"Livelihood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left orphans at fifteen, and had lived ever since, as those who work for their livelihood must live, by economy and privation. For the last twenty or thirty years they had worked in jewelry in the same house; they had seen ten masters succeed one another, and make their fortunes in it, without any change in their own lot. They had always lived in the same room, at the end of one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his father buried by charity; and then took the sieve and went riddling here, there, and everywhere to gain a livelihood; and the more he riddled, the more he earned. But Pippo, taking the cat, said, "Only see now what a pretty legacy my father has left me! I, who am not able to support myself, must now provide for two. Whoever beheld so miserable an inheritance?" Then the cat, who overheard ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... dying on the return journey, in the jails, and camps, and baggage cars, or by the roadsides. They found themselves once more back in their pillaged towns, with nothing to work with, and yet with their livelihood to be earned somehow. They began to dig and plant and take up the routine of their lives again. They began to look on themselves as human again. The grind of suffering and hopelessness began to let up and they had moments ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... democracy as it is,—not as its founders dreamed of it,—picture to himself the operation of a system whereby anything and everything is controlled by elected officials, from whom there is no escape, outside of whom is no livelihood and to whom all men must bow! Democracy, let us grant it, is the best system of government as yet operative in this world of sin. Beside autocratic kingship it shines with a white light; it is obviously the portal ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... theorists propose a universal co-operation, to save the waste of personal competition. But competition is a wholesome and vital law; it is only the direction of it that requires alteration. When the cessation of working for one's livelihood takes place, human energy and love of production will not cease with it, but will persist, and must find their channels. But competition to outdo each in the service of all is free from collisions, and its range is limitless. Not to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... sidelight on her character!—gay, bohemian, care-free as a child, not even heeding her feet, her means of livelihood. Oh, Bibi—"Bibi Coeur d'Or," as she was called so frequently by her multitudinous adorers—would that in these mundane days you could revisit us with your girlish laugh and supple dancing form! Look at the portrait of her, painted by Coddle ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... little mama, and I have given it up. I have begun to lead a different life—one with which I am satisfied; and if you will take the advice of one who wishes you well, you, too, will quit the old ways. You can embroider beautifully and play the piano like a master. You could earn a livelihood giving lessons in either. Do not trouble any further about me, for I can take care of myself. If only you knew how much happier I am now, you would rejoice, I know! Let me beg you to become honest and truthful, and think often of your old friend and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... home three or four packages of good skins, and sold them well. Father was so pleased, that he talked of turning trapper himself, but, as I told the old man, a man with a lame leg—for he had been wounded in the leg and halted—would not make his livelihood by hunting in the woods ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... black slavery of my dependence on you was frightful; but now I can look you thanklessly in the face, for I have the means of living without you. I spent sick and sleepless days and nights, but I gained an independence; the merciful God blessed the efforts of the old man, who strove to gain his livelihood—yes, I am independent of you both. I came to see my son before I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... numerous to be fully set forth in this history. It appears, from a statement drawn up by the missionaries at Constantinople, that nearly forty persons, in that city alone, had their shops closed and their licenses taken away, and were thus debarred from laboring for an honest livelihood. Nearly seventy were ejected from their own hired houses, and sometimes from houses owned by themselves, and were thus exposed as vagabonds, to be taken up by the patrol and committed to prison; and could find shelter only in houses provided for the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... the silver trinkets from the children of those of the baser sort, or the sacred amulets from the mummies of those who were laid out for burial, and here a water-carrier wailed over the carcass of the ass that won him his livelihood. ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... will find me a most useful bird, for I rouse honest men to their work in the morning by my crowing." But the Thief replied with some heat, "Yes, I know you do, making it still harder for us to get a livelihood. ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... making bad blood by hard words, Ben. I told you before I've had nought to do with the happenings at Balmoral. We're only fighting for our rights and our livelihood, that you're trying to take away from us; but there, I didn't come to say all that, but to see the young master, if he 'll let me have a word with him,' ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... compelled to live. About 1155, then, they went to Jerusalem, but found conditions even more intolerable there, and turned back to Egypt, where they settled down in Old Cairo. In 1166 the father died, and after this we learn that the sons made a livelihood, and even laid the foundation of a fortune, by carrying on a jewelry trade. Moses still devoted most of his time to study, while his brother did most of the business, but the brother was lost in the Indian Ocean, and with him went not only a large ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... less accurate likenesses of Mrs. Bell were given with all the events of her life that seemed spectacular, the most prominent of which was that her neighbors had long speculated as to her source of livelihood, since her husband's death some four years previously, and with characteristic charity such speculation led to hints along salacious trails and the dark recesses of public suspicion. The events of the injury to her little ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... of the rough fellows who hang on the outskirts of the wilderness had tried as they said, to "pump" him on these points, but Jonas was either a dry well or a deep one, for pumping brought forth nothing. He gained a livelihood by shooting, fishing, trapping wild animals for their skins, and, sometimes, by doing what he called "odd jobs" ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... by this poor creature to procure a livelihood were truly admirable, and furnish proof that necessity is indeed the mother of invention. When the few deer sinews, that she had an opportunity of taking with her, were expended, in making snares ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... How few such can I remember, and how poorly have honesty and valour been rewarded! Here, at the time when most men think of repose, he is bundled off to command in India.[284] Would it had been the Chief Governorship! But to have remained at home would have been bare livelihood, and that is all. I asked him what he thought of "strangling a nabob, and rifling his jewel closet," and he answered, "No, no, an honest man." I fear we must add, a poor one. Lady Dalhousie, formerly Miss Brown of Coalstoun, is an amiable, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Mr. Bertram, who would have thought it as reasonable if his nephew had proposed to take a house in Belgrave Square with the view of earning a livelihood. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... consideration the contrariness of circumstances and of opposing human elements. His plans were perfect from his own standpoint; the standpoint of other people was out of his consideration. Never before had he conceived so clever a scheme for getting a livelihood made for him. There was really nobody but Denas to interfere with any of his arrangements, and Denas was under his control and could be made more so. This night he felt positive that he had "hit ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... rede-craft, let me ask them to study the lives of men of mark. Isaac Newton began his life as a farm-boy who carried truck to a market town; Spinoza, the philosopher of Amsterdam, ground lenses for his livelihood; Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was mechanic to the University of Glasgow; Porson, the great professor of Greek, was trained as a weaver; George Washington was a land surveyor; Benjamin Franklin ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... to struggle with nature for the acquisition of the means of livelihood will always be the first and most unquestionable of all obligations, because this obligation is a law of life, departure from which entails the inevitable punishment of either bodily or mental annihilation of the life of man. If a man living alone excuses himself ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... that a woman who marries should understand housekeeping in all its varied branches as that the man who marries should understand his trade or profession; for, without the knowledge of means to gain a livelihood (however great his love for a woman), how is the man to hold that woman's love and affection unless he is able by his own exertions to provide her with necessities, comforts, and, perhaps, in later years, luxuries? And in return, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... agriculture, four and seven tenths per cent. in liberal professions, eleven and five tenths per cent. in personal service (domestic service etc.); the rest, minus the persons without any definite employment are forced to seek for means of livelihood in the field of commerce (thirty-one per cent.), industry (thirty-six and three tenths per cent.), and transport (three per cent.) In the same way works the artificial congestion of the Jews in the cities: only eighteen per cent. live in the villages of the Pale of Settlement, while the rest—more ...
— The Shield • Various
... thriving condition; but when he came to Atarneus he discovered that certain exiles from Chios had got possession of the stronghold, which served them as a convenient base for pillaging and plundering Ionia; and this, in fact, was their means of livelihood. Being further informed of the large supplies of grain which they had inside, he proceeded to draw entrenchments around the place with a view to a regular investment, and by this means he reduced it in eight months. Then having appointed Draco of Pellene (10) commandant, he stocked ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... said, however, that there is a class of young ladies who do not choose to marry, and who select professions or avocations and follow them for a livelihood. This is true, but this class, compared with the number who unite in matrimony with the husbands of their choice, is comparatively very small, and it is the duty of society to encourage the increase of marriages ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that would prevent the poisoning of the blood of our people in any way whatever by the introduction of either disease, crime, or vice into our midst, and would vote to exclude all paupers or persons who were unable to earn an honest livelihood by labor. That is the correct principle. I think we did, during the war, go to the extreme in one direction to induce people to come among us to share our benefits and advantages, and we gave the reasons ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... is familiar with the ringing words with which he threw away his livelihood and turned from every attractive outlook in life, when, Secession having actually come, he said to the governor of Louisiana, "On no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to or in defiance of the United States." ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... their way along the mountain trail they came unexpectedly upon an Indian workman who was gathering herbs and bark, an industry by which many of the natives added to their scanty livelihood. The woman was familiar with the appearance of the white men, ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... to seek its own livelihood and happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get its required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knotting ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... from afar, and since it seems and is evident to me that ye wished to communicate to us also the things which ye believed true and best, we will not therefore be heavy to you, but will kindly receive you in hospitality, and give you a livelihood, and supply your needs. Nor will we hinder you from joining and adding to the religion of your belief all whom you ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... was not inferior to that of Meyerbeer or Rossini. His Rienzi was the greatest immediate success of his whole life when grand operas, of which it is the type, were fashionable, and a few more works of the kind would have raised him above all anxiety for his livelihood. This can scarcely be questioned now; it has been asserted again and again by those who most hated him, and who were in the habit of denouncing him as "past help" because he refused to listen to them. To do so he would have had to sacrifice all that he held sacred. He had "hitched his ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reply a smile of ill-disguised contempt might have been detected on the face of at least one of the men present. But as he was only a "poor relation" dependent for his very means of livelihood upon the generosity of Jeoffrey and Eldon Maise he ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... that I dinna ken them—there's the differ of it. Now, here's you. Ye lie on your wame a bittie in the bield of this wood, and ye tell me that ye've cuist off these Frasers and Macgregors. Why! Because I couldna see them, says you. Ye blockhead, that's their livelihood." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for a happy end Of all our miseries and strife; - But still in vain; - the swordmen did intend To make them hold for term of life: That our distempers might be made Their everlasting livelihood and trade. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... master. I know well enough how he manages to eke out a livelihood. He is up before dawn every day, and with a basket of pan leaves, twists of tobacco, coloured cotton yarn, little combs, looking-glasses, and other trinkets beloved of the village women, he wades through the knee- deep water of the marsh and goes over to the Namasudra quarters. There ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... own dwellings, and the principle being followed up, led from bad to worse, until every spark of independence in the breast of the peasantry had been nearly extinguished. The parish must keep them, it was often said; and they did not care to obtain an honest livelihood by the sweat of their brow. The existing state of things had indeed reduced the labouring population in many districts to a state of deplorable misery and distress. It was evident that there were great dangers to be incurred if matters were left as they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... think them very foolish for their pains, and wish them a better mode of gaining their livelihood," observed Mr Maclean, "and I agree with Fanny. A sailor has to climb the rigging of his ship, but then he goes in the way of duty, and when people mount in balloons, they have generally a scientific object in view, or some reason to offer. But in ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... universal knowledge seems utterly unattainable to us, with all our modern machinery of education. Michelangelo grew up in a suburb of Florence, to which his father moved when he was a child, at a notary's desk, his father trying to teach him enough law to earn him a livelihood. Whenever he had a chance, he escaped to draw in a corner, or to spend forbidden hours in an artist's studio. He was taught Latin and arithmetic by an old schoolmaster, who was probably a priest, and a friend of his father's. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... many, David was of opinion (as, indeed, he had showed in his practice) that it was in itself honourable, especially if times were such that honest men could be secure against being shot, hanged, or banished, and had ane competent livelihood to maintain themselves, and those that might come after them. "And, therefore," as he concluded something abruptly, addressing Jeanie and Butler, who, with faces as high-coloured as crimson, had been listening to his lengthened argument for and against the holy state of matrimony, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... vicar of East Dean (1680) as a refuge for castaways. We can but hope that his parishioners were as humane, but the probability is that the parson's efforts were looked on askance by his flock, who gained a prosperous livelihood by the spoils of the shore; and perhaps this feeling gave rise to the unkind fable that the cave was made as a refuge ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... a little of a humorist to boot. The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gudewife was very common among the Scottish Bonifaces. There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family who condescended, in order to gain a livelihood, to become the nominal keeper of a coffee-house, one of the first places of the kind which had been opened in the Scottish metropolis. As usual, it was entirely managed by the careful and industrious Mrs. B—; while her husband amused himself with field sports, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... heart-rending bramble of separation." The Nightingale cast his eye upon the scene around him, but saw nothing fit to eat. Destitute of food, his strength and fortitude failed him, and in his abject helplessness he was unable to earn himself a little livelihood. He called to his mind and said: "Surely the Ant had in former days his dwelling underneath this tree, and was busy in hoarding a store of provision: now I will lay my wants before her, and, in ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... answered Kornel briefly; and I, who watched him, knew from his voice that there was to be no truce after that, that we should still earn our livelihood by ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of the population depend on subsistence agriculture, fishing, and forestry for at least part of their livelihood. Most manufactured goods and petroleum products must be imported. The islands are rich in undeveloped mineral resources such as lead, zinc, nickel, and gold. The government of the Solomon Islands is nearing financial insolvency. In mid-1995 the central bank suspended interest ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 1668, and that he was the son of the novelist Claude le Sage, little is known of the youth of Alain Rene le Sage. Until he was eighteen he was educated with the Jesuits at Vannes, when, it is conjectured he went to Paris to continue his studies for the Bar. An early marriage drove him to seek a livelihood by means of literature, and shortly afterwards he found a valuable and sympathetic friend and patron in the Abbe de Lyonne, who not only bestowed upon him a pension of about L125, but also gave him the use of his library. The first results of this favour were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... some reason attributed to the example of Charles Kingsley. Of the twelve graduates from Cambridge, six treated religion as a cricket match played before the man in the street with God as umpire, six regarded it as a respectable livelihood for young men with normal brains, social connexions, and weak digestions. The young man from Durham looked upon religion as a more than respectable livelihood for one who had plenty of brains, an excellent digestion, and no social ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that fifteen-hundred-dollar license and losing outside trade but we'd be robbing an honest and respectable man of his livelihood," said Sears with ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... toil is hard—and so much the better—it calms and occupies his mind; but bitter is his feeling that the toil which gains for him this nauseous and scanty livelihood heaps dainties and gay wines on the table of his distant landlord, clothes his children or his harem in satin, lodges them in marble halls, and brings all the arts of luxury to solicit their senses—bitter to him to feel that this green ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... live upon the soil as the hireling of another with a lordless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among the dead that ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... imperative sentence for commanding."—S. Barrett's Prin. of Language, p. 87. "In October, corn is gathered in the field by men, who go from hill to hill with baskets, into which they put the ears; Susan labors with her needle for a livelihood; notwithstanding his poverty, he is a man of integrity."—Goldsbury's Parsing, Manual of E. Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... poets of no mean merit, all capable of admirable verse on occasion; and in various degrees possessed of the lofty, vigorous, and vivid style of that great age. The theatre, and writing for the theatre, afforded to many men of talent a means of livelihood analogous to that offered by journalism among ourselves. They were apt to work collectively, several hands hurrying out a single play; and in twos or threes, or fours ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... in the fact that here the shameful bargain is made not for life, but only for years, weeks, hours. It is common to both that the sweetest, most sacred treasure of humanity, woman's heart, is made the subject of vulgar huckstering, a means of buying a livelihood; and worse than the prostitution of the streets is that of the marriage for a livelihood sanctioned by law and custom, because under its pestilential poison-breath not only the dignity and happiness of the living, but the sap and strength ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... hold that Haydon excelled all other borrowers known to fame; but his is not a career upon which an admirer of the art can look with pleasure. Haydon's debts hunted him like hounds, and if he pursued borrowing as a means of livelihood,—more lucrative than painting pictures which nobody would buy,—it was only because no third avocation presented itself as a possibility. He is not to be compared for a moment with a true expert like Sheridan, who borrowed for borrowing's sake, and without ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children, no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes 'the education ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... stroling Fifty Pounds in my Debt. Besides, I have just now a lazy Trull of a Daughter, that run away with a Foot Soldier, return'd big with the Lord knows what, and that's no small Charge to me, that am forc'd to pad it about for a Livelihood. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... consort, Komyo, bore fruit during the reign of Koken. In the third year after Shomu's abdication, a decree was issued prohibiting the taking of life in any form. This imposed upon the State the responsibility of making donations of rice to support the fishermen, whose source of livelihood was cut off by the decree. Further, at the ceremony of opening the public worship of the great image of Buddha, the Empress in person led the vast procession of military, civil, and religious dignitaries to the temple Todai-ji. It was a fete of unparalleled dimensions. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... or what to seek, no one could tell. They crowded the streets; they fell prostrate on the ground; they lay stretched in the fields, in consternation and dismay resigned to their fate. Numbers lost their whole substance, even the tools and implements by which they gained their livelihood, and, in that distress, did not wish to survive. Others, wild with affliction for their friends and relations whom they could not save, embraced voluntary death, and perished ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was proud, brilliant Belton, the husband of a woman whom he fairly worshipped, surrounded in a manner that precluded his earning a livelihood for her. This set Belton to studying the labor situation and the race question from this point of view. He found scores of young men just in his predicament. The schools were all supplied with teachers. All other doors were effectually barred. Society's stern edict forbade these young men resorting ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... never told a soul, but had quietly anchored it with the anchor of his ship to the bottom of the sea, which just there was profoundly deep, and had made the thing the secret of his life, determining to marry and settle down there if it ever became impossible to earn his livelihood in the usual way at sea. When first he saw it, it was drifting slowly, with the wind in the tops of the trees; but if the cable had not rusted away, it should be still where he left it, and they would make a rudder and hollow out ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... comprises everybody connected in any way with the theatres. Their occupation is gone. For the space of one year neither public nor private performance is permitted. During that time actors are outcasts upon the face of the earth, and have no regular means of getting a livelihood. The lessees of theatres have most likely feathered their own nests sufficiently well to enable them to last out the prescribed term without serious inconvenience; but with us, actors are proverbially improvident, and ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... him to earn his own livelihood. Captain Borrow's pension had ceased with his death, and the old soldier's savings of a lifetime were barely sufficient to produce an income of a hundred pounds a year for his widow. The provision made in the will for his younger son during his minority would operate ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... bound to tell you, however, that his present place is a better one. He is learning a good trade, which, if he masters it, will always give him a livelihood. I learned a trade, and owe all I have ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... usefulness in providing the great Baron Fagoni with a livelihood," added Martin, with ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... to dream that her hair is falling out, and baldness is apparent, she will have to earn her own livelihood, as fortune has ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... naturally noble province is to the Netherland nation, what service it could render it in future, and what a retreat it would be for all the needy in the Netherlands, as well of high and middle, as of low degree; for it is much easier for all men of enterprise to obtain a livelihood here than in ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... the Bankruptcy Court a quarter of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in search of employment, he had taken root where he came ashore, and vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the season, ministering, not injudiciously, to their myriad whims and necessities. Among his multifarious functions, perhaps the most respectable and permanent was that of clerk to the English chapel. He was by no means ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... could do for his son, was to help in preparing him for some work fit to employ what faculty had been given him, in accordance with the tastes also given him. He saw, the last thing a foolish father will see, that the best a father can do, is to enable his son to earn his livelihood in the exercise of a genial and righteous labor. He saw that possession generates artificial and enfeebling wants, overlaying and smothering the God-given necessities of our nature, whence alone issue golden ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... in it alms in disguise. Adrienne preferred, therefore, whilst she treated her as a friend, to give her a confidential employment. In this manner the great delicacy of the needlewoman would be spared, since she could earn her livelihood by performing duties which would at the same time satisfy her praiseworthy instincts of charity. In fact, she could fulfil, better than any one, the sacred mission confided to her by Adrienne. Her cruel experience in misfortune, the goodness of her angelic soul, the elevation ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... punish them. If they say anything, the gentlemen make use of but two words: one,—That is for the brigade; and the second,—That is to administer justice. The particulars of it is this,—that the byparees will bring their grain from all quarters, and sell for their livelihood. There is at present no war to occasion a necessity for sending for it. If none comes, whatever quantity will be necessary every month I will mention to the aumils, that they may bring it for sale: but there is no deficiency ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of fifteen Oxford scholars to whom licences were accorded between 1551 and 1572, their duration varying from seven weeks to eight months. In the sixteenth century such passports had become necessary, or, at least, the absence of them, where scholars resorted to begging for a livelihood, was attended with serious risk. By the 4th section of the Act of 22 Henry VIII. c. 12: "Scolers of the Universities of Oxford & Cambrydge that goo about beggyng, not being aucthorysed under the Seale of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... work in connection with one of the younger publishing houses. In after years he looked back in amazement that he should have ventured on the great London attack with so slender a supply of ammunition—but now, looking forward in Polchester, that question of future livelihood seemed the very ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and, in any case, we should soon know all, as Mr. Paasma's dwelling is a little green house close to the miniature quay. We saw his name over the door, for evidently he doesn't entirely depend upon his guardianship of boats for a livelihood. He owns a shop, with indescribable things in the one cramped but shining window—things which only those who go down to the sea in ships could possibly ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... majority of the population still depends on agriculture and livestock for a livelihood, even though most of the nomads and many subsistence farmers were forced into the cities by recurrent droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. Mauritania has extensive deposits of iron ore, which account for almost 50% of total exports. The decline ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... been the richest soil in the kingdom became a shifting heap of red sand, and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the adverse skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, to seek some means of gaining a livelihood among the cities and people of the plains. All their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some curious old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants of their ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... not always strictly seclude themselves within the limits of the religious domain. The gods accepted, and even sometimes solicited, from their worshippers, houses, fields, vineyards, orchards, slaves, and fishponds, the produce of which assured their livelihood and the support of their temples. There was no Egyptian who did not cherish the ambition of leaving some such legacy to the patron god of his city, "for a monument to himself," and as an endowment for the priests to institute prayers and perpetual sacrifices on his behalf.[*] ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sentences stamp on the brain the substance of long experiences. Witness this: Enoch lies sick, distant from home and wife and children; here is one word crowded with pathos, telling of the weary loss of livelihood, the burden slowly growing more intolerably irksome to the bold and careful worker wrestling with pain, and to the fragile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... their condition, but could not force freedom from them. At last came a great crash. To explain this you must understand that very great progress had been made amongst the workers, though as before said but little in the direction of improved livelihood." ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... licking her lips, as if to say, I have made a good meal. Thenceforward she made war on snakes; they were her daily food. In the winter she scratched them out of their holes. My friend—for so I grew to call the dog—had found her own livelihood, and freed me from ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... personal knowledge of you that I may judge of your literary merits. You may possibly be one of these, who came hither from the old world to seek your fortune; who have handled the pen as others handle the awl or needle; that is, for the sake of a livelihood, and who, therefore, are willing to work on any kind of cloth or leather, and to any model that may be in demand. You may, in the course of your trade, have accommodated yourself to twenty different fashions, and have served twenty classes of customers; have copied at one time ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... say? and would her hero despise a girl that worked for a livelihood? Then she whimpered a little, thinking how lonesome she would be, for a while, among strangers; but it was a kind of lamentation that differed widely from the frantic weeping of the morning. Then, all at once, a doubt began to depress her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... bring as many religious as he can; for the said need is today greater than what it was when Father Diego de Bobadilla came with the forty men that he brought. For, since that time, sixty-one religious have died here, and some of them of but moderate age, as the land and its means of livelihood in general are so poor. The said order uses them as sparingly as is demanded by the poverty that the land suffers at this time. They are also placed under great restrictions by the continual hardships and dangers of their missions, as they are so separated in various islands—some of Moros and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... heart not only yearned towards the oppressed of the human family, but his compassion extended to the brute creation, under whose sufferings in the service of man, to use his own expression, "creation at this day doth loudly groan." Though dependent on his own labor for a livelihood, he was careful in a most exemplary degree, "not to entangle himself with affairs of this life, that he might please Him who had called him to be a soldier;" and the reader of his life will find that this unworldly man took similar pains to avoid wealth, which others do to acquire it. ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... definite. His thesis was that observation and thought concerning men and their activities, pointed and directed by intimate touch with what others had observed and set down—that is, through books—was the gist of life. Any job which gave opportunity or leisure for this was good enough. Livelihood was but a garment, at most; life was the body beneath. Furthermore, young Banneker would find, so his senior had assured him, that he possessed an open sesame to the minds of the really intelligent wheresoever he might encounter them, in the form of a jewel which ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the men and women now writing for bread, who have not the least chance of finding in such work a permanent livelihood. They took to writing because they knew not what else to do, or because the literary calling tempted them by its independence and its dazzling prizes. They will hang on to the squalid profession, their earnings eked out by begging and borrowing, until it is ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... construction, is giving the boy the best use of his hands and placing within his reach the power to build his own house and keep it in repair, or to go on to the mastery of a useful trade and through it to the securing of a means of livelihood. The printing office, too, gives yet another line of hand training and at the same time of intellectual accuracy ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... plot. Unluckily, one is helpless. That scoundrel Cousinho—Andreas, you know—has been coveting the brig for years. Naturally, I would never sell. She is not only my livelihood; she's my life. So he has hatched this pretty little plot with the chief of the customs. The sale, of course, will be a farce. There's no one here to bid. He will get the brig for a song—no, not even ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... traced its descent from William De Irwyn, the secretary and armor-bearer of Robert Bruce; but at the time of the birth of William Irving its fortunes had gradually decayed, and the lad sought his livelihood, according to the habit of the adventurous ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... parents, he said; and, destitute of friends, money, and food, was making his way to the next port, to offer himself to any vessel that would take him on board, that he might work his way abroad, and seek a livelihood. ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... gentlemen are chatting about the ticker; some more are watching the board. An old man with a white beard is dozing in a corner with a "Reading Annual Report" on his knee. If you are a quick and accurate judge of values, here is a means of livelihood under the most agreeable, gentlemanly and easy auspices. You are making your fortune seated comfortably among your friends, so to speak, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... overcome, consented to furnish a brief sketch personal to myself. Although my name has been constantly appearing for some twelve or fifteen years, yet I have lost none of that, shrinking from notoriety and observation which made me timid and retiring when a boy. The necessity to write as a means of livelihood, and to write a great deal, has brought me so frequently before the public, that I have almost ceased to think about the matter as any thing more than an ordinary occurrence; but, now, when called upon to write about myself, I find that the edge of a natural sensitiveness is quite as keen as ever. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... their own cupidity and to support the needy. They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and consisting of a mere collection of villages, and would plunder it; indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory. An illustration of this is furnished by the honour with which some of the inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful marauder, and by the question we ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... faithfully, he was ever gentle, grateful, and even indulgent. There was a certain Wolfgang, or Wolf Sieberger, whom he had taken as early as 1517 into his service at the convent—an honest but weak man, who knew of no other means of livelihood. Him Luther retained in his service throughout his life, and tried to make some provision for his future. He once sought, as we have seen, to practise turning with him, but of this nothing further is related. He loved, too, to joke with him in his own ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... rights, for our place where we win our livelihood. We should be cowards if we did not. You must play the dog's part for us with your sharp eyes and ears. Recollect we have right on our side and they ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... capital. A bond or a share of stock meant to him what it would bring that day on the Stock Exchange. The rainy day which is the bugaboo for the most of us, never seemed to show on his horizon. For a man whose livelihood depended on the lasting quality of his creative faculties he had an infinite faith in the future, and indeed his own experience seemed to show that he was justified in this belief. It could not have been very long after his start as a fiction writer that he received as high a price ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... coinage and postage; of certain common laws for criminal and similar cases; of a common government to direct their affairs with other nations. But by habit and by training each was local rather than National in its outlook. The Georgian had nothing in common with the men of Massachusetts Bay whose livelihood depended upon fisheries, or with the Virginian of the Western border, to whom his relations with the Indians were his paramount concern. The Rhode Islander, busy with his manufactures, knew and cared nothing for the South Carolinian with his rice plantations. How to ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... according to the decision of physicians called upon to testify, has been declared sound in body. There is no occasion to doubt that she is over sixteen years of age and no reason for preventing her from earning her livelihood by the exercise of an art which she has already ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... by-product, the Russian Revolution, will have so worked on the minds of Noblemen that they will prefer to have not one footman in their service. Or it may be that all those men who might be footmen will prefer to earn their livelihood in other ways of life. It may even be that no more parlourmaids and housemaids, even for very illustrious houses, will be forthcoming. I do not profess to foresee. Perhaps things will go on just as before. But remember: things were going on, even then. Suppose that in the social organism ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... vote. It merely said that suffrage could not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. As the Negro was generally poor and in the midst of the economic depression of the South too often had to wander from place to place to seek a livelihood, he could be easily eliminated by the poll tax, the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... indeed. Why, what better were you? You were bribing a poor man to furnish you with statistics, which he was very reluctant to let you have; yet you overcame his scruples with money, quite willing that he should risk his livelihood, so long as you got the news. If you ask me, I don't see very much difference in our positions, and I must say that if two men take the risk of talking aloud about a secret, with a door open leading to another room, which may be ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr |
