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Laborious   Listen
adjective
Laborious  adj.  
1.
Requiring labor, perseverance, or sacrifices; toilsome; tiresome. "Dost thou love watchings, abstinence, or toil, Laborious virtues all? Learn these from Cato."
2.
Devoted to labor; diligent; industrious; as, a laborious mechanic.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Laborious" Quotes from Famous Books



... will witness, with shuddering, among Bagford's immense collection of Title Pages, in the Museum, the frontispieces of the Complutensian Polyglot, and Chauncy's History of Hertfordshire, torn out to illustrate a History of Printing. His enthusiasm, however, carried him through a great deal of laborious toil; and he supplied, in some measure, by this qualification, the want of other attainments. His whole mind was devoted to book-hunting; and his integrity and diligence probably made his employers overlook his many failings. His hand-writing is scarcely legible, and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... the hope of discovering gold mines was the principal cause of the first expedition sent to Africa by the Royal Adventurers in December, 1660. When this scheme to mine gold was abandoned the company's agents traded for gold which was brought down from the interior or washed out by the slow and laborious toil of the natives. The other African products, especially elephants' teeth, were brought to London where they sold quite readily ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... to the problem of technique, that professional equipment for his task as a sermonizer and public speaker which is partly a native endowment and partly a laborious acquisition on the preacher's part. Such was President Tucker's course on The Making and Unmaking of the Preacher. Certainly observations on professional technique, especially if they should include, like his, acute discussion of the speaker's obligation to honesty of thinking, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... different times to make the production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or, rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the Literature of our Country. This has, indeed, been the aim of all my endeavours in Poetry, which, you know, have been sufficiently laborious to prove that I deem the Art not lightly to be approached; and that the attainment of excellence in it, may laudably be made the principal object of intellectual pursuit by any man, who, with reasonable consideration of circumstances, has faith in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... improve their land. Others have come with ships freighted with a large quantity of cattle. They have cleared away the forest, enclosed their plantations, and brought them under the plough, so as to be an ornament to the country and a profit to the proprietors after their long and laborious toil. The whole of these now lie in ashes through a foolish hankering ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... minute the pupils of the eyes were dilated and the respiration was laborious. " 2-1/2 do. vomiting and staggering. " 4 do. evacuations; the cries continued, the voice hoarse and unnatural. " 5 do. repeated attempts at vomiting. " 7 do. respiration ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey

... of the Gospel. He lives in Winnsboro, S. C., at the corner of Moultrie and Crawford Streets. He is duly certified and registered as an old age pensioner and draws a pension of $8.00 per month from the Welfare Board of South Carolina. He is incapable of laborious exercise. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... and the tide favouring me, I advanced so far that I could just hold up my chin and feel the ground. I rested two or three minutes, and then gave the boat another shove, and so on, till the sea was no higher than my arm-pits; and now, the most laborious part being over, I took out my other cables, which were stowed in one of the ships, and fastened them first to the boat, and then to nine of the vessels which attended me; the wind being favourable, the seamen towed, and I shoved, until ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... the history of nineteenth-century music. His audacious power dominates all his age; and in the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not see what a poor figure the young Wagner cut at that time, working away in laborious and self-satisfied mediocrity? But Wagner soon made up for lost ground; for he knew what he wanted, and ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... supposition than that the latter states were settled and are inhabited almost exclusively by those who carried with them the violence, impatience of legal restraint, love of domination, fiery passions, idleness, and contempt of laborious industry, which are engendered by habits of despotic sway, acquired by residence in communities where such manners, habits and passions, mould society into their own image.[43] The practical workings of this cause are powerfully ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the paloverdi, occatilla, cholla, opunti, through which he edged his laborious way, all offered an almost animate, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... wrote. "I wish that those who will read my book could know how unwillingly I took it in hand, that I might acquit myself of folly and arrogance in completing what Caesar had begun. For all agree; that the elegance of these commentaries surpasses the most laborious efforts of other writers. They were edited to prevent historians being ignorant of matters of such high importance. But so highly are they approved by the universal verdict that the power of amplifying them has been rather taken away than bestowed ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... disgust what was rank and overblown. Himself a sardonic humorist, he could enjoy the bubbling mirth with which she discovered comedy in the objects of their common derision. Himself a hoplite in study, laborious, without sense of proportion, he could look on and smile while she, a woman, walked more nimbly, picking and ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... indignant heart. Mother and sister in the past—wife and Nettie now—to think how Fred had secured for himself such perpetual ministrations, by neglecting all the duties of life! No wonder an indignant pang transfixed the lonely bosom of the virtuous doctor, solitary and unconsoled as he was. His laborious days knew no such solace. And as he fretted and pondered, no visions of Bessie Christian perplexed his thoughts. He had forgotten that young woman. All his mind was fully occupied chafing at the sacrifice of Nettie. He was ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... our way, with not a little laborious effort, to the farther end of the lake, across which a red-shafted flicker would occasionally wing its galloping flight; thence through a wilderness of large rocks and fallen pines to a beckoning ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... saying that it is Mr. Darwin's misfortune to know more about the question he has taken up than any man living. Personally and practically exercised in zoology, in minute anatomy, in geology; a student of geographical distribution, not on maps and in museums only, but by long voyages and laborious collection; having largely advanced each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately registered facts upon which the author of the 'Origin of Species' ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... explanation of this affectionate effusion, our lordly dedicator subjoins a note to inform us that Lord CARLISLE'S works are splendidly bound, but that "the rest is all but leather and prunella," and a little after, in a very laborious note, in which he endeavours to defend his consistency, he out-Herods Herod, or to speak more forcibly, out-Byrons Byron, in the virulence of his invective against "his guardian and relative, to whom he dedicated his volume ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... be effected was not so clear. For months Gallatin had been toiling over masses of statistics, trying to reconcile a policy of reduced taxation, to satisfy the demands of the party, with the discharge of the public debt. By laborious calculation he found that if $7,300,000 were set aside each year, the debt—principal and interest—could be discharged within sixteen years. But if the unpopular excise were abandoned, where was the needed revenue ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... rebutting these criticisms in detail. Mr. Bradley in particular can be taken care of by Mr. Schiller. He repeatedly confesses himself unable to comprehend Schiller's views, he evidently has not sought to do so sympathetically, and I deeply regret to say that his laborious article throws, for my mind, absolutely no useful light upon the subject. It seems to me on the whole an IGNORATIO ELENCHI, and I feel free to disregard ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... small collection: but to the most enlightened minds, new combinations may be suggested by a new arrangement of materials, and the curiosity and enthusiasm of the inexperienced may be awakened, and excited to accurate and laborious researches. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... my dear friend, I am expecting the fleet to put to sea; every day, hour, and moment: and you may rely that, if it is in the power of man to get at them, it shall be done; and, I am sure, that all my brethren look to that day, as the finish of our laborious cruise. The event, no man can say exactly; but I must think,—or render great injustice to those under me, that let the battle be when it may, it will never have been surpassed! My shattered frame, if I survive that day, will require rest, and that is all I shall ask for. If I fall on ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... his brother Magnus having soon died, bore rule in Norway for some five-and-twenty years. Rule soft and gentle, not like his father's, and inclining rather to improvement in the arts and elegancies than to anything severe or dangerously laborious. A slim-built, witty-talking, popular and pretty man, with uncommonly bright eyes, and hair like floss silk: they called him Olaf Kyrre ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... life Offered me to the muses. Oh, cut off Untimely! when thy reason in its strength, Ripened by years of toil and studious search, And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught Thy hand to practise best the lenient art To which thou gavest thy laborious days, And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou Shalt not, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... shop-boys, hair-dressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the stage, (who, in such a commonwealth as yours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the sober incapacity of dull, uninstructed men, of useful, but laborious occupations,) can never be put into any shape that must not be both disgraceful and destructive. The whole of this project, even if it were what it pretends to be, and was not in reality the dominion, through that disgraceful medium, of half a dozen, or perhaps fewer, intriguing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... are only the frame for a witticism. On the other hand, German humor generally shows no sense of measure, no instinctive tact; it is either floundering and clumsy as the antics of a leviathan, or laborious and interminable as a Lapland day, in which one loses all hope that the stars and quiet will ever come. For this reason, Jean Paul, the greatest of German humorists, is unendurable to many readers, and frequently tiresome to all. Here, as ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... by Juan de Barros of the abandonment of the Malayan city of Singapura and foundation of Malacca differs materially from the above; and although the authority of a writer, who collected his materials in Lisbon, cannot be put in competition with that of Valentyn, who passed a long and laborious life amongst the people, and quotes the native historians, I shall give an abstract of his relation, from the sixth book of the second Decade. "At the period when Cingapura flourished its king was named Sangesinga; and in the neighbouring island of Java reigned Pararisa, upon whose death the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... towering o'er the rest, Of all the other books the best. Old Father Baxter's pious call To the unconverted all. William Penn's laborious writing, And the books 'gainst Christians fighting. Some books of sound theology, Robert Barclay's "Apology." Dyer's "Religion of the Shakers," Clarkson's also of the Quakers. Many more books I have read through— Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" too. A book concerning John's baptism, ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... their rival chiefs, or in those between the Irish and English, or Anglo-Irish, the result was the same to them. If they were not robbed or burned out to-day, they might be to-morrow; and under such circumstances to what purpose could they be expected to exercise industrious or laborious habits, when they knew that they might go to bed in comfort at night, and rise up beggars in the morning? It is easy to see, then, that it was the lawless and turbulent state of the country that reduced them to such a mode of life, and drove them to make reprisals upon the property of others, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... modern in his unalloyed sympathy with the impoverished victims of the social order. It was something new for German poetry to find inspiration in the wrath of a beggar who cannot pay his dog-tax, the sardonic piety of an old widow reduced to penury by the exactions of the "gracious prince," or the laborious resignation of an aged washerwoman.—The Silesian nobleman JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF (1788-1857), Prussian officer and civil official, was a consistent conservative in his political attitude, a pious Catholic, and a romanticist ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... contemporary; an able, sedulous, and learned bibliographer. His whole soul was in his library; and he never spared the most painful toil in order to accomplish the various objects of his inquiry.[132] And here, my dear friends, let me pay a proper tribute of respect to the memory of an eminently learned and laborious scholar and bibliographer: I mean JOHN ALBERT FABRICIUS. His labours[133] shed a lustre upon the scholastic annals of the 18th century; for he opened, as it were, the gates of literature to the inquiring student; inviting ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... the knowledge of the true number of people, as a principle, the whole scope and use of the keeping bills of births and burials is impaired; wherefore by laborious conjectures and calculations to deduce the number of people from the births and burials, may be ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... here related were only extracted by the most persistent and laborious cross-examination of the Government, who employed all the familiar arts of official evasion in order to conceal the truth from the country. Day after day Ministers were bombarded by batteries of questions in ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... of our domestic animals will probably forever remain vague. But I may here state that, looking to the domestic dogs of the whole world, I have, after a laborious collection of all known facts, come to the conclusion that several wild species of Canidae have been tamed, and that their blood, in some cases mingled together, flows in the veins of our domestic breeds. In regard to sheep and goats ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... mossy boulders which upheave their scintillating shoulders to the sun, or of the long shallow dells where a tangle of blackberry-bushes hedges about a sky-reflecting pool. I have encamped over against a plain, brown hillside, which, with laborious patience, I am transferring to canvas; and as we have now had the same clear sky for several days, I have almost finished quite a satisfactory little study. I go forth immediately after breakfast. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... assumed the management of the "London Magazine" they engaged no editor. They were tolerably liberal paymasters; the remuneration for each page of prose (not very laborious) being, if the writer were a person of repute or ability, one pound; and for each page of verse, two pounds. Charles Lamb received (very fitly) for his brief and charming Essays, two or three times the amount of the other writers. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... not even remember how she had regained her liberty, so prompt and easy had been her conquest of that husband, cold, sickly, selfish, and polite; of that man dried up and yellowed by business and politics, laborious, ambitious, and commonplace. He liked women only through vanity, and he never had loved his wife. The separation had been frank and complete. And since then, strangers to each other, they felt a tacit, mutual gratitude for their freedom. She would ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... a powerful anti-tumor effect, is very perishable, is laborious to make, but is worth the effort because it contains powerful enzymes and nutrients that help detoxify and heal when taken internally or applied to the skin. As a last resort with dying patients ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... important that every man's assent to them, or dissent from them, had to be recorded, and then the West was introduced to the results of Eastern controversy, which it generally acquiesced in without interest and without resistance. Meanwhile, one department of inquiry, difficult enough for the most laborious, deep enough for the most subtle, delicate enough for the most refined, had never lost its attractions for the educated classes of the Western provinces. To the cultivated citizen of Africa, of Spain, of Gaul and ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Luke, if contrast brings any blessing with it," said Edwin Jack, "you ought to revive here, for you have splendid fresh country air—by night as well as by day—a fine laborious occupation with pick and shovel, a healthy appetite, wet feet continually, mud up to the eyes, and gold to your heart's content. What ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... too much wit for a comic poet. These people must have rather a strange notion of wit. The truth is, that Congreve and the other writers above mentioned possess in general much less comic than epigrammatic wit. The latter often degenerates into a laborious straining for wit. Steele's dialogue, for example, puts us too much in mind of the letters in the Spectator. Farquhar's plots seem to me to be ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... fallacies, but assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... wisdom will alone make the poet. Horace was again endowed by nature with another and rarer and equally necessary gift,—the sense of artistic expression. It would be waste of time to debate how much he owed to native genius, how much to his own laborious patience, and how much to the good fortune of generous human contact. He is surely to be classed among examples of what for want of a better term we call inspiration. The poet is born. We may account for the inspiration of Horace by supposing ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... subject. He missed a number of little pleasures and conveniences, which he had scarcely noticed, whilst they had every day presented themselves as matters of course. The occupation of digging was laborious, but it afforded no exercise to his mind, and he felt most severely the want of Henry's agreeable conversation; he had no one to whom he could now talk of the water-cresses of Cyrus, or the black ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... him by which he can change the essential character and determined trend of his life. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. All the effort that the most devoted and laborious of men might give to the culture of a hedgerow of thorns would not succeed in producing one grape. Though men spent life and fortune in cultivating a field of thistles, they would not gather a single ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... almost certain mark of Anglo-Saxon artists. With his little varnished shoes, his fine black socks, spotted with red, his coat of quilted silk, his light cravat and the purity of his linen, he had the air of a gentleman who applied himself to an amateur effort, and not of the patient and laborious worker he really was. But his canvases and his studies, hung on all sides, among tapestries, arms and trinkets, bespoke patient labor. It was the history of an energy bent upon the acquisition of a personality constantly fleeting. Maitland manifested in a supreme degree the trait common to almost ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... proudly, "I will be a poet." Hereupon Artemisia and Serventius laughed, and informed me that the profession of a poet, if such it might be termed, was the most laborious, thankless, and ill requited of any, and that to be a poet, was in fact little better than being an honourable mendicant. The Church and the Bar were mentioned, but as I expressed a decided antipathy to them, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... water; and they were not even able to make it into a warm mess by heating the water, as they had no vessels; moreover, when their hard day's work was at an end, they had but a handful of straw on which to lie. These privations, added to their hard and laborious life, brought on an endemic fever, which incapacitated for work many soldiers and labourers, numbers of whom had to be dismissed. Very soon the unfortunate men, who were almost as much to be pitied as those whom they were persecuting, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... soon From earth's dark arms and naked barbarous breast. Too soon, too soon, we leave the golden feast, Fetter the dancing limbs and pluck the crown Of roses from the dreaming brow. We pass Our lives in most laborious idleness. For we have lost the meaning of the world; We have gone out into the night too soon; We have mistaken all the means of grace And over-rated our small power to learn. And the years move so ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... in Mr. Shaw, for all his plays are prefaces: Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry. But that Mr. Davidson (who can write excellent poetry) should write instead laborious metaphysics in defence of this doctrine of will, does show that the doctrine of will has taken hold of men. Even Mr. H.G.Wells has half spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, "I FEEL this curve is right," ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... could be more frequently brought face to face with the living heroes of the law, the zeal for careful work and laborious study would be fanned almost into enthusiasm. To follow the complex details of a difficult branch of law, from the lips of an eminent counsellor who has but lately exhausted the subject in an important case ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... imply a sort of cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the philosophic statesman of Athens, that his countrymen achieved by the mere force of nature and the love of the noble and the great, what other people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all who came among them were submitted to the same method of education. We have traced our student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of the schools. No awful arch, no window of many-coloured lights marks the seats of learning ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... nature cannot he combated, but must be wisely directed. Hence, modern civilisation deals lees than preceding ages in abstractions; and in its Intellectual development, accepts religion as a starting point in the laborious but open walk, which leads to human ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... much in need of rest after their laborious day's work, and it may be imagined how welcome the flaming fire close to the tents was to ourselves, and how heartily we enjoyed the evening meal which we found ready laid for us, and the repose upon the soft outspread carpets. All around us were encamped troops of Bedouins, the song of whose ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator

... part of the system requires unpleasant work. Most are willing to feel, but they would feel without principle; and if they act, they would act only from the impulse of the moment. They shrink from introspection; from working on their own hearts through the laborious operations of the intellect, so that the affections may be at once both right and rational. But if we would see the gorgeous palace towering in symmetry and grandeur, unpleasant work must be done; the rubbish must be removed, the soil excavated, ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... bumped and clanked, and the train came to a laborious stop with the outermost cars beneath the lofty latticed framework of the main traveller. At once the electro-magnetic cranes began to descend, ready to swing off whole carloads of steel in their ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... liberals supported this demand. At a banquet at Pinerolo, Audifredi, an advocate, said, "Twenty thousand of our brothers stand, so to speak, enclosed and isolated between two torrents in our delightful valleys. They are honourable, laborious, strong in mind and body, equal to other Italians. With enlightened dispositions and by severe sacrifices they have educated their children, but oppressed by burdens they do not enjoy the rights of other citizens. To us it belongs, as their nearest brethren, to vote that by an universal brotherhood ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... prevented all work, settling down with her friends in the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming more dismal. He rushed off to Paris, hired a small room at an hotel, tried to fancy he was a bachelor; but suddenly ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth Avenue line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle dropped him at old Catherine's. The sitting-room window on the ground floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she caught sight of Archer; ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... cold, the garments he had retained clinging about him. Some one, however, ran down towards him with a vessel containing a draught of sour milk. This revived him enough to see clearly and follow his guides. After walking a distance, which appeared to him most laborious, he found himself entering a sort of village, and was ushered through a courtyard into a kind of room. In the centre a fire was burning; several figures were busy round it, and in another moment he perceived ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... strange that so delicate and laborious a task should have remained unattempted. Democracy is a gigantic current that has been fed by many springs. Physical and spiritual causes have contributed to swell it. Much has been done by economic theories, and more by economic laws. The propelling force lay sometimes ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... many stories told of the world's greatest orator. There is doubtless this much truth in them at least—that Demosthenes attained success, in spite of great discouragements, by persevering and laborious effort. It is certain that he was a most diligent student of Thucydides, whose great history he is said to have known by heart. More than sixty of his orations have been preserved. "Of all human productions ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... that the speed of composition varied with the literary quality of the work produced. Personally he found that by far the most laborious and protracted mental effort was entailed in the writing of Revues. He had calculated that the amount of brain force he had spent on his last masterpiece was fully as large as that expended by GIBBON on his monumental History of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... convince or confute.—Women admire what is brilliant; men what is solid.—Women prefer an extemporaneous sally of wit, or a sparkling effusion of fancy, before the most accurate reasoning, or the most laborious investigation of facts. In literary composition, women are pleased with point, turn, and antithesis; men with observation, and a just deduction of effects from their causes.—Women are fond of incident, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... of patient waiting, I started the laborious climb upward, for it was impossible to make progress downward, where the soft snow lay. Now, like the sheep, I would take advantage of those wind-swept ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... judge, the Chancellor Thugut was the only efficient Minister, being very laborious in his work, and indeed "the only man of business about the Court."[338] Yet Thugut was rather a clever diplomat and ideal head-clerk than a statesman. In forethought he did not much excel his master. Indeed, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... certainly the most laborious day, as she always did her washing and ironing on Sunday morning, it being, as she said, the only leisure day she had; for on the other days she went about the country telling fortunes, and selling dream-books and wicked songs. Neither her husband's nor her children's ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... journey, wishing the honour and happiness which belongs to your most known deservings may ever attend you, with a reward from above for those inestimable favours by which you have for ever obliged me to you and all that is mine; who, after the long course I have run, through all the degrees of my laborious calling, my services to my country and the Commonwealth, my great losses and sufferings for the public, and the discharge of my duty in all my several trusts and employments, have now the hoped-for comfort of all removed from me, and a dark shadow cast upon me, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... will not be refused—was being taught her now. She only knew it was dull work just for the moment—a tedious sort of routine, which one was glad to think could not last for ever; and so went on, the steadfast little soul, no one being any the wiser, upon that suddenly-clouded, laborious way. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... correspondence collected in the State Department of the confederation, and he did this, as has been said, pencil in hand, making notes and abstracts as he went. It was well worth doing, for he learned much, and from this laborious study and thorough knowledge certain facts became apparent, for the most part of a hard and unpleasant nature. First, he saw that England, taking advantage of our failure to fulfill completely our obligations under ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... with a blunder. He brought in a Bill to extend the time for payment of rates and for voters under the new Bill, and because it was opposed he abandoned it suddenly; his friends are disgusted. Robarts told me that the Bank Committee had executed their laborious duties in a spirit of great cordiality, and with a general disposition to lay aside all political differences and concur in accomplishing the best results; a good thing, for it is in such transactions as these, which afford an opportunity for laying aside the bitterness of party and the rancorous ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... distributed a certain number of Indians among them to cultivate the soil. This system was afterward introduced in all the Spanish settlements, the Indians being everywhere seized upon and compelled to work in the mines, to till the plantations, to carry burdens and to perform all menial and laborious services. The stated tasks of the unhappy natives were often much beyond their abilities, and multitudes sank under the hardships to which they were subjected. Their spirit was broken, they became humble and degraded, and the race was rapidly wasting away. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... the domain of commerce they succeeded in accomplishing in the region of literature. They were the first to devote themselves to the study of the Chinese literature and language, and what we know of the history of China down to the last century is exclusively due to their laborious research and painstaking translations of Chinese histories and annals. They made China known to the polite as well as the political world of Europe. Keen Lung himself appreciated and was flattered by these efforts. His poetry, notably his odes on "Tea," ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... very hard, because you are a laborious, ill-bred Tradesman, I must be bound to be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... not astonishing that he works miracles. He is a servant of God. God obeys his servants." "They tell us of marvelous things that took place here," said a pilgrim who but echoed the words of many, "but the grand miracle of Ars is the life, so penitent and laborious, of the cure." No miracles showed more clearly his extraordinary gifts and graces than the power which his spirit possessed over his poor emaciated body; and no miracle was greater than his absolute control over his physical state when he seemed on the verge of dissolution, ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous

... curl under the scissors of Lord Petre, must have had the best of the gayety, in the time of the first and second Georges, for Pope himself, writing of it in one of his visits in 1717, described the court life as one of dull and laborious etiquette. Yet what was fairest and brightest and wittiest, if not wisest in England graced it, and the names of Bellenden and Lepell and Montagu, of Harvey and Chesterfield, of Gay and Pope and Walpole, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... his cell, and taught him to speak; and Prospero would have been very kind to him, but the bad nature which Caliban inherited from his mother, Sycorax, would not let him learn anything good or useful: therefore he was employed like a slave, to fetch wood and do the most laborious offices; and Ariel had the charge of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... proved a troublesome one from the first. The brand kept the great beasts at a distance, time and again the red coals almost died out, and Grom had anxious and laborious moments nursing them again into activity; and the care of the mysterious things made progress slow. Grom learned much, and rapidly, in these anxious efforts. He discovered once, just at a critical moment, the remarkable ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... errors which either himself or others may have heretofore imbibed, his pains will be sufficiently answered: and, if in some points he is still mistaken, the candid and judicious reader will make due allowances for the difficulties of a search so new, so extensive, and so laborious. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... intended contest Mr. Eliot began by preaching and making collections from the English settlers, and likewise "he hires a native to teach him this exotick language, and, with a laborious care and skill, reduces it into a grammar, which afterwards he published. There is a letter or two of our alphabet which the Indians never had in theirs; though there were enough of the dog in their temper, there can scarce be found an R in their language, . . . but, if ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... be remembered, that these conspirators were quite unaccustomed to laborious employments: yet their mistaken zeal in the cause of popery, which they seem to have regarded as the truth, induced them to apply themselves to the task with unceasing energy. They continued at their labour from the 11th of December until Christmas eve, without any intermission. Nor ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury

... were made. Some said that as Mr Alf had a large share in the newspaper, and as its success was now an established fact, he himself intended to retire from the laborious position which he filled, and was therefore free to go into Parliament. Others were of opinion that this was the beginning of a new era in literature, of a new order of things, and that from this time forward editors would frequently be found in Parliament, if editors were employed ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... began to wish that Adolay would return, and then sat down to make fire by the slow and laborious Eskimo process of rubbing two pieces of stick rapidly together until the friction should ignite them. He was still absorbed in the work when the Indian girl returned with a bundle of wood which she threw down ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; 75 The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... do, their ambition is insatiable. They are consumed by the passion of money-making. The hope of victory makes them despise toil and renounce pleasure. Gladly will they deprive themselves of rest and lead laborious lives. The battle and its booty are their own reward. They count their gathered dollars with the same pride wherewith the conquering general counts his prisoners of war. But the contest marks their faces with the lines of care, and leaves ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... barbarisms of an uneducated Englishwoman's language: I hasten to add, however, that I would sooner have the Englishwoman for a pupil. Two Englishwomen who required assistance from a private tutor would submit in patience to a prolonged course of laborious and irksome work, all unmindful of the doings of society and the absorbing interests of the hour, so long as the ultimate object was some day attained. My fair Americans were undoubtedly intelligent, and even spasmodically hard-working, but their impatience of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... attempting to maintain a lofty ideal which encouraged hypocrisy. "The human race would gain much," as Senancour wrote early in the nineteenth century in his remarkable book on love, "if virtue were made less laborious. The merit would not be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... considerations the western scholar encounters a perpetual difficulty in the fact that he is not of oriental birth, and can enter but imperfectly into the spirit and force of oriental imagery. What costs him days of laborious investigation would open itself like a flash of lightning to his apprehension—all except that which remains dark from the nature of the prophetic themes—could he but have that perfect apprehension of the language, the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... be vested, they are left undetermined by Scripture. I have heard it said by men who know their Bible far better than I, that careful examination may detect evidence of the existence of three orders of Clergy in the Church. This may be; but one thing is very clear, without any laborious examination, that "bishop" and "elder" sometimes mean the same thing; as, indisputably, in Titus i. 5 and 7, and I Peter v. I and 2, and that the office of the bishop or overseer was one of considerably less importance than ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... loneliness, engendered by our dismal surroundings and the daily increasing distance from home. The stage from Tostach was perhaps the hardest one south of the Arctic, for we travelled steadily for twelve hours with a head-wind and driving snow which rendered progress slow and laborious. Finally, reaching the povarnia of Kurtas[37] in a miserable condition, with frost-bitten faces and soaking furs, we scraped away the snow inside the crazy shelter and kindled a fire, for no food had passed our lips for sixteen hours. But time progressed, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... a larger quantity of material was disposed of by the latest and perhaps the most laborious investigator of this intricate problem. M. Oscar Stumpe, of Bonn (Astr. Nach., Nos. 2,999, 3,000), took his stars, to the number of 1,054, from various quarters, if chiefly from Auwers' and Argelander's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... grateful to their sight. Neither they nor their children were again to till the soil of England, nor again to traverse the seas which surround her.[9] But here was a new sea, now open to their enterprise, and a new soil, which had not failed to respond gratefully to their laborious industry, and which was already assuming a robe of verdure. Hardly had they provided shelter for the living, ere they were summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead. The ground had become sacred, by enclosing the remains of some of their companions and connections. A parent, a child, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... with little of that old audacity and self-confidence which had never met with insuperable obstacles.... As his thoughts were cramped in a narrow space girt with precipices instead of soaring freely over a vast horizon of power, they became laborious and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... the local historians, who have searched with laborious curiosity into the transactions of some one particular nation. These men, wishing by all means to enrich and adorn the Sparta which they had gotten for their own, and to that effect not passing over in silence even such things ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... little fruit I reaped from them, moved Thee with compassion. This was the state of my soul when Thy goodness, surpassing all my vileness and infidelities, and abounding in proportion to my wretchedness, granted me in a moment, what all my own efforts could never procure. Beholding me rowing with laborious toil, the breath of Thy divine operations turned in my favor, and carried me full sail over ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... is not described, and consequently it cannot be ascertained how far they resembled any of the many kinds of Welsh Fairies. Gervase, speaking of one of these species, says:—"If anything should be to be carried on in the house, or any kind of laborious work to be done, they join themselves to the work, and expedite it with more ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... I were you," remarked Major Ralston with the air of a man performing a laborious duty. "You ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... of bulk and output. This is appalling to a laborious writer, a student or a thinker. Week by week there pours forth an unending deluge of love fiction, and week by week this deluge is absorbed into the systems of millions of human beings. We speak glibly of the world-wide fame of some classic, when, in point of fact, the people familiar ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... discharged by lavish endowments, which it is of moral certainty he will squander, or by merely placing him in situations where he might prosper, had he the industrial aptitudes of the white man, acquired through centuries of laborious training. Savage as he is by no fault of his own, and stripped at once of savage independence and savage competence by our act, for our advantage, we have made ourselves responsible before God and the world for his rescue from destruction, and his elevation to social ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker

... and too great exertion in clearing and planting, and other laborious work, which necessity obliged us to undertake, was likewise a principal cause of the prevalence of various disorders and complaints of the liver, the region of the stomach swelling, and becoming quite hard below ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel

... food, which became a perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing himself but by breaking off and eating some of the pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy frame, and with the indomitable spirit of avarice, he resumed his laborious journey. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... I tell you whom I pity?—the fourth woman whom you love. She will be forced to struggle against three others. Therefore, in your interests as well as in hers, I must warn you against the dangers of your tale. For myself, I renounce the laborious glory of loving you,—it needs too many virtues, Catholic or Anglican, and I have no fancy for rivalling phantoms. The virtues of the virgin of Clochegourde would dishearten any woman, however sure of herself she might be, and your intrepid English amazon discourages even a wish for ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... And there was indeed a curious contrast between the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse to which the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labour which he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit must have grown upon him; it was natural that it should do so as thought gained the ascendency over emotion in what he had to say. Mrs. Browning told Mr. Val Prinsep that her husband 'worked at a great rate;' and this fact probably connected itself with the difficulty he then found in altering ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... to the school-house and alighted, a man in an angry voice snapped out, "Well! if the women are coming to vote, I'm going home!" But he did not go; he had too much curiosity; he wanted to see the fun. He stayed and was converted. After watching the sovereign "white male citizen" perform the laborious task of depositing his vote in the ballot-box, I thought if I braced myself up I might be equal to the task. So, summoning all my strength, I walked up to the desk behind which sat the august officers of election, and presented my vote. When behold! I was pompously met with the assertion, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of a face; but when it has been read, has the reader realised the face? I doubt it, and am inclined to believe that three different readers will carry away three different impressions even from a really brilliant portrait. Laborious realism may, at least, I think, be admitted as hopeless. The only chance is in a Meredithian lightning-flash, and those fly but from one or two bows. I wonder if an image will help at all here. Think on a pebbly stream, on a brisk, bright morning; dwell on the soft, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... the impression which the manuscript has made on my mind will be made on the minds of all who read your book—that it is the production of an able, laborious, enthusiastic, scholarly man, who deserves the gratitude and admiration of all who labor to perpetuate an interest in the language, literature, and history ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... comes to think of it, a late development and laborious growth are generally more fruitful than those which are over-early luxuriant. Drawing an illustration from the art of painting, with which he was well acquainted, my brother used to say that all the greatest painters had begun ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... which Cleveland flinched from doing his duty or faltered in the full performance of it. He acted throughout in his avowed capacity of a public trustee, and he conducted the office of governor with the same laborious fidelity which he had displayed as sheriff and as mayor. And now, as before, he antagonized elements of his own party who sought only the opportunities of office and cared little for its responsibilities. He did not unite ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... small culture of vegetables, are among the charms that come unsought, and that are not to be found by seeking—are never to be achieved if they are sought for their own sake. And another of the delights of the useful laborious land is its vitality. The soil may be thin and dry, but man's life is added to its own. He has embanked the hill to make little platforms for the growth of wheat in the light shadows of olive leaves. Thanks ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... man who has a love for science, and is interested in the welfare of humanity, can reflect without sorrow and pain upon the loss of so many profound, laborious, and subtle heads, who, for many centuries, have foolishly exhausted themselves upon idle fancies that proved to be injurious to our race? What light could have been thrown into the minds of many famous thinkers, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... great virtues, but he has the defects of his virtues, and his home life is far from idyllic. He is laborious, shrewd, enduring, frugal, self-reliant, sober, honest and capable of intense self-control for a distant reward; but that reward is property in land, in pursuit of which he may become as pitiless as ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various

... by experience, finds it true, 'Tis much more hard to please himself than you; And out of no feigned modesty, this day Damns his laborious trifle of a play: Not that its worse than what before he writ, But he has now another taste of wit; And, to confess a truth, though out of time, Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound, And nature flies ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... had fallen as angels fall—and to God only knew what high promptings strangled and vitiated in his father. Thor was heir to it all, with something of his own to boot, something strong, something patient, something laborious and loyal, something long-suffering and winning and meek, that might have marked the leader of a rebellious people or a pagan, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... forefathers knew the worth of land, And bank'd the Thames out with laborious hand; From fresh encroachments bound it's restless tide Within a spacious channel deep and wide. With equal pains, revers'd, their grandsons make On the same spot a little inland lake; Where browsing sheep or grazing cattle fed, The wondrous waters new dominion ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... the strong man and wondered at his power of working under any circumstances. He was laborious as well as industrious. He often wrote a page over two and three times, in the hope of improving it, and he was capable of spending an hour in finding a quotation from a great writer, not for the sake of quoting it, but in order to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... sustenance of life. Others, who labour in more honourable ways, earn the right to be maintained by the sweat of others' brows—for instance, those who stand at the head of the commonwealth; for by their laborious exertion the former are enabled to enjoy the peace, the security, without which they could not exist. The same holds good of those who have the charge of spiritual matters....'[1] 'Because,' says Aquinas, 'many things ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... roses are accessible; liberal to profusion of their charms before marriage, they are chastity itself after: the moment they commence wives, they give up the very idea of pleasing, and turn all their thoughts to the cares, and those not the most delicate cares, of domestic life: laborious, hardy, active, they plough the ground, they sow, they reap; whilst the haughty husband amuses himself with hunting, shooting, fishing, and such exercises only as are the image of war; all other employments being, according to his idea, unworthy the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... appreciation of Bourdaloue,—free, contrary to the critic's wont, from hostile insinuation even,—regards it as part of the merit of this preacher that there is, and that there can be, no biography of him. His public life is summed up in simply saying that he was a preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful years he preached the doctrines of the Church; and this is the sole account to be given of him, except, indeed, that in the confessional he was, all that time, learning those secrets of the human ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... was accustomed. My favorable experience in this matter, led me to use my influence to induce the daughters of my race, and my own family relatives, to give up practices which are alike profitless, laborious and injurious to health. My husband also aided me in getting books on the training of children, and I studied the true system of training, learning much of what is profitable to the mothers and fathers of my country in preserving the health ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... will be made, and their effects either corrected or turned to good account. Successes will be achieved, and their effects must be coolly appraised and carefully discriminated. The task will never be entirely achieved, but the tedious and laborious advance will for every generation be a triumphant affirmation of the nationalized democratic ideal as the one really ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... fate scattered on his path, to make amends perhaps for the thorns that had so long beset it; if he sometimes accepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as in the form of study,[54] did he not likewise always impose hard laborious occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it to beautiful immaterial things? Did his intellectual activity slacken? Was his soul less energetic, less sublime? The works of genius that issued from his pen at Venice are a sufficient reply. "Manfred," conceived on the summit of the Alps, was ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... and door open to the tonic air; never before had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored commands, her ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... fields had long ago wandered home to be milked, scarcely a bird moved in the high silences, the gnats had hidden themselves away in the deep, rugged bark of the trees, and, through the dimness, the heavy beetles were hurling like stones, and dropping and rising again in a laborious flight. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... catalogue of contingencies, this, indeed, was to be found; but it was as little likely to happen as any other. It could not happen without a series of anterior events paving the way for it. If his death came from us, it must be the theme of design. It must spring from laborious circumvention and deep-laid stratagems. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... through the narrow and tortuous labyrinth which served as paths for communication between different parts of the Camp. Still further, there was nothing to see anywhere or to form sufficient inducement for any one to make so laborious a journey. One simply encountered at every new step the same unwelcome sights that he had just left; there was a monotony in the misery as in everything else, and consequently the temptation to sit or lie still in one's own ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... a more favourable opportunity than any he should ever meet with again, readily embraced the offer, and sacrificed the soft delights of love, which at that time he enjoyed without control, to an eager, laborious, and dangerous curiosity. In that and the following campaign, during which he was present at the siege of Philipsburgh, and several other actions, he enlarged his acquaintance among the French officers, especially those of the graver sort, who had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... columns of whose ledger fail by one cent of balancing, spares neither time nor money in searching out and correcting the error; the merchant brings to bear upon his business a care and insight so unceasing and laborious that his locks are soon sprinkled with premature silver; the machinist works to plans from which the variation of a thousandth part of an inch can not be allowed to pass uncorrected; but the dairyman too often stumbles along through his work without thought, or employs the little intellect ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... This laborious work was accomplished; and, in its execution, the first object of attention was religion. The church of England was established by law, and provision was made for its ministers. To preserve the purity and unity of its doctrines and discipline, those only who had been ordained by some bishop in England, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... no longer be wood and earth. The one shall become silver, and the other pure gold. They shall shine like fire, and glisten like the most beautiful scarlet. Every female shall also change her state and looks, and no longer be doomed to laborious tasks. She shall put on the beauty of the star-light, and become a shining bird of the air. She shall dance, and not work. She shall sing, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... here speak of the service which philosophy has rendered to human reason by the laborious efforts of its criticism, granting that the outcome proves to be merely negative: about that matter something is to be said in the following section. But do you then ask, that the knowledge which interests ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... alum crystals, or stick him over with little rosettes of red and white wafers; but none of these being applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after a laborious turn in the kitchen,—after burning her dress and blacking her fingers,—succeeds only in bringing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... Rev. Dr. Macknight, who translated anew the Apostolic Epistles, is said to have copied over with his own hand that laborious and valuable work five times, previously to his committing it ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders

... is slow and laborious, while it moves on the ground and in trees with a quickness and freedom equal to that of our better ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... exacting and laborious offices of Attorney General and Solicitor General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just described, to satisfy his. He was a ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... son, while encouraging those "shoemakers," his subjects, to go beyond their "last," by consulting the representatives of his people on matters pertaining to the mysteries of government. He was slowly digging the grave of the monarchy and building the scaffold of his son; but he did his work with a laborious and pedantic trifling, when really engaged in state affairs, most amazing to contemplate. He had no penny to give to the cause in which his nearest relatives mere so deeply involved and for which his only possible allies ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the practice of composition be useful, the laborious work of correcting is no less so: it is indeed absolutely necessary to our reaping any benefit from the habit of composition. What we have written should be laid by for some little time, till the ardor of composition be past, till the fondness for the expressions we have used be ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... treacherous, but the people are neither cruel nor treacherous: on the contrary, I think they would make most excellent and faithful soldiers; and it is singular to find, surrounded by natives who have not the slightest energy of mind or body, a people so active, so laborious, and so enterprising as the Burmahs. The English seamen are particularly partial to them, and declared they were "the best set of chaps they had ever fallen in with." They admitted the Burmahs to their messes, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... him": wide tracts of woodland, and fat meadows and winding streams, and snug homesteads embowered in trees, and miles on miles of what will soon be cornfields. Far away in the distance, a thin cloud of smoke floats over some laborious town, and whichever way we look, church after church is dotted over the whole surface of the country, like ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... Literature is as good as and better than ever it was in the fabulous palmy days, but it is not so precious now; and a great work, so far from being treated as a priceless possession and a companion, is regarded only as an item in the menu furnished for a sort of literary debauch. A laborious historian spends ten years in studying an important period; he contrives to set forth his facts in a brilliant and exhilarating style, whereupon the word is passed that the history must be read. People meet, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... the common people well: they are laborious, grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased. When I or any other governor say to one of the people, 'Brother, this or that ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... apparently get itself accomplished without any of these things; or that at least the Government can quite easily attend to it by asking other Governments to attend a Conference. We must realise that a change of opinion, the recognition of a new fact, or of facts heretofore not realised, is a slow and laborious work, even in the relatively simple things which I have mentioned, and that you cannot make savages into civilised men by collecting them round a table. For the Powers of Europe, so far as their national ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... bridle-path through a gorge in a range of hills from which all the soil seems to have been washed with most of the small stones, and where, with much precaution, your beast goes picking his way as if in a laborious, slow-paced minuet. The convent stands in an opening of the hills, on a little bit of comparatively plain land,-a half-finished battlemented square pile, offering defence against a slight attack; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... but with purpose; hast become Laborious, persevering, serious, firm— For this, thy track, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... easy, down a slope of firm snow where steps were not needed. Then came ice again, and we had to cut into it below the fresh surface snow. This was so laborious that Wake took to the rocks on the right side of the couloir, where there was some shelter from the main force of the blast. I found it easier, for I knew something about rocks, but it was difficult enough with every ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... of forgetfulness, whether for good or evil. He had none of that convenient oblivion which in softer natures covers sin and saintliness with one common, careless pall. So long as a man persisted in a wrong attitude before God or man, there was no day so laborious or exhausting, no night so long or drowsy, but Theodore Parker's unsleeping memory stood on guard full-armed, ready to do battle at a moment's warning. This is generally known; but what may not be known so widely is, that, the moment the adversary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... ashamed of the degree of sorrow I feel at leaving all the early and long-prized objects of my affection; and though I am persuaded I do right in the step which I am taking, I cannot help wishing that it had not been quite so wide and laborious a one. You cannot think how beautiful Hatton appears at this moment in my imagination, nor with what strong emotion I fancy I hear Tuckey telling a story on my knee, and see Margaret poring upon her French before me. It is in your family that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... creditor.[2303] Thus, as to the clergy, it had almost separated the head from the trunk by superposing (through the concordat) a staff of gentleman prelates, rich, ostentatious, unemployed, and skeptical, upon an army of plain, poor, laborious, and believing curates.[2304] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Pisan galleys were introduced into the Tyber: but the senate and people were saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress of disease; nor did Frederic or his successors reiterate the hostile attempt. Their laborious reigns were exercised by the popes, the crusades, and the independence of Lombardy and Germany: they courted the alliance of the Romans; and Frederic the Second offered in the Capitol the great standard, the Caroccio of Milan. [60] After the extinction of the house of Swabia, they were banished ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... the positive school would spend in this spiritual analysis but a little of that skill they have attained to in their analysis of matter. In their experiments, for instance, on spontaneous generation, what untold pains have been taken! With what laborious thought, with what emulous ingenuity, have they struggled to completely sterilise the fluids in which they are to seek for the new production of life! How jealously do they guard against leaving there any already existing germs! How easily ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... some refreshments, after which they departed, and feeling completely exhausted after their laborious experience of the night before, Robert and Edward Sommers sought their couches, and ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... economy. In this period Bishop Percy collected the ancient English ballads, and also historic poems from the Chinese and the Runic; in it Warton wrote his history of poetry. Dr. Johnson, self-reliant and laborious, was producing his dictionary, and giving limits and coherence to the language. Mind was on the alert, not only subsidizing the present, but looking curiously into the past. I have ventured to call it the antiquarian age. In 1751, the Antiquarian Society of London was ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... a position which needs no champion. She has made that position herself, by her own energy and industry, and the unimpeachable purity of her conduct. In this land where labor is a virtue, and the most laborious, when they combine intellect with industry, become the greatest,—in this land it will be no blot upon her noble name, (when she chooses to resume it) that she has linked that name with work. She will rather be held up as ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... immediately such a chorus of questions, exclamations, and shrill protests from Madame Bouvet, that I (being such a laborious French scholar) could distinguish but little of what they said. I looked in wonderment at the gesticulating figures grouped against the light, Madame imploring, the youthful profile of the newcomer marked with a cynical and scornful refusal. More than once I was for rising ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... older kind of metaphysics have kept aloof from the vital problems of our lives. In one of his curious but brilliant metaphors Bergson likens Life to a river over which the scientists have constructed an elaborate bridge, while the laborious metaphysicians have toiled to build a tunnel underneath. Neither group of workers has attempted to plunge into the flowing tide itself. In the most brilliant of his short papers: L'Intuition philosophique, he makes an energetic appeal that ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... millions of miles on the heavens correspond to one inch of the map. It is at this point we encounter a difficulty. There are, however, several ways of solving the problem, though they are all difficult and laborious. The most celebrated method (though far from the best) is that presented on an occasion of the transit of Venus. Herein, then, lies the importance of this rare event. It is one of the best-known means of finding the actual scale on which our system is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... much the better, perhaps. But you must hear me. I make a profession—an occupation more exacting, more wearying, more laborious, than that of your meanest herdsman—of that which others make a dissipation of the senses. And yet, Jovita, there is not the meanest vaquero in this ranch, who, playing against me, winning or losing, is not held to ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte

... discrimination in conveying in language suited to her readers the results of the laborious investigations of other ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... nature, that of the whaleship Canada, has been disposed of by friendly arbitrament during the present year. It was referred, by the joint consent of Brazil and the United States, to the decision of Sir Edward Thornton, Her Britannic Majesty's minister at Washington, who kindly undertook the laborious task of examining the voluminous mass of correspondence and testimony submitted by the two Governments, and awarded to the United States the sum of $100,740.09 in gold, which has since been paid by the Imperial ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... accomplished successfully the task of printing many of the books of these old-time physicians and secured their publication in magnificent editions. These were bought eagerly by scholars and libraries all over Europe in spite of the high price they commanded in that era of slow, laborious printing. The Renaissance exhibits some of its most admirable qualities in its reverence for these old workers in science and above all for the careful preparation by its scholars of the text of ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certaldo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a course of laborious study, which shortened his existence; and there might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the "hyena bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio and ejected it from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... us—this inscrutable, ceaselessly vigilant power, humanly super-human, sovereignly intelligent, and, for all we know, even personal—must it not, at first sight, seem more reverent, worthier, to offer complete submission, trying only to master our terror, than tranquilly to set on foot a patient, laborious investigation? But is the choice possible to us; have we still the right to choose? The beauty or dignity of the attitude we shall assume no longer is matter of moment. It is truth and sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of all things—how much ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... died on New Year's Day 1559. Though not perhaps a great, he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a good ruler. A strong sense of duty, genuine piety, and a cautious but by no means pusillanimous common-sense coloured every action of his patient, laborious and eventful life. But the work he left behind him is the best proof of his statesmanship. He found Denmark in ruins; he left her stronger and wealthier than she ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... market town less often than he and the routine of her life on the farm kept her close to the farmhouse and prevented visits even to her neighbors' dwellings. The difficulty of getting domestic servants made the work of the farmer's wife extremely laborious; and at that time there were none of the modern conveniences which lighten work such as power churns, cream separators, and washing-machines. Even more than the husband, the wife was likely to degenerate into a drudge without ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... a very determined man, however, and he shouldered his rifle, intent on accomplishing by a laborious prosecution of the chase the means of winning his loved one from her parents, notwithstanding that the elements and the times were against him. He worked industriously, and after many days was rewarded by a goodly supply of beavers, otters, and mink which he had trapped, besides many a deerskin ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... all) when the moving hand seems gloriously in gear with the tremulous and busy mind, and all the spinning earth stands hearkeningly still waiting for the perfect expression of the thought. It is the work of a hand trained in laborious task-work and then set magnificently free, for a few blessed months, under no burden save that of putting its captaining spirit truthfully on paper. And this book—in which there is a sea passage ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... the dread of his liability to get compromised by the over-zeal of supporters, he changed the venue to the small semi-Irish town of Kilmore, where his seat was always secure, until, in his advancing years, he condescended to the less laborious sphere of the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... both because men who draw to them the attention of the public, and expose themselves to the odium of great multitudes, are obliged to be very guarded in their conduct, and because few who have a strong propensity to pleasure or business, will enter upon so difficult and laborious an undertaking. The doctrines of Wickliffe being derived from his search into the Scriptures and into ecclesiastical antiquity, were nearly the same with those which were propagated by the reformers in the sixteenth century: he only carried ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume



Words linked to "Laborious" :   laboriousness, arduous, heavy, hard, punishing, grueling, backbreaking



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