"Plod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every little dyke or embankment with a crowd of bustling villagers, each with a heavy bundle of grain on his head, hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... phenomena have been in progress all over the world from periods beyond historic record, but colleges have not yet learned of their existence. They are now becoming familiar to millions, from the emperor to the beggar, and still the colleges plod on in sanctified ignorance where the priest rules, or in insolent dogmatism where the medical professor rules. Is there anything in the way of demonstration that can overcome this pachydermic stupidity?—doubtful! Clairvoyants have described diseases, described distant places, described ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... under Sin's fine clothes there is a breast cancer-eaten, and at the bottom of the wine there is a bitter dreg called satiety; but Virtue does not much heed that; like the woman she is, she only notes that Sin drives a pair of ponies in the sunshine, while she herself is often left to plod wearily through the everlasting falling rain. So she dubs us "cynics" and leaves us—who can wonder if we won't follow her through the rain? Sin smiles so merrily if she makes us pay toll at the end; whereas Virtue—ah me, Virtue will find ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... simple men; for many sweat Under this act, that knows not the law's debt Which hangs upon their lives; for silly men Plod on they know not how, like a fool's pen, That, ending, shows not any sentence writ, Linked but to common reason or slightest wit: These follow for no harm; but yet incur Self penalty with those that raised this stir. A God's name, on, to calm our private foes With ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... money of their parents and friends been expended to educate them? Their fathers did as well as, if not better, than they without it, and cannot this man, with the advantage of education, "turn up something"? There is something radically wrong with the plan of education. The old man could plod over the farm in his antiquated way, and earn money enough to keep things going, and educate his son, but when that son's education has been completed, he has not the ability, or business tact, with modern improvements, to build upon the foundation ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... subtle-minded author would have us adopt, or would adopt himself? If he scorn the easy, methodical citizen, who plods along the beaten tracks of life, looking occasionally, in his demure, self-satisfied manner, upwards to the heavens, but with no other result than to plod more perseveringly along his very earthy track, it follows not that there is any one order of fanatic spirits with whom he would associate, to whose theology he would yield assent. Verily, no. He demands faith—he gives no creed. What is it you teach? a plain-speaking man would exclaim; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... ye would cherish the trust which your fathers left, Ye must strive—ye must work—without ease. Strong have your good sires battled, oft have your fathers bled, If ye would hold up the flag which they've never let sag, Ye must plod—ye must creep where they've led. The shimmering icebergs call you; the plunging screw-drums scream, By shallowing shoals they haul you, to the beat of the walking beam. The twisting petrels chatter, as ye drift ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... pleasant to lose sight entirely of a beautiful scene, and to plod along for a few hundred yards in almost objectless shadow. Our conceptions and feelings are bright and strong from the nearness of their objects, yet the dream is somewhat different from the reality. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... reading I fortune to meet with any difficult points, I fret not my selfe about them, but after I have given them a charge or two, I leave them as I found them. Should I earnestly plod upon them, I should loose both time and my selfe, for I have a skipping wit. What I see not at the first view, I shall lesse see it if I opinionate my selfe upon it. I doe nothing without blithnesse; and an over obstinate continuation ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Wittemore would come back and say his mother was better! It was Wittemore that had started all this queer side-track of philanthropy; that had sent him off to make toast for old women and manage funerals for strange young girls. If Wittemore would get back to his classes and plod off to his slums every day, with his long horse-like face and his scared little apologetic smile, why, perhaps his own mind would assume its normal bent and let him get at his work. And with that he sat down ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... without force. They are all trimmed as much as possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad plaint. It is a day on which to thank God for the unknown tongue. The drover and his lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and blind to all but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook, instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, but armed with a heavy stick and mechanically dealing blows on the short thick fleeces; without evil ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... sunshine every day; It warms the bones and breathes upon the heart; But you I see out-plod a little way, Bitten with cold; your cheeks and fingers smart. Would you were here, we might in temples lie, And look from azure into azure sky, And paradise achieve, slipping ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... makes us throw off all ideas of soft ease we may have harboured in Kashmir, and reminds us that we have to prepare ourselves to face beauties of a far sterner kind. So we insensibly alter our whole attitude of mind, and as we plod our way through the mountains we summon up from within ourselves all the austerer stuff of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... more ordinary than is supposed. Plod rather than cleverness is often the best missionary equipment." Rev. J. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... cold. The traveller is also aware of a sympathy of mood between himself and the road he travels. We have all seen ways that have wandered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail wearily over the dunes like a trodden serpent: here we too must plod forward at a dull, laborious pace; and so a sympathy is preserved between our frame of mind and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the roadway. Such a phenomenon, indeed, our reason might perhaps resolve ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me, as the rushing wind Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, O'er which all heavily the journeying years Plod the last sands of life—where not ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... to the fence, helped her over, and then, without a word they began to plod across the ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... day the doubly bereaved man started on his lonely journey back to the Dakota claim, back to an empty house, with a gnawing pain in his heart and a constriction like an iron band about his throat; back to his broad fields to plod ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts, and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round feet had left their print upon so ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... these stay-at-home little housewives, the angels of many a happy hearth, whose busy fingers, beaming smiles and gentle accents are the rest and refuge of many a toil-worn weaver at life's heavy loom. To lay aside the world's distressing cares at sunset, to wipe his moistened brow, and "homeward plod his weary way" to his cabin small and lowly, where glows this cheerful love in one dear breast, in one sweet face, is to the uncouth "ploughman" a joy, a comfort, which many ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... employed and their salaries. Hamilton, by this time, was fully alive to the fact that he was about to be subjected to fresh persecution, and the agility of his enemies could not keep pace with his. He furnished the House with an itemized list—which it took the Committee days to plod through—of his bookkeepers, clerks, porters, and charwomen, and the varying emoluments they had received since the Department was organized, three years and a half before. He further informed them that the net yield of the foreign loan was eighteen millions six hundred ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... favor of Martin Howe if she had to plod every step of the three scorching miles; and if he were brute enough to let her toil along in the heat—to walk while he rode—well, that was all she ever wanted to know about him. Her heart beat tumultuously as she heard ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... timeless grave to throw, No cypress, sombre on the snow; Snap not from the bitter yew His leaves that live December through; Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel clime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him: bring No spray ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... member of the staff of Cosy Moments to arrive at the office on the following morning was Master Maloney. This sounds like the beginning of a "Plod and Punctuality," or "How Great Fortunes have been Made" story; but, as a matter of fact, Master Maloney was no early bird. Larks who rose in his neighbourhood, rose alone. He did not get up with them. He was supposed ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Let me know the outcome of this act; its philosophy, its reasonableness, its result, then I will obey. But the Spirit answers, "It is enough for thee, O child of man, to know Me. Canst thou not trust? Wilt thou not obey? And as thou obeyest thou shalt know. Take this path, plod along its difficult way, climb where it climbs, so shalt thou ascend the steep of obedience, and at each step a further horizon of the truth will open outspread ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... mixture of races be seen, and each nationality was enjoying itself in its own peculiar fashion—all except the Chinese, who were, as usual, hard at work in their little dens. No recreation for this people. Work, work, work! They never play, never smile, but plod away, from early morning until late at night. The Chinaman's objection to giving his creditor in New York a note was because it "walkee, walkee alle timee; walkee, walkee, no sleepee." They seem to me to ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the last few days, now forsook me altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many traveling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet—complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... time through order may be won, I promise. So, Friend (my views to briefly sum), First, the collegium logicum. There will your mind be drilled and braced, As if in Spanish boots 'twere laced, And thus, to graver paces brought, 'Twill plod along the path of thought, Instead of shooting here and there, A will-o'-the-wisp in murky air. Days will be spent to bid you know, What once you did at a single blow, Like eating and drinking, free and strong,— That one, two, three! thereto ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... sound, except to reply cheerfully whenever I addressed her. The exceeding roughness of the passage made our progress slow, and quite frequently we were all obliged to dismount, generally glad enough of the change, and plod forward for some distance on foot. I possessed no knowledge then as to where we were, the map having deceived me so often I had long since lost all confidence in it as a guide, but now, in this later day, I can trace our ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... "Well, plod along," replied Johnson. "Little boats keep near the shore. But, let me tell you, my young friend, your mind is rather too limited for a merchant of this day. There is Mortimer, who began business about the time you did. How much do you think he has ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... continued, 'you are as charming as ever—you will win your way only the better in the world for this little experience. And as for me—I have been in Elysium for three months; and that is more than a host of your excellent prudent men can boast of, who plod on day after day only that they may continue plodding to the end of their lives. Adieu! my adorable—my angel that will now vanish from my sight!' And here, in spite of my struggles, he embraced me with the greatest ardour, and then, tearing himself away as if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... to persevere in the proposal of first finishing the Didactics; backed by saws to this effect: 'One would rather the better, but the earlier must be done first,' 'One doesn't go from the bigger to the smaller, but wicey warsey,' and all the rest of it. Nothing was left me but to obey, and plod on against my will in the clay of logomachies for eight whole years. Fortunately this was not till I had printed at Dantzic, in the year 1643, my already-made efforts at a better detection of the foundations of Pansophia, under the title of 'Pansophiae Diatyposis Ichnographica ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... began, have laid them down In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... in the way of her attaining any distant end had always been her reluctance to plod through the intervening stretches of dulness and privation. She had begun to see this, but she could not always master the weakness: never had she stood in greater need of Mrs. Heeny's "Go slow. Undine!" Her imagination ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... as the pinters move on towards four. Clasping hands with fellow toilers and (hard task) onclaspin' 'em, as they go up above us, or down nearer the foot. Havin' little 'intermissions' of enjoyment, soon over. But we plod on, on, and bimeby — and sometimes we think we do not care how soon — the teacher will say to us, that we can be 'dismissed.' And then we shall drop out of the rank of learners, and the school will go without us, jest ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... As your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that leads out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the atmosphere thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting blood are yours again, until, as you near the heights, ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... they are past you: sixe or seaven make a perfect Morrice-daunce; they need no Bells, their Spurs serve their turne: I am ashamed to traine 'am abroade, theyle say I carrie a whole Forrest of Feathers with mee, and I should plod afore 'am in plaine stuffe, like a writing Schole-maister before his Boyes when they ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... combined agonies of sea-sickness and rheumatism, with the additional chance of being shot headlong into the inky ditch on either side. By taking to what the driver called "our own hind legs," we accepted an ankle-deep plod through filth indescribable and treacherous boulders, which turned over when trust and sixteen stone were reposed on them. It was at this part of the journey that I saw for the first time the Mountain Sylph. Some women and children, who ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... of man's fugitive castaway soul upon a doomed and derelict planet. The minds of all men plod the same rough roads of sense; and in spite of much knavery, all win at times "an ampler ether, a diviner air." The great poets, our masters, speak out of that clean freshness of ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... from "Czar und Zimmermann," in which I had just been playing, the "March" from "Lenore," and scraps of choruses and airs from the "Thurm zu Babel," all ringing in my head in a confused jumble, I sprung up the stairs (up which I used to plod so wearily and so spiritlessly), and went into the sitting-room. Darkness! After I had stood still and gazed about for a time, my eyes grew accustomed to the obscurity. I perceived that a dim gray light still stole in at the open window, and that some one reposing ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... sceptre, pen and hod— Yea, sodden laborers dumb; To brains overplied, to feet that plod, In solace of the Truce of God ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... me." Here his smile died, his eyes softened, and his face set in impenetrable gravity. "Had I the power I would keep Viola Lambert forever young and forever virgin." Then, with a quick return to his familiar drawl: "But I am going away without even killing Clarke, to plod my little round in Colorow and wait news from you. If I do not see you again, Mrs. Rice, keep me in mind. I make the same promise your husband made—I will 'manifest' to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... face. I never saw such ugly shadows, and once I had to stop and get breath before I could make up my mind to pass a clump of old mulberry bushes. Once in a while I heard a crackle behind me like a footstep, but I didn't look back. I knew my only chance was to plod ahead, no matter how my heart thumped or my knees shook. I thought of everything I could to bolster me up—of dear old Aunt Pam and poor little Maggie. But the sound of the waves on the beach was ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... God's mercy, Sad and disconsolate though he may be, Far o'er the watery track must he travel, Long must he row o'er the rime-crusted sea— Plod his lone exile-path—Fate is severe. Mindful of slaughter, his kinsman friends' death, Mindful of hardships, the wanderer saith:— Oft must I lonely, when dawn doth appear, Wail o'er my sorrow—since living is none Whom I may whisper my heart's undertone. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... then he would say, "Tickets, gentlemen; tickets, gentlemen." like he was conductor on a train of cars. This little episode would be over, and then would commence the same tramp, tramp, tramp, all night long. Step by step, step by step, we continued to plod and nod and stagger and march, tramp, tramp, tramp. After a while we would see the morning star rise in the east, and then after a while the dim gray twilight, and finally we could discover the outlines ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... Claus burst into tears, Then calmed again: "my reindeer fleet, I gave them up: on foot, my dears, I now must plod through snow and sleet. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... snow had turned to cold dull rain, which was far more depressing. I wished the mineral springs at Borsek had never been discovered. It was too late to turn back to St Miklos, where I devoutly wished myself, so I had nothing to do but plod on with my waterproof tight round me. It was impossible to go fast, for in places the mud was very deep and the road was beset ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... as he said on some occasion, and I am sure by this time that "want of cavalry" must be written on poor Methuen's. So you must figure to yourself a small army, an army almost all infantry, and an army tied to the railway on this march; and if we bring off no brilliant strategy, but simply plod on and take hard knocks, well, what else, I ask, under the circumstances ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... done much to bequeath those mental qualities to us, but that which scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours and keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by,—that depends on our own plod in the rut, our drill of habit, in a word our 'drudgery.' It is because we have to go and go morning after morning, through rain, through shine, through toothache, headache, heartache to the appointed spot and do the appointed ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... tired women rest under the trees, and chat, and perhaps smoke until evening. When the hot sun has gone down in the west, they make their damp and dry clothes up into huge bundles, lift them to their heads, and plod homeward. ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... fatigue. But that evening his mind was wide awake. Nor could he fix it upon business. It would interest itself only in the hurrying throngs of foot passengers and the ideas they suggested: Here am I—so ran his thoughts—here am I, tucked away comfortably while all those poor creatures have to plod along in the storm. I could afford to be sick. They can't. And what have I done to deserve this good fortune? Nothing. Worse than nothing. If I had made my career along the lines of what is honest and right and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... convinced himself—he wished to do so—that the obscure power that moved him had an exact meaning, and that its meaning was in accordance with his will. His free instinct, risen from the unconscious depths, was willy-nilly forced to plod on under the yoke of reason with perfectly clear ideas which had nothing at all in common with it. And work so produced was no more than a lying juxtaposition of one of those great subjects that Christophe's mind had marked out for itself, and those ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... grovel for the shoddy goods And plod and plot and plan, And if you win the paltry prize Go prize it—if you can, But I would hurl it in your face To ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... vegetable matter. This slime had hardened in the sun and formed a cake over the soft mud beneath. Upon this treacherous surface a man could walk with great care. Should the thin covering break through, he would be immediately waist-deep in the soft mud. To plod through this was the elephant's delight. Smearing a thick coat of the black mud over their whole bodies, they formed a defensive armour against the attacks of mosquitoes, which are the greatest torments that an elephant has ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Hold Sirha, beare you these Letters tightly, Saile like my Pinnasse to these golden shores. Rogues, hence, auaunt, vanish like haile-stones; goe, Trudge; plod away ith' hoofe: seeke shelter, packe: Falstaffe will learne the honor of the age, French-thrift, you Rogues, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the two could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither had any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling presently on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance, of the plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible, coughing asthmatically, or saying, "You, JOE!" with a spiritless flap of the whip upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps at street-corners ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... been standardized thirty years ago,—we should still be writing by hand, by gas-light, we should be without the inestimable aid of the telephone (sometimes, I admit, it is a nuisance), without the automobile, without wireless telegraphy. Personally, I could have managed to plod along without the aeroplane, and I could have been ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... up courage an' plod along, that's my advice. If she's meant fer you, ye'll win her all right. I'm a great believer in the idea that our own'll come to us some day, an' often in ways we least expect. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... and not one of the lads can, though they want to do it very much. But, best of all, Nat, you really care to learn something, and that is half the battle. It seems hard at first, and you will feel discouraged, but plod away, and things will get easier and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... my service, and writes with such zeal for my interests, and such warmth of sorrow for my sufferings, as if he wrote with fire and tears. God bless him! I wish above all things to realize a school. I could be well content to plod from morning to night, if only I could secure a secure competence; but to toil incessantly for uncertain bread weighs me down ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... an' lang's the road! He fain at my side wud hae timed his plod, But, eh, he was sent for, an' hurried awa! Noo, I'm thinkin he's harkin to hear ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... that his old friend had to say, and felt sure that he could and would follow the advice given. Never before had right living seemed so attractive, and the path of duty so luminous. But the thought that chiefly filled him with joy was that henceforth he would not be compelled to plod forward as a weary pilgrim. He felt that he had wings; some of the divine strength had been given him. He believed himself changed, renewed, transformed; he was confident that his old self had perished and passed away, and that, as a new creature, ennobling tendencies would control ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... will appear. First of all, there must be good sleighing; and second, a fine night for Christmas eve. Ours are not the carollings of your poor shivering little East Angles or South Mercians, where they have to plod round afoot in countries which do not ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... still toss'd into foam of pure whiteness; On falls the most glorious that Earth has e'er seen! Strength acquiring, in admiring All as the matchless work of God; Can, with pleasure, leave such treasure, And my journey onward plod. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... have received answer to his query here also. The quiet is astonishing: there are no farm sounds even; and, though the hours pass so pleasantly that we "take no note of time", we can tell when Saturday comes, for then numbers of log-laden ox-carts plod slowly into the village from the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... plod up the treadmill it had labored on for so many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own mind, forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as if he had been speaking aloud. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in the world and its bigness and splendor: That most of the hearts beating round us are tender; That days are but footsteps and years are but miles That lead us to beauty and singing and smiles: That roses that blossom and toilers that plod Are filled with ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... reach a world where we shall not have to plod through so much doubt and misgiving, and where our real feelings will be ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... "the hunter home from the hill," but so far as I can find out he never killed anything himself. He was concerned with the romance of the thought, with alliteration, and the singular charm of the truth—sunset and the end of the day, the hunter's plod down the hill to the cottage, to the home where wife and children awaited him. Indeed it is a beautiful truth, and not altogether in the past, for there are still farmers ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... pigeons in the moon before the snow moon. No prayers could avail to stay their coming, and from that time all the troubles in the world began. No man was allowed to have his own way thenceforward, nor was he permitted to plod along in his old, slow, comfortable fashion, but each one in terror went to work as swift as a loon flying before ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... that should rear a gigantic barrier before which this puffing fiery monster should stand powerless, and acknowledge the soft bits of down master of the situation? The storm raged through the day, increasing each hour in strength and fury. The long train began to plod in a laboured, tired way, after the manner of mortals, stopping often, while snow-ploughs in advance cleared the track. Darkness came down and still the fearful mass of whiteness piled itself in huge billows about them. The snow-ploughs were unavailing; as fast ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... numerous. We sometimes have at Talladega applications from fifty such in a single year. It is often pitiful to hear their appeals to be admitted to school, when denial is forced upon them, since there is neither room nor money. Still, there are many who secure books, seek help, and blindly plod on. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various
... The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without hyperbole of the 'fairy tales of science.' To us, who have to plod through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not science, we may ask with a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... plod away, Step by step in mouldering moss; Thick branches bar the day Over languid streams that cross Softly, slowly, with a sound Like a smothered weeping, In their aimless creeping ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... she said, after watching him plod rather wearily along for several blocks, "a circus ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... into notoriety, which lasted precisely two years, to fill the court and town during that time with continuous laughter, intermingled with inquiries who and what he was, and then for seventeen long years to plod on unknown and unregarded, still hearing his Hudibras quoted, and still preparing more of it, or matter similar, with no result. He died, in almost absolute destitution, in 1680, and was buried at a friend's expense, in the church-yard ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... given to hospitality," he said; "we're always looking for the angel we are going to entertain unawares. Come along home with us, Lewis." And Lewis would plod up the hill and take his turn at the tin washbasin, and then file down the men's side of the stairs to the dining-room, where he and the three old brothers sat at one table, and Athalia and the eight sisters sat at the other ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... straight lines; but before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait. It ceased to be a strut; it became a plod. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... and crestfallen, Donald returned to Kildun and urged the Prince to instant flight. But not even the fear of immediate capture could induce the three wearied men to set out again in the wet and darkness to plod over rocks and morasses with no certain goal. So Donald had to control his fears ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... once a week or his passion will cool and he will put up his tackle. The tiger-sportsman must find a tiger at least once a fortnight or he will get tired and quit. The elephant-hunter's enthusiasm will waste away little by little, and his zeal will perish at last if he plod around a month without finding a member of that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Master Bean had to cringe before two. Nobody can last long against an office-boy whose eyes shine with quiet, respectful reproof through gold-rimmed spectacles, whose manner is that of a middle-aged saint, and who obviously knows all the Plod and Punctuality books by heart and orders his life by their precepts. Master Bean was a walking edition of Stepping-Stones to Success, Millionaires who Have Never Smoked, and Young Man, Get up Early. Galahad, Parsifal, and Marcus Aurelius, as I say, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... desirous perhaps of encouraging a more entire devotion of his talents to the study of the law, distinguished him by the title of her Counsel extraordinary,—an office of little emolument, though valuable as an introduction to practice. But the genius of Bacon disdained to plod in the trammels of a laborious profession; he felt that it was given him for higher and larger purposes: yet perceiving, at the same time, that the narrowness of his circumstances would prove an insuperable bar to his ambition ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... temptation by any means. But what has been may be again, and it is none the easier to resist because it is unusual. When a young girl, with hot impatience, feels she is not advancing as rapidly as she should, the wealthy "patron of Art" declares it is folly for her to plod along so slowly, that he will free her from all trammels, he will provide play, wardrobe, company, and show the world that she is already an artist. To her trembling objection that she could only accept such tremendous aid ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... half of the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade arrived on the 2nd of August at Dakhala, during a blustering dust-storm. For all that, black and travel-stained, they were glad to detrain, and to plod through the sand, and breast the laden atmosphere, in order to get into camp hard by the Atbara. The following day the remainder of the battalion marched in under somewhat pleasanter conditions. Everybody turned out to cheer the smart, soldierlike detachments. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... mule-paths are found along this valley as I follow the course of the little stream eastward; they are by no means continuous, by reason of the eccentric wanderings of the rivulet; but after climbing the rough pass one feels thankful for even small favors, and I plod along, now riding, now walking, occasionally passing little clusters of mud huts and meeting with pack animals en route to Ismidt with the season's shearing of mohair. "Alia Franga!" is the greeting I am now favored with, instead of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... roguishness there was much shyness. The two would plod along the road together in a sort of blissful agony of embarrassment. The neighbors were right in their surmise that there was no definite understanding between them. But the thing was settled in the minds of both. Once Ben had said: "Pop says I can have the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... force might operate for a month without drawing supplies of any kind from the north. The railway, which had progressed at the rate of about half a mile a day, had reached and was working to Ambigole Wells, where a four-gun fort and entrenchment had been built. The distance over which convoys must plod was reduced by half, and the business of supply was doubly accelerated. By degrees the battalions and squadrons began to move forward towards Akasha. Sarras, deprived of its short-lived glory, became again the solitary fort on a crag. Wady Halfa was also deserted, and, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... I plod, and still in cities moil; From precious leisure, learned leisure far, Dull my best self with handling common soil; Yet ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... woods of a night without being frozen to death, thousands of the convicts try to escape from the gold and salt mines. These poor folk prefer to run the risk of capture and the brutal punishment it involves, rather than remain longer in endless misery. Feeding on mushrooms and berries they plod their weary way back, amid perils of every kind, to their native homes, hundreds—it may be thousands—of miles distant. They avoid towns and highways, of course, but they freely enter the villages. The Siberian peasants, in silent pathetic fashion, show their ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... them at least, have been very instructive, but the gradual falling away of our members makes evident to me how unlikely it is that any official commission will ever settle the claims of spiritualism. As Maxwell has said: 'It is a slow process, and he who cannot bring himself to plod patiently and to wait uncomplainingly for hours at a time will not go far.' I confess that the half-heartedness of our members has disappointed me. I told them at the outset not to expect entertainment, but they did. It is tiresome to sit night after night and ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... Melton I'm so weak. I have to train myself to see that they are not really getting up so fast, but only scrambling fast over slipping, sliding stones; and then I have to try to find some firm ground where I can make a path of my own, up which I can plod ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Lorrigans ran swiftly through the veins of Tom, who had set himself to win a million honestly. It was then that he remembered his quiet, law-abiding years regretfully, as time wasted; a thankless struggle toward the regard of his fellow men. Of what avail to plod along the path of uprightness when no man would point to him and say, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... students the piano is only a barrier—a wall between them and music. Their thoughts never seem to penetrate farther than the keys. They plod along for years apparently striving to make piano-playing machines of themselves, and in the end result ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... hard work are the sole remedies, or rather the sole means of temporary escape. Much of the Rambler is occupied with variations upon this theme, and expresses the kind of dogged resolution with which he would have us plod through this weary world. Take for example this passage:—"The controversy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That life has many miseries, and that those miseries are sometimes ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... a horse with wings! Hear'st thou, Pisanio? He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs May plod it in a week, why may not I Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio, (Who long'st like me, to see thy lord—who long'st— O let me bate, but not like me—yet long'st, But in a fainter kind—O ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... incessant labor; the hard marches over a rough road, and under a broiling sun, at length became too oppressive. Oftentimes I felt, as it were, unable to proceed a step further; but my proud spirit with a stern determination of will, exerted every possible energy, and I continued day after day to plod along with my foot-sore and way-worn companions. Our fatigues were however occasionally relieved by a general rest for a few days. But before one third of the journey had been completed I was seized one night with a severe attack ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... short section of our story we shall cram two months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as they plod through it. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... roles were thus curiously reversed. The Emperor reasoned as a sound patriot and a good strategist. MacMahon must have felt the same promptings, but obedience to the Empress and the Ministry, or chivalrous regard for Bazaine, overcame his scruples. He decided to plod on towards ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... earth, Was framed for homes, not vast estates; A lowering scale of human worth Each generation demonstrates, Which feels the landlord's iron hand, And hopeless, plod with effort brave; Who love no home can love no land; These own no home, until ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... last sleep;—the dead reign there alone.— So shalt thou rest—and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the rough and tumble working-days of his younger manhood, would not so much as cast him a word or a look. He knew that the first thing necessary to attain for this purpose was money; and he had, by steady and constant plod, managed to enlarge and expand all his business concerns into various, important companies, which he set afloat in all quarters of the world,—with the satisfactory result that by the time his years had run well into the forties, he was one of the wealthiest men in the country. He had from ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... heard footsteps pass the window. A great house like this would have a watchman, but these quick shuffling footsteps were surely not the dull plod of a servant. They passed on to the grass and died away. I began to think of getting back ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... don't hear of it, to begin with, and if they did they wouldn't care for it. I am surprised to find how little most of these people appreciate their present prospects. Once in a while you find an intelligent man who does so, but the mass plod along in the beaten track with little thought about the future and no sort of feeling of responsibility. They feel a sense of relief that no one stands to force them to labor, and they fall back with a feeling of indifference as to whether they exert themselves beyond what is necessary ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... ready-made disguises—unhook them, rather. He must know all the cant-phrases, the cant-references. There are very, very many of them, and belike it is hard to keep them all at one's finger-tips. But, at least, there is no difficulty in collecting them. Plod through the 'leaders' and 'notes' in half-a-dozen of the daily papers, and you will bag whole ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... depression is certain to be followed by a rise. That has been the history of trade and agriculture for generations. Nothing will ever convince me that it was intended for English agriculturists to go on using wooden ploughs, to wear smock-frocks, and plod round and round in the same old track for ever. In no other way but by science, by steam, by machinery, by artificial manure, and, in one word, by the exercise of intelligence, can we compete with the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Winston Churchill," says The Daily Express, "has to plod through life without a middle name." We all have our little cross to bear. Even the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS has to plod through life with the knowledge that there is another Winston Churchill ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... and debonair, and seemed to swing past with a touch of recklessness in their stride, others were grave and serious, and seemed almost to plod forward to the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... she had been journeying on like this for uncounted time, and would plod on like this always,—chilled, numbed to the heart, moving through a frozen, lonely world far from the voices of men, remote from the multitudinous feet bent on the joyous errands of life.... She had sunk into a lethargy ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... speak this tongueless language more than we imagine. Some day we may learn the secrets that are now so heavily veiled and thereby put to naught the glory of our present modes of communication. Until then we will plod along with the telegraph, telephone, wireless telegraphy and our ever-changing knowledge of ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... with rhyme, Her hair unfilleted, her feet unshod, Naked and not ashamed demands of God No covering for her beauty's youth or prime. Clad but with thought, as space is clad with time, Or both with worlds where man and angels plod, She runs in joy, magnificently odd, Ruggedly wreathed with flowers of every clime. And you to whom her breath is sweeter far Than choicest attar of the martyred rose More deeply feel mortality's unrest Than ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... instance, we can not highly praise the conduct of the narrative. It is full of improbable combinations. Persons and scenes are brought into juxtaposition, in a manner to violate every principle of vraisemblance. The effect is so to blunt the interest of the story, that we can hardly plod on to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... meaningless faces that met her in the street, not living men and women, and yet she had a distinct perception of an apple-woman's stall, of some sham jewelry she saw in a shop-window. She was near turning back then, but it didn't seem worth while, and it was less trouble to plod stupidly on, always westward, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... tied to an iron ring in its nostrils, Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed for a saddle. She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant. Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others, 1000 Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband, Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey. "Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, "but the distaff; Then you would be in ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... many weighty affairs of state at Sargeant's." Muriel smiled reminiscently. "I suppose Baretti's will grow dearer to us as we plod along our college way. I like it better than the Colonial, which lacks the air this place has. Besides, the Sans monopolize it so that ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... will watch, yes, but on the whole sparingly practise. Their snuffy old scholars will even be proud to decry them. Where once the simians swung high through forests, or scampered like deer, their descendants will plod around farms, or mince along city streets, moving constrictedly, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... to corrupt a voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the ridge to plough, and Brindle must be shod, And at noon, through the lane from the farm-house, I see him slowly plod; In the strong frame, chewing his cud, he patiently stands, but see! The bands have been placed around him—he struggles to be free: But John and Timothy hammer away, until each hoof is arm'd, Then loosen'd Brindle looks all round, as if ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... tired and glad when we reached a camping-place. We could not stop on this high ridge for lack of water, although the feed was very good. We were forced to plod on and on until we at last descended into the valley of a little stream which crossed our path. The ground had been much trampled, but as rain was falling and darkness coming on, there was nothing to do ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... are, in fact, the principles by which they are governed, and which sometimes serves them for their excuse; since they know better, but do not care to give themselves the trouble of acting up to their knowledge. Thus they plod in the safe, and broad road of mediocrity, but without any reputation or name. They are ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... never go from one place to another in a slow, sober walk. He always moved by leaps, as if he felt too gay to plod along like Daddy Longlegs, for instance. Chirpy himself often remarked that he hadn't time to move slowly. And almost before he had finished speaking, as likely as not he would jump into the air and alight some distance away. It was all done so quickly ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... is despatched ahead to fill his bottle with water at a well known to be some five miles farther ahead, and to meet us with it on the way. On through the sand and heat we plod wearily, myself almost sick with thirst, fatigue, and disgust. Mohammed Ahzim Khan, observing my wretched condition, insists upon me letting one of the sowars try his hand at trundling the wheel, while I rest myself by riding his horse. Both the sowars bravely try ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and I must not go back to it, because, with all my past experience, and in spite of all my present good resolutions, I should do no better, and I might do worse. I'm not wise enough to keep steady there; I must return to the old ways, dull but safe, and plod along till I find my real place ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... to me. I asked him where they came from, and he said, "Ash'n." In answer to another question, he said, "We're o' one family. Me an' yon tother's wed. That's his wife wi' th' chylt in her arms, an' hur wi' th' plod shawl on's mine." I asked if the old man was his father. "Ay," replied he, "we're o' here, nobbut two. My mother's ill i' bed, an' one o' my sisters is lookin' after her." " Well, an' heaw han yo getten on?" said I. "Oh, we'n done weel; but we's come no moor," replied he. Another ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... selling fruit to the soldiers, and I once saw an old peasant woman, who was digging potatoes in her garden when a small shell burst about two hundred feet from her, shake her fist toward the German lines, mutter something, and plod angrily home to her cellar. There are rarely any children close to the trenches, but in villages that are only occasionally shelled, the school is open, and the class hurries to the cellar ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... fast walker, he had immense endurance. He made several Alpine tours, and once (in 1860) he accompanied me in an ascent of the Jungfrau with a couple of guides. He was fresh from London; we had passed a night in a comfortless cave; the day was hot, and his weight made a plod through deep snow necessarily fatiguing. We reached the summit with considerable difficulty. On the descent he slipped above a certain famous bergschrund; the fall of so ponderous a body jerked me out of the icy steps, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... perchance gets before him: another one while gets ground, another while loseth it again, either in the beginning, or middle of his race, and so proceedes vnegally sometimes swift somtimes slow as his breath or forces serue him: another sort there be that plod on, & will neuer change their pace, whether they win or lose the game: in this maner doth the Greeke dactilus begin slowly and keepe on swifter till th'end, for his race being deuided into three parts, he spends one, & that is the first slowly, the other twaine swiftly: the anapestus ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... saddle or plod of hoof broke the bleak stillness, save when some wandering Apache hunted the wild turkey or the deer, knowing that winter had locked the trails to his ancient heritage; that the white man's law of boundaries was void until the snows were thin ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... succeeded, when the meal hour had to be postponed, while I whetted my appetite, rather superfluously, with more miles of tramping. I was surprised to find I could go foodless for several days and still have strength to plod ahead and maintain my ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... were merely re-learning some favorite study, momentarily forgotten. And in the case of the disliked study, every step is attended with toil. In some cases the child seems to learn every branch with the minimum effort, and with practically no effort; while in other cases the child has to plod wearily over every branch, as if breaking entirely new ground. And this continues into after life, when the adult finds this thing or that thing into which he naturally fits as if it were made for him, the knowledge concerning it coming to him ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... aristocracy, instead of the aristocracy transforming them. He knew that Veneering had carried off Twemlow in triumph. He very nearly knew what we all know to-day: that, so far from it being possible to plod along the progressive road with more votes and more Free Trade, England must either sharply become very much more democratic or as rapidly ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... who had supplied her place, and whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve. There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod on, through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I heard him whisper to the three countrymen, "How do you suppose a fellow feels shut up in the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on Political Economy, gives us an account of this condition of things, as prevailing among the peasants in certain districts of Germany. "They labour early and late," he says, quoting from a German eulogist. "They plod on from day to day and from year to year, the most untirable of human animals." The German writer admires them as men who are their own masters. Mill holds them up as a shining and instructive example of the magic ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... are your father's own child," he said. "We certainly are getting the rustic accent out of our mouths and the rustic scruples out of our morals. In the meantime"—he added lightly—"some of us have to plod along with our old habits, or where would the Empire be? I don't expect to improve much on the proconsulship of ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... cart, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, is a tall, wiry, bronze-colored Hindu. He has a yard of white gauze about his waist, and another yard twisted up into a turban on his head. The dictates of fashion do not interest him. He does not plod along year in and year out behind his team for the pittance of sixty cents per day, to squander on the outside of his person. Not he. He has a wife up near Simla. He hopes to go back next year, and buy a bit of ground back from ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... my country! city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lose the wind at sundown; I can row in with Johnny," said I; and Mrs. Todd nodded reassuringly and kept to her steady plod, not quickening her gait even when we saw William come round the corner of the house as if to look for us, and wave ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... "Well said, sir. Science knows no party lines. Your chosen subject rises above the valley of partisanry where we old wheel-horses plod—stinging each other in the dust, as the poet finely says. Mr. West has told ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... came to wake us that we might drink. He himself showed us the way, saying: You men of t'other world say that ignorance is the mother of all evil, and so far you are right; yet for all that you do not take the least care to get rid of it, but still plod on, and live in it, with it, and by it; for which a plaguy deal of mischief lights on you every day, and you are right enough served—you are perpetually ailing somewhat, making a moan, and never right. It is what I was ruminating upon just now. And, indeed, ignorance keeps you here fastened ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... along the country roads, but it was very seldom that any of the older people went. On the whole, it seemed as if the closer you lived to the mill-yard gate, the better. You had more time to loiter on a summer morning, and there was less distance to plod through the winter snows and rains. The last stroke of the bell saw almost everybody within the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... indignation he endures by this sympathy, which is reflection. He visits the Grundyite, who says "Shocking," "Not nice," when human nature writhes in its agony and cries aloud for that drop of water which he, the virtuous conformist, refuses. He goes to the flat-footed and broad-waisted; those who plod along the beaten highway, and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, neither to the hills nor the hollows. But he speaks a foreign language, and they heed him not. The iron-bound care nought. Does that cry of suffering raise the price of stocks or lower ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I plod and peer amid mean sounds and shapes, I hunt for dusty gain and dreary praise, And slowly pass the dismal grinning days, Monkeying each other like a ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... But is that wicked Gaveston return'd? K. Edw. Ay, priest, and lives to be reveng'd on thee, That wert the only cause of his exile. Gav. 'Tis true; and, but for reverence of these robes, Thou shouldst not plod one foot beyond this place. Bish. of Cov. I did no more than I was bound to do: And, Gaveston, unless thou be reclaim'd, As then I did incense the parliament, So will I now, and thou shalt back to France. Gav. Saving your reverence, you must pardon me. K. Edw. Throw off his golden ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it—I did not ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... moors, and in a rich champaign comfortable to man and horse, were you but once there, after plodding through the desolations. But from that Sazawa by the Luschnitz on to Budweis, mounting and falling in such fashion, there must be ninety miles or thereby. Plod along; and keep a sharp eye on the whirling clouds of Pandours, for those too have got across upon us,—added to the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
