"Plod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Then plod along with tearless eye, Poor son of toil! and ne'er repine, The road through barren wastes may lie, And thorns, as oft hath mine; But there was ONE who came to earth, Star-heralded at hour of birth, Humble, obscure, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... "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 Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... 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 glide away, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... there was this pleasant ritual. She would plod all round the house, duster in hand, picking things up, giving them a little flick and putting them back again, patting treasures that she especially loved, sighing heavily with satisfaction at the pleasant sight of all her possessions tranquilly in their right places. As she looked around ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... 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 ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... 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
... they, And cut them down. Yet rather would I dwell With them, with wildness and its stealthy forms— Yea, rather with wild men, wild beasts and birds, Than in the sordid town that here may rise. For here I am a part of Nature's self, And not divorced from her like men who plod The weary streets of care in search of gain. And here I feel the friendship of the earth: Not the soft cloying tenderness of hand Which fain would satiate the hungry soul With household honey-combs and parloured sweets, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... be written in the pouring rain, in a shaking stagecoach, or by the light of a lantern. They were also promptly handed in at the office, despite the fact that the stages sometimes broke down and left their passengers to plod on foot through the miry roads leading into London. These reports and newspaper articles soon attracted attention; and Dickens received an offer for a series of humorous sketches, which grew into the famous Pickwick Papers, and earned L20,000 for the astonished publishers. He was able to make ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... house, and for this refuge the British dashed madly. The first man to reach the door tried the knob. The door was locked. From behind came the plod of the heavy German feet and the sharp ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... composing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few rivals in this laborious and unattractive pursuit, he soon began to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... 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 me of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Veneri!—The thing is clear. Her friends were furious, her lovers nettled; 'Twas much as though the Lady Vere de Vere On some hedge-schoolmaster her heart had settled. Unheard! Intolerable!—a lumbering steer To plod the upland with a mare high-mettled!— They would, no doubt, with far more pleasure hand her To curled Euphorion ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... probably formed expectations which I shall never realize. I have thought much upon the subject, and have finally come to the conclusion that I shall never make a distinguished figure in the world, and all I hope or wish is to plod along with the multitude. I do not say this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, but merely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point where your partiality has led you astray. I did hope that uncle Robert's opinion of me was nearer ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... till he seemed to wake up all at once to the fact that it was growing dark, and that a thick mist was gradually creeping round him, and he was growing wet, as well as so faint and weary that he could hardly plod along. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... out as a governess, if she can find any one to take her, and Arthur is to plod on with Joe Jenkins, and Tom means to apply for the post of bell-ringer to the cathedral," interposed the incorrigible Annabel, who had once more darted in, and heard the last words. "Can you recommend Constance to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... looked so beautiful—had never felt so proud and happy; proud to present her husband to her good uncle and aunt, who were waiting to welcome them; happy that her beloved Frank would no longer have to plod on life's dull round in poverty ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... not care to draw any explicit moral. 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 prima facie resemblance of right, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, 30 And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... 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. On the 6th inst. the first half ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Helen's influence there had been a change of the olden customs, and instead of the long chapter, through which Uncle Ephraim used to plod so wearily, there was now read the Evening Psalms, Aunt Betsy herself joining in the reading, which she mentally classed with the "quirks," but confessed to herself that it "was most as good ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... 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 awful! They roared like so many wild beasts. It was ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... them a pilot. In vain Donald offered 500l.; fear made them obdurate; and so, depressed 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 and impatience ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... into tears, Then calmed again: "My reindeer fleet, I gave them up: on foot, my dears, I now must plod through ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... 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. But, hello! ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... with a sort of half contempt in his tone; 'but these boys of ours are a different sort of stuff, and we have seen that it will never answer to pin them down to plod.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... begun, And bear it with 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... think you have learned it well. Then, you can play the violin, 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 easier as ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... bought the governments; and everywhere they use their raped and stolen power to intrench themselves in their privileges, to dig wider and deeper the channels through which the river of profits flows to them!—And you, workingmen, workingmen! You have been brought up to it, you plod on like beasts of burden, thinking only of the day and its pain—yet is there a man among you who can believe that such a system will continue forever—is there a man here in this audience tonight so hardened and debased that he dare rise ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Indeed, I question whether those wonderful fingers of hers were not as good as many pairs of eyes we see. How many people go half-blind through the world, just for want of the habit of looking at things! How many plod onward, with eyes fixed on the ground, when they might be raised to the skies, seeing the glory of the Lord, which He has spread abroad over hill and meadow, for all eyes to behold! How many walk with introverted gaze, seeing only themselves, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... craving exercise. The revolt of white women against this preordained destiny has in these latter days reached splendid proportions, but it is the revolt of an aristocracy of brains and ability,—the middle class and rank and file still plod on in the appointed path, paid by the homage, the almost mocking homage, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... my plan.—To make the dull ones plod well, Books for the use of schools, give Mr. Rodwell; And works on painting should you ever lack, You need but brush to either ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... Tyndall in the 'Nineteenth Century,' for last November, "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and they are sometimes intolerant of those that can. They are formed to plod meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realize the mental act—the act of inspiration it might well be called—by which a man of genius, after long pondering and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... until Bidwell's trail became a plain line leading up the hillside; then the stampede began. With wild halloos and resounding thwacking of mules they scattered out, raced over the hilltop, and disappeared, leaving Bidwell to plod ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... snow-white bull, obeying the hand of its master. 995 Led by a cord that was 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 ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... plod here," he said, "while every one else is enjoying himself? If young Charlie were here, I'm pretty sure he'd be in for some of their sprees, and laugh at me for wearing my ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... nearly everything which they eat and wear and use. Mill, in his treatise 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 effect of ownership ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... honest chat: Said one: "To-morrow we shall be Plod plod along the featureless sands, And coasting miles and miles of sea." Said one: "Before the turn of tide We will achieve the eyrie-seat." Said one: "To-morrow shall be like To-day, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... trodden, vengeance should demand them all. In a tempest of murderous hate he followed on in haste, for the track was plain enough, starting with such a burst of speed as could not be maintained, but brought him back soon to a plod for the spent, sobbing breath to be regulated. He cursed Christian aloud and called White Fell's name on high in a frenzied expense of passion. His grief itself was a rage, being such an intolerable anguish ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... as 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 know ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... strong idea of what commercial failure means to English merchants—utter ruin, present and prospective, and obliterating all the successful past; how little chance they have of ever getting up again; how they feel that they must plod heavily onward under a burden of disgrace—poor men and hopeless men and men forever ashamed. I doubt whether any future prosperity (which is unlikely enough to come to them) could ever compensate them for this misfortune, or make them, to their own consciousness, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... about a dozen of them," he said thickly. And, holding the Winchester ready, he commenced once more to plod on through the stinging sheets of wind-driven ice particles. More than once he had great difficulty in not losing that crimson trail, for here and there the restless, white crystals completely blotted out ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the Gordian knot with a sword. If that is the way of it, dear boy, you must be an Alexander, or to the hulks you go. For my own part, I am quite contented with the little lot I mean to make for myself somewhere in the country, when I mean to step into my father's shoes and plod along. A man's affections are just as fully satisfied by the smallest circle as they can be by a vast circumference. Napoleon himself could only dine once, and he could not have more mistresses than a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... he find it? The nearest town, where the only railway station then was, was eight miles off, and he was not likely to plod back thither again, and the village inn, five miles away, was little ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... covenant comes out, When every man gathers his fee; I'le take my blew blade all in my hand, And plod to the green wood ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... 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
... whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Jack might plod along all his life and never have a dollar ahead. Poor Jack! And her eyes grew moist as she thought of him. Ah, how well he ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... when thou dost plod, Alone, upon these wintry days, Along the old familiar ways Wherein ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... comes, and takes the edge off everything. We drag remembrance, like a lengthening chain, through all our life; and with remembrance come remorse and regret. 'The vision splendid' no more attends men, as they plod on their way through the weariness of middle life, or pass down into the deepening shadows of advancing and solitary old age. The best comes first, for the men who have no good but this world's. And some of you have got nothing in your cups ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... balance will be greatly to your advantage. You may remember, that I have always earnestly recommended to you, to do what you are about, be that what it will; and to do nothing else at the same time. Do not imagine that I mean by this, that you should attend to and plod at your book all day long; far from it; I mean that you should have your pleasures too; and that you should attend to them for the time; as much as to your studies; and, if you do not attend equally to both, you will neither have improvement nor satisfaction from either. A man is fit for neither ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... you could meet Crews and Jordan and Saxon. They're very dissimilar, but they've got something like the unifying motive of a monastery, and they're willing to serve and to plod and to be patient. I fight with Saxon because he's a pacifist, but like all pacifists he's a very pugnacious person, and he can get frightfully angry, but it's pitiful to see him when he's been angry, because he's so sorry afterwards. I'm not a pacifist, but I haven't a tenth of his pluck. He'd ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... tame luxurious dreams, you mean. I see how they are conquered. I can plod. Anything ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... patience than those dealing with Psychology. Even those who put their knowledge to a practical use in such studies as divination by tea-leaves, must still plod patiently along a path thickly strewn with new knowledge. The powers of clairvoyance, for instance, cannot be forced or hurried; such arbitrary laws as time have no meaning for the subconscious self, therefore the need for hurry ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... 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
... 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 things ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... caked split lips and rasping, dry-puffed tongue; the sickening ache in the pit of his stomach; the insupportable silence, the empty space, the utter desolation, the contempt of life; the weary ride, the long climb, the plod in sand, the search, search, search for water; the sleepless night alone, the watch and wait, the dread of ambush, the swift flight; the fierce pursuit of men wild as Bedouins and as fleet, the willingness to deal sudden death, the pain of poison thorn, the stinging tear of lead through flesh; ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... perhaps in the first hour and the last room, he would come upon the painting that gave him the peg for his eloquence, make an elaborate study of it, tell us his task was finished, and hurry off exultant. But envy him as I might, I couldn't borrow his briskness. I had to plod on all morning and again all afternoon until the Academy closed, to look at every picture before I could be sure which was the right peg or whether there might not be a dozen pegs and more. And I had to collect elaborate notes, not daring to trust to my memory alone, and after ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... anyway. Land of love! if man and woman was all, then when they came face to face with life they would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child; after that all lives is pretty much ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... "Still must I plod, and still in cities moil; From precious leisure, learned leisure far, Dull my best self with handling common soil; Yet mine ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... you see 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 the little family threshing-floor, dumps ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... service. As already stated, on arriving in Berlin, I had great difficulty in obtaining any fitting quarters, but at last secured a large and suitable apartment in an excellent part of the city, its only disadvantage being that my guests had to plod up seventy-five steps in order to reach it. Having been obliged to make large outlays for suitable fittings, extensive repairs, and furniture throughout, I found that more than the entire salary of my first year had been thus sunk; but I congratulated ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... years on the bronze doors of the Baptistry there in Florence, which Michael Angelo declared to be worthy of paradise. Then I reflect that it was worth a lifetime of work to win the praise of such as Angelo. This reflection calms me, and I plod on more serenely, glad of the fact that I can count Ghiberti and the bronze doors as a part of my world. When I can have Titian, Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, and Rosa Bonheur around, I feel that I have good company and must be on ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... see her bones, nor her his bow-legs," the mariner phrased it. But be this as it may, whether or no each made love to a voice, Cupid ran a swift course with them, steeplechasing over obstacles that would have taken years for a Zorra lad to plod around. In less than six months they passed from a bare goodnight to the exchange of soul thoughts on butter-making, the raising of calves, fattening of swine, and methods of feeding swedes that they might not taint cow's milk, and so had progressed ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... 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 laid by his less cultured father. Let ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... continued with a weary monotony to plod, down to the very last line, and then da capo, and so on, in my uncomfortable half-sleep, for how long, I can't conjecture. I found myself at last, however, muttering, 'dead as a door-nail, so there was an end'; and something ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... pen and hod— Yea, sodden laborers dumb; To brains overplied, to feet that plod, In solace of the Truce of God The ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... conning their dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to please their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as, together, they plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or three hours you shall have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love and play, if you be not too tired to think, or love, or play. Then to your litter, that you may be ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 poets born beneath a happier star, Because the pathos of your grand repose ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... and talk, them home by King. The horses have an antiquated plod; The team is old, but not too old to balk ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... has the ability and might easily learn the profession and adapt himself to it, could as easily establish himself in a well-paying business in that way as to plod along in the same old rut year in and year out, without any future prospect for obtaining ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... requiring quick thought and quick decision. You like to reason things out; you want to know why before you go ahead. Your success lies in lines which require slow, thoughtful, careful reasoning, mature deliberation, and an ability to plod diligently through masses ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... seemed not to hear the man; nor, in the case of the off mare, to feel the bite of his lash. They continued to plod along the beaten trail, heads drooping, ears flopping, hoofs scuffling disconsolately. Felipe, accompanying each outburst with a mighty swing of his whip, swore and pleaded and objurgated and threatened in turn. But all to no avail. The horses held stolidly to their gait, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... 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 hold ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... them to the donkey or the horse standing patiently in the neighbour's paddock, and when she hasn't animals to play with she will put a horseshoe on each hand and each foot, and then you will hear from above the plod-plod-plod of a horse going its daily round. But while she has a comprehensive affection for all four-legged things, her most fervent love is reserved for ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... dinner service, while one man in each division stood guard. Special duties were assigned to the "extras," and Will's was to ride up and down the train delivering orders. This suited his fancy to a dot, for the oxen were snail-gaited, and to plod at their heels was dull work. Kipling tells us it is quite impossible to "hustle the East"; it were as easy, as Will discovered, to hustle ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... 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 in becoming something ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... ask a 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 wheels ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... 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 ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... 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 become very ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... admonishes: Hast thou ploughed, Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills, Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud. Steadily eyeing, before that wail Animal-infant, thy mind began, Momently nearer me: should sight fail, Plod in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that's all he is good for: he can plod through the service well enough; but he has not a single ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Deliberately he withdrew his attention from the unessentials. Not a glance did he vouchsafe to the prospect far or near; not a thought did he permit himself of speculation or of wandering interest. His sole job now was to plod on at an even gait, to keep track of time, to follow the spoor of the Leopard Woman's safari, to save himself for later. If he had spared any thought at all, it would have been self-congratulation that Simba and Cazi Moto were old and tried. For Simba relieved him of ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... and down the earth men pant and plod, March, laughing at the showers and days unsteady, And whispering secret orders to the sod, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... staring down on her and on the dismal, wet, and deserted streets. The clocks she passed told her that it was nearly eight o'clock. Then it was past eight. What must they be thinking of her on the Rue de Presbourg? She tried again to hurry, but could force her aching muscles to no more than the plod, plod, plod of her dogged advance over those interminable miles of pavement. There was little of her then that was not cold, weary, wet flesh, suffering all the discomforts that an animal can know. She counted her steps for a long time, and became so stupidly absorbed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... 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. All at once, at ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... those neglected duties, and you would be stronger for patience, if you used more of your strength for service. You do well if you do not sink under your burden, but you would do better if, with it on your shoulders, you would plod steadily along the road; and if you did, you would feel the weight less. It seems heaviest when you stand still doing nothing. Do not cease to toil because you suffer. You will feel your pain more if you do. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... his customer are waiting in the man shambles, while the negro messenger with his boy article of trade plod their way along through the busy streets. The negro looks on his charge with a smile of congratulation. "Mas'r 'll laugh all over 'e clothes when he sees ye-dat he will!" he says, with an air ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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
... 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 ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... stone-throwing. Of course there were days when neither of these methods 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 interest in ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the "rig" was that while it was a tongued wagon with whiffletrees for two horses, there was only one horse. The driver, a bearded farmer, was urging the patient animal on, although it was impossible for it to do more than plod in its ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... 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 ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... 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
... 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 neither ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... he panted querulously as the girl paused reluctantly in answer to his pleading. "Age hath stolen my vigor and I cannot walk as thou canst. Already thou hast made me plod many a weary step beyond my strength; and now thou wouldst have me run as though I were a lad. Thou ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... if we 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 ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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 like ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... 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 ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... constantly drop of their minds and they make no new ones. Their mental vigor has given way, the fecund sap has dried up; the finished man appears, often a finished man content to be put away, to be married, and plod along indefinitely in the same circle, entrenched in his restricted vocation and doing his duty, but nothing more. Such are the average returns—assuredly, the profits do not make up for the expenses. In England and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 his two ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... else can such a 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 ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... starved so that we had looked at each other with maniac thoughts, and now we placed in our mouth the very fat of the land. We had seen our cattle almost perishing; seen them grow gaunt and tottering; seen them slowly plod along with hanging heads and only the supremacy of human will over animal instinct had kept them from lying down never to rise again. Now they were in pastures of sweet grass, chewing the cud of content and satisfaction. Life which had been a burden grew sweet to us, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... 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
... and Pentonville, are fast pouring into the city, or directing their steps towards Chancery-lane and the Inns of Court. Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no means increased in the same proportion as their families, plod steadily along, apparently with no object in view but the counting-house; knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or overtake, for they have seen them every morning (Sunday excepted) during the last twenty years, but speaking to no one. If they do happen to overtake ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that direction with Julie, and he meant to find her. But how? He prayed silently for the coming of Lannes with the Arrow. For such a search as this the swift aeroplane could serve while one might plod in vain over the ground. Lannes would come before the next night! He must come! If he had made an appointment for such a meeting nothing could delay him ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... truth, he had already resolved to play truant. Unhappily, as he turned into the lane from the drive gates, a rabbit dashed across the road right in front of him, and frisked into the hedge in a most tantalising manner, as if to show his contempt for stupid human beings who plod along the beaten track. That killed all Tom's scruples, and he was soon scurrying through the fields, scrambling over hedges, leaping ditches, and getting his clothes into as pretty a pickle as ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... 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
... are unendingly cheerful when in the tent. We mean to see the game through with a proper spirit, but it's tough work to be pulling harder than we ever pulled in our lives for long hours, and to feel that the progress is so slow. One can only say "God help us!" and plod on our weary way, cold and [Page 410] very miserable, though outwardly cheerful. We talk of all sorts of subjects in the tent, not much of food now, since we decided to take the risk of running a full ration. We simply couldn't go hungry at ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and the late Mr. George Wyndham were the only pupils of Chittenden's who made names for themselves. The rest of us were content to plod along in the rut, though we had been taught to concentrate, to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... heartening Washington, Prone Freedom rose, with head above the cloud. Beholding her transfigured, Thrall is cowed. His minions are bewildered. How they run! Some follow him against the rising sun; Others plod north. The Torries' vaster crowd Hide in dark places, and like Satan, proud, They hate the glory, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... the cart unsteadily, and mounted his donkey. For a moment he looked doubtfully up and down the road, then he turned the poor tired animal's head once more toward the village, and they began to plod ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... certain inconvenience coupled with being called upon to pose as a genius at the comparatively early age of twenty-six. Popular theory to the contrary, notwithstanding, it is easier to plod slowly along on the path to fame. Greatness does not repeat itself, every day in the week. But fate had overtaken Gifford Barrett, and had hung a wreath of tender young laurels about his boyish brow. He deserved ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... been indefatigable in 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 ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... celebrate your father's exequies. 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. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... they are associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds of the Northwest, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... no atmosphere to Middleton's mind; and the hard, bald caustic peculiarity of his genius, which is unpleasingly felt in reading any one of his plays, becomes a source of painful weariness as we plod doggedly through the five thick volumes of his works. Like the incantations of his own witches, it "casts a thick scurf over life." It is most powerfully felt in his tragedy of "The Changeling," at once the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... bonhomie and 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. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... mistakes grew fewer, and Felicia, looking across at her brother's brown, handsome face, found it tranquil and sober, an earnest absorption in his gray eyes and a gently whimsical smile about his mouth. She knew of whom he was thinking, and smiled tenderly herself as she watched his big hand plod systematically and doggedly across the unfamiliar way. Bedtime found Ken elated and exhibiting to his sister several neatly embossed ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains: They boast their peasant's pipes; but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few, amid the rural tribe, have time To number syllables and play with rhyme; Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? Or the great labours ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... children came trudging in from the most barren cabin homes, wide-eyed, and eager to 'larn,' and grown-up men and women tramped barefoot miles and miles every day to try to get some of the 'larnin' they'd heard about. Then they would plod away with the utmost patience trying to read and write. It was intensely pathetic. Nothing has ever touched and interested me so much as some supply work I have done for our school," she added, a light upon her face, which thrilled Steve's heart anew. What a help ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... 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 ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... houses,' he answered. He returned for the two bags. Thus laden, they started to plod up the hill, under the great long black building of the foundry. She walked beside him—workman of workmen he was, trudging with that luggage. The red lights flared over the deepening darkness. From the foundry came the horrible, slow clang, clang, clang of iron, a great noise, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... sense of liberty, and Jacqueline, who had been watching me anxiously, seeing the gloom disappear from my face, tried, first to tempt me to mirth, and then to match me in it. Sometimes we would run a little way, and then we would fall back into our steady, ambling plod once more. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... 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 to ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... out of a dull, uninspired life. It goes with the energetic, the forceful. The dull soul who is content to plod along year after year in the same rut may be honest, and this one redeeming feature may be of such inestimable value to him that it sweetens and softens his entire days. It will bring him friends ... true-blue friends, who will excuse all other shortcomings because ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... thought I saw my wife. And often, often throughout those terrible days her voice came to me, kindly and low and encouraging. When I felt I really could plod no farther through the snow, her voice would tell me not to lose heart, but to do my best, and all would be right in the end. And when, wearied beyond measure at night, I would fall into a heavy sleep, and my fire would burn low, a hand on my shoulder would arouse me, and her voice would ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Sanders and Hubbard. Consequently, when Bell returned from Washington, he was compelled by his agreement to devote himself mainly to the musical telegraph, although his heart was now with the telephone. For exactly three months after his interview with Professor Henry, he continued to plod ahead, along both lines, until, on that memorable hot afternoon in June, 1875, the full TWANG of the clock-spring came over the wire, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... to town, after a pleasant good-by, he turned more than once to note the slow, swinging plod of the bulls. Finally he walked more briskly, and, finding the doctor and Latimer, they sought the levees, where the bustle and hustle of the frontier town were most apparent. Early as it was, the river-front was thronged with river-men, American and English soldiers; traders, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... lines of the Bois-le-Pretre, did a thriving business 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
... 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 sympathy ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... work much depends on our attitude regarding our calling. We can plod like an ox, or like Markham's semi-brute man with the hoe, and make that the badge of servitude to toil, or we can make it a wand in a magician's hand to call forth radiant forms of beauty from the somber earth to smile upon us and load the air with fragrance. We can live down in the basement ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... us anywhere. I won't press you further to voice your suspicion—right now. In the meantime, I'll plod along with my investigation on ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... in the hot sultry weather: very singular to contemplate. They wend; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim peril; they not doubtful: Fate and Feudal Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without: they, having also decided, do march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they plod onwards; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtaean Colonel, Rouget de Lille whom the Earth still holds, (A.D. 1836.) has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... pain, but we have to make the best of it. Stubborn patience and 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 at least ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... pupil certain hours for study?—assign him lessons, by topics if possible, allow him to do what he can in the allotted time, and then prohibit the appropriation of an additional minute? Why should a dull scholar, or one who has but little taste or talent for a given study, be required to plod twelve, sixteen, or eighteen hours at unwelcome tasks, while another more favored disposes of his work in six? Why should a pupil, who is laboring under some mental or physical debility, be required to apply his mind unceasingly when he ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... 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 of becoming, as he once beautifully expressed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... could hear Elsie moan and sob, but Eloise gave utterance to no 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 progress with some degree of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... hills, Where free children sing most cheerily, My young breast with sorrow fills, While here I plod my way so wearily: Sad my face, more sad my heart, From home, from all I had to part, A loving mother, my sister, my brother, For chains and lash in hopeless misery, Children try it, could you try it; But one day to live ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... fighting men, shots, the clash of steel—again a tolling bell and a requiem for the dead. A horse galloping in the night. Mountain winds crooning mournfully, rising to the scream of tempest and the crash of thunder. Dreary uplands, the hiss of rain, the sough of drifting snow, the patient plod of a mule along a perilous trail. And then the jungle: its discordant uproar, its hammering of frogs, its hoots and howls, the dismal swash of flood waters. A monotonous ebb and flow of life, punctuated by sudden flares of fight. Then a long, mournful ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... the sugar. It is probable that this was originally done in hand mortars. Next came the passing of the cane between wooden rollers turned by ox power, the rollers standing upright and connected with a projecting shaft or beam to the outer end of which the animal was attached, to plod around and around while the cane was fed between the rollers. The present system is merely an expansion of that old principle. At the mill, the stalks are dumped, by carload or by cartload, into a channel through which they are mechanically conveyed to huge rollers, ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... thee true, my noble neophyte; my little gram maticaster, he does: it shall never put thee to thy mathematics, metaphysics, philosophy, and I know not what supposed Suficiencies; if thou canst but have the patience to plod enough, talk, and make a noise enough, be ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... often, indeed, in the moods of his bitter envy, he would lay the fault upon the world. How great he could have been, if he had been rich and high-born! Oh, he was made to spend, not to save,—to command, not to fawn! He was not formed to plod through the dull mediocrities of fortune; he must toss up for the All or the Nothing! It was no control over himself that made Varney now turn his thoughts from certain grave designs on Percival St. John to the brutal debauchery of his three companions,—rather, he then yielded most to his natural ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the trail, and, glancing down it, from out of the silence reached him the distant, soft plod of hoofs in its heavy covering of sand. His look of satisfaction deepened as he turned back to his horses and tightened the cinchas of the saddles, and replaced the bits in their mouths. Then he picked up the Winchester rifle propped against a tree stump and turned ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 perception. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... to trust too much to your brightness, remember the animals who made fun of the inch-worm. If you are dull, remember the inch-worm, take courage, and plod away. ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... may be. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know a thing that write about it. Those who know it thoroughly don't take the trouble. All I know about women, or men either, is a mass of generalities. I plod along, and occasionally lift my eyes and skim the weltering surface of mankind lying between me and the horizon, as a crow might; ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... return with a wretched present from Chitunkue; bad flour and a fowl, evidently meant to be rejected. He sent also an exorbitant demand for gunpowder, and payment of guides. I refused his present, and must plod on without guides, and this is very difficult from the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... really badly cold—one of those moments for quick action. We harnessed and dashed for the shelter of the cliffs; up tents, and hot tea as quick as possible; after this and some shift of foot gear all were much better. Heavy plod over the sea ice, starting at 4.30—very bad light on the glacier, and we lost our way as usual, stumbling into many crevasses, but finally descended in the old place; by this time sweating much. Crean reported our sledge pulling much more heavily than the other one. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the making of men is your right, your risk, your agony, your glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience, as you call it, for that. He has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod for you, like the ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who carries his burdens for him. No woman shall make me live my father's life. I will hunt: I will fight and strive to the very bursting ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 and wrote a letter to Wittemore, brief, sympathetic, inquiring, ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and said discontentedly,— "Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... may hold for them, whether they plod along in the servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers, and made to bear the cross of the fainting Christ—whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the prophecy of the psalmist, who said, "And suddenly Ethiopia ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and I am sometimes inclined to think that the proficiency of the French in philosophy, the arts, and sciences, is not so much the result of patient investigation and laborious and continued study, as a kind of intuition which amounts to genius. The French mind is quick, and does not plod slowly toward eminence; it leaps to it. Certainly, in brilliancy of talents the French surpass every other nation. I will not do them the injustice to speak of them as they are at this moment—crushed under the despotism of Louis Napoleon—but as they have been in the last ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... forty-two, won a moderate competence, he could turn from business to science, and from science to the public service, using money as a means to the noblest ends. Strong-minded but unlettered men, like Girard, who cannot be idle, must needs plod on to the end, adding superfluous millions to their estates. In Girard's case, too, there was another cause of this entire devotion to business. His domestic sorrows had estranged him from mankind, and driven him ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton |
