, the people in it, or the needs of either. Ye'll find the Cree has more concern for meat an' clothes, for traps an' powder, than he has for his ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of China. It is perfectly true that there are certain positions and collocations of words which tend to recur, but when one sits down to formulate a set of hard-and-fast rules governing these positions, it is soon found to be a thankless task, for the number of qualifications and exceptions which will have to be added is so great as to render the rule itself valueless. [Ch][Ch] means "on a horse," [Ch][Ch] "to get on a horse." But it will ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... tear, Nor check those sighs, that to my heart are dear, Since ease from them alone it hopes to prove. Ye verses, weep!—ye rhymes, your woes renew! For Cino, master of the love-fraught lay, E'en now is from our fond embraces torn! Pistoia, weep, and all your thankless crew! Your sweetest inmate now is reft away— But, heaven, rejoice, and hail ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the thankless girl up stairs was fretting and muttering about her grandmother's stinginess, in not having a better carpet "than the old faded thing which looked as if manufactured before ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... word chaperon is at best, and what a thankless vocation the unlisted, active, and very irregular verb 'to chaperon' implies. I quite agree with Johnson, who denounced the term as affected, for certainly its application is, though Lavinia Dorman ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... considerable interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most thorough bona fides, always ensure the conduct of the common agent against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's offer (through Shelburne) ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... consolation from overflowing feeling, that burdens me sorely. Weep not, my angel; let your sympathy be strong and full of confidence in God; give him real consolation with encouragement, not with tears, and, if you can, doubly, for yourself and for your thankless friend whose heart is just now filled with you and has room for nothing else. Are you a withered leaf, a faded garment? I will see whether my love can foster the verdure once more, can brighten up the colors. You must put forth fresh leaves, and the old ones I shall lay between the pages of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... contracts which were to help pay for the Expedition, and lastly, our leader, with Drake and Wyatt, the business manager, were to pay bills we had incurred by countless items of equipment, large and small, which went to fill up our lengthy stores lists. Thankless work enough—we in the ship were much better off with no cares now beyond the handling of our toy ship and her safe conduct to Lyttelton. Cecil Meares and Lieut. Bruce were on their way through Siberia ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... moment came my father in, looking more than grave and severe, so that I judged at once that he had been talking to the Duke Casimir and had found his post of chief adviser both thankless and difficult. I knew it could be no matter of his office which worried him, for that day he wore his holiday attire of white Friesland cloth, and the broad bonnet in which I loved best to see him. There was no mark of his calling about him anywhere, save a little Red Axe sewed upon ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... he gives us credit for understanding it. He has nothing of that paltry meanness or strange density of so many of his colleagues, who put us down as aimless iconoclasts or moral anarchists. He admits that we are waging a thankless war for what we take to be Truth and Progress. He is doing the same. But why, in the name of all that is reasonable, should we, when we are agreed on the momentousness of the issue either way, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... at last of waiting, patiently, humbly, resigned like the beast of burden which awaits the slaughterhouse. Beasts of burden! Are we not that, all we who with brow bent under humiliation, injustice, thankless toil; with the heart embittered by tedious deception and tedious despair, miseries of heart and miseries of body, wait, wait ever, wait vainly for a more brilliant sun to shine at last, until at the end of the day there rises before us the only guest we have never expected, on whom we counted ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... appointment of Gordon. This was the main object the Khedive and his advisers had in view when they invited Gordon to accept the post of Governor of the Equatorial Provinces in succession to Sir Samuel Baker, who resigned what he found after many years' experience was a hopeless and thankless task. The post was in one sense peculiar. It was quite distinct from that of the Egyptian Governor-General at Khartoum, who retained his separate and really superior position in the administration of the Upper Nile region. Moreover, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... call thee thankless, king, and perjured both: Thou swor'st by Alha, and hast broke thy oath. But thou dost well; thou tak'st the cheapest way; Not to own ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... that lone valley that was so much their common grief. "And could we not be worse? I'm sure Black Duncan, reared in a bothy in Skye, who has been tossed by the sea, and been wet and dry in all airts of the world, would be a very thankless man if he was not pleased to be here safe and comfortable, on a steady bed at night, and not heeding the wind nor the storm no more than if he was ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... willing necks on which no yoke did pass. He, from his starry throne sublime, looks East and West; and lo! He sees but Rome, and Rome's domain, in all he sways below. Hail happy day, and still return to bless with happier face The sons of Romulus, lords of Earth, not thankless for thy grace! But who art thou, strange biform god, and what thy power? for Greece With all her gods of thee and thine hath bade her Muses cease; This say; and say why thou alone of all celestial kind, Dost forwards still look steadfastly and also gaze behind? Thus with myself I mused, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... sacrifice, tenderness, enthusiasm, all these rays turn against the woman within her inmost self and attack and burn her. All these virtues remain to avenge themselves upon her. When she would have been a wife, she is a slave. Hers is the hopeless, thankless task of lulling a brigand in the blue nebulousness of her illusions and of decking Mandrin with a starry rag. She is the sister of charity of crime. She loves, alas! She endures her inadmissible divinity; she is magnanimous and thrills at so being. She is happy with a horrible ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Soul, the body's guest, Upon a thankless errand, Fear not to touch the best, The truth shall be thy warrant; Go, since I needs must die, And ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... building, which at first glance seemed but a rugged rock clothed in straggling brambles. Nothing was finished, only here and there could the slightest resemblance to an architectonic line be traced, so that I often felt tempted to relinquish the thankless task of trying to build from such materials. And yet I was enchained by a wondrous magic. The baldest legend spoke to me of its ancient home, and soon my whole imagination thrilled with images; long-lost forms ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... slanderous tongue To daunt me, scattering in the people's ear Dark hints, and looked for partners of his wrong: Nor rested, till with Calchas' aid, the seer— But why the thankless story should ye hear? Why stay your hand? If Grecians in your sight Are all alike, ye know enough; take here Your vengeance. Dearly will my death delight Ulysses, well the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... vice can raise? Where such mild arts can no impression make, War, tumult, noise and fury must awake. Fortune one age with three great chiefs supply'd, Who different ways, by the sword that rais'd 'em dy'd; Crassus's blood, Asia; Africk, Pompey's shed; In thankless Rome, the murder'd Caesar bled. Thus as one soil alone too narrow were, Their glorious dust, and great remains to bear, O're all the earth their scatter'd ruin lyes; Such honours to the mighty dead arise. 'Twixt Naples and Puteoli ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... of him of Troy" saw in him a youth "both manful and vertuous." There was little time indeed for mere riot in a life so busy as Henry's, nor were many opportunities for self-indulgence to be found in campaigns against Glyndwr. What fitted the young general of seventeen for the thankless work in Wales was his stern, immoveable will. But fortune as yet had few smiles for the king in this quarter, and his constant ill-success continued to wake fresh troubles within England itself. The repulse of the young prince in a spring campaign in 1405 was at once followed by a revolt ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... power to deliberate, I know not. My thoughts flowed with tumult and rapidity. To shut this spectacle from my view was the first impulse; but to desert this man, in a time of so much need, appeared a thankless and dastardly deportment. To remain where I was, to conform implicitly to his direction, required no effort. Some fear was connected with his presence, and with that of the dead; but, in the tremulous confusion of my present thoughts, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... now upon the snow in thaw A young man motionless he saw, As one who bivouacs afield, And heard a voice cry—Why! He's killed!— And now he views forgotten foes, Poltroons and men of slanderous tongue, Bevies of treacherous maidens young; Of thankless friends the circle rose, A mansion—by the window, see! She sits ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... and the death of the Prince, the mystery has not yet been removed, and the field is still open to conjecture. It seems a thankless task to grope in the dark after the truth at a variety of sources; when the truth really exists in tangible shape if profane hands could be laid upon it. The secret is buried in the bosom of the Vatican. Philip wrote two letters on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... worth answering may be in it leaps to the lips; to give it utterance that moment is the only natural, courteous, and truthful course. Ten days hence, the reply, which now comes of its own accord, cannot be found; what might have been a source of pleasure to two persons will have become a piece of thankless drudgery. In vain the conscientious correspondent, at the appointed time, takes the letter which she would answer out of the compartment of her portfolio, whereon stationers, cunningly humoring a popular weakness, have gilded,—"UNANSWERED LETTERS." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... and forest, the dangers of flood and torrent, and perhaps of outlawed thief or murderer, the privations and hardships of the way; and the heavy fines which occur in the king's rolls for non-attendance show how anxiously great numbers of the suitors avoided joining in the troublesome and thankless business of the court. When they reached the place of trial a strange medley of business awaited them as questions arose of criminal jurisdiction, of feudal tenure, of English "sac and soc," of Norman franchises and Saxon liberties, with ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... the situation will exhibit the difficulties of the Khedive in his thankless and Herculean task of cleansing the Augean stables. He incurred the wrath of general discontent; his own officials accused him of deserting the Mahommedan cause for the sake of European Kudos, and while he sacrificed his popularity in Egypt, his policy was misconstrued by the powers he had sought ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... room, whispering comfort and soothing to her; while, as they reached the door, the boy rushed forward, and, clasping Ursula's robe, sobbed out—"Dear dame, not one farewell for your little Angelo! Forgive him all he has cost you! Now, for the first time, I feel how wayward and thankless I have been." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... own house saw both the sword and fire; All white with age and cares, his feeble arm Had now forgot the war; but this alarm Gathers his dying spirits; and as we An aged ox worn out with labour see By his ungrateful master, after all His years of toil, a thankless victim fall: So he by Jove's own altar; which shows we Are nowhere safe from heaven, and destiny: Yet died a man; but his surviving queen, Freed from the Greekish sword, was barking seen. I haste to Rome, and Pontus' king ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... ran up to put on her bonnet; 'but I suppose toothache puts people out of the pale of civilization. And if he is thankless, is not that treating me more ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray that "even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best observation that ever was made upon it;" but there are surely few tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo), and either labouring to point out to us ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Wisting had charge of the whole outfit, and was responsible that nothing was touched without permission. Bjaaland and Stubberud were to look after the pent-house and the passage round the hut. Lindstrom was occupied in the kitchen — the hardest and most thankless work on an expedition like this. No one says anything so long as the food is good; but let the cook be unlucky and burn the soup one day, and he will hear something. Lindstrom had the excellent disposition of a man who is never put out; whatever people might say, it was "all the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... mankind, and far I have wander'd, Have shared all the joys youth so madly pursues; I have been where the bounties of Nature were squander'd Till man became thankless and learn'd to refuse! Yet there I still found that man's innocence perish'd, As the senses might sway or the passions command; That the scenes where alone the soul's treasures were cherish'd, Were the peaceful abodes ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lovely even in death! The pitying destroyer has touched gently on those heavenly features. That sweetness was no mask—the hand of death even has not removed it! (After a pause.) But how is this? why do I feel nothing. Will the vigor of my youth save me? Thankless care! That shall it not. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... or concern of any other person. Of course I was not surprised, for "as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined," but my step-mother was disappointed with the results of all her anxious solicitude, and began to see when it was vain, how thankless such indulgent efforts prove in the end. Freddy's soul was altogether absorptive, taking in whatever offerings gratified him, but yielding no return, and I ask, is there anything so discouraging to an ardent love as this cold neutrality, which proves, without a scruple, that all affection lavished ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... necessity of the moment, to meet a pressing evil, and not to establish any particular system, or any specific combination of ideas, resolutions, or designs. Its sole policy was at first confined to the support of the Restoration against the reaction: a thankless undertaking, even when most salutary; for it is useless to contend with a headlong counter-current. While you are supporting the power whose flag serves as a cloak to reaction, it is impossible to arrest ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 'tis enough, at length thy labour ends, And thou shalt live; for Buckingham commends. Let crowds of critics now my verse assail, Let Dennis write, and nameless numbers rail. This more than pays whole years of thankless pain, Time, health, and fortune, are not lost in vain. Sheffield approves: conferring Phoebus bends; And I, and malice, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fruitless and thankless task to work at Abydos after it had been ransacked by Mariette, and had been for the last four years in the hands of the Mission Amelineau. My only reason was that the extreme importance of results from there led to a wish to ascertain everything possible about ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... from all sides. More than ten years had elapsed since the enactment of the Dingley bill and the position of many industries had been altered with the course of time. Evidently the day for revision—at best a thankless task—had arrived. Taft accepted the inevitable and called Congress in a special session. Until the midsummer of 1909, Republican Senators and Representatives wrangled over tariff schedules, the President making ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... encouraged the Porte in its policy of delay and subterfuge, and Turkey soon came to look on Germany as its only strong, sincere, and disinterested friend in Europe. For the indefinite continuance of chaos and bloodshed in Macedonia, after the other powers had really braced themselves to the thankless task of putting the reforms into practice, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... reputation, if the interest of his country demands it. We knew the condition upon which we stepped aside from the agreeable and peaceful avocations of life, and entered upon the task so distasteful, so repulsive, and for a time so thankless. We had reason to know that the shafts of fiendish calumny would assail, that friendship would be broken, that envy and jealousy would ply their innuendoes, that the Copperhead elements of a fraternity, claiming one of the offenders ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Full many a thankless child has been, But never one like mine; Her meat was served on plates of gold, Her drink was rosy wine; But now she 'll share the robin's food, And sup the common rill, Before her feet will turn again ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... of strain and friction in regard to the countless details of an Indian household was, in itself, an unspeakable relief. During the first few months of his marriage he had persevered steadily in the thankless task of instructing his cheerfully incompetent bride in the language and household mysteries of her adopted country. But the more patiently he helped her the more she leaned upon his help; till the futility of his task had threatened to wear his temper threadbare, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... a solid in his hand, which he partially immerses: he remains steadfast and unmoved, and we all know that he must be drowned. The multitudes who daily perish in this manner to attest a philosophical truth, and whose bodies the unreasoning wave casts sullenly upon our thankless shores, have a truer claim to be called the martyrs of science than a Galileo or a Kepler. To use Kossuth's eloquent phrase, they are the unnamed demigods of the ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... happen to think, myself, that this colony is enormously important, objectively speaking, I mean. If our race muffs this chance, we may never get another. But you and I wouldn't care about that, not really, unless it was personally important too. Would we? Why did you accept this thankless job, commanding a colonial fleet? It can't be an itch to explore. Rustum's already been visited once, and you'll have precious little time to carry on any further studies. You could have been off to some star where men have never traveled at all. Do you see, captain? You're not ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... job, I'm sure," I said. "If he gives us the slip after giving us such trouble, it would have been a thankless task." ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... the haunts o' the low human pest, Give to the weary, the poor, and distress'd; What if ungrateful and thankless they be, Think of the giver ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... the time I want to lie down and cry. Everything seems to me so impossible. I do not make things go very well, and I feel that my life is an absolute and irretrievable failure. Perhaps I am thankless, but I so often feel that I should like to give it up and die. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity I should ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... as if the fair promise of eloquence and statesmanship had been shown to public life only to be withdrawn from it; but a path was about to be opened, leading to a new field of action, distant, indeed, and often thankless, but giving scope for the exercise of gifts, both of mind and character, which can rarely be exhibited in a Parliamentary career. In March 1842, at the early age of thirty, he was selected by Lord Stanley, who was then Secretary for the Colonies, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... was the hatred in the heart of Savonarola. He was making war against no trivial human sins, but against godless and thankless quiescence, against getting used to happiness, the mystic sin by which all creation fell. He was preaching that severity which is the sign-manual of youth and hope. He was preaching that alertness, that clean agility and vigilance, which is as necessary to ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... accompanied his triumph with acclamations of joy and gratitude, which were imputed as a crime to the victorious general. But when he entered the palace, the courtiers were silent, and the emperor, after a cold and thankless embrace, dismissed him to mingle with the train of slaves. Yet so deep was the impression of his glory on the minds of men, that Justinian, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, was encouraged to advance near forty miles from the capital, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... that gives it value rather than the hero. You may also wish to trace out the action through a series of episodes with many figures. In the latter case you might have recourse to a bas-relief, which, although durable, is usually a thankless work; there is little in it that might not be conveyed in a drawing with distinctness. As some artists, like Michael Angelo, have carried the sculptor's spirit into painting, many more, when painting is the prevalent and natural art, have produced carved pictures. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... its fertile breast, Dost thou feel a glow for it? Thou of all its charms possest. Living on its first and best, Art thou but a thankless guest Or a traitor foe for it, If thou lovest, where's the test? Wilt thou strike a blow ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the last word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity—sometimes even wit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. He repeats the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... 'tis enough; at length thy labour ends, And thou shalt live, for Buckingham commends; Let crowds of critics now my verse assail, Let Dennis write, and nameless numbers rail, This more than pays whole years of thankless pain— Time, health, and fortune, are not lost in vain. Sheffield approves; consenting Phoebus bends, And I and Malice ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise —That last infirmity of noble mind— To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... warning—it is in no sense your business to dictate to others as to what they may or may not, should or should not, read, and if you attempt to assume such responsibility you will make unnumbered enemies, and take upon yourself a thankless and uncalled-for task. ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... polemical controversy; saw the newspapers which had sparkled with his forceful, high-minded criticism die; and lived miserably upon a daily allowance of thirty sous, earned by copying for the Palais. Marcas lived at that time, 1836, in the garret of a furnished house on rue Corneille. His thankless debtor, become minister again, sought him anew. Had it not been for the hearty attention of his young neighbors, Rabourdin and Juste, who furnished him with some necessary clothing, and aided him at Humann's expense, Marcas would not have taken advantage of the new opportunity that was offered him. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... "A thankless office, my dear. If you could make all the world wise, it would do, but fools are always angry ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Dialogues of Plato, was another martyr; from whose ashes arose the Royal Literary Fund, which has prevented many struggling authors from sharing his fate. Seventeen long years of labour, besides a handsome fortune, did Edmund Castell spend on his Lexicon Heptaglotton; but a thankless and ungrateful public refused to relieve him of the copies of this learned work, which ruined his health while it dissipated his fortune. These are only a few names which might be mentioned out of the many. What a noble army of martyrs ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... pitch of intensity which it never has reached before. The competent, to whose energies the riches of the world are due, are to put these riches away from them as though they were food offered by the devil. The incompetent, with thankless but perpetually open mouths, are to swallow this same food as though it were the bread from heaven. In other words, according to our Christian socialist, the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is involved in the enjoyment of riches, is not the enjoyment of material superfluities ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... and I'll now give ye these whole papers and documents, I would say that my dead brother Hugh has here in his will laid out yere whole life for the three years of the minority. He has put on me the thankless labor and care of watching over yere worldly gear, and of keeping ye safely to the lines of prudence and of a just economy. And my duty to my dead brother, I will do just as his own words and hand and seal lay it down! To-morrow I will have much to say to you. If ye will come ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... there was no silencing the voice. He had talked to the intelligence of the mob. Now his talk had been addressed to—the representatives of the mob; if the demon did not cry so loudly, it was only because he was weary of his thankless task. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... "As thankless a task as that of Moses," said the other, watching him curiously. "For you will not see the pleasant land,—you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... whose heart is so cold that I shiver only to think of it—for this waif and stray, who has nothing but her ragged pride and the mere scrapings of a lost fortune, which never could compare with ours—for this thankless creature, who can hardly bring herself to bid me, your mother, such a civil good-morning—by Heaven it is the truth—as I can say to a slave—for her that I, that your parents are to be bereft of their son, the only child that a gracious Providence has left to be their joy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had swerved, Athene, hating Troy and loving them Who craved to snatch and make a diadem Of Priam's regal crown for other brows— She, though foredoomed she knew, held to her vows, And duly paid the thankless evening rite— There came to Paris' house late in the night Deiphobus his brother, young and trim, For speech with fair-tressed Helen, for whose slim And budded grace long had he sighed in vain; And found her in full hall, and showed his pain And need of her. To ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... breakfast, and spread it temptingly out on the table, a thankless task, for, as before, Le could not be persuaded to choke himself by attempting to swallow a morsel of solid food; but he drank cup after cup full of strong coffee, as fast as the woman ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... some such a way now, the depth of this pure devotion quite smote upon him, and filled his heart with thanksgiving. Gracious God, who was he, weak and friendless creature, that such a love should be poured out upon him? Not in vain—not in vain has he lived—hard and thankless should he be to think so—that has such a treasure given him. What is ambition compared to that, but selfish vanity? To be rich, to be famous? What do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... thankless traitor, whether king or beggar he!" And a dagger gleamed above us with a fierce glare at the light, Then was struck upon my bosom near the place the heart might be, And my false friend, through the people, hastened wildly in ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... Griswold stood to look on. The toilers were negroes, most of them, but with here and there among the blacks and yellows a paler face so begrimed with sweat and dust as to be scarcely distinguishable from the majority. The sight moved Griswold, as thankless toil always did; and he fell to contrasting the hard lot of the laborers with that of the group of passengers looking on idly from the comfortable shade of the saloon-deck awning. Griswold's thought vocalized itself ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... can bear. Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those stern peers who counselled with her upon the most effectual way of having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man's peace—why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... equally careless as to the correct Christian names of his cousins and his aunts. In the main, the general reader is wise in his generation. But with the painful biographer, toiling in the immeasurable sand of thankless research, often foot-sore and dry of throat, these trivialities assume exaggerated proportions; and to those who remind him—as in a cynical age he is sure to be reminded—of the infinitesimal value of his hard-gotten ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... of repetition might be obviated by the publication of the various readings that have been suggested in the text of Shakspeare, but who is there to be found Quixotic enough to undertake so large and thankless a task, one which at best can only be most imperfectly executed: the materials being so scattered, and often so worthless, the compiler would, I imagine, abandon the design before he had made great progress ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... had recently failed in business, in consequence of which he himself was at present supporting a second establishment. He sighed, and reflected that it was a thankless task to rear a family. The infantine troubles of teething, whooping-cough, and scarlatina were trifles as compared with the later annoyance and difficulties of dealing with striplings who had the audacity to imagine themselves grown-up, and competent to have a ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his advice and interposition; but he made the same answer to all—referring them at once to the established authority, and declining to use any influence, upon the most trifling occasions, which in his position he might have legitimately exercised. His magnanimity was thrown away upon a thankless soil. The situation he had filled with so much honour and advantage, was now occupied by a nobleman who could neither appreciate nor imitate ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Does he not define such a one in the lines, 'As long as you love boys in the glorious flower of their youth for their kisses and embraces.' And add to Solon the lines of AEschylus, 'You did not disdain the honour of the thighs, O thankless one after all my frequent kisses.'[68] For some laugh at them if they bid lovers, like sacrificing priests and seers, to inspect thighs and loins; but I think this a mighty argument in behalf of the love of women. For if the unnatural commerce with males does not take away or mar the amorous ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... wasteful mud upon the scanty cornfields. The people call this soil creta; but it seems to be less like a chalk than a marl, or marna. It is always washing away into ravines and gullies, exposing the roots of trees, and rendering the tillage of the land a thankless labour. One marvels how any vegetation has the faith to settle on its dreary waste, or how men have the patience, generation after generation, to renew the industry, still beginning, never ending, which ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... living under a constitutional government, where no one really cares for that cold and thankless, blind, deaf Thing called public interest, to imagine the zeal which a mere word of the Emperor was able to inspire in his political or administrative machine. That powerful will seemed to impress itself as much upon things as upon ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... friend for evident faults Is but a thankless office; still 'tis useful, And wholesome for a youth of such an age, And so this day I will reprove my friend, Whose fault is palpable."—Plautus, Frinummus, Act ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... enjoy our being is to be ungrateful to the Author of it, is well expressed in Spenser, F. Q. b. iv. c. viii. st. 15. For he whose daies in wilful woe are worne The grace of his Creator doth despise, That will not use his gifts for thankless nigardise. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... We are thy thankless children, gracious Lord. The good thou dost afford Lightly do we employ, All careless of the one who ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... which is eternally released? That she does so the Snkhyas distinctly assert, 'By manifold means Prakriti, helpful and endowed with the gunas, without any benefit to herself, accomplishes the purpose of the soul, which is thankless and not composed of the gunas' (Snkhya K. 60).—The Snkhyas further teach that Prakriti, on being seen by any soul in her true nature, at once retires from that soul—'As a dancer having exhibited herself ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... hear, sir?), a vexatious, capricious, thankless, troublesome, Animal; but I hope you'll do better in the time to come, and I bless you and forgive you!' Here, she quite forgot that it was Pa's turn to make the responses, and clung to his neck. 'Dear Pa, if you knew how much I think this morning of what you told me once, about the first ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... are little, frank, honest-hearted creatures, and say out what they think, as such plebeian people will, used to tell her roundly she was thankless for the supreme ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... earth or form into various character and temper the different families of man is "rain influences" from the heaven that smiles so benignly on those who had once shrunk, ragged, from the wind, or scowled on the thankless sun. Here, the hard air of the chill Mother Isle,—there, the mild warmth of Italian autumns or the breathless glow of the tropics. And with the beams of every climate, glides subtle Hope. Of her there, it ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have been more certain that he was satisfied with me, nothing would have been wanting to my happiness. Everybody waited upon me; and perhaps it was on this account that Ernst, in comparison, seemed somewhat cold; I was the petted child of my too kind parents; I was thankless and peevish, and ah, some little of this still remains! Nevertheless, it was during this very time that, under the influence of my husband, the true beauty and reality of life became more and more perceptible to my soul. Married life and family ties, one's country and the world, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... at her sharply, but with some signs of sympathy on his grave face. 'My woman,' he said 'a could ha' wished as you'd niver seen t' watch. It's poor, thankless work thinking too much on one o' God's creatures. But a'll do thy bidding,' he continued, in a lighter and different tone. 'A'm a 'cute old badger when need be. Come for thy watch in a couple o' days, and a'll tell ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Young Wilkinson was a very handsome lad, and grew up to be a handsome man; but his beauty was of that regular sort which is more pleasing in a boy than in a man. He also was an excellent lad, and no parent could be so thankless as to be other than proud of him. All men said all good things of him, so that Mr. Wilkinson could not but be contented. Nevertheless, one would always wish to see one's own son not less bright than one's ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... And as Babhru stood gazing at her, like one struck by a thunderbolt, Chamu said again: Thou owest me not abuse, but gratitude, O woodman: for see, I have brought her back to thee, all across the sand, where many in my place would have left her in the middle of the way, for it was a thankless task, and she was a cross-grained burden, that was very loath to come at all. So as thou seest, thou wert very wrong, to call even Atirupa robber: for here she is again. And the women are silly creatures, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... that he was four inches out in a measurement, and told him of it, when he swore frightfully. He then took his two-foot rule, and finding himself in the wrong, swore more frightfully than ever. This was my first experience in the thankless business of art-criticism, and it was the beginning of a false position, in which I often found myself in youth, from knowing more about some subjects than ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... in this thankless world the giver Is envied even by the receiver; 'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion Rather to hide than own the obligation: Nay, 'tis much worse than so; It now an artifice does grow Wrongs and injuries to do, Lest men should ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... weapon. Is it the desperation of your fear Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend, Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed 60 Was but to try you. As for me, I think, Thankless affection led me to this point, From which, if my firm temper could repent, I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak The ministers of justice wait below: 65 They grant me these brief moments. Now if you Have any word of melancholy comfort To speak to your pale wife, 'twere best ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... And formed a thick and matted bower Which might have turned a summer shower, Was saved by ruinous assault. The hunters thought their dogs at fault, And called them off. In danger now no more The Stag, a thankless wretch and vile, Began to browse his benefactress o'er. The hunters listening the while, The rustling heard, came back, With all their yelping pack, And seized him in that very place. "This is," said he, "but justice, in my case. Let every black ingrate Henceforward profit by my fate." The dogs ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... is your duty. But do not let the slandering Devil slander to you that blessed word, Duty, and make you afraid of it, and shrink from it, as if it meant something burdensome, and troublesome, and thankless, which you suppose you must do for fear of punishment, while you have a right to see how little of it you can do, and try to be let off as cheaply as possible. Beware of that evil spirit, my friends, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... invitation with pleasure," replied Marshall, whose manners were all that his attire was not. "I shall be glad to talk with you on many subjects. To-morrow I shall pay my respects to Mr. Hamilton. His has been a trying but not a thankless task. He has addressed himself to the right class of men all over the country, winning them to his sound and enlightened views, giving them courage, consolidating them against the self-interested advocates of State sovereignty. That he has so often neglected a legal practice ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... believe your mind is care-ridden," bandied Martin, falling in with the other's mood. "It must be a wearisome and thankless task to scatter universal knowledge amidst the brainless. Have you still got your book? That thing you tried to sell ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... then, I must not live. Posterity shall ne'er report, they had Such thankless fathers, or a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Ah, thankless! canst thou envy him who gains The Stoic's cold and indurate repose? Thou! with thy lively sense of bliss and woes!— From a false balance of life's joys and pains Thou deem'st him happy.—Plac'd 'mid fair domains, Where full the river down the valley flows, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward |
