"Task" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... could get them to be not unwilling partners in hard work. He subjected himself not only to the same conditions of living as these men, but also to the same dangers and was the first to accomplish every task that he demanded of them. Likewise he was confident that they, too, without pretexts and with zeal,—since he showed his care for them not in words only,—would help him effect ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... to task for this when a note arrived from Zura. I had been almost sure that my invitation would meet the same fate as the English lessons. My fears disappeared when I opened the missive. It read ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... day and the night passed quietly. There was no other alarm, and riding herd was an easy task. Nor was there any stoppage of the water, which ran freely out through the pipe from the underground tunnel as though there had never been any interruption of its very ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... too, got into the cart, sat down heavily, and, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the corner. It is true that he was out of humor and greatly disliked the task that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... she left St. Petersburg the Emperor sent her in his private barge to the mouth of the Baltic. "It was not only," says one who knew him weil, "through his skill, ability, and experience as an engineer that Major Whistler was particularly qualified for and eminently successful in the important task he performed so well in Russia. His military training and bearing, his polished manner, good humor, sense of honor, knowledge of a language (French) in which he could converse with officers of the government, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... down the street; the hard-faced young ruffian fresh for his morning task. He gathered the ends of the reins and brought them down on the horse's back with a resounding thwack. The horse did not notice this at all, but the boy ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... an abuse, is turned to criminate the authority which has long suffered it, rather than to honor those who would amend it, (which is the spirit of this malignant French distemper,) every step out of the common course becomes critical, and renders it a task full of peril for princes of moderate talents to engage in great undertakings. At present the only safety of Spain is the old national hatred to the French. How far that can be depended upon, if any great ferments should be excited, it is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this effort he had reckoned of nothing but of carrying out his captain's designs. He neither thought of cannon balls nor of bullets. But now that his task was accomplished, he came suddenly back to himself to find the galleries of the galley aflame with musket shots, and to become aware with a most horrible sinking of the spirits that all the shots therefrom were intended for him. He cast his eyes about him with despair, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the earlier history of his people because of the great importance of the events themselves and of his desire to reveal for the common benefit things that were buried in ignorance. He was stimulated to the task by the fact that his forefathers had been willing to communicate their antiquity to the Greeks, and, moreover, several of the Greeks had been at pains to learn of the affairs ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... had, from an ill-timed haughtiness, totally neglected it. He disdained, he said, to satisfy those who could deem him capable of so base and villanous an action. Finding that the calumny gained ground, and had made deep impression on his subjects, he was now obliged to submit to the mortifying task of ascertaining the reality of the birth. Though no particular attention had been beforehand given to insure proof, the evidence both of the queen's pregnancy and delivery was rendered indisputable and so much ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... parvo has never yet appeared. The author has set himself the task of writing a work on Ferments that should embrace human erudition ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Charles Bradlaugh's ghost is knocking about this planet, having a mission to undo the work of his lifetime in the flesh, it should begin the task in London. It was at the Hall of Science that Charles Bradlaugh achieved his greatest triumphs as a public teacher, and it is there that he should first attempt to undo his work, to unteach his teaching, to disabuse the minds of his dupes. Of course we shall ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... have just heard something which annoys me not a little: I am to prepare to act Mrs. Haller. I know very well that nobody was ever at liberty in this world to do what they liked and that only; but when I know with what task-like feeling I set about most of my work, I am both amused and provoked when people ask me if I do not delight in acting. I have not an idea what to do with that part; however, I must apply myself to it, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the cases of sudden deaths from joy, fright, pain, grief or such other causes. The sense of a life-task consummated, of the worthlessness of one's existence, if strongly realized, produced death as surely as poison or a rifle-bullet. On the other hand, a stern determination to continue to live, has, in fact, carried many through the crises ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... English traveller, writing on "Antigua and the Antiguans" in 1844, says in regard to the question, whether the freed negro will work, that he has often observed, when a piece of land was to be holed for sugar-cane by task-work, the negroes rising by one or two o'clock in the morning during moonlight, going to the field and accomplishing a usual day's work (300 cane-holes) by five or six o'clock in the forenoon; then, after resting a short time, they were prepared for another task, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... leaden weight of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw the cataract of the Golden River springing from the hillside, scarcely five hundred feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang on to complete his task. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... their task was great. England's prestige had suffered severely. Lord Methuen had fought at Belmont, Graspan, Modder River and Magersfontein, but the enemy's entrenchments were apparently as strong as ever and Kimberley as ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... of a man teaching something he himself does not know is grotesque, and yet, I have known at least three-score who felt divinely appointed to perform that very task. ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... employing honest John Keeler. It would have been well for Francis, before it was too late, to realize to what an extent money standards were replacing honor in his own life. It takes determination, loyalty, devotion, to accomplish a difficult task; and such qualities cannot ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... all," retorted his wife, haughtily. And with his going out of the room, she set her face in a resolute cheerfulness, for the task of heartening Lydia when she should appear; but it only expressed misgiving when the girl came in with her yachting-dress on. "Why, Lydia, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French men and women. If those are to be delineated at all—and, with a view to their amendment, surely they may—the task could hardly be executed with a chaster and less offensive pencil. De Bernard paints immorality—it would be unjust to say that he encourages it. He neither deals in highly-coloured and meretricious scenes a la ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Carolina and Georgia," vol. 1, p. 120, is the following: "So laborious is the task of raising, beating, and cleaning rice, that had it been possible to obtain European servants in sufficient numbers, thousands and tens of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... who are sworn to relate the facts: And this in a trial for murder requires great care and attention. I would just observe here, that in the last trial there were not less than eighty- two witnesses for the jury to examine and compare, which was an arduous task indeed! And I will venture further to observe, that some of these witnesses who swore very positively were not so creditable as others, and the testimony of one of them in particular, which was very precisely related & very peremptory, might have been invalidated ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... "That task will be his," said Mme. de Bargeton rhetorically. "Do you not see the first beginnings of the vision of the poem, like the flame of dawn, in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... perplexed man, although, too much for itself, it can not conceive how the thing should be, has to learn that there, in that heart whence it came, lies for it restoration, consolation, content. Herein, O God, lies a task for Thy perfection, for the might of Thy imagination—which needs but Thy will (and Thy suffering?) ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the Hebrew patriarchs and their tribes of his time were suffering under the persecution of hard task-masters in Egypt. How could their patriarchs teach to their classes the lessons of virtue and morality? We can readily suppose at the conclusion of a toilsome day, when all is dark, and tired nature would otherwise be at rest, ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... first three or four days after our arrival on board the Martha Brown, Cunningham devoted his energies entirely to the task of qualifying himself to take charge of a watch, looking after the ship, and generally polishing up his somewhat rusty seamanship; but he very quickly settled into his place, and then, whenever he had a ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... you for giving me this charge. It means that a man must raise his own standard of living before he can accept such responsibility. . . . You endow me with all that a man ought to be; and my task is doubled; for it is not only Gerald but I ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... but as they saw Lord Fawn more frequently, they knew better than Mrs. Hittaway the real state of the case. They felt sure that he was already sufficiently embittered against Lady Eustace, and thought that therefore the peculiarly unpleasant task assigned to Lady Fawn need not be performed. Lady Fawn had not the advantage of living so much in the world as her daughter, and was oppressed by, perhaps, a squeamish delicacy. "I really could not tell him about her sitting and—and kissing the man. Could I, my dear?" "I couldn't," said Amelia;—"but ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... seemed a cruel task-master; still they obeyed him. So the colony was held together, although in misery and hunger and without hope for ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... watched these outer dangers so closely as the Queen. But buried as she seemed in foreign negotiations and intrigues, Elizabeth was above all an English sovereign. She devoted herself ably and energetically to the task of civil administration. At the first moment of relief from the pressure of outer troubles, after the treaty of Edinburgh, she faced the two main causes of internal disorder. The debasement of the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... troop of horse and the conviction that Sancho was an unmitigated rascal; therefore were his palpable allusions to be accepted as mere pleasantries or deprecated as unmerited injustice. Blake had blackened the character of the ranch cuisine, even if he had been unequal to the task of blackening that of the owner. Blake had declared Sancho's homestead to be a den of thieves, and the repast tendered the stage passengers a Barmecide feast—the purport of which was duly reported to Sancho, who declared he would ultimately carve his ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... run from one end of London to another, to pass an hour with him, I should omit to seize any spare time to be in his company, when I am settled in the same house with him. But my Journal is really a task of much time and labour, and he forbids ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... well enough for those strong souls which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience a cardinal virtue; but they fall (experto crede) upon the unfledged faculties of the boy like a winter's rain ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... there, and the task was over, and they spent a happy happy evening together. Next morning Julian accompanied them to the train, and walked ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... he was undertaking the hardest task of his life when he reached home and broke the news to his mother—it was like disturbing the peace of some ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... for if the spirit of bitterness is once aroused, the door is shut, for the time at least, against good influences." [1] To awaken to an experience of vital religion the ignorant, superstitious, and spiritually lifeless Copts is a difficult task; to bring to personal faith in Christ the bigoted Moslems is more difficult still. "A Moslem's religion," she says, "is twined up with his political, social, domestic life so minutely, that the whole rope, as it were, has to untwisted before he can be free from ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the test. Those of us who played some part in directing the great processes by which the war was pushed irresistibly forward to the final triumph may now forget all that and delight our thoughts with the story of what our men did. Their officers understood the grim and exacting task they had undertaken and performed it with an audacity, efficiency, and unhesitating courage that touch the story of convoy and battle with imperishable distinction at every turn, whether the enterprise were great or small, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the three local roads which were to be united to bridge the Chicago-Missouri River gap were scattered all over the Middle West. To secure the necessary options on working majorities of the stock would be a task for a financial diplomat, and one who could break the haste-making record by being in a dozen different places at one and the same moment. Moreover, secrecy became a prime factor in the problem. If the opposition, and particularly the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... heat o' the sun Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... habit to entertain an inflated opinion of his own importance. On occasion he had ridden around the gridiron on the shoulders of idolatrous students; but his modesty had been one of the factors underlying his popularity. Despising conceit in others, he was too prone, perhaps, to take himself to task for those little mistakes which every young man is liable to ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... each succeeding day for his kingdom: he has fairly won it. May his future subjects record the fact in ineffaceable characters on their memory! The British army had faught thirteen successive hours; they halted, and to the fresh troops of the Prussians the task of pursuing the fugitive enemy was assigned: they gladly forgot all fatigue, in vengeful feeling and relentless retaliation against their former merciless and insulting invaders. The British moved forward this day, and will enter France to-morrow. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... landscape, be it the wild doons of Exmoor or the wilder Yorkshire coast, or, across the seas, the plains of the Sierras. He is a story-teller of the days in which it was quite unimportant whether tales should come to an end or not. He would have saved Scheherazade all her trouble and enjoyed the task. He cannot pass carelessly by the slightest incident; it is his nature to approfondir all his surroundings: if the hero breaks his stirrup and stops at the blacksmith's to have it mended, the blacksmith will appear ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... warehouse, he would leave the flour trembling in the balance and shuffle off, while I perched on the counter and swung my heels, and discussed packs with Ted Wakeland, another pioneer, who, spitting vigorously, averred that packing grub through the brush was all right for an Indian, but no fit task for a white man. Through the open door I could see the gentle swells of the Big Water washing along the crescent of the beach and heaping the sand in curious little crescent ridges. The sun beat hotly ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Duke of York, to whom was entrusted the task of selecting the new commissioners, chosen his men as wisely as Clarendon had shaped his policy, the results, as far as Massachusetts was concerned, might have been more successful. The trouble lay with the character of the work to be done. On the one hand the Dutch colony was to be seized ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... 1994, only to drop by 2.4% in 1995. The government is continuing to push its IMF/World Bank structural adjustment program aimed at encouraging exports and foreign investment. Officials face the difficult task of restraining expenditures in their effort to ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... awoke, much refreshed. I had no wound; my repeated swoons had been brought on (as indeed well they might) by my gigantic efforts in carrying the elephant up a steep hill a quarter of a mile in length. Walking, the task is bad enough: but running, it is the deuce; and I would recommend any of my readers who may be disposed to try and carry a dead elephant, never, on any account, to go a pace of more than ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Madame de Staemer had been to visit the invalid, and that she was all anxiety to return was a fact she was wholly unable to conceal. There was a tired look in her still eyes, as though she had undertaken a task beyond her powers to perform, and, so unnatural a quartette were we, that when presently she withdrew I was glad, although she ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... these words, king Bhagiratha directed his course towards the spot where lay those bodies of mighty Sagara's sons, in order that, O most praiseworthy of men, the holy water might flood (the same). Having achieved the task of sustaining Ganga, Siva, saluted by men, went to Kailasa the most praiseworthy of mountains, accompanied by the celestials. And the protector of men (Bhagiratha) accompanied by Ganga reached the sea; and the sea, the abode ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... straggled over considerable territory. He lighted the lantern and sat down on the steps waiting for the boy. From the corral back of the store came the sound of trampling hoofs and an occasional word from Young Pete, who seemed to be a long time at the simple task of untying a drag-rope. The store-keeper grew suspicious and finally strode back to the corral. His first intimation of Pete's real intent was a glimpse of the boy astride the big bay and blinking in ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... floors. If one wished to sit down, they had to retire to the yard, and repose on a pile of carpets. If they wished to eat, they had to do so off the kitchen table on the side porch. If they wanted to dress, their clothes were in the yard, under chairs, pictures and bedding, and the task was so trying that finally one did not want to change so much ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... generosity, so great that they comprehended love itself and excelled its highest type, irradiated the whole being of the fat man exposed to the gaze of his inferiors. Chivalry, which rendered him almost god-like, strengthened him for his task. Sydney thought always of Margaret as distinct from her physical self, a sort of crystalline, angelic soul, with no encumbrance of earth. He achieved a purely spiritual conception of her. And Margaret, living again her gentle lady life, was likewise ennobled by a gratitude which transformed her. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... possible to me many a little enterprise that could not be attempted without him. My father made him share my studies, and thus they became doubly pleasant. And oh, ye boys! who murmur at the Waverley Novels as a dry holiday task, ye may envy us the zest and enthusiasm with which we devoured them in their freshness. Strangely enough, the last that we read together was the Fair ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your opinion. The episode of the corporal was delightful, and has thrown much light upon the lieutenant's conduct, who is a traitor in my opinion, if ever there was one; but he must be allowed to fulfil his task, and then we will soon find out the traitor; but if I mistake not, that man ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... kind may account for the fact that Paradise Regained has been more appreciated by the poets than by the public. {208} The public finds it rather bare and dry and judges accordingly. The poets know how infinitely hard a task it was that Milton set himself, and find no praise too great for the man who did not fail in it. They see a poem of two thousand lines whose single subject is the attempt of a devil who knows himself doomed to defeat to persuade a divine Person who knows Himself ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... infliction of an imposition in a thousand ways. Our memory was so good that we never learned a lesson. It was enough for either of us to hear our class-fellows repeat the task in French, Latin, or grammar, and we could say it when our turn came; but if the master, unfortunately, took it into his head to reverse the usual order and call upon us first, we very often did not even know what the lesson was; then the imposition fell in spite of our most ingenious ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... most difficult of all measures, hard even to read aloud,—in which blank verse seems to blend with rhyme. It might be either to the ear, though to the eye it is elaborate rhyme,—such as would severely task a made poet, but which this born poet seems to have thrown off without labor. The leading peculiarity of the poem is description,—of men and places; of the sea, the mountain, and the river; of Nature in her loveliness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... do!" cries she, bursting into tears again, and flinging herself in an abandonment of grief into his longing arms. "And that is what makes my task so hard. That is why I have not allowed myself to see you all these past days. It was not coldness, Teddy, it was love. I dared not see you, because all must be ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... had charge of all the colonel's voluminous correspondence, he having a mortal hatred to all letter writing in any shape or form, and in addition to my good patron's business communications, was entrusted with the task of despatching a lengthy epistle every other mail—they went fortnightly from La Guayra to France—informing Miss Elsie of our doings, the colonel himself adding the briefest of postscripts to his ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... But instinctively Aldous felt that his grandfather's mood had grown gentler—his own task easier. He seized on the moment ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Dixie Greyhound Lines, 309 U.S. 176, 188-189 (1940). F.D.G. Ribble's State and National Power Over Commerce (Columbia University Press, 1937) is an excellent study both of the Court's formulas and of the arbitral character of its task in this field of Constitutional Law. On the latter point, see especially Chapters X and XII. The late Chief Justice Stone took repeated occasion to stress the "balancing" and "adjusting" role of the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... in bronze wrinkles when Saint-Castin told him about the proposal in the woods. The proper time for courtship was evening, as any Frenchman who had lived a year with the tribe ought to know; but when one considered the task he had undertaken, any time was suitable; and the chief encouraged him with full consent. A French marriage contract was no better than an Abenaqui marriage contract in Madockawando's eyes; but if Saint-Castin ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... statement made in the prospectus, albeit a superfluity. In 1730 the author of The Seasons republished his Poem to the memory of sir Isaac Newton, with the addition of the lines which follow, and which prove that he was aware of the task on which Mr. Conduitt was then occupied. The lines, it should be observed, have been omitted in all ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... the daylight it was no easy task to avoid these danger spots, for the horses floundered on the muddy soil. Vaguely the girl wondered how she would find her way back in the darkness, as she had planned. She said little as they approached the road- house, for the thoughts within her brain had begun ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... difficult task. To her own embarrassment Tory realized that she was thinking more of her own hunger than of Kara's need as the minutes wore on and no one arrived. Fortunately she had saved a small quantity of coffee in their thermos bottle the day before. This must ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... an occupation was strongly felt by stepfather and stepson. It chanced that Thomas Smith was a reformer; the superiority of his proposed lamp and reflectors over open fires of coal secured his appointment; and no sooner had he set his hand to the task than the interest of that employment mastered him. The vacant stage on which he was to act, and where all had yet to be created—the greatness of the difficulties, the smallness of the means intrusted him—would rouse a man of his disposition like a call to battle. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and lindens, just starting into leaf. On the 11th of May, we found spring at last, after six months of uninterrupted winter. I don't much enjoy going the round of a new city, attended by a valet-de-place, and performing the programme laid down by a guide-book, nor is it an agreeable task to describe such things in catalogue style; so I shall merely say that the most interesting things in Copenhagen are the Museum of Northern Antiquities, the Historical Collections in Rosenborg Palace, Thorwaldsen's Museum, and the Church ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... goatherd. Your task is to watch the goats. You know a great deal about goats. A bacteriologist watches germs. That's his task, and he knows a great deal about them. So, as I was saying, the bacteriologists fought with the germs and destroyed them—sometimes. There was leprosy, a horrible disease. A hundred years ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... the slits in the mask, were, however, dark and brilliant. In them could be seen alertness and eagerness, for it was apparent that he had come there hot-foot in search of someone. In any case he had a difficult task, for in the whirling, laughing, chattering crowd each person resembled the other save for their feet ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... considers a woodman's work crabbed prose. The idea of making poetry out of any part of it, or out of a herder's work either, is to him stark idiocy. Sheep-washing, for instance, is simply working a whole spring day in very chilly water, and sheep-shearing is a task at which he makes "ridgy" work and endures the horror of seeing the gentle, thin-skinned creatures bleed under his awkward shears. The boy cannot conceive what poetry there is about oxen. From the moment a calf hides in the hay with its mother's help, and makes believe there is no calf born ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... pulled by four lusty retainers of the departed chief, while Gustavus himself stood on the raft, astride over the coffin, and with an eel-spear, which had afforded him many a day's sport, performed the melancholy task of guiding it. It was a strangely painful yet beautiful sight to behold the graceful figure of the fine boy engaged in this last sad duty; with dexterous energy he plied his spear, now on this side and now on that, directing the course of the raft, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... ray of hope presented to his mind the figure of Marie de Mantua in the distance; and for a moment his thoughts were calmed. But all his future lay in that brief sentence—"to please the King"; and he began to reflect upon all the bitterness in which his task might involve him. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... clay fraught with so much significance, the clay out of which the gods made man and man in turn has made gods. As a result of the hours he had spent in Rome with sculptor friends, watching them work and observing each movement of their fingers, he accomplished his task with great ease, to his own astonishment and Miss Burns's admiration. His anatomical knowledge and medical experience also stood him in good stead. Shortly before completing his course as a medical student, he had for a time ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of this task, I was diverted from it by the publication of an answer to the articles. The moment I saw it advertised, not sufficiently habituated to the vice of indolence myself to recollect that I had an idle footman below, I hurried to the publisher's, purchased it, and returned ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... mountainous quality of the great ruin is its chief interest; beauty of detail has pretty well vanished, especially since the high-growing wild-flowers have been plucked away by the new government, whose functionaries, surely, at certain points of their task, must have felt as if they shared the dreadful trade of those who gather samphire. Even if you are on your way to the Lateran you won't grudge the twenty minutes it will take you, on leaving the Colosseum, to turn away under the Arch of Constantine, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... down at all. At last in 1054 the King roused all the cities of Central Gaul, Burgundian, Gascon, Breton and Auvergnat in one combined onset, and gathered them at Mantes, the natural frontier between Normandy and France. Duke William's strategy and daring were equal to his task. He divided the invaders into two, annihilated one division at Mortemer with very little loss, and watched the other with grim merriment as it vanished from his Duchy, afraid to strike a blow. Four years later France and Anjou came on for another ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... her a warm letter of congratulation. "You are now," he said, "Queen of the mightiest land in Europe. In your hands lie the happiness of millions. May Heaven assist and strengthen you with its strength in that high but difficult task! I hope that your reign may be long, happy, and glorious, and that your efforts may be rewarded by the thankfulness and ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... way on the cars he was thinking of the task he had undertaken to perform. Not without certain phases of amusement, he rehearsed his part, and made up his mind to leave nothing of ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... had no small difficulty in cleaning their vessel, as there was no carpenter among them. They performed that laborious task in the best manner they could, and then made to the north side of Hispaniola. The first sail they met with was a French ship of twelve guns, which they captured; and while they were plundering her, another appeared in view. Enquiring of the Frenchmen, they learned that she was a ship of twenty-four ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... happiness and enjoyment, we were going to sleep, when the hostess came to tell us that the gondola was waiting for us. I immediately got up to open the door, in the hope that she would amuse us with her description of the opera; but she left that task to her daughter, who had come up with her, and she went down again to prepare some coffee for us. The young girl assisted my sweetheart to dress, but now and then she would wink at me in a manner which made me think that she had more experience ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and in the matter of grammar we are still the slaves of the ancient world. As for spelling, the irregularities of our language seem to have driven us to one sole method, memorizing: and to memorize every word in a language is an appalling task. Our rhetoric we have inherited from the middle ages, from scholiasts, refiners, and theological logicians, a race of men who got their living by inventing distinctions and splitting hairs. The fact is, prose has had a very low place in the literature ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... them then began to flay their own ox, but Ring was only half through by the time Snati had finished his. In the evening, after they had finished this task, the Prince thought himself unfit to carry all the horns and both the hides, so Snati told him to lay them all on his back until they got to the Palace gate. The Prince agreed, and laid everything on the Dog except the skin of the smaller ox, which he staggered along ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... founder of Russian Realism. It came from a man who had deliberately turned his back on Romanticism, even on the romanticism of his friend and teacher, Pushkin, and who had decided to venture all alone on a new and untried path in Russian literature. He fully realised the difficulties of his task, and the opposition he was bound to encounter. He asks and answers the two familiar questions invariably put to the native realist. The first is, "I have enough trouble in my own life: I see enough misery and stupidity in the world: what is the use of reading about ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... his whole heart to Imlac, who, promising to assist him to escape, proposed the plan of piercing the mountain. A suitable cavern having been found, the two men worked arduously at their task, and within a few days had accomplished it. A few more days passed, and Rasselas and Imlac, with the prince's sister, Nekayah, had gone by ship to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... with horror. That man with the mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself. It sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation of years, and to respect himself for it—as if that was really sufficient—for the difficult task. At least during the eight days which lapsed between that conversation and their departure he strictly observed the promise he had given his wife. In vain did Cibo, Pietrapertosa, Hafner, Ardea try to see him. When the train which bore them away steamed out he asked his wife, with a pride that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that Mrs. Cathcart had discovered Adela's restlessness the night before; had very possibly peeped into her room; and, as her windows looked in the same direction, might have seen Harry riding home from his selfish task in the cold grey morning; for scheming can destroy the rest of some women as perfectly as loving can destroy the rest of others. She might have made the observation, too, that Adela had lain as still as a bird unhatched, after that apparition ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... early legends, why don't you go to the State Capitol? They have every magazine and every book that so much as mentions any place in the state." So Vance Cornish went to the capitol and entered the library. It was a sweaty task and a most discouraging one. The name "Black Jack" revealed nothing; and the name of Hollis was an equal blank, so far as the indices were concerned. He was preserved in legend only, and Vance Cornish ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... The grain is poured into the hollow and the upper stone is rolled back and forth over it while the flour gradually sifts out over the sides on to the cloth which is spread on the ground underneath the mill. It is a monotonous task, and very often two people work it together, one feeding in the grain and the other turning the millstone. This is pleasanter, as each worker is "company" for the other. Perhaps our hostess will let us roll the millstone for her while she ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... to picture himself restoring life to the old place. Now and again he allowed himself to see a woman aiding him in the pleasant task. He would picture her standing by the sundial, looking out towards the sparkling water; standing by the marble basin with white pigeons alighted at her feet, and peacocks strutting near her; walking among the marble statues, with a book; ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... a long task, the translator may without impropriety point out the difficulties which he has had to encounter. These have been far greater than he would have anticipated; nor is he at all sanguine that he has succeeded in ...
— Charmides • Plato
... Preston took up a bundle of grammar exercises and sorted them. She was too weary for this task: she could not go on just yet. She drew her chair over to the window and sat there long quarter hours, watching the electric cars. They announced themselves from a great distance by a low singing on the overhead wire; then with a rush and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... To complain of Herodotus, or any public historian, as drawing too continually upon his reader's profounder sensibilities, is, in reality, to forget that this belongs as an original element to the very task which he has undertaken. To undertake the exhibition of human life under those aspects which confessedly bring it into unusual conflict with chance and change, is, by a mere self-created necessity, to prepare beforehand the summons ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of Mars' gigantic Canal system, planetary in its extent, might seem to your Earth people an impossible task. And it might prove so to your Earth dwellers should you undertake a similar project in the ages to come when your seas dry up, though it must be remembered that gravity on Mars, compared with your Earth, is as 38 to 100. Excavations ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... bateau was lowered from its position, rolled down to the lake, and launched. The muscular arm of the trapper rendered this a comparatively easy task, and it was accomplished in a few hours. The mast was stepped, the sail bent on, and the rigging adjusted under the direction of Fanny, who was more familiar with such matters than either of her companions. Such provisions as remained were stowed on ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... point out that the case of the minority, who throw themselves with passion and gusto into their daily business task, is infinitely less deplorable than the case of the majority, who go half-heartedly and feebly through their official day. The former are less in need of advice "how to live." At any rate during their official day of, say, eight hours they are ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... silk, which was in pretty thorough confusion, and began the task of unravelling and untieing, preparatory to its being wound. This time Lady Rythdale did not turn away; she sat considering Eleanor, on whose white drapery and white fingers the green silk threads made a pretty contrast, while they left ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... protection and was content to merge his individuality in some society in order to obtain it. The guilds made for peace and diminished competition, so that a guildsman may have been less tempted to hurry over or scamp his task. The result was much honest, careful work such as you see in the original of this picture. We are told by those who know best that there has never been a time when the actual workmanship of the general run of craftsmen was better than in the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... no family of plants more so, to those who have time and patience to study them. The Club Mosses, indeed, may claim a place in the garden if they can only be induced to grow, but that is a difficult task, and the tenderer Lycopodiums are always favourites when well grown among greenhouse Ferns; but for the most part, the Mosses must be studied in their native haunts, and when so studied, they are found to be full of beauty and ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... parts of the story which would be strengthened, even in their psychological interest, by condensation here and there. If you will leave that to me, I will perform the task as conscientiously and carefully as if it were my own. But the suggestion I offer for your acceptance, no one but yourself can ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers, he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... come to the large class of coloured or richly spotted eggs, and here we have a more difficult task, though many of them decidedly exhibit protective tints or markings. There are two birds which nest on sandy shores—the lesser tern and the ringed plover,—and both lay sand-coloured eggs, the former spotted so as to harmonise with coarse shingle, the latter ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... public sentiment inscribes on the list of Executive duties, in characters too legible to be overlooked, the task of reform, which will require particularly the correction of those abuses that have brought the patronage of the Federal Government into conflict with the freedom of elections, and the counteraction ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... sense of the weakness of the dogma of Biblical infallibility seems to be at the bottom of a prevailing tendency once more to substitute the authority of the "Church" for that of the Bible. In my old age, it has happened to me to be taken to task for regarding Christianity as a "religion of a book" as gravely as, in my youth, I should have been reprehended for doubting that proposition. It is a no less interesting symptom that the State Church seems more and more anxious to ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the Spirit, though a man did see his misery, and also the way to come to God; yet he would never be able to claim a share in either God, Christ, or mercy, with God's approbation. O how great a task is it, for a poor soul that becomes sensible of sin and the wrath of God, to say in faith, but this one word, "Father!" I tell you, however hypocrites think, yet the Christian that is so indeed finds all the difficulty in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied only by a nomade or thinly scattered population, the task of the pioneer settler is of a very different character. He is to become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the damaged fabric which the negligence or the wantonness of former lodgers has rendered untenantable. He must aid ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... that they would no longer endure any hard work if they could help it, but were thoroughly out of training in every respect and wanted to have no emperor that ruled with a firm hand but demanded that they get everything without stint, and chose to perform no task that was fitting for them. They were further angered by the cutting off of their pay and the deprivation of prizes and exemptions (these last among the privileges of the military), which they had ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... piety, or his extensive knowledge, and the depth of his philosophical inquiries, or the strength and solidity of his reasoning, or the noble sublimity of the expression, and the elegance and perspicuity of the diction. It was the love of God which engaged him to undertake, in this task, the defence of the cause of our best Father and supreme Lord, as he modestly assures us, (p. 320,) and this motive animated him with fresh life and uncommon vigor in exerting and displaying the strength and beauty of his genius on so ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... mamma. Do forgive me, if you think so, and let us retire, for I have an awful task ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... housework that can be simplified, and still done at home, and the much larger proportion which must sooner or later be relegated to the professional expert, either coming in at intervals or performing the task elsewhere. And this is true, fortunately, of women in the country as ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... the German people a naval text book as General von Bernhardi's book, "Germany and the Next War," was a military text book. Bernhardi's task was to school Germany into the belief in the unbeatableness of the German army. Hollweg's book is to teach the German people what their submarines will accomplish and to steal the people for the plans her ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... in a low soft way, giving me a sidelong glance again, and then taking out his great knife and making a pretence of cutting his nails, for which task the knife was about as suitable ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... you reckon all women on the standard of such women as you have known. Only women of savage races transfer their affection from dead lovers to their slayers. But you do not yet comprehend the fearful task before you. Your conceit is colossal. In single combat with Frank Merriwell you would not have ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... collusion with the German authorities, and with the object of furthering the military ends of the Hohenzollerns. The famous prosecutor of the Czarist regime, Aleksandrov, who had prosecuted numerous revolutionists, was now entrusted with the task of protecting the public from the counter-revolutionary Bolsheviki. Under the old regime the inmates of prisons used to be divided into political prisoners and criminals. Now a new terminology was established: Criminals and Bolsheviks. ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... window. Standing on a stone, which he placed beneath the window, he looked in and saw the Father busily at work in the far corner of the room. Curiosity took possession of him, and he watched every movement of the worker until he had completed his task, taken up the lantern, and left the room. After waiting a few moments, to make sure he was not coming back, Juan sprang lightly through the window, and went to the corner where the Father had been occupied. First looking out into ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... has been taken to task for not being a philologist as well as a linguist. He may have used the word philologist somewhat loosely on occasion. "Think what the reader would have lost," says one eminent but by no means prejudiced critic {476a} with real sympathy and insight, "had Borrow waited to verify his etymologies." ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... finished my task; Bianca returned to her convent, but her image remained indelibly impressed upon my heart. It dwelt on my imagination; it became my pervading idea of beauty. It had an effect even upon my pencil; I became noted for my felicity ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... MONKEY PUZZLE TREE.—A task lies before you which you will find hard, but for which you will afterwards be rewarded by meeting ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... actually seen rising through the hatchway in the form of a dense steam that continued to pour up for several minutes, and when the men were ordered below to pass up the dead bodies, even the toughest and most hardened of them recoiled from the task, and staggered away forward literally as sick as dogs. At length, however, after the lapse of about a quarter of an hour, a gang ventured down into the now comparatively pure atmosphere, and the work of passing up the dead bodies began. I stood to windward, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the very difficult task of arranging the family of acarides, or mites; he divides them into sixty-nine genera, the greater part ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... It was no easy task, for Bill was naturally somewhat slow and heavy; but he had perseverance, which makes up for many deficiencies, and his heart being in his work he ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... of the wheat-midge which has been the scourge of the grain-fields of Europe: it will, doubtless, some time be a passenger on our Atlantic ships or steamers; it will commence its work; and then man has the task of importing its natural antagonists, of promoting their spread, and so of compensating the evil. The work which we are noticing abundantly shows, that, if man were not in the world, the natural compensations which the Divine Being has introduced would produce perfect harmony in all things; ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sovereign who maintained a conflict of world-wide importance amidst greater dangers and with greater success than Queen Elizabeth. Her grandfather had begun a political emancipation from the ruling influences of the continent, her father an ecclesiastical one: Elizabeth took up their task and accomplished it victoriously against Rome and against Spain, while her people had an ever-increasing part in public affairs, and thus entered into a new stage of development. Her memory is inseparably connected with the independence and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Experiences in Two Continents (MURRAY) is made up of the diary and letters of Miss MACNAUGHTAN, written during her search for work that might help in the great Task. The book, it is sad to say, must serve as her memorial to those many whom she has amused by her bright and wholesome stories. Worn out by labours and quests beyond her strength she fell sick at Teheran in 1916 and returned to England ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... the bear hide so that it might dry as much as possible. He then set all of them at fleshing the hide, a task none of them seemed to relish. Afterward, he also added some sort of counsel in the Cree language which presently resulted in the three visitors tightening up their belts, taking their solitary rifle, and passing out of sight in the bush at ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... hard when you are pleased with your dress, and even entertaining becomes more easy when your costumiere lives in Regent Street. On Tuesdays Maude is at home. Every other day she hunts through her plate of cards, and is overwhelmed by the sense of her rudeness towards her neighbours. But her task is never finished, though day after day she comes back jaded with her exertions. Strangers still call upon her—'hope it is not too late to do the right thing, and to welcome,' etc., etc.—and they have to be re-visited. While she is visiting them, other cards appear upon her hall table, ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... my own mother. I am not ill, only lazy, and that you were not wont to encourage; my eyes would close, spite of all my efforts. But why should you have the uninteresting task of watching ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a "down and out" actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... was an almost forgotten land, lying out of the chief paths of merchants and travellers, and far away from all the capital cities of Christendom. Rarely went thither any one from Paris, or Vienna, or Berlin; to reach it from London was a harder task than to cross the Atlantic; and a man of office receiving in this distant province his orders despatched from St. Petersburg, was the servant of masters who governed him from a ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... "As every task is according to aptitudes and powers, the fathers who are not strong-shouldered and big-armed fold the packages of chocolate, or make out the bills, and those who are robust ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... the same task, the same results! But at length, one day, when Cesarini returned from his moody walk in the gardens (pleasure-grounds they were called by the owner), he found better workmen than he at the window; they were repairing the framework, they were strengthening the bars,—all hope was now gone! The ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... McClellan as long as it was possible to do so. He never resented the personal discourtesies. He never wearied of the fruitless task of urging him on. He never refused to let him have his own way provided he could show a reason for it. But his persistent inactivity wore out the patience of the country and finally of the army itself. With the exception of northern democrats with southern ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... hands, large and powerful, hung down below her knees. Her face showed the ravages of work. Although but sixteen, she had for over a dozen years been supporting her aged pappy and mappy by brewing mountain whiskey. From time to time she would pause in her task, and, filling a dipper full of the pure, invigorating liquid, would drain it off—then pursue her work ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and my aim to arouse Protestantism to a sense of their duty, and if I can do this I will feel that I have accomplished a task that will eventually call forth the plaudits of the American people, for as sure as God reigns, just that sure our public schools will be crushed out of existence by Catholicism unless Protestant America raises her voice and her strong arm in defense of our public ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg |
