"Painstaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with less sanguine anticipations for herself: but the black disaster that rode on with it brought her certain aids to the spirit, certain hopes of herself. Laura's prompt replies, with their terrible margins and painstaking solecisms, came to be things Miss Livingstone looked forward to. She read them with a beating heart, however, in the unconscious apprehension of some revelation of improvement. She was quite unaware of it, but she entertained towards ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... were constructed. I can, however, find nothing on record indicating that the object glasses of these enormously attenuated instruments ever exceeded in diameter two and one-half inches. Yet, with unwieldy and ungainly telescopes, nearly always defining badly, wonders were accomplished by the painstaking and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... nimbus was there; everything looked damp and dank, lacking sweetness and sightliness; the air wanted clearing, the ground cleaning, and the sea washing. Such on January 17, 1882, was the first appearance of the redoubtable Sierra Leone. It was a contrast to the description by the learned and painstaking Winterbottom. [Footnote: An Account of the Native Africans im the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, etc. London, Hatchard, 1803.] 'On a nearer approach the face of the country assumes a more beautiful aspect. The rugged appearance of these mountains is softened by the lively verdure ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... which it held on to its purpose until it met its death in the fate of the ill-starred Southern Confederacy. Every step in his narrative is supported by references to unimpeachable authorities; and the scholarly Monograph bears high testimony to the author's earnest labor, painstaking research and unswerving fidelity. Should the present work stimulate inquiry beyond the scope herein set before the reader, he is most confidently referred to Professor Du Bois' book as containing a complete exposition of the development and ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... angel who cares for the "tenderfoot" was good to Patches that day, and favored him with many sagging wires and leaning or broken posts, so that he could not ride far. Being painstaking and conscientious in his work, he had made not more than four miles by the beginning of the afternoon. Then he found a break that would occupy him for two hours at least. With rueful eyes he surveyed the long stretch of dilapidated fence. It was time, he reflected, that ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... volume, abundantly supplied with well-engraved woodcuts and lithographic plates; a sort of Encyclopaedia for ready reference.... The whole work has a look of painstaking completeness highly commendable."—Athenaeum. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... some one object, and ask what we are to do with the systematic arrangement of the fossils, the so-called "geological succession," that monument to the painstaking labors of thousands of scientists all over the world. This geological series is still on our hands; what are we to ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... letters forty pages long to the King, and send off another courier on the same day with two or three additional despatches of identical date. Such prolixity enchanted the King, whose greediness for business epistles was insatiable. The painstaking monarch toiled, pen in hand, after his wonderful minister in vain. Philip was only fit to be the bishop's clerk; yet he imagined himself to be the directing and governing power. He scrawled apostilles in the margins to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Scriptorium, but it is unlikely that any save the oldest and most learned of the community were afforded this luxury. In these scriptoria of various kinds the earliest annals and chronicles in the English language were penned, in the beautiful and painstaking forms in which we ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... can there be much doubt that this expectation will be fully justified by the result. Thanks to the conspicuous painstaking with which Mr. Addyman has discharged his duty, and the 123 illustrations by which the text is elucidated, the volume can hardly fail to prove a very valuable standard work of its class. It can thus be confidently recommended to all who ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... for various papers, and was a painstaking writer. He usually wrote his articles two or three times, and the account of his second mob that was written for the Herald of Freedom he re-wrote seven times. He could write best in the morning, and frequently read and wrote half of the forenoon; ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the aunt and niece, but a great deal of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of affection which young girls have for the ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... instruction. He had once experimented at painting in oils, he had tried his hand at the stylus, he had made a few figurines in modeling-wax. He wrote his play, then, by the simple process of building first with painstaking accuracy, a model of his stage, the girl's room in that burgomaster's house with the French windows giving upon the little balcony. He modeled the furniture in plastiscene. He bought three little dolls to represent his characters. And then he reported what ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of what he has must be spent and used for productive purposes, just as would be the case if it were spent by the Government, with this difference, however, that, generally speaking, the individual is more painstaking and discriminating in the use of his funds and at the same time bolder, more imaginative, enterprising and constructive than the Government with its necessarily bureaucratic and routine regime possibly could be. Money in the hands of the individual is continuously ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all things into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn of mind. As he used to say, he "liked to account to himself" for practically everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had found in his cabin a week before. The why and the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... impossible to believe that Heracles would have been allowed inside the pomoerium, had he been introduced by foreigners in the strict sense of the word. No doubt much has yet to be learnt about Hercules in Italy; but recent painstaking researches have made it possible for us to acquiesce in the belief that this Hercules of the ara came from a Latin city,—from that Tibur which by tradition was of Greek origin—"Tibur Argeo positum colono,"—and which, like ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... understands the old and terrible truth: as the twig is bent so will it grow. The skin he would slough will not be sloughed; he tries all the methods—robust executions, lymphatic executions, sentimental and insipid executions, painstaking executions, cursive and impertinent executions. Through all these the Beaux Arts student, if he is intelligent enough to perceive the falseness and worthlessness of his primary education, slowly works his way. He is like a vessel without ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... he would have given himself wholly to the career of a successful pianist, but for an accident. After a year of painstaking practice, he invented a contrivance by which the weaker fingers were allowed to gain strength by usage, while the third finger was held back. This mechanism was altogether too successful, for, after using it some time, he found his third finger so badly crippled ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... careful, painstaking fellow, who always wanted to be absolutely exact, and as a result he frequently got the ill-will ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... stopping to glance through a number of lately arrived letters on a table and found one for himself, addressed in his father's painstaking script. Alone, once more without his coat, he opened the letter. Its beginning was commonplace—"My dear son, Elim"—but what followed confused him by the totally unexpected shock it contained: ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fortunately their incompetence stood them in good stead and saved them from becoming the Guidos, Domenichinos, and Guercinos, that so many of their more competent successors took so much trouble to become. Incompetence, if amiable and painstaking, will have with it an unconscious involuntary idealism of its own which is perhaps more charming than any that can be attained by aiming at it deliberately; at any rate it will take the thing portrayed apart ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... probably no inborn tendency whereby these responses of increased vigor and satisfaction are aroused in connection with any kind of activity. We do not try to surpass others in the way we talk or in our moral habits or in our intellectual attainments, as a result of nature, but rather as a result of painstaking education. As an instinct, rivalry is aroused only in connection with other instinctive responses. In getting food, in securing attention or approval, in hunting and collecting, the activity would be increased by seeing ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... had hitherto been of the vaguest. Vast plains of barren sand, a pyramid or two, Memnon's head breathing wild music in the morning sunshine, crocodiles, copper-coloured natives, and Antony and Cleopatra. These things were about as much as Miss McCroke's painstaking tuition had implanted in her pupil's mind. And here, without a shadow of vocation, this poor ignorant girl was poring over the driest details that ever interested the scholar. The mysteries of the triple language, the Rosetta Stone, Champollion—tout le ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... school of dancing in Pimlico, and incessantly trained pupils for the stage. Many of them had appeared with more or less success in the ballets at the Empire and Alhambra, and he was widely known amongst stage-struck aspirants as charging moderately and teaching in a most painstaking manner. He thus made an income which, if not large, was at least secure, and was assisted in the school by his niece, Peggy Garthorne. She was the manager of his house and looked after the money, otherwise ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... painstaking translator of this book has prepared a full conspectus, showing the results of Professor Preyer's careful observations in a chronological order, arranged by months. This considerable labor will render the book more practical, inasmuch as it will enable each reader to see at a glance the items of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... years of editorship, save in one or two conspicuous instances, I was never able to assign to an American writer, work which called for painstaking research. In every instance, the work came back to me either incorrect in statement, or otherwise ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... great scholar who has been called "the painter of nature" relax his zeal for painstaking as a writer. "I am every day learning to write," he would still say at seventy years ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... later the girl was locked in her room with the paper. His name was in large letters in the head-lines. She read the account over many times, with painstaking effort to understand that this meant Johnny McLean. That he was down there now, while she breathed pure air. Many times she read it, dazed. Suddenly she flashed to the window and threw it open and beat on the stone sill and ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... should also be taken up after the regular course in operating. It gives splendid exercise for quick handling of material, but makes a poor foundation of itself on which to build a painstaking, expert, all-round operator. Speed is the first requisite in getting a hat properly shaped, as the straw braid is flying through the machine at the rate of four thousand stitches a minute; hence the general operating is given first to the ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... association, each partner wins by considering the other before the self. Since marriage grows by enveloping, rather than by being enveloped by, any one element, every part of the married life must receive the same painstaking attention. At no point can the domination of either partner over the other take the place ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... drawing to portray accurately and in cold blood the appearance of objects. To express form one must first be moved by it. There is in the appearance of all objects, animate and inanimate, what has been called an emotional significance, a hidden rhythm that is not caught by the accurate, painstaking, but cold artist. The form significance of which we speak is never found in a mechanical reproduction like a photograph. You are never moved to say when looking at one, "What ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... little secret bit of her nature, to which he, on account of his masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist—a self-mystery-maker—like a woman. But an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... TELEGRAPH, April 13th, 1895.—"Mr G. A. Sekon has performed a service to the public. His book is full of interest, and is evidently the result of a great deal of painstaking inquiry.... His book is made all the more valuable by several pictures of engines, collisions, the Saltash Bridge, the Old Bath Station and the Box Tunnel; and it will be welcomed by all interested in the history and extraordinary expansion of ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... however, set in; and while we certainly do not love the Caesar of laboratory methods and accuracy the less, we are beginning to have a juster affection for the Rome of the rich harvest that may be gained from the careful, painstaking, detective-like exercise of our ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... I must express my share in the general regret at the departure of Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley, from whom we received much kindness. His successor, General Biddulph, R. A., is well known as a most able and painstaking officer, who is admirably suited for the responsible position he now occupies, but all will remember with due appreciation the vigorous administration of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who was selected for the command of Cyprus in the difficult period of the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... heard of him," admitted the visitor in his slow, painstaking tone, which yet had ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... service that the home can render in the cause of training girls for homemaking is probably close, painstaking study of its own individual girl—her likes, dislikes, aptitudes, and limitations. Home-mindedness shows itself nowhere so much as in the home; lack of home-mindedness shows there quite as much. The results of such study should throw great light upon the problem of the girl's future. ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... and active interest in political matters, and had rendered efficient political service by his connection with the Republican Town Committee of Easton, as Chairman and Treasurer, since the formation of the Republican party. As a member of the State Senate he was diligent and painstaking in attendance upon his Legislative duties, and was known as one of the working members of the body. He served during each year of his membership on the Committees on Railroads, and Education. In 1882 he received the Republican ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of half their letters, were scrawled with ground-plans and elevations. But latterly this chronic disposition has been quickened into an acute form by the falling-in of some few thousands to their domestic treasury,—left as the sole residuum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it into her head to make a will in Bob's favor, leaving, among other good things, a nice little bit of land in a rural district half an hour's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... had never once set eyes on the Shoe-Bar. Bloss wrote frequent and painstaking reports which seemed to indicate that everything was going well. But all through the long and tedious journey ending at the little Arizona way-station, Stratton fumed and fretted and wondered. Even if Joe had failed to see his name amongst the missing, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... omnibus, outside which Edgar had exalted him— he did not well know why till on descending at Charing Cross, he found he was to have an interview with Mr. Renville, who was copying a picture in the National Gallery, and whom he found, to his great relief, to be no wild Bohemian, but a simple painstaking business- like man, who had married a German hausfrau, and lodged a few art students with unexceptionable references. Knowing Edgar already, he had measured his powers, and assured Felix that his ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mine, the open or savanna fields sweet, adorned with flowers and grass, and full of very fine woods. I saw abundance of parrots, and fain would I have caught one, if possible, to have kept it to be tame, and taught it to speak to me. I did, after some painstaking, catch a young parrot; for I knocked it down with a stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home, but it was some years before I could make him speak. However, at last I taught him to call me by my name very familiarly: but the accident that followed, though ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... puppy!" said old Nutcracker, when his wife repeated these sayings to him. "Featherhead is a fool. Common, forsooth! I wish good, industrious, painstaking sons like Tip Chipmunk WERE common. For my part, I find these uncommon people the most tiresome. They are not content with letting us carry the whole load, but they sit on it, and scold at us ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... example of the kind of zoologist who does first- class field-work in the wilderness than John D. Haseman, who spent from 1907 to 1910 in painstaking and thorough scientific investigation over a large extent of South American territory hitherto only partially known or quite unexplored. Haseman's primary object was to study the characteristics and distribution of South American ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... at times, a disturbing emotion, a foreshadowing of evil, a warning for him to be on his guard. He used the sweep more, to help their progress in the current, and he began to measure time and distance with painstaking care. He recognized ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... she's living all right. The little woman is what d'ye call it, clever and steady; she's living, and what d'ye call it, doing her best. She's all right; the little woman's of the right sort I mean; painstaking and what d'ye call it, submissive; the little woman's all right I mean, all right, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... years of age in every class, and under all circumstances. The end of all the thoughts of father and daughter was, as I said before, Mary was to be a dressmaker; and her ambition prompted her unwilling father to apply at all the first establishments, to know on what terms of painstaking and zeal his daughter might be admitted into ever so humble a workwoman's situation. But high premiums were asked at all; poor man! he might have known that without giving up a day's work to ascertain the fact. He would have been indignant, indeed, had he ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... manner of brewers, he was much in the habit of following. Mrs. Annesley had lived at Buston all her life, having been born at the Hall. She was an excellent mother of a family, and a good clergyman's wife, being in both respects more painstaking and assiduous than her husband. But she did maintain something of respect for her brother, though in her inmost heart she knew that he was a fool. But to have been born Squire of Buston was something, and to ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... landlords are non-resident and negligent: the people have no example set them; they have no knowledge of a proper system of cultivation; and hence the poverty which generates crime. It so happens, however, that there are not better or more painstaking landlords in England than are to be found in this very district, and in the adjoining and equally disturbed county of Cavan. The Lord Primate has a large estate in Leitrim, and in the most disorganized part, on which he has had a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... difficult to see how this latter advantage could fail to outweigh the former defect; and everybody knew that they can't find a lawyer to fill your place, though another man might do the ordinary circuit work with greater comfort to the Bar; though therefore nobody is so painstaking and so little liable to make mistakes, yet to people in general and in the whole, another man would seem to do the work nearly as well, and would do his work, as far as his knowledge and conscientiousness went, with more ease;—this was something like the substance of what ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Bones in his squeakiest voice, a sure sign of his perturbation, "permit me to introduce partner, ancient commander, gallant and painstaking, jolly old Captain Hamilton, D.S.O.—which stands, young typewriter, for Deuced ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... to-day, this book does not take the traveller from the highroad. The mere idler, the wayfarer to whom Morocco is no more than one of many places of pilgrimage, must needs deal modestly with his task, even though modesty be an unfashionable virtue; and the painstaking folk who pass through this world pelting one another with hard facts will find here but little to add to their store of ammunition. This appeal is of set purpose a limited one, made to the few who are content to ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... from the beginning of the Shang dynasty in the 18th century B.C., or possibly earlier, down to a point in the reign of King Hsuean of the Chou dynasty, generally fixed at 827 B.C. They have been carefully reproduced and for the most part deciphered by painstaking Chinese archaeologists, and form the subject of many voluminous works. The following may be taken as a specimen, in which it will be noticed that only the last character is unmistakably pictorial: This is read: [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch]—"Shen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... a friendly recognition. As a lesson in social education, Cambridge House gave much subject for thought. First or last, one was to know dozens of statesmen more powerful and more agreeable than Lord Palmerston; dozens of ladies more beautiful and more painstaking than Lady Palmerston; but no political house so successful as Cambridge House. The world never explains such riddles. The foreigners said only that Lady Palmerston was ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... systems. Verbal lessons seem as if they ought to be so deeply effective, if only the will and the throng of various motives which guide it, instantly followed impression of a truth upon the intelligence. And they are, moreover, so easily communicated, saving the parent a lifetime of anxious painstaking in shaping his own character, after such a pattern as shall silently draw all within its influence to pursuit of good and honourable things. The most valuable of Rousseau's notions about education, though he by no means consistently adhered to them, was his urgent contempt for this fatuous substitution ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... countries beyond the Alps; and the elaborate preparation of the vellum, upon which much greater care was bestowed than in the modern manufacture, rendered it a costly article; so much so, that a painstaking clerk could find it worth his while to erase the writing of an old book, in order to use the blank pages for another manuscript. The books thus rewritten were called "codices rescripti," or "palimpsests." ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... yielded even better prices than the year before. She said that others were complaining of a drought, and that the fruit in consequence was generally inferior in size, so that those who, like myself, had been lucky enough, or painstaking enough, to secure a full crop, were doing better than ever. Then our little strawberry-peddler, Lucy Varick, was doing a thriving business. She established a list of customers among the great ladies in the city, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... novelist, poet, are all doing one thing, as are sculptor, painter, architect. Of detail criticism ("dry-as-dust" criticism, to use Carlyle's term) there is much, though none too much, which work requires scholarship and painstaking, and is necessary. Malone is a requirement of Shakespearean study. But, candidly, is verbal, textual criticism the largest, truest criticism? Dust is not man, though man is dust. No geologist's biography of the marble from Carrara, nor a biographer's sketch of the sculptor, will explain ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... manuscript, and to the careful criticisms and suggestions made by those persons who examined the completed manuscript in behalf of his publishers. Above all, a great debt of gratitude is owed to Mr. Grant Norris, Superintendent of Schools, Braddock, Pennsylvania, for the encouragement and painstaking aid he has given both in preparation of the manuscript and in reading ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... conscientious and painstaking investigations of the Bollandist Fathers, who examine in their careful way all the guarantees and traditions of the manuscript with a jealousy worthy of the most enlightened historians—is not Turgot, who is usually ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... painstaking, proffered this lucid explanation painfully, and then gasped; it seemed a liberty for her to explain anything ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... enthusiasm as the spectacle of the pure working of our administrative machinery, of able and independent judges, a learned and upright bar, a respectable and purified custom-house, an enlightened and efficient treasury, and a painstaking post-office. The colleges of the country and the railroads, and indeed everything that depends on private enterprise, are rapidly becoming objects of pride; but a good deal needs to be done by the government to prevent its being a ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... fairly well how to respond to the reiterated words of command: "High Guard"—"Pint;" "Low Guard"—"Pint," etc., and can form the "pints" and guards in a respectable manner, it will be well to join some school of arms with a proficient and painstaking military instructor who is also an expert swordsman. I say swordsman advisedly, because I am convinced that it is only one who is a fencer who can be really qualified to impart knowledge on the subject of weapons chiefly used ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... after weeks of heartbreaking labor and disappointments we succeeded. Out of the five species of toucans living in this part of Guiana we found the nests of four, and the one which eluded us was the big sulphur-breasted fellow. I remembered so vividly the painstaking care with which, week after week, we and our Indians tramped the jungle for miles,—through swamps and over rolling hills,—at last having to admit failure; and now I sat and watched thirty, forty, fifty of the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... most searching investigation and said its last word, we know comparatively little and that little imperfectly. No set of men is more ready to admit this state of affairs than that which has made the closest scrutiny of the phenomena of nature. There is a host of questions to which the most painstaking investigation on the part of the philosophers can afford us ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... to keep the tongue well under control, no small factor in moral excellence, and to make it always obedient and submissive to reason, is not possible, unless by practice and attention and painstaking a man has subdued his worst passions, as for example anger. For such expressions as "a word uttered involuntarily," and "escaping the barrier of the teeth,"[526] and "words darting forth spontaneously," well illustrate what happens ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Zerrahn wields the baton, but Madam Urso is the real director. Her spirit guides the music and inspires the orchestra with unusual animation. The rather listless manner in the symphony is exchanged for painstaking care and attention. Camilla's earnestness and life seems to inspire them to greater effort, and their playing gains in vigor and precision. "Not too much fire, gentlemen." This is the slow movement, and she gently represses their enthusiasm. The feather like touch, the airy delicacy of ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... Veldeke and Hartman von Ouwe, but his poem is free from the tedious and often exaggerated descriptions of pomp, dress, and court ceremonies, that mar the beauty of even the best of the courtly epics. Many painstaking attempts have been made to discover the identity of the writer of our poem, but even the most plausible of all these theories which considers Kurenberg, one of the earliest of the "Minnesingers", to be the author, because of the similarity ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... of their hearts these gossips put no faith in such reports; for ever since his return from Spain the daily life of the Rabbi had been pure, pious, and earnest in every way. He performed every detail of all religious customs and ceremonies with painstaking conscientiousness; he fasted every Monday and Thursday—only on Sabbaths and feast days did he indulge in meat or wine; his time was passed in prayer and study; by day he taught the Law to students, whom his fame had drawn to Bacharach; and by night he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... things to a stand before the window, where she went on with her copying till dinner was ready. Whatever the reason was, however, her pencil did not work smoothly; her eye did not see true; and she lacked her usual steady patience. The next morning, after an hour and more's work and much painstaking, the drawing was finished. Ellen had quite forgotten her yesterday's trouble. But when John came to review her drawing, he found several faults with it; pointed out two or three places in which it had suffered from haste and want of care; and asked her how ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... of scholars and thinkers in this country. So consummate was the handling of Hoffman's "Race Traits and Tendencies" by Prof. Miller, that we may say that it was the most scientific defense of the Negro ever made in this country by a man of our own blood: accurate, pointed, painstaking, and I claim conclusive. ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... perfectly well that Emil's letters were written more for her than for Alexandra. They were not the sort of letters that a young man writes to his sister. They were both more personal and more painstaking; full of descriptions of the gay life in the old Mexican capital in the days when the strong hand of Porfirio Diaz was still strong. He told about bull-fights and cock-fights, churches and FIESTAS, the flower-markets and the fountains, the music and dancing, the people ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... work of isolating and testing the blood fraction, Jay had worked tirelessly and unsparingly; scarcely sleeping, but brooding; silent, prone to fly into sudden savage rages, but painstaking. He had overseen the trailmen with an almost fatherly solicitude—but from a distance. He had left no stone unturned for their comfort—but refused to see them in person except ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... rather labrynthal, commodious place with plain, ancient furniture. Beyond, is a very excellent school for girls as well as infants of the gentler sex. It is supervised by nuns, some of whom are wonderfully clever. They are "Sisters of the Holy Child;" are most painstaking, sincere, and useful; never dream about sweethearts; devote their whole time to religion and education. All of them are well educated; two or three of them are smart. The school, which has an average attendance of 550, is in a high ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... asked the Baroness Sophie, not by way of questioning the statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of Providence, which had obviously never intended that she ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... withdrawal of the "Conclusion" to The Renaissance from its second edition, from a fear that "it might possibly mislead some of those young men into whose hands it might fall," is but one of many examples of his solicitude; and surely such as have gone astray after such painstaking guidance have but their own natures to blame. As he justly says, again of Marius, "in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... promised to be more painstaking, reserving only the right to rest if they should "knock ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... take her for a walk to pick flowers in the hedgerow, or to sail a tiny boat for her in the pools left as the sea retired. Mrs. Walsham found, to her surprise, that the child gave little trouble. She was quiet and painstaking during the half hours in the morning and afternoon when she was in the school room, while at mealtimes her prattle and talk amused both mother and son, and altogether she made the house brighter and ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... with less than the respect which is eternally due to an artist who has once excited in the heart a generous and beautiful emotion, and has remained honest, I regret it. And this is to be said: at his worst Kipling is an honest and painstaking artist. No work of his but has obviously been lingered over with a craftsman's devotion! He has never spoken when he had nothing to say—though probably no artist was ever more seductively tempted by publishers and editors to do so. And he has done more than shun notoriety—Miss Marie Corelli ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... and when the smoke has cleared away there he is, still standing. He will not vote himself an enemy, but if against his will he is voted an enemy, he accepts the election, and discharges the duties of his office with painstaking vigilance and care. Now, no one does that, and ever gets re-elected, no matter what the office. Such is the world. And so the Dutchman has never been voted an enemy twice by the same people. One term of his vigorous administration of hostile forces is quite enough, and inasmuch as he does not ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... only good if it explains all known phenomena in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a new fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist is experiment!" ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the purpose very well if it were not for the Vexirfehler. According to this definition, when the Vexirfehler appears we should have to say that one point is above the threshold for twoness, which is a queer contradiction, to say the least. It follows that all of the elaborate and painstaking experiments to determine a threshold are useless. That is, the threshold determinations do not lead us ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... announced the wanderer. "If I settled myself into a respectable practice I should be obliged to march with the army of doctors who carry a great array of small weapons, and who find out what is the matter with their patients after all sorts of experiment and painstaking analysis, and comparing the results of their thermometers and microscopes with scientific books of reference. After I have done all that, you know, if I have had good luck I shall come to exactly what you can say before you have ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... girl. She didn't like the tropics. He had brought her out there, where she had no friends, and now, she said, he was becoming inconsiderate. She had a presentiment of some misfortune, and notwithstanding Davidson's painstaking explanations, she could not see why her presentiments were to be disregarded. On the very last evening before Davidson went away she asked him in a ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Prussia on crossing the frontier the authorities were most civil, cast an eye at the carriage, made a bow, and would not look at an article; the regulations of Prussia are in all departments most excellent, and a painstaking discipline exists everywhere, which makes the position of the traveller quite charming. Here only one side of the road is macadamized, the other half is the soil, but the road is very wide, so down hill you take the soil, very safe. All through Prussia, as far as I have ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... as a parson does upon his parishioners, and considered the alms he received as much his due as the other does his tithes. "I rather think," added Scott, "Andrew considered himself more of a gentleman than those who toiled for a living, and that he secretly looked down upon the painstaking peasants ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... with even moderate accuracy; constant study of the actual object, and frequent comparison by glancing from object to copy, are absolutely necessary for forming a correct draughtsman. But Millet knew his own way best; and how wonderfully minute and painstaking must his survey have been when it enabled him to reproduce the picture of a person afterwards in every detail ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... position, but was sensible of his own; and his familiarity, friendly enough, was not such as invited response. It was said of him that he did not remember his rank unless you forgot it. In political administration he was painstaking, clear-headed, and just. But his abilities were moderate, and he did not see how far they were from being sufficient for the management of great affairs, which, however, he was always ambitious of handling.' See also Selborne's ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... achieved." "Chaque oeuvre a faire a sa poetique en soi, qu'il faut trouver," said Flaubert. Truth in a work of art is sincerity. That a man says what he really means—shows us what he really thinks to be beautiful—is all that reason bids us ask for. No science or painstaking can make up for his not doing this. No lack of skill or observation can entirely frustrate his communicating his intention to kindred natures if he is utterly sincere. An infant communicates its joy. It is probable that the inexpressible is never felt. Stammering becomes more eloquent than oratory, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the Iles-Saint-Marguerite," says Lagrange-Chancel," brought many things to my knowledge which a more painstaking historian than M. de Voltaire would have taken the trouble to find out; for at the time when I was taken to the islands the imprisonment of the Man in the Iron Mask was no longer regarded as a state secret. This extraordinary event, which M. de Voltaire ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... complete his work. Verocchio consented to do so, but had not been long in Venice when he died. Verocchio is said to have spent much time in drawing from the antique, and his works prove him to have been diligent and painstaking; these qualities made him the sculptor that he was; but we see no traces in his work of the heaven-born genius which makes the artist great, and so inspires himself that his works fill all beholders with an enthusiasm ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... history of Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate, he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man, consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure, he was the author of Paradise Lost; but that much-praised poem had serious religious ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should find it a difficult task—not only that much of it was in a strange tongue, but that it was a volume whose displaced leaves would have to be lifted tenderly, blown free of much dust, re-arranged, some torn fragments laid together again with much painstaking, and even the purport of some pages guessed out. Obviously, the place to commence at was that brightly illuminated ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... him. According to his own confession he had "not half the sense, memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of less than half its importance, down in writing."[11] This chronicle is the work of a painstaking clerk. One is not surprised to find a chronicler in the pay of the house of Alencon representing the differences concerning the Maid, which arose between the Sire de la Tremouille and the Duke of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... with painstaking explanations and the objections gradually became fewer, simmering down into more or less intelligent questions. Gregory noticed that the fishermen began to retire and clustered together in little groups while they talked earnestly among themselves. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... any rate try; She would do all in her power to make him comfortable, and would be specially careful not to irritate him by any insistence on her own higher rank. She would be very meek in this respect; and if children should come she would be as painstaking about them as though her own father had been merely a clergyman or a lawyer. She thought also much about poor Lilian Dale, asking herself sundry questions, with an idea of being high-principled as to her duty in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... to dance. There was a particularly painstaking little boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones from a Fraulein ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... Dostoevski, and Andreev, and explains why the Russians admire him more than they love him. To him the truth about life was always the main thing. His novels were never tracts, he wrote them with the most painstaking care, and in his whole career he never produced a pot-boiler. His work is invariably marked by that high seriousness which Arnold worshipped, and love of his art was his main inspiration. He had a gift for condensation, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... them in sustained, relentless action. Endued by nature with invincible energy and determination, he moved spontaneously and easily along his difficult path. He approached, although he did not attain genius. In Howe is seen rather the result of conscientious painstaking acting upon excellent abilities, but struggling always against a native heaviness and a temper constitutionally both indolent and indulgent; a temper to which indeed he does not yield, over which he triumphs, but which ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... useful hand. People who possess this type are essentially practical, logical, and rather materialistic. They belong to the earth and the things of the earth. They have little imagination or idealism, they are solid, serious workers, methodical and painstaking in all they do. They believe in things only by proof and by their reason. They are often religious and even superstitious, but more from habit than from ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... gateway of mediumship the spirits make themselves known in a variety of ways. There are many phases of mediumistic phenomena, and the student will find that he must be patient, painstaking, and persevering if he would make sure of his facts. Careful investigation, possibly prolonged research, under many difficulties and with many discouragements, will be required, but 'success is certain if energy fail not,' and the results will adequately recompense him for all sacrifice ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... in the end house of the village, a white-walled, vine-clad building, with a courtyard and stables and a neat garden that only one Boche shell had smitten. On the door of the large room that we chose for the mess there still remained a request in French, written in a clear painstaking hand, that billeted officers should keep to the linoleum strips laid across the carpet when proceeding to the two inner rooms. But there was no linoleum now, and no carpet. On the otherwise bare wall was hung a massively-framed portrait of the proprietor—a ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex) |
