"Toil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Where tired feet Toil to and fro; Where flaunting Sin May see thy heavenly hue, Or weary Sorrow look from thee Toward a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... till end of October. And then suddenly, cold rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... toil in those high latitudes is soon followed by an overwhelming weariness; for the breath soon fails, and the strongest are forced to rest ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... suffer, die, and live For faith and truth. Here they the corner-stone Of Freedom laid; Here in their hearts' distress They lit the lights Of Liberty alone; Here, with God's aid, Conquered the wilderness, Secured their rights. Not men, but giants, they, Who wrought with toil And sweat of brawn and brain Their freehold here; Who, with their blood, each day Hallowed the soil. And left it without ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... university grounds, four hundred feet above the valley, were not as in these days, and the electric trolley had not been invented. She bore the fatigue patiently until winter set in; then she came to me, expressing regret at her inability to toil up the icy steep, and left us. On my reporting this to the trustees, Mr. Sage made his proposal. I had expected from him a professorship or a fellowship; but to my amazement he offered to erect and endow a separate college ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... life, she was the kindest and most lovely. She had been brought as a young girl, by her parents, from Old Guilford in Connecticut; and in her later life she often told me cheerily of the days of privation and toil, of wolves howling about the cottages of the little New York settlement in winter, of journeys twenty miles to church, of riding on horseback from early morning until late in the evening, through the forests, to bring flour from the mill. She was quietly ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to examine themselves, or the universe, or to dream of any noble development? Probably not. Reason is seldom or never the ruler: it is the servant of instinct. It would therefore have told the ants that incessant toil was ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Brought back to keeping sheep once more, But not chief shepherd, as before, When sheep were his that grazed the shore, He who, as Corydon or Thyrsis, Might once have shone in pastoral verses, Bedeck'd with rhyme and metre, Was nothing now but Peter. But time and toil redeem'd in full Those harmless creatures rich in wool; And as the lulling winds, one day, The vessels wafted with a gentle motion, "Want you," he cried, "more money, Madam Ocean? Address yourself to some one else, I pray; You shall not get it ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... under our breath, for it seemed like a schoolboy's prank. Well, after the long toil in the fen, we were like boys just freed from school, though our game was the greatest of all—that of war—the game of Hodur's ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... the Hollywell drawing-room. Any other time of day would have suited Charles as well for the reading, but he liked to take the hour at noon, and never perceived that this made all the difference to his friend of a toil or a pleasure. Now and then Guy gave tremendous yawns; and once when Charles told him he was very stupid, proposed a different time; but as Charles objected, he yielded as submissively as the rest of the household were ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men, and engineers, instead of being able to grow up as farm labourers. Yet I saw enough of farming to speak exuberantly in political addresses of the joy of early rising and the deep sleep, both of body and intellect, that is induced by honest manual toil. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... sadly at the Countess. There was something pitiable in the sight of a woman ruined, bereaved, seemingly hopeless, portioning out the very land from which she was a fugitive; unable to restrain the passion for intrigue, which had been the toil and the bane of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... help thinking that none of all these could put away self more entirely than the girl beside her, toiling away her beauty and her youth in this dull round of toil, not able to exercise the instincts of her art to the utmost, and with no change from the monotonous round of mosaics, which were forced to be second rate, to the commonest household works, and the company of the Queen ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of subordinate grade to this which your kindness has conferred, has taught me that toil and care and disappointment are the price of official elevation. You will see many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate; but you shall not find in me either want of zeal or fidelity to the cause that is to me the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs of long-conquered races—how could they count? My heels were iron as I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces and enslaved them to the toil of our will. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... do," said, warmly. "I often think of the strange inequality in the lot of men. Living in the country, I see around me hundreds of men who are by nature as worthy as I am, or thereabouts. Yet they must toil and labor, and indeed fight, for bare food and clothing, all their lives, and worse off at the close of their long labor. That is what grieves me to the heart. All this time I revel in plenty and luxuries—not forgetting the luxury of luxuries, the delight of giving ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... even if he cannot follow them, up steep mountains, exposed to the heat of the sun, in dust, over rocks, and without water, toils the hunter, who accounts himself lucky if, by tramping scores of miles through this sort of impediment, he succeeds, after days of toil, in killing his deer. Perhaps he has been without fresh meat for a week or a fortnight, and often on short commons; is it to be wondered at that when a shot offers he avails himself of the opportunity even if ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... application to work is the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honourable industry travels the same road with duty; and Providence has closely linked both with happiness. The gods, says the poet, have placed labour and toil on the way leading to the Elysian fields. Certain it is that no bread eaten by man is so sweet as that earned by his own labour, whether bodily or mental. By labour the earth has been subdued, and man redeemed from barbarism; nor has a single step in civilization been made without ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of competitors who had sprung up like mushrooms. It became necessary to take proper preliminary legal steps to protect the interests which had been acquired at the cost of so much money and such incessant toil and experiment. During the first few years in which the business of the introduction of the light was carried on with such strenuous and concentrated effort, the attention of Edison and his original associates was constantly focused ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... connected with the reign of the present dynasty on the throne, the government of an empire of such vast magnitude, stored with an almost incalculable population, must necessarily be a task of inconceivable vigilance and toil; a task that must have required all the time, the talents, and the attention of the four sovereigns to ensure the brilliant and unparalleled successes that have distinguished their long reign. Tchien Lung, at the age of eighty-three, was so little afflicted with ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... loving breast of poverty. Most of those who have climbed highest on the shining ladder of fame commenced at the lowest round. They were reared in the straw-thatched cottages of Europe, in the log-houses of America, in the factories of the great cities, in the midst of toil, in the smoke and din of labor, and on the verge of want. They were rocked by the feet of mothers whose hands, at the same time, were busy with the needle or ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... thrown into a feverish heat of excitement between this cowardly act and the president's death, which occurred two months later. Thus, after a struggle for recognition, which had won the admiration of the world, he was snatched from the pleasure of enjoying the fruits of his toil, and from the people who needed his service. Like Lincoln, he had come from the people, he belonged to the people, and by his own right hand had won the first place among fifty millions of people. Like Lincoln, he was ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... research can understand how hard all this was to him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the completion of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of pet theories, the establishment of new principles,—all, all abandoned after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully through a desert toward some beautiful height, which, at first dimly seen, has grown clearer and clearer and always more splendid as he advances, and now at its very foot to be turned back by a gloomy stream in whose depths ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... doesn't hide anything," he began, and he was going to speak of the men in the furnace pits of the steamer, how they fed the fires in a welding heat, and as if they had perished in it crept out on the forecastle like blanched phantasms of toil; but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... singular, that Servilius and Andrea, never suffered me to toil; their sole care seemed to be, to bestow upon me, during their intervals of labour, all the instruction and accomplishments which their limited means allowed; and without vanity I may affirm, that my mind richly repaid them for the trouble of cultivation. I trust I was not haughty in my childhood, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... Frenchman who has not, in his family or his fortune, some cruel wound to heal. The facts are notorious, and can never be sufficiently enforced. Agriculture, for the last five years, has gained nothing; it barely exists, and the fruit of its toil is annually dissipated by the treasury, which unceasingly devours every thing to satisfy the cravings of ruined and famished armies. The conscription has become, for all France, a frightful scourge, because ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... luck!" said Mr. Fox furiously, when Harry had completed his story. "Joel may work and toil all his life, and he won't get no seven ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... die, and if they went above to Pani they were murdered. So soon the habit of birth was lost and the Sons of Wisdom perished one by one. Yes, they who ruled the world and by tens of thousands of years of toil had gathered into their bosoms all the secrets of the world, perished, till only a few, and among them I and this daughter ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... now, at fifty-five, she was a handsome woman. Her dress was always perfect: she never dressed but once in the day, and never appeared till between three and four; but when she did appear, she appeared at her best. Whether the toil rested partly with her, or wholly with her handmaid, it is not for such a one as the author even to imagine. The structure of her attire was always elaborate and yet never over-laboured. She was rich in apparel ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... archaeological eminence; and in this exclusive attitude of mind he had undertaken this expedition without the companionship of a fellow-countryman, or even of any white man, devoting himself to his patient and laborious toil, assisted only by an Egyptian cook, a number of Arab labourers, and such natives of Babylonia as he had attracted to his service by the promise, faithfully kept, of ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... lies the Forth, and beyond it, dimly blue, the far away Highland hills; eastward, rise the bold contours of Arthur's Seat and the rugged crags of the Castle rock, with the grey Old Town of Edinburgh; while, far below, from a maze of crowded thoroughfares, the hoarse murmur of the toil of a polity of energetic men is borne upon the ear. At times, a man may be as solitary here as in a veritable wilderness; and may meditate undisturbedly upon the epitome of nature and of man—the kingdoms of this world—spread ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... of the cotton begins in the latter part of October, with the result that November is a month of hard toil for the ponies that have to carry the heavy loads of cotton from the fields into the larger towns. By the middle of the month all the san has been cut and the water-nuts have been gathered in. Then the pressing of the sugar-cane begins in earnest. The little presses that for eight months ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... hackney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters of early public-houses; and little deal tables, with the ordinary preparations for a street breakfast, make their appearance at the customary stations. Numbers of men and women (principally the latter), carrying upon their heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of Piccadilly, on their way to Covent-garden, and, following each other in rapid succession, form a long straggling line from thence to the turn of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Petty's lead, says: "The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and labor which it can save to himself, and which it can impose on other people.... Labor was the first ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... too good to be true. It was impossible that she should thus throw herself into his arms. Half the romance of all this adventure would be lost if it had so simple and easy a conclusion. No! He had to seek for her, he had to toil, to wait, to suffer still more before he could expect to attain the object of his desire. Thus do we add to our pain in the intensity of our love's longings, and Cary took grim pleasure in magnifying his own wretchedness. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... could see on this walk, hardened into temporary stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the advance of the whole world. Ellen did not think of that, for she was occupied with more personal considerations, thinking of the dead woman in the great Lloyd house. She pictured her lying dead on that same bed whereon she had seen her husband ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and would hardly let me out of her sight. I must say it was very nice to be waited on so faithfully, and I gave myself up to the unaccustomed luxury. All she required of me in exchange for her incessant toil on my behalf was "news." It did not matter of what kind, every scrap of intelligence was welcome to her, and she refused to tell me to what date her "latest advices" extended. During the three days of our stay in that clearing among the great pines of the Wanaka Bush, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... poetry, Forgot by all almost as well as me. Sometimes he has some humour, never wit, And if it rarely, very rarely hit, 'Tis under such a nasty rubbish laid, To find it out's the cinder-woman's trade; Who for the wretched remnants of a fire, Must toil all day in ashes and in mire. So lewdly dull his idle works appear, The wretched text deserves no comments here; Where one poor thought sometime's left all alone, For a whole page of dulness to atone: 'Mongst forty bad, one tolerable line, Without ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... in fact to his experience in Ireland, testing the mettle of character, its loyalty, its sincerity, its endurance. His picture of character is by no means painted with sentimental tenderness. He portrays it in the rough work of the struggle and the toil, always hardly tested by trial, often overmatched, deceived, defeated, and even delivered by its own default to disgrace and captivity. He had full before his eyes what abounded in the society of his day, often in its noblest representatives—the strange ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... toil,' said the Fairy; 'but it is all of no avail: they will end by dying of despair, as ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... to the wife of Intaphernes permission to claim the life of a single man of her kindred, she chose her brother, saying that both husband and children could be replaced.[117] The declaration of Antigone in Sophocles,[118] that she would have performed for neither husband nor children the toil which she undertook for Polynices, against the will of the citizens, indicates that the tie of a common womb was stronger than the social tie of marriage. The extraordinary honor, privilege, and proprietary rights enjoyed by ancient ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... after six months' familiarity with it on his sister's lips, he could not get accustomed to it. The colourless and non-committal style of "J. S. Thorpe," under which he had lived so long, had been well enough for the term of his exile—the weary time of obscure toil and suspense. But now, in this sunburst of smiling fortune, when he had achieved the right to a name of distinction—here it was ready to his hand. A fleeting question as to whether he should carry the "J" along as an initial put itself to his mind. He decided ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... milestone. On I went, trundling my loads of stone, with the heavy step of the professional. Soon I grew warm, and the dust on my face changed into solid and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till evening should put a limit to Mr Turnbull's monotonous toil. Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road, and looking up I saw a little Ford two-seater, and a round-faced young man in a ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... or five years, and, never having seen oxen before, we looked at them with the same eager freshness of conception as we did at the wild animals. We worked with them, sympathized with them in their rest and toil and play, and thus learned to know them far better than we should had we been only trained scientific naturalists. We soon learned that each ox and cow and calf had individual character. Old white-faced Buck, one of the second yoke of oxen we owned, was a notably sagacious fellow. He seemed ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... realm, within eight days I shall be once more upon the sea. Great travail I must endure, and many pains I shall suffer, in readiness for that hour. Return I must, and till then I have no mind for anything but toil; for I will not give the lie to my ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... said the old man, turning to his grandson. "Why do you bring your profligate companions here? I am poor. You have chosen your own path, follow it. Leave Nell and me to toil and work." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... passions we cherish an enemy in our bosoms; how every moment demands from us, in the name of the most sacred duties, the sacrifice of our dearest inclinations, and how at one blow we may be robbed of all that we have acquired with much toil and difficulty; that with every accession to our stores, the risk of loss is proportionately increased, and we are only the more exposed to the malice of hostile fortune: when we think upon all this, every heart which is not dead to feeling must be overpowered ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... we are met by the further difficulty that, unlike Christ, we are not always sensible of being sent on any special errand into the world. We lose what aim we have, amid the diversities of toil to which we are compelled. We lose what breadth of view we have, amid the multitude of trifles of which our lives are composed. We can imagine Christ's sense of his mission, and how it could absorb ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... would have saved an entire population from trusting to the allurements of a petty, demoralising trade; they would have saved us the sight of decayed villages and a people becoming daily less capable of bearing the laborious toil of agricultural industry. To handle the hoe has now become a disgrace, and men have lost their manhood by becoming gentlemen.' I shall presently ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... himself to leave Hartley, what would it be to her? Not many months would pass before she would have to quit a place ever dear, and now sacred in her thoughts; there was in store for her the anguish of dismantling the home of many years, and the toil and whirl of packing; a wearied head and an aching heart at a time when she would have most need of ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... if not altogether, a one-sided arrangement for the merchant. That is my opinion with regard to the Faroe fishing, and the ling fishers say the [Page 207] same. We don't know what we are to get until the end of the season. We go and toil away and catch fish if we can, but we don't know what we are to get for them until the time of settlement. There is an arrangement made between the fish-curers or merchants, and by that time they have made up their minds, and have fixed upon certain price, while we under our ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... fuel, and pastures could be had. The distance made was from two to four leagues[18], and the command rested every four days, more or less, according to the fatigue caused by the roughness of the road, the toil of the pioneers, the wandering off of the beasts, or the necessities of the sick. Costanso says that one of their greatest difficulties was in the control of their caballada (horse-herd), without which the journey could not be made. In a country ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... but toil of brain, And toil of hand, and strife of will,— To dig and forge, with loss and pain, The truth from lies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... lucid and free be the style of his romance, and though its flexibility and ease seem at first sight to have cost no trouble at all, yet its merit lies precisely in the fact that it succeeds in concealing the toil, in hiding the seams. He could not have reached this perfection at a first attempt. He must have worked long at the task, revised it again and again, corrected much, and added rather than cut away. The aptness of form and expression has been arrived at ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... my soul, arise! The husks of time disdain, And wing thee to the skies, Where there is lasting gain; Where moth nor rust can mock thy toil, Nor subtle thief ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... had the vague consciousness of assisting at a great development whose evidences to-day on every hand attest its magnitude. We have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort, lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. But it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to concrete data, and in reducing, to unfold its ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... or the nation shrinking from it forfeits all title to self-respect. We have scant sympathy with the sentimentalist who dreads oppression less than physical suffering, who would prefer a shameful peace to the pain and toil sometimes lamentably necessary in order to secure a righteous peace. As yet there is only a partial and imperfect analogy between international law and internal or municipal law, because there is no sanction ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... might suppose such another was the Indian who enchanted Cortes; with eyes and hair of extraordinary beauty, a complexion dark but glowing, with the Indian beauty of teeth like the driven snow, together with small feet and beautifully-shaped hands and arms, however imbrowned by sun and toil. In these cases it is more than probable that, however Indian in her appearance, there must have been some intermarriages in former days between her progenitors and the descendants of the conquerors. We ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... fire-jewels above him, thought of this marvel-glory of Love,—this celestial visitant who, on noiseless pinions, comes flying divinely into the poorest homes, transfiguring common life with ethereal radiance, making toil easy, giving beauty to the plainest faces and poetry to the dullest brains. Love! its tremulous hand- clasp,—its rapturous kiss,—the speechless eloquence it gives to gentle eyes!—the grace it bestows on even the smallest gift from lover to beloved, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... early riser; and the morning had not long looked upon the fresh fields, when he was on his way to Williamsburg. With a hopeful spirit, which banished peremptorily all those gloomy thoughts which were accustomed to harass him, he pressed on to commence his day of toil at the college. ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... was resented, a riot ensued, and when the sun went down that evening his last beams fell upon a city reeking with the blood of a hundred millionaires and twenty thousand citizens and sons of toil! ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... right—that the scheme was practicable. They subscribed fifty dollars a piece, and, in the summer, Judah and his assistants made a careful survey of the passes in the Sierras. This was in the summer of 1860, and in the fall the engineer party returned, toil-worn and travel-stained, but vastly encouraged and elated with the result of their summer's work. So favorable was the report that fifteen hundred dollars were immediately raised to be used the following summer in the same manner. The summer of 1861 found Judah and ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... are chang'd,—how chang'd that scene, For mark old Robin's alter'd mien, And feeble tread. His toil has ceased to be his pride, At Susan's name he turns aside, And shakes ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... the causes that contribute to social injustice and industrial disorder, whether we should have rescued the sweated worker, afforded to every man adequate security for a fair return for an honest day's toil, and prevented the use of economic advantage to procure gain for one man at the expense of another. We should have to ask whether we had the basis of a just delimitation between the rights of the community ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... though perhaps that game looks uglier when played at such close quarters and on so small a scale, it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. The village usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress as the millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. If it were fair for Cobden to buy up land from owners whom he thought unconscious of its proper value, it was fair enough for my Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers. ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the midst, it may be, of taunt, and obloquy, and shame. And as there are different crosses, so there are different ways of bearing them. To some, God says, "put your shoulder to the burden; lift it up, and bear it on; work, and toil, and labor!" To others, He says, "Be still, bear it, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... gone,—sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone. Oh, when weary, sad, and slow, From the fields at night they go, Faint with toil, and racked with pain, To their cheerless homes again, There no brother's voice shall greet them; There no father's welcome meet them. Gone, gone,—sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia's hills and waters; Woe is ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... is on deck. Landsmen can call in help when their house needs repairing, but sailors must be able to keep every part of their house in perfect order; and there is always something to be done. But we are lazy; we toil not, neither do we tar ropes, and our main business is to get up a thoroughly good appetite while we watch the deft sailor-men going about their business. It is my belief that a landsman might spend a month without a tedious hour, if he would only take the trouble ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... crammed with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, that child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium.... And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Hath the forehand and vantage of ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... afar that I might rear A peaceful home on English soil; I labored for the gold and gear— I loved my toil. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... companions during the hours of relaxation; for when the illimitable fields of intellect were opened to his vision, he would scarce for a moment consent to withdraw his admiring gaze. Thus, when it was necessary for a season to cease his toil in the path of learning, he delighted to recline in some cool shade with a pleasing book in his hand, and regale his senses with the flowers and refreshing streams of imaginative authors. And thus ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... the words of one who had experience in a similar undertaking: "The biographer of our day is too often perplexed in the toil of his researches after adequate information for composing the history of men who were an honor to their age, and of whom posterity is anxious to know whatever may be added to increase the need ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... the narrow seat would permit, and only woke to chafe at each halt, and Louis mused over the associations of those scenes, and last year's triumphant return. Had the change of habits truly hastened the decay of her powers? had her son's toil and success been merely to bring her home to the grave of her fathers, at the expense of so many heartburnings, separations, and dissensions? At least, he trusted that her last hours might be crowned by the peacemaker's joy, and that she might see strife and bitterness laid aside ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plantations and buildings, and provide water for irrigation at all seasons of the year. They will lead the streams to the temples and groves of the Gods; and in such spots the youth shall make gymnasia for themselves, and warm baths for the aged; there the rustic worn with toil will receive a kindly welcome, and be far better treated than at the ...
— Laws • Plato
... believed that report about the hat-boy till someone explained to me that he wasn't allowed to keep his loot, not only having clothes made special without pockets but being searched to the hide every night like them poor unfortunate Zulus that toil in the diamond mines of Africa. Of course I could see then that this boy had become merely enraged like a wild-cat at having a dollar crowded onto him for some one else every time a head waiter grovelled Angus out of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... between them, and act as a mediator; but I myself have, contrary to my hopes, incurred blame and abuse on both sides! This just accords with what I read the other day in the Nan Hua Ching. 'The ingenious toil, the wise are full of care; the good-for-nothing seek for nothing, they feed on vegetables, and roam where they list; they wander purposeless like a boat not made fast!' 'The mountain trees,' the text goes on to say, 'lead to their own devastation; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... labors afterward. While his memory was tenacious, he was a great hoarder of documents and marker of books; he was a careful methodizer of his knowledge; he accustomed himself to a great variety and to unceasing diligence in literary toil, and he was perpetually going back of facts to the principles which he ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... gate-way to the unknown world, with beautiful walks leading down to the river whose depth and calmness and solemn grandeur symboled the waves through which he should pass to the reward of a life of such toil and enviable glory. He had promise of an evening worthy of his meridian—when the surveyors and engineers, with their charter-privileges, invaded his retreat, built a road through his garden, destroyed forever ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... together with some so-called tortoiseshells (really turtle-shells) of a larger size than any that we had seen before. Still more pleased was I to get ten skins of the exquisite birds-of-paradise which Wallace so well describes. He considered himself amply repaid for toil and hardship by the discovery of their previously unknown splendour, which one can quite imagine, even in their dried and imperfectly prepared state. I have seen them alive at Singapore in an aviary, and they ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... whatever will do me the least 'good' in the way of shaking the one strong possession of change impending over us that every day makes stronger; but if I could work on with some approach to steadiness, through the summer, the anxious toil of a new book would have its neck well broken before beginning to publish, next October or November. Sometimes, I think I may continue to work; sometimes, I think not. What do you say to the title, ONE OF THESE DAYS?" That title held its ground very briefly. "What do you think," ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "is a better thing than to arrive." This would explain the fact that this Book of Discovery has become a record of splendid endurance, of hardships bravely borne, of silent toil, of courage and resolution unequalled in the annals of mankind, of self-sacrifice unrivalled and faithful lives laid ungrudgingly down. Of the many who went forth, the few only attained. It is of these ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... began the fiercest toil of the pioneers—breaking the sod, building, harvesting, ploughing; then the winter again, though not so hard to bear; then the same round of work again. So the land was settled, the sod was turned over; sod shanties gave way to little frame houses; ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... memory! The years might bury it all in silence, but she could never, never forget. She had laid her plans for life, sweet, unselfish plans for uplifting human lives. Strange lands, strange scenes, strange faces would surround her. She would toil and smile on ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... successful. The next thing he heard was the intelligence of his death. It is quite evident that the fatal revolver was purchased for the defense of his treasures. What a lesson is this of the danger of excessive application, of unreasonable toil, of late hours, and mental tension. A continued exhaustion of his energies had brought upon the geologist a state of mental horror from which death seemed the only relief. The reaction of the nervous system was, no doubt, similar to that arising from delirium tremens; and thus extremes met, and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... under exaggerated hair, bowed in the harsh north light above the utensils of their art; for it was something more than an industry, surely, this creation of ever-varied settings for the face of fortunate womanhood. Their own faces were sallow with the unwholesomeness of hot air and sedentary toil, rather than with any actual signs of want: they were employed in a fashionable millinery establishment, and were fairly well clothed and well paid; but the youngest among them was as dull and colourless as the middle-aged. In the whole work-room there was only ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... River." Life there seems not to have been "all beer and skittles," or the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... at a public library; they enjoyed an occasional holiday in the country; and they went to church twice every Sunday when it was not stormy. The mother usually dozed in the obscure seat near the door which they occupied, for she was getting old, and the toil of the long week wearied her.—Alida, on the contrary, was closely attentive. Her mind seemed to crave all the sustenance it could get from every source, and her reverential manner indicated that the hopes inspired by her faith were dear and cherished. Although they lived such quiet lives and kept ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... toil their hardest at this time. At the manor they were cutting clover and hoeing turnips; in the cottages the women were piling up the potatoes, while the old women were gathering mallows for cooling drinks and lime-blossoms against the ague. The priest spent all his days tracking ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... summer breezes, cool and sweet, Bring rest, relief from toil and heat; As showers, needed as they fall, Renew, refresh and comfort all; So to my feverish heart is given This loving message, fresh from ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... my midnight toil, But took the elements and oil, And hurried down into the street That barked and clamored at our feet— And as we ran there came a hum Of round shot slithered on a drum, While like a lid of sound shut down The ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... lie hidden in the shade. Is she not busy as a bee, joyous as a lark, helpful, pitiful, unselfish, industrious, contented? How often has she not slipped her last coin into the alms-box at the hospital gate, and gone supperless to bed? How often sat up all night, after a long day's toil in a crowded work-room, to nurse Victorine in the fever? How often pawned her Sunday gown and shawl, to redeem that coat without which Adolphe cannot appear before the examiners to-morrow morning? Granted, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... against the localities also; roads for the advance of the army had to be opened through forests and morasses before the least progress could be made; and it often happened that a league a day was the greatest extent of march gained after immense toil. But nothing checked the ardor of these gallant soldiers. The Russians attempted to defend the passage of rivers and swamps that impeded the march of the foe. Their efforts were vain; no superiority of numbers, no ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... as glad-ly, too, The work our Mas-ter bids us do, And then we need not fear; But when from earth-ly toil we rest, We all shall meet a-mong the blest Who served Him ...
— The Infant's Delight: Poetry • Anonymous
... toil-worn hands, and the lines that hard work and worry had graven in her face. Her "best clothes" rather accentuated these details. But back of it all he sensed the resolute spirit of the West, resourceful, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for the play is played out.' Yes! if there be nothing more to follow than the desires which deceive, man's life, with all its bustle and emotion, is a subject for cynical and yet sad regard, and all the men and women that toil and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the moment when any of those dreary persons, who chiefly speak on such subjects, was on his legs. St James's, and the talk of St James's, were his business, his pleasures, the exciters of his wit, and the rewarders of his toil. He had applied the art of French cookery to the rude material of the world, and refined and reduced all things into a sauce piquante—all its realities were concentrated in essences; and, disdaining the grosser tastes of mankind, he lived upon the aroma of high life—an epicure even among ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... eyes. He felt as he had never felt before. There was something so inexpressibly touching about this orphan! He took her little hand tenderly in his own great, brown, toil-worn fist, and looked at her very wistfully. For a few moments he said nothing. Margot looked up at him with her great brown eyes, and then looked meekly at the deck. Zac heaved a deep sigh; then he placed his disengaged ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... 1538. After this followed the banishment of Quesada by the Spanish authorities, his return and his wise rule of the country—over which he was appointed Marshal—from 1551 onwards. Later, after his appointment as Adelantado, he devoted three years of toil and an enormous amount of wealth to the quest of El Dorado. Three hundred Spaniards, 2,000 Indians, and 1,200 horses set out on this quest; 24 men and 32 horses only returned. The costly myth of El Dorado, from the earliest days ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... looked at the roof from a distance. It was there, in there, that she lived with another! The apple trees were in bloom, the cocks crowed on the dunghill. The whole dwelling seemed empty, the farm hands had gone to the fields to their spring toil. He stopped near the gate and looked into the yard. The dog was asleep outside his kennel, three calves were walking slowly, one behind the other, towards the pond. A big turkey was strutting before the door, parading before the turkey hens like ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... an undersized, dark-complexioned little woman, who at one time possessed considerable personal beauty; but she had been so worn by toil, hard usage, and insufficient food, that she now appeared little else than skin and bone; in fact, she as much resembled a mummy as a being through whose veins throbbed the blood ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... these propositions involves many others, many difficulties, many apparent anomalies and contradictions, which should bespeak for such a theory,—the offspring of observation, without the aid afforded by the knowledge of others, and of toil without leisure,—a large share of indulgence. With this we will close these preliminary remarks, and present our theory of the physical cause which disturbs the equilibrium of our atmosphere, and which appears the principal agent in ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... opposite to each other, resting after their toil. Occasionally, with a youth's eagerness for adventure, the younger man would ask the elder to recount those military experiences to which the decorations in the cash-box bore testimony; but the father gave only scanty and unwilling replies. He bethought ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of November was a red-letter day, for on it we crossed the LAST SAND-RIDGE—in lat. 19 degrees 20 minutes—leaving the desert behind us. A feeling of satisfaction filled us that we had conquered its difficulties not by chance, but by unremitting toil and patience. I am sure that each in his heart thanked his God that He had been pleased to bring us through safely. Once across the range we had seen from Mount Bannerman—a range of quartzite hills which I named Cummins Range, after the Warden at Hall's Creek—and we had reached the watershed ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... brick-kilns, squat truncations, Hunched like spread toads yet high beneath their circles Of low packed smoke, assemblages of thunder That glowed upon their under sides by night And lit like storm small shadowless workmen's toil. Meaningless stumps, upturned bare roots, remained In fields of mashy mud and trampled leaves; While, if a horse died hauling, plasterers Knelt on a flank to clip ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... survivors—there were but few, alas!—to their homes. Over one hundred of the wretched beings had perished of disease in the hot and stifling holds of the slavers; scores of them, attempting to regain their liberty, had been shot down, and the fearful toil in the guano pits of the Ghincha Islands carried off ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... he was a man of learning, and knew the hearts of women as well as those of men. He saw Miss Milner's heart at the first view of her person, and beholding in that little circumference a weight of folly that he wished to eradicate, he began to toil in the vineyard, eagerly courting her detestation of him in the hope of also making her abominate herself. In the mortification of slights he was an expert, and humbled her in her own opinion more than a thousand sermons would have done. She would have been cured of all her pride had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to learn to exercise themselves and to suffer. To some He has commanded the estate of matrimony, to others the estate of the clergy, to others, again, the estate of the rulers, and to all He has commanded that they shall toil and labor to kill the flesh and accustom it to death, because for all such as are baptised their baptism has made the repose, the ease, the plenty of this life a very poison, and a hindrance to its ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... meadow, Where the men dig and delve, Lived a wise mother ant And her little anties twelve. "Toil!" said the mother; "We toil," said the twelve: So they toiled and were wise Where ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... for drinks had been his safeguard, but the safeguard was crumbling. Presently he could be drunk at dawn, yet not feel particularly wretched in his conscience—or in his stomach—when he awoke at eight. No regret, no desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the arduous merriment of the Bunch, was so great as his feeling of social inferiority when he failed to keep up. To be the "livest" of them was as much his ambition now as it had been to excel at making money, at playing ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... sun, the blue sky, the fleecy clouds, the red and purple of the colored hills; and felt his chest expand with the mounting glory of great effort. The muscles of his back and arms, strengthened by the long toil with his heavy axe, rippled and swelled and burned, and stretched like rubber cords, and strung tight like steel bands. The ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... studying Indian philosophy, but if once a person can get himself used to the technical terms and the general positions of the different Indian thinkers and their modes of expression, he can master the whole by patient toil. The technical terms, which are a source of difficulty at the beginning, are of inestimable value in helping us to understand the precise and definite meaning of the writers who used them, and the chances of misinterpreting or misunderstanding them are reduced to a minimum. It is I think well-known ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... transfusion of blood, to transfer from full veins of one to the empty veins which pine for him. John was to give his blood, as he is the more young and strong than me."—Here Arthur took my hand and wrung it hard in silence.—"But now you are here, you are more good than us, old or young, who toil much in the world of thought. Our nerves are not so calm and our blood ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker |
