"Plod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love! if man and woman was all, then when they came face to face with life they would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child; after that all lives ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The "shades of the prison-house" closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly watch ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... mile distant. He looked round—no sign of him of course; he was sailing away with a good start, fields ahead, in that contented ecstasy that stops not for friend or foe. There was nothing for it but to plod on to the forge, trusting to nick in later in the day. As the shoe had to be made, delay was inevitable. Dutton lit a cigar to while away the term of durance, and was disconsolately looking out at the door of the smithy, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... instructive, but the gradual falling away of our members makes evident to me how unlikely it is that any official commission will ever settle the claims of spiritualism. As Maxwell has said: 'It is a slow process, and he who cannot bring himself to plod patiently and to wait uncomplainingly for hours at a time will not go far.' I confess that the half-heartedness of our members has disappointed me. I told them at the outset not to expect entertainment, but they did. It is tiresome to sit night after night and get nothing ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... stray, Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains: They boast their peasant's pipes; but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few, amid the rural tribe, have time To number syllables and play with rhyme; Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? Or the great labours of the field degrade, With the new ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... went out again—to plod once more down the narrows to the base of Blow-me-Down Dick and search the vague light of the coast for the first sight of Doctor Rolfe. It was not time; he knew that. There would be hours of waiting. It would be dawn before a man could come by Thank-the-Lord and Mad Harry, if he ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... tea and talk, them home by King. The horses have an antiquated plod; The team is old, but not too old to balk If driven ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... one thing to jump a hook and ladder truck up Broadway to the relief of a fire-threatened block, and quite another to plod humbly along the curb from ash-can to ash-can. How Silver did hate those cans. Each one should have been for him a signal to stop. But it was not. In consequence, he was yanked to a halt every ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... philosophy, its reasonableness, its result, then I will obey. But the Spirit answers, "It is enough for thee, O child of man, to know Me. Canst thou not trust? Wilt thou not obey? And as thou obeyest thou shalt know. Take this path, plod along its difficult way, climb where it climbs, so shalt thou ascend the steep of obedience, and at each step a further horizon of the truth ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... and down the earth men pant and plod, March, laughing at the showers and days unsteady, And whispering secret orders to the sod, For Spring ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... Betty. "Of course she was very well prepared, and so her work here seems easy to her. Next year I hope that you and I won't have to plod along so." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... the mountains in the windless autumn Frost-clear, blue-nooned, apple-ripening days; Faintly fragrant in the farther valleys Smoke of many bonfires swells the haze; Fair-bound cattle Plod with lowing up ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... this short section of our story we shall cram two months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as they plod through it. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... my humble feet did plod, My bosom beating with the glow of song; And high-born fancy walk'd with me along, Treading the earth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... I saw my wife. And often, often throughout those terrible days her voice came to me, kindly and low and encouraging. When I felt I really could plod no farther through the snow, her voice would tell me not to lose heart, but to do my best, and all would be right in the end. And when, wearied beyond measure at night, I would fall into a heavy ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... so swiftly from us; But time through order may be won, I promise. So, Friend (my views to briefly sum), First, the collegium logicum. There will your mind be drilled and braced, As if in Spanish boots 'twere laced, And thus, to graver paces brought, 'Twill plod along the path of thought, Instead of shooting here and there, A will-o'-the-wisp in murky air. Days will be spent to bid you know, What once you did at a single blow, Like eating and drinking, free ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... log of man's fugitive castaway soul upon a doomed and derelict planet. The minds of all men plod the same rough roads of sense; and in spite of much knavery, all win at times "an ampler ether, a diviner air." The great poets, our masters, speak out of that clean freshness of perception. We hear ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... been may be again, and it is none the easier to resist because it is unusual. When a young girl, with hot impatience, feels she is not advancing as rapidly as she should, the wealthy "patron of Art" declares it is folly for her to plod along so slowly, that he will free her from all trammels, he will provide play, wardrobe, company, and show the world that she is already an artist. To her trembling objection that she could only accept such tremendous ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... interest itself only in the hurrying throngs of foot passengers and the ideas they suggested: Here am I—so ran his thoughts—here am I, tucked away comfortably while all those poor creatures have to plod along in the storm. I could afford to be sick. They can't. And what have I done to deserve this good fortune? Nothing. Worse than nothing. If I had made my career along the lines of what is honest and right and beneficial to my fellow men, I'd probably be plugging home under an umbrella—and to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... celebrate your father's exequies. But is that wicked Gaveston return'd? K. Edw. Ay, priest, and lives to be reveng'd on thee, That wert the only cause of his exile. Gav. 'Tis true; and, but for reverence of these robes, Thou shouldst not plod one foot beyond this place. Bish. of Cov. I did no more than I was bound to do: And, Gaveston, unless thou be reclaim'd, As then I did incense the parliament, So will I now, and thou shalt back to France. Gav. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... begun to transform the aristocracy, instead of the aristocracy transforming them. He knew that Veneering had carried off Twemlow in triumph. He very nearly knew what we all know to-day: that, so far from it being possible to plod along the progressive road with more votes and more Free Trade, England must either sharply become very much more democratic or as rapidly become very much ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... in that country. Travellers have to plod through the wilderness as they best can. It may not have occurred to my reader that it would be a difficult thing to walk for a day through snow so deep, that, at every step, the traveller would sink the whole length of his leg. The truth is, that ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... the nearest madhouse I could find. The whole business of love-making and marriage involves too much risk to a man who, like myself, must use his wits as a sword to carve his fortunes. I've fought my way up alone so far, and may as well remain a free lance. The wealthy, and those who are content to plod, can go through life with a woman hanging on their arm. Rich I shall never be, and I'll die before I'll plod. My place is in the midst of the world's arena, where the forces that shall make the future are contending, and I propose to be an appreciable ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... over the very persons, who, in the rough and tumble working-days of his younger manhood, would not so much as cast him a word or a look. He knew that the first thing necessary to attain for this purpose was money; and he had, by steady and constant plod, managed to enlarge and expand all his business concerns into various, important companies, which he set afloat in all quarters of the world,—with the satisfactory result that by the time his years had run well ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... which they eat and wear and use. Mill, in his treatise on Political Economy, gives us an account of this condition of things, as prevailing among the peasants in certain districts of Germany. "They labour early and late," he says, quoting from a German eulogist. "They plod on from day to day and from year to year, the most untirable of human animals." The German writer admires them as men who are their own masters. Mill holds them up as a shining and instructive example of the magic ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... to hospitality," he said; "we're always looking for the angel we are going to entertain unawares. Come along home with us, Lewis." And Lewis would plod up the hill and take his turn at the tin washbasin, and then file down the men's side of the stairs to the dining-room, where he and the three old brothers sat at one table, and Athalia and the eight sisters sat at the other table. After supper he had the chance to see ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... plod through the dull routine of an agent's work, or interest myself in the thatch of this tenant's bothy or the sails of that one's boat, when my mind was taken up by the chain of events which I have described, and was still busy seeking ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the party were to go to Count von Rappoltstein in the village of Rappolts, and this time Ulrich was not to plod along on foot, or he in a close baggage-wagon; no, he was to be allowed to ride a spirited horse. The escort would not consist of hired servants, but of picked men, and the count was going to join the train in person at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... some, who 'twixt me and the youth Have heard this discourse, whose sole aim is the truth, Will see and acknowledge, as homeward they plod, Each thing is arrang'd by the wisdom ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... win your way only the better in the world for this little experience. And as for me—I have been in Elysium for three months; and that is more than a host of your excellent prudent men can boast of, who plod on day after day only that they may continue plodding to the end of their lives. Adieu! my adorable—my angel that will now vanish from my sight!' And here, in spite of my struggles, he embraced me with the greatest ardour, and then, tearing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the world. It is very different from the inland New England manner; as different as the gentle, slow speech of the shore from the clipped nasals of the hill-country. The lounging native walk is not the heavy plod taught by the furrow, but has the lurch and the sway of the deck ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 4/3 step throughout, but with a difference. It is more of a plod, with less of stamping and much less lifting of the feet. Morris Off, danced in the traditional manner, gives one the impression of a company agreeably tired, but pleased and comfortable, having rollicked to their hearts' content, and to the ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... made any secret of the fact that to watch Derek bringing up Dorothea made her as fidgety as if she had seen him trimming hats, though she recognized the futility of trying to snatch the task from his hands in order to do it properly. The utmost she had been able to accomplish was to be allowed to plod daily from Gramercy Park to Fifth Avenue, in the hope of keeping bad from becoming worse; and even this insufficient oversight must be discontinued now, since Aunt Regina would monopolize her care. If she took ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... away and went back across the lawn, only to stop at the well in the garden, fill two buckets, and plod back to the firing-line again. He found plenty to do there; he helped Alixe, following her with his buckets where she passed among the wounded, the stained cross on her breast. Once a bullet struck ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... my covenant comes out, When every man gathers his fee; I'le take my blew blade all in my hand, And plod to the green ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men, The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes In the ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... he had immense endurance. He made several Alpine tours, and once (in 1860) he accompanied me in an ascent of the Jungfrau with a couple of guides. He was fresh from London; we had passed a night in a comfortless cave; the day was hot, and his weight made a plod through deep snow necessarily fatiguing. We reached the summit with considerable difficulty. On the descent he slipped above a certain famous bergschrund; the fall of so ponderous a body jerked me out of the icy steps, and our combined weight dragged down ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... healthy. 3. Man'tel-tree, shelf over a fireplace. Plod'ded, went slowly. 4. Heaving, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... us anywhere. I won't press you further to voice your suspicion—right now. In the meantime, I'll plod along with my investigation on the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... this pleasant ritual. She would plod all round the house, duster in hand, picking things up, giving them a little flick and putting them back again, patting treasures that she especially loved, sighing heavily with satisfaction at the pleasant sight of all her possessions ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... a short rest were welcome as the heat of the day came on, making the old dog plod wearily on with his tongue out, so that Stephen began to consider whether he should indeed have to be his bearer—a serious matter, for the creature at full length measured nearly as much as he did. They met hardly any one, and they and Spring were alike ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with wildness and its stealthy forms— Yea, rather with wild men, wild beasts and birds, Than in the sordid town that here may rise. For here I am a part of Nature's self, And not divorced from her like men who plod The weary streets of care in search of gain. And here I feel the friendship of the earth: Not the soft cloying tenderness of hand Which fain would satiate the hungry soul With household honey-combs and parloured sweets, But the strong friendship of ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... began again to plod up the treadmill it had labored on for so many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own mind, forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as if he had been speaking aloud. "Now, now here I am. What must I do? What ought I to do? There must be some answer if ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... leaping over and diving under each other, across everything, through anything, and sticking at nothing, until over lands where, fifty years ago, only carts and coaches used to creep and poor pedestrians were wont to plod, cataracts of travellers now flow almost without intermission night and day—the prince rolling in his royal bedroom from palace to palace; the huntsman flying to the field, with his groom and horse in ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... cried triumphantly. "He amuses me that way sometimes, and my fascinations never disturb the even tenor of his thoughts: he will plod on with his foolish old mathematics with my head on his shoulder. There! I oughtn't to have said that," she added with a little grimace. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Nello many a morning; but Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts, and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round feet had left their print upon ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... slow decay, A hundred codes and systems proven vain Lie hearsed in sand upon the heaving plain, Memorial ruins mounded, still and gray; And we who plod the barren waste to-day Another code evolving, think to gain Surcease of man's inheritance of pain And mold a state ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... to plod, step by step, over these thousands of pages, if only to trace the hand of God touching the springs of human action all over the world in ways of His own, and at times of great need, and adjusting the amount and the exact ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... so, a motley, unattractive throng, They toil and plod, Dead to the holy ecstasies of song, To ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... found a little mutton; but, contrary to Michael's hopes, there was not a single beast of burden in the country; horses, camels—all had been either killed or carried off. They must still continue to plod on across this weary ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... Claus burst into tears, Then calmed again: "My reindeer fleet, I gave them up: on foot, my dears, I now must plod through snow ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... exercise healthful and good, For tuning the nerves and digesting the food— Graceful gymnastics for stirring the blood Without the gross purpose of use Ant, let me tell you 'tis not a la mode To plod like a pilgrim, and carry a load, Perverting the limbs that for grace were bestowed, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... there is not enough mental action in it, though there does exist an indisputable tenacity which is appalling. How they lack that infectious ardeur, that splendid elan which characterizes every little poilu! But they just plod on like a great machine, lacking intelligence in its parts, each vital, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... ways that so even are made, The pedestrian traveler bemoans; He no more the green carpet may tread, But plod on, 'midst the gravel and stones: And if he would rest with his load, No green hillock presents him a seat, But long, hard, tiresome sameness of road Fatigues both the eye ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... each nationality was enjoying itself in its own peculiar fashion—all except the Chinese, who were, as usual, hard at work in their little dens. No recreation for this people. Work, work, work! They never play, never smile, but plod away, from early morning until late at night. The Chinaman's objection to giving his creditor in New York a note was because it "walkee, walkee alle timee; walkee, walkee, no sleepee." They seem to me to ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... should have been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few rivals in this laborious and unattractive pursuit, he soon began to be regarded as an oracle on questions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stretching uninterruptedly from the Stelvio to the Isonzo. In the mountain warfare that had to be undertaken amidst the terrific heights, progress by either side could all but be reckoned by yards. The convoys had to plod up and down precipitous mountain sides. Instead of the fighting taking place in valleys and passes, as many thought, the positions and even the trenches were revealed as frequently on the very summits of almost inaccessible peaks and crags, often above the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Tyndall in the 'Nineteenth Century,' for last November, "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and they are sometimes intolerant of those that can. They are formed to plod meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realize the mental act—the act of inspiration it might well be called—by which a man of genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... them obdurate; and so, depressed and crestfallen, Donald returned to Kildun and urged the Prince to instant flight. But not even the fear of immediate capture could induce the three wearied men to set out again in the wet and darkness to plod over rocks and morasses with no certain goal. So Donald had to control his fears ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... out, plod, plod, plodding through the woods. But Lox turned himself into a coon again, and scampered from tree to tree, and got first to the village. When he told the people the plague was coming, and they asked how they could avoid it, he said: "When I have spoken my charm, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... study?—assign him lessons, by topics if possible, allow him to do what he can in the allotted time, and then prohibit the appropriation of an additional minute? Why should a dull scholar, or one who has but little taste or talent for a given study, be required to plod twelve, sixteen, or eighteen hours at unwelcome tasks, while another more favored disposes of his work in six? Why should a pupil, who is laboring under some mental or physical debility, be required to apply his ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... been indefatigable in my service, and writes with such zeal for my interests, and such warmth of sorrow for my sufferings, as if he wrote with fire and tears. God bless him! I wish above all things to realize a school. I could be well content to plod from morning to night, if only I could secure a secure competence; but to toil incessantly for uncertain bread weighs me ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... of excellence, of such as have in them the makings of striking and eloquent preachers. Dull and stupid fellows never deviate into the extravagance and absurdity which I specially understand by Veal. They plod along in a humdrum manner; there is no poetry in their soul,—none of those ambitious stirrings which lead the man who has in him the true spark of genius to try for grand things and incur severe and ignominious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... "Well, plod along," replied Johnson. "Little boats keep near the shore. But, let me tell you, my young friend, your mind is rather too limited for a merchant of this day. There is Mortimer, who began business about the ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... numerous. We sometimes have at Talladega applications from fifty such in a single year. It is often pitiful to hear their appeals to be admitted to school, when denial is forced upon them, since there is neither room nor money. Still, there are many who secure books, seek help, and blindly plod on. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various
... though, plod, plod, till the loose drift was passed as if in a nightmare, and he felt as if his legs were moving mechanically. How long this had been going on he could not tell, for at last the horror of the pursuit had ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... had hold of my hand when I could spare it which was generally only when I read to her, for of course she and me had our bits of needlework to plod at and neither of us was very handy at those little things, though I am still rather proud of my share in them too considering. And though she took to all I read to her, I used to fancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all to His gentle compassion for us poor ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... the slackest of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a spark of the genuine, enthusiastic ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the poet-scholars is due in great part to their own corruption: their type is continually arising again; Goethe and Leopardi, for example, belong to it. Behind them plod the philologist-savants. This type has its origin in the sophisticism of the ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in any vocation requiring quick thought and quick decision. You like to reason things out; you want to know why before you go ahead. Your success lies in lines which require slow, thoughtful, careful reasoning, mature deliberation, and an ability to plod diligently through masses of facts ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the whole of knowledge. Quiet and its charms, this homelike garden of still work, make their appeal in vain. "God has called me," he cries; "these burning desires to know all are his voice in me; and if I stay and plod on here, I reject his call who has marked me from mankind. I must reach pure knowledge. That is my only aim, my ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... hard. Man wanted to tear down, not build up. Cynical. Oh, I do hope I'm not a sentimentalist. But I can't see any use in this high-art stuff that doesn't encourage us day-laborers to plod on." ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... betrays his hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before. If there is no track in the snow a man goes ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... stun me at once, I might perhaps hint at the possibility that this was to be attributed almost as much to the narrowness of his reading on this subject as to the extent of mine. There are men here who are mere mathematical blocks; who plod on their eight hours a day to the honours of the Senate House; who leave the groves which witnessed the musings of Milton, of Bacon, and of Gray, without one liberal idea or elegant image, and carry with them into the world minds contracted ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... students the piano is only a barrier—a wall between them and music. Their thoughts never seem to penetrate farther than the keys. They plod along for years apparently striving to make piano-playing machines of themselves, and in the end result in becoming something ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... In 1588 her majesty, desirous perhaps of encouraging a more entire devotion of his talents to the study of the law, distinguished him by the title of her Counsel extraordinary,—an office of little emolument, though valuable as an introduction to practice. But the genius of Bacon disdained to plod in the trammels of a laborious profession; he felt that it was given him for higher and larger purposes: yet perceiving, at the same time, that the narrowness of his circumstances would prove an insuperable bar to his ambition of becoming, as he once beautifully expressed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... done, however, but to plod along in the familiar rut. He must stomach aspersions and injuries, behave as if nothing had happened. His first hot intention of turning his back on Schwarz soon yielded to more worldly-wise thoughts. Every ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the contest, and said discontentedly,— "Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... instance, we can not highly praise the conduct of the narrative. It is full of improbable combinations. Persons and scenes are brought into juxtaposition, in a manner to violate every principle of vraisemblance. The effect is so to blunt the interest of the story, that we can hardly plod on ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the violin, and not one of the lads can, though they want to do it very much. But, best of all, Nat, you really care to learn something, and that is half the battle. It seems hard at first, and you will feel discouraged, but plod away, and things will get easier and easier as you ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... begun, And bear it with me, as the rushing wind Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, O'er which all heavily the journeying years Plod the last sands of ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... roles were thus curiously reversed. The Emperor reasoned as a sound patriot and a good strategist. MacMahon must have felt the same promptings, but obedience to the Empress and the Ministry, or chivalrous regard for Bazaine, overcame his scruples. He decided to plod on ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... knot with a sword. If that is the way of it, dear boy, you must be an Alexander, or to the hulks you go. For my own part, I am quite contented with the little lot I mean to make for myself somewhere in the country, when I mean to step into my father's shoes and plod along. A man's affections are just as fully satisfied by the smallest circle as they can be by a vast circumference. Napoleon himself could only dine once, and he could not have more mistresses than ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... meet Crews and Jordan and Saxon. They're very dissimilar, but they've got something like the unifying motive of a monastery, and they're willing to serve and to plod and to be patient. I fight with Saxon because he's a pacifist, but like all pacifists he's a very pugnacious person, and he can get frightfully angry, but it's pitiful to see him when he's been angry, because he's so ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... idea of what commercial failure means to English merchants—utter ruin, present and prospective, and obliterating all the successful past; how little chance they have of ever getting up again; how they feel that they must plod heavily onward under a burden of disgrace—poor men and hopeless men and men forever ashamed. I doubt whether any future prosperity (which is unlikely enough to come to them) could ever compensate them for this misfortune, or make them, to their own consciousness, the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod— Yea, sodden laborers dumb; To brains overplied, to feet that plod, In solace of the Truce of ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... dismal aftermath of battle seems to be concentrated along the highways, which are punctuated by dead men and dead horses thrown into the gutters to be out of the way. Long trains of horse-drawn wagons plod wearily along toward the front; the towns through which they pass are battered and nearly deserted; the poplars which line the roads are broken and gashed by shells, and the fields on either side are marred by shell craters and by the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... the Grundyite, who says "Shocking," "Not nice," when human nature writhes in its agony and cries aloud for that drop of water which he, the virtuous conformist, refuses. He goes to the flat-footed and broad-waisted; those who plod along the beaten highway, and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, neither to the hills nor the hollows. But he speaks a foreign language, and they heed him not. The iron-bound care nought. Does that cry of suffering raise the price of stocks or lower that of grain? Tush! let it ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... some excuse for the more vigorous sports," Evelyn maintained. "Of course, you can't eliminate a certain amount of cruelty; but, admitting that, isn't it just as well that men who live in a luxurious civilization should be willing to plod through miles of heather after grouse, risk their limbs on horseback, or spend hours in cold water? These are bracing things; they imply some moral discipline. It really can't be nice to ride at a dangerous fence, or to flounder down a rapid after an otter when you're ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... roguishness there was much shyness. The two would plod along the road together in a sort of blissful agony of embarrassment. The neighbors were right in their surmise that there was no definite understanding between them. But the thing was settled in the minds of both. Once Ben had said: "Pop says ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... which they are associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds of ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... plod away, Step by step in mouldering moss; Thick branches bar the day Over languid streams that cross Softly, slowly, with a sound Like a smothered weeping, In their ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... before him: another one while gets ground, another while loseth it again, either in the beginning, or middle of his race, and so proceedes vnegally sometimes swift somtimes slow as his breath or forces serue him: another sort there be that plod on, & will neuer change their pace, whether they win or lose the game: in this maner doth the Greeke dactilus begin slowly and keepe on swifter till th'end, for his race being deuided into three parts, he spends one, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... am sure by this time that "want of cavalry" must be written on poor Methuen's. So you must figure to yourself a small army, an army almost all infantry, and an army tied to the railway on this march; and if we bring off no brilliant strategy, but simply plod on and take hard knocks, well, what else, I ask, under the circumstances can ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... next day the doubly bereaved man started on his lonely journey back to the Dakota claim, back to an empty house, with a gnawing pain in his heart and a constriction like an iron band about his throat; back to his broad fields to plod to and fro alone. ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... no, he was not visible anywhere; neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving, consequently he was doing the same. This argued that he had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it with some peasant. There was nothing for us to do but plod along—and this we did. At the end of three hours we were still plodding. This was not only mysterious, but exasperating. And very fatiguing, too; for we had tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide, but had only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the steers as they plod Are pounding to powder the hot prairie sod; And it seems as the dust makes you dizzy and sick That we'll never reach noon and the cool, shady creek. But tie up your kerchief and ply up your nag; Come dry up your grumbles ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century for their first great ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... write my Life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he give me credit for being a plodder he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... to see a skillful horse plod through a stream, probing with his eyes the depth, and stretching his head before his feet, and at every step he whisks his tail to tell himself that he is right. In my agony of observation all these things I heeded, but only knew that I had done so when I thought long ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... snow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the joy and blood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now one man to the fore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a case of stubborn, unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had to be pressed down, and the wide-webbed shoe, under a man's weight, sank a full dozen inches into the soft surface. Snowshoe work, under such conditions, called for the use of muscles other than those used in ordinary walking. From step ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... could hardly see my hand before my face. I never saw such ugly shadows, and once I had to stop and get breath before I could make up my mind to pass a clump of old mulberry bushes. Once in a while I heard a crackle behind me like a footstep, but I didn't look back. I knew my only chance was to plod ahead, no matter how my heart thumped or my knees shook. I thought of everything I could to bolster me up—of dear old Aunt Pam and poor little Maggie. But the sound of the waves on the beach was awful! ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... influence there had been a change of the olden customs, and instead of the long chapter, through which Uncle Ephraim used to plod so wearily, there was now read the Evening Psalms, Aunt Betsy herself joining in the reading, which she mentally classed with the "quirks," but confessed to herself that it "was most ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... with wings! Hear'st thou, Pisanio? He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs May plod it in a week, why may not I Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio, (Who long'st like me, to see thy lord—who long'st— O let me bate, but not like me—yet long'st, But in a fainter kind—O not like me, For mine's ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve. There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod on, through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I heard him whisper to the three countrymen, "How do you suppose a fellow feels shut up in the cage with ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could be. The snow had turned to cold dull rain, which was far more depressing. I wished the mineral springs at Borsek had never been discovered. It was too late to turn back to St Miklos, where I devoutly wished myself, so I had nothing to do but plod on with my waterproof tight round me. It was impossible to go fast, for in places the mud was very deep and the road was ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... right. Rather odd place for us to meet, isn't it? But, you see, you've had the advantage all these years; you knew whom you were running away from, while I was compelled to plod along in the dark. But I 've caught up just the same, if it has been a ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... into towers, domes, and pinnacles of gleaming metal,—and weaves for every distant summit a robe of variegated light, such as the "Delectable Mountains" must have worn for the rapt gaze of weary "Christian;"—and another to plod over the same forty miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing but the dim, grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, and you care not where,—with no better employment than to look at your watch, and wonder when you shall ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... with rhyme, Her hair unfilleted, her feet unshod, Naked and not ashamed demands of God No covering for her beauty's youth or prime. Clad but with thought, as space is clad with time, Or both with worlds where man and angels plod, She runs in joy, magnificently odd, Ruggedly wreathed with flowers of every clime. And you to whom her breath is sweeter far Than choicest attar of the martyred rose More deeply feel mortality's unrest Than poets born beneath a happier star, Because the pathos of your ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... over, damned my impudence, and rode off with never another word, leaving me to stare after him mute with indignation and surprise; and so to plod on, racking my brain to discover in what particular I could ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... to onlearn a sight, as the pinters move on towards four. Clasping hands with fellow toilers and (hard task) onclaspin' 'em, as they go up above us, or down nearer the foot. Havin' little 'intermissions' of enjoyment, soon over. But we plod on, on, and bimeby — and sometimes we think we do not care how soon — the teacher will say to us, that we can be 'dismissed.' And then we shall drop out of the rank of learners, and the school will go without us, jest as busily, jest as cheerfully, jest ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... lanes of the five thousand level saw them plod slowly along, while faster and better-groomed ships slipped smoothly past; then the red hull rose to Level Twelve and swung out upon the great circle course that would bear them more nearly in the direction of the destination Chet had given. There were free levels higher up in which ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... foxes pleased may hide 'Mong the grass, where they abide. We, in box carts slowly borne, On the great roads plod ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... the staff of Peaceful Moments to arrive at the office on the following morning was Master Maloney. This sounds like the beginning of a "Plod and Punctuality," or "How Great Fortunes have been Made" story, but, as a matter of fact, Master Maloney, like Mr. Bat Jarvis, was no early bird. Larks who rose in his neighborhood, rose alone. He did ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... city of the soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferings? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... that he was about to be subjected to fresh persecution, and the agility of his enemies could not keep pace with his. He furnished the House with an itemized list—which it took the Committee days to plod through—of his bookkeepers, clerks, porters, and charwomen, and the varying emoluments they had received since the Department was organized, three years and a half before. He further informed them that the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... have been able to transfer into my English that sweep and majesty of verse which is the charm of Sanscrit, and which often sustains and elevates the simplest narration and the plainest ideas. Without the support of those sustaining wings, my poor narration must often plod through the dust; and I can only ask for the indulgence of the reader, which every translator of poetry from a foreign language can with reason ask, if the story as told in the translation is sometimes but a plain, simple, ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... North toward Charing Cross the other evening, when a lady asked to be taken up. The stage was full; the law forbids the taking of more than twelve passengers inside; a remonstrance was instantly raised by one or more of the passengers against taking her; and she was left to plod her weary way as she could. I think that could not have happened in New-York. In another instance, a stage-full of passengers started eastward from Hyde Park, one of the women having a basket of unwashed clothes on her knee. It was certainly inconvenient, and not absolutely inoffensive; ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... washing up its own tin dinner service, while one man in each division stood guard. Special duties were assigned to the "extras," and Will's was to ride up and down the train delivering orders. This suited his fancy to a dot, for the oxen were snail-gaited, and to plod at their heels was dull work. Kipling tells us it is quite impossible to "hustle the East"; it were as easy, as Will discovered, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... if it were merely re-learning some favorite study, momentarily forgotten. And in the case of the disliked study, every step is attended with toil. In some cases the child seems to learn every branch with the minimum effort, and with practically no effort; while in other cases the child has to plod wearily over every branch, as if breaking entirely new ground. And this continues into after life, when the adult finds this thing or that thing into which he naturally fits as if it were made for him, the knowledge ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... useful or willing animal than the Mule. And perhaps there is no other animal so much abused, or so little cared for. Popular opinion of his nature has not been favorable; and he has had to plod and work through life against the prejudices of the ignorant. Still, he has been the great friend of man, in war and in peace serving him well and faithfully. If he could tell man what he most needed ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley |
