"Sedulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he crossed the hall and the drawing-room, wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called, but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial occasions. It was a big room; half of ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... here, any more than anywhere else in this book, about the "sedulous ape" business. No man ever wrote as well as Stevenson who cared only about writing. Yet there is a sense, though a misleading one, in which his original inspirations were artistic rather than purely philosophical. To put the point ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Hall, Oxford. On leaving the university he was admitted a member of Clifford's Inn; but in 1604 removed to the Inner Temple. Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses, says of him that 'after he had continued there a sedulous student for some time, he did, by the help of a strong body and a vast memory, not only run through the whole body of the law, but became a prodigy in most parts of learning, especially in those which were not common or little frequented or regarded ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Nor, sedulous as I have been to trace How Nature by extrinsic passion first 545 Peopled the mind with forms sublime or fair, And made me love them, may I here omit How other pleasures have been mine, and joys Of subtler origin; how I have felt, Not seldom even in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the General Synod, while made with the best intentions, fell with exceedingly painful echo on the ears of the missionaries at Amoy. Was the flock they had gathered with so much prayer and effort, and reared with such sedulous care, to be thus summarily divided and perhaps in consequence scattered? The missionaries felt persuaded that their brethren in the United States could not fully appreciate the situation or there would ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... poisoned amidst comparative ease and plenty, or when, as before the fall of Napoleon, provisions were twice as dear as they now are, and wages not much more than half as high? Romans and Carthaginians were pretty much given to war: but no nations were more sedulous in the cult of Mammon. Again, the Scriptures are pretty strong against Mammon-worship, but they do not recommend this original and peculiar cure. Nay, once more: what sad errors must have crept into the text of the prophet Isaiah when he is made to desire that ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of his essays, tells us how he "played the sedulous ape" to Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Montaigne, and other writers of the past. And the compositors of all our higher-toned newspapers keep the foregoing sentence set up in type always, so constantly does it come tripping off the pens of all higher-toned reviewers. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... man's reputation of good-breeding; you must, therefore, in a manner, overwhelm them with these attentions: they are used to them, they expect them, and, to do them justice, they commonly requite them. You must be sedulous, and rather over officious than under, in procuring them their coaches, their chairs, their conveniences in public places: not see what you should not see; and rather assist, where you cannot help seeing. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... habit, acquired after years of practice and a sedulous study of the best models, to conceal beneath a mask of well-bred indifference any emotion which she might chance to feel. Her dealings with the aristocracy of England had shown her that, while the men occasionally permitted ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... been sedulous to subject and unite all the priests of the Orient throughout its whole extent to the see of Your Holiness.... For we do not suffer that anything which is mooted, however clear and unquestionable, pertaining to the state of the churches, should fail to be made known ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... comparative psychology. They interact throughout the whole of life, and their interactions are very complex. No one can read the chapters of The Descent of Man which Darwin devotes to a consideration of the mental characters of man and animals without noticing, on the one hand, how sedulous he is in his search for hereditary foundations, and, on the other hand, how fully he realises the importance of acquired habits of mind. The fact that educability itself has innate tendencies—is in fact a partially differentiated educability—renders ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... harmoniously represent one age, and that a brief age, of culture; that this effect cannot, in a thoroughly uncritical period, have been deliberately aimed at and produced by archaeological learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic tradition, or by the scientific labours of an editor of the sixth century B.C. We shall endeavour to prove, what we have already indicated, that the hypotheses of expansion are not self-consistent, or in accordance with what is known of the evolution of early national ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... first open recognition between the mother and her son's betrothed. Their other meeting had been in public, when, with a sedulous dread, both had behaved exactly as usual, and no word or manner had betrayed their altered relations. Now, when for the first time it was needful for Miss Silver to be received as a daughter elect, with all the natural sympathy ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... guinea, and reduced Carolus Secundus, from a whole number, to decimal fractions) I dispatched a letter into the country, full of excuse, and penitence, baited with all the submissive eloquence imaginable. In the mean time, I was no less sedulous to find out some employment, that might suit with my genius, and with my dependencies at ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... may be rhetorical fiction and sedulous imitation, we ought not, on that account, to undervalue the enthusiasm inspiring the young poets. Let us, who have mostly grown blunt to the charms of Latin, not think too lightly of the elation felt by one who, after learning this language out ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... on his models, and classed him among writers whose inspiration is imitative and second-hand. But this is to be quite misled by the well-known passage of Stevenson's own, in which he speaks of himself as having in his prentice years played the 'sedulous ape' to many writers of different styles and periods. In doing this he was not seeking inspiration, but simply practising the use of the tools which were to help him to express his own inspirations. Truly he was always much of a reader: but it was life, not books, that always ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that in their ignorance they will speak evil of me. So by my good-doing I only come to be evil spoken of. This is what I do not desire, but am not able to avoid. In the case of a man, who gets up at cock-crowing to practise what is good and continues sedulous in the endeavour till midnight, and says at the same time that he does not wish men to know it, lest they should praise him, I must say of such a man, that, if he be not deceitful, he is stupid."' Another day, the duke asked Tsze-sze, saying, 'Can my state be made to flourish?' 'It may,' ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... day or two unwonted peace and serenity were observable in Lydia Graham's demeanour and countenance. She took even more than the ordinary pains with her dress; she arranged her little drawing-room more than ever effectively and with sedulous care, and she remained at home every afternoon, in spite of fine weather and an unusual number of invitations. But Douglas Dale made no sign, he did not come, he did not write, and all his enthusiastic declarations seemed to have ended in nothing. The truth was that Paulina Durski was ill, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... (1) sedulous, sedentary, supersede, subside, preside, reside, residue, possess, assessment, session, seige; (2) sediment, insidious, assiduous, subsidy, obsession, see ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... extravagance. Therefore, all who had any sense among the Importants—La Rochefoucauld, La Chatre, and Campion—anxiously sought to hush up and terminate this deplorable affair; and Madame de Chevreuse, sedulous to pay court to the Queen at the same time that she was weaving a subtle plot against her minister, had prepared the little fete for her at Renard's garden with the design of dispersing the last remaining cloudlets ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Certainly, the sedulous manner in which the new tragedy had been advertised was not without result. To me, unused as I was to theatre-going, the host of people, the hot air, the glare of the gas-lights were intoxicating. In a flutter of anxiety for Tom's success, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Knight, though brave, was blind, Squire Sancho just a trifle credulous, But our dear Don was nobly kind, And in the cause of suffering sedulous. If, mounting MALAMBRUNO's steed, He showed more sanguine than sagacious, He was not moved by huckster greed, Or ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... were very great, he could not but admit to himself that she wanted a something,—a way of holding herself and of speaking, which some people call style. Lily might certainly learn a great deal from Lady Alexandrina; and it was this conviction, no doubt, which made him so sedulous in pleasing that lady on ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... threshold of the world. Lucretia therefore received the suggestions and proposals of Madarne Colonna with coldness and indifference; one might even say contempt, for she neither felt respect for this lady, nor was she sedulous to evince it. Although really younger than Coningsby, Lucretia felt that a woman of eighteen is, in all worldly considerations, ten years older than a youth of the same age. She anticipated that a considerable ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights In battles feigned (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung), or to describe races and games Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... liberty bonds in the amount of $206,179,150, to 1,349, individual subscribers. As "dispatch bearers of the government" they have distributed over 15,000,000 war pamphlets. They have been sedulous and invaluable in checking enemy propaganda. They have served on innumerable public occasions as police aids and as ushers at great meetings. They performed one feat that might to many have appeared impossible, in searching out for the war department enough black walnut trees ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... night when we were in our lonely beds. We knew not even which alternative to hope for, both appearing so unnatural, and pointing so directly to an unsound brain. Once this fear offered, I observed his conduct with sedulous particularity. Something of the child he exhibited: a cheerfulness quite foreign to his previous character, an interest readily aroused, and then very tenacious, in small matters which he had heretofore despised. When he was stricken down, I was his only confidant, and I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that has occurred was the visit of the upholsterer (with some further calculations) since I began this letter. I think they took me here at the New London for the Wonderful Being I am; they were amazingly sedulous; and no doubt they looked for my being visited by the nobility and gentry of the neighborhood. My first and only visitor came to-night: a ruddy-faced man in faded black, with extracts from a feather-bed all over him; an extraordinary and quite miraculously dirty face; a thick ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... But then—I can write the thing no other way—that ancient devil of hers made re-entry into the heart of Mistress Gwyn. I was a man, and a man who had loved her; it was then twice intolerable that I should disclaim her dominion, that I should be free, nay, that I should serve another with a sedulous care which might well seem devotion; for the offence touching the guinea was forgotten, my mock drowning well-nigh forgiven, and although Barbara had few words for me, they were such that gratitude and friendship shone in them ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... knowing there is little to be gained by trying to cherish and succour a feeble remnant of fire. He will manfully jettison the whole business, filling the cellar with the crash of shunting ashes and the clatter of splitting kindling. But this pitiable creature still thought that mayhap he could, by sedulous care and coaxing, revive the dying spark. With such black arts as were available he wrestled with the despondent glim. During this period of guilty and furtive strife he went quietly upstairs, and a voice spoke up from slumber. "Isn't the house very ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Sorrel thought—to deal with him delicately and cautiously—neither with too much levity, nor with an overweighted seriousness. One's plan of conduct with a multi-millionaire required to be thought out with sedulous care, and entered upon with circumspection. And Mrs Sorrel did not attempt even as much as a youthful giggle at Helmsley's half-sarcastically implied compliment with its sarcastic implication as to the ease with which she supported her years and superabundance of flesh tissue. She ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... daily diminishing food supply with sedulous consideration, knew that the winter was drawing near, a season merciless in its rigor. He knew that one of these days the northerly wind would bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... given. It will be remembered that Ferdinand Lopez destroyed himself in March, now three months since. The act had been more than a nine days' wonder, having been kept in the memory of many men by the sedulous efforts of Quintus Slide, and by the fact that the name of so great a man as the Prime Minister was concerned in the matter. But gradually the feeling about Ferdinand Lopez had died away, and his fate, though it had outlived the nominal ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... cultivation, of course, I have not had to overstrain it in the attempt to reach vocal heights which have come to some only after severe and long-continued effort. But, on the other hand, the finer the natural voice the more sedulous the care required to preserve it in its pristine freshness to bloom. This is the singer's ever present problem—in my case, however, mostly a ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... numbers and those of subconsciousness mingle in a like darkness. I am well aware that an explanation laden to such an extent with mysteries explains but very little more than silence does; nevertheless, it is at least a silence traversed by restless murmurs, and sedulous whispers that are better than the gloomy and hopeless ignorance to which we would have perforce to resign ourselves if we did not, in spite of all, to perform the great duty of man, which is to discover a ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... guilty to the same extent of enormity as the coterie in Holland, who devised all the Bond mischief at a safe distance, the Hollanders in South Africa were nevertheless their eager abettors and sedulous henchmen. It will be remembered that the Bond cry had been "Drive the English into the sea, out of Africa," and that the first earnest in carrying out that fiat was practised some months before the outbreak of the war upon the unaggressive ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... that, he was not the actor. The author, on Mr. Collins's showing, must have been a very sedulous and diligent student of Greek poetry, above all of the drama, down to its fragments. The Baconians assuredly ought to try to prove, from Bacon's works, that ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... sedulous care was bestowed upon the ponies, which could be of little use among the great mountains. When spring was fully come they would go eastward out of the mountains, and upon the vast plains, where they would hunt the buffalo. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... but a small part of a minister's duty.' Or, in the event of a vacancy, the flock looking out for a pastor are apt enough to say, 'Our last minister was an accomplished pulpit man, but what we at present want is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths' standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the remark, as if it embodied a self-evident ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... bounty of Providence, and it was meet that the liberality of man should be in harmony with it. Felix, grave and decorous, as became the importance of the occasion, and his assistant, multiplied themselves into a thousand waiters, sedulous to anticipate the wants of the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Irving's popularity, one of them might have been the beauty of his name, whose secret is revealed by the laws of prosody. Washington is a stately dactyl; Irving is a sweet and mellow spondee, and thus we have a combination which poets in ancient and modern days have sought with sedulous care, and which should close every line of hexameter verse. Hence a measure such, as that found in 'Washington Irving' terminates every line in Evangeline, or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... popular sovereigns were likewise the most sedulous patrons of learning. Prakrama I. founded schools at Pollanarrua[1]; and it is mentioned with due praise in the Rajaratnacari, that the King Wijayo Bahu III., who reigned at Dambeadinia, A.D. 1240, "established a school in every village, and charged the priests who superintended them to take nothing ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... determination to have her own way marked her character perhaps rather more strongly than that of most spoiled children, for nature had endowed her with a strong will, which education had fostered, as it almost seemed, with sedulous care. For the fact was Mrs. Grey dreaded a contest with Pauline; she screamed so, and Mr. Grey got so angry, sometimes with her, and sometimes with the child, and altogether it was such a time, that she soon begun to think it ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... were on the yards, and broad folds of fresh canvas were flapping in the breeze, as the new sails were bent and set. Ropes were spliced, or supplied by new rigging, the spars examined, and in fine all that watchfulness and sedulous care were observed, which are so necessary to the efficiency and safety of a ship. Every spar was secured, the pumps were sounded, and the vessel held on her way, as steadily as if she had never ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... they had abandoned to his revenge him who had put out his eyes, took him home, and the punishment he inflicted upon him was sedulous instructions to virtue." Yet this truly comic paper does not probably know that it is comic, any more than the kleptomaniac knows that he steals, or than John Milton knew he was a humorist when he wrote a hymn upon the circumcision, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... genius for, and sedulous attention to the interests of his profession, procured him an acquisition of farther honours, as well as recommended him to the patronage of the most eminent of the faculty: in 1707 his Paduan diploma for doctor of physick, was confirmed by the university of Oxford; ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... in the discharge of duties properly so called, receives general esteem. Even in matters merely ceremonial, if importance be attached to them, sedulous and exact compliance, being the distinction of the few, will earn the approbation ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Victoria. The London Daily Telegraph said of him at the time of his accession—speaking probably with the knowledge of Lord Burnham, its proprietor, who had for many years been on intimate terms of friendship with the Royal Family—that the new King had undergone sedulous training and been educated to rule by learning to obey. "The country will discover in him what those admitted to his confidence have always realized—admirable traits of kindliness and strength; wise common sense, practical judgment of affairs; ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... any longer); and she accepted a sprig of Johnnie's geranium, and a handful of Duncan's sweet-peas; tasted one of Archie's nasturtium flowers when assured by him that it was 'so nice;' was duly edified by the sight of the remains of the tooth-brush, worn to a stump by Georgie's sedulous and novel use of it; allowed Honorius to pull up a potato root, that she might see how healthy and free from disease it was; submitted patiently to have her hair ornamented with some of Seymour's convolvuluses; and only declined ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... turned upon the brow o' the hill, It was so openly, so lightly done, You saw she thought he was not thought upon. He through the gate went back in bitterness; She that night woke and stirred, with no distress, Glad of her doing,—sedulous to be glad, Lest perhaps her foolish heart suspect ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London's best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. His golf handicap was twelve. His sister, Mrs. Horace Hignett, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... its origin to education, and is the creation of our social state. Hence the wise will give himself no concern as to a meritorious act or a crime, seeing that the one is intrinsically neither better nor worse than the other; but he will give himself sedulous concern as respects his outer or external relations—his position in society; conforming his acts to that standard which it in its wisdom or folly, but in the exercise of its might, has declared ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... phenomenon, of a traveller, usually lauding the countries through which he passes, receiving in return the reluctant approbation of those whose institutions, manners, and customs, have been praised by him. It is admitted, by the most sedulous and systematic of my opponents—M. CRAPELET—that "considering the quantity and quality of the ornaments and engravings of this Tour, one is surprised that its cost is ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... reputation or his fortune? There is no quality so contrary to any nature, which men cannot affect, and put on upon occasions, in order to serve an interest, or gratify a prevailing passion. The proudest man will personate humility, the morosest learn to flatter, the laziest will be sedulous and active, where he is in pursuit of what he has much at heart. How ready, therefore, would most men be to step into the paths of virtue and piety, if they infallibly ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... visiting Rome, they lingered at Fiesole. Donatus was received with great honor by clergy and people and was requested to fill their vacant bishopric. With much hesitation he took upon himself ihe burden, which he bore for many years. His biographer says of him that "he was liberal in almsgiving, sedulous in watching, devout in prayer, excellent in doctrine, ready in speech, holy in life." Andrew, who was his deacon, founded the church and monastery of St. Martin in Mensola, and is known in Fiesole as St. Andrew of Ireland, or St. Andrew the Scot, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... little after sunrise one bright morning in September that Benham came up on to the deck of the sturdy Austrian steamboat that was churning its way with a sedulous deliberation from Spalato to Cattaro, and lit himself a cigarette and seated himself upon a deck chair. Save for a yawning Greek sailor busy with a mop the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... improvement. They are more directly under the eye of Keate; he treats them with more civility and speaks to them differently. So the days follow one another very much alike—studious, cheerful, sociable, sedulous. The debates in parliament take up a good deal of his time, and he is overwhelmed by the horrible news of the defeat of the catholics in the House of Commons (March 8,1827). On a summer's day in 1826, 'Mr. Canning here; inquired after me and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... fountain, at the very moment of her death, to the Master of Ravenswood, in The Bride of Lammermoor, with great effect. It was probably the vivacity with which he realized the violence which such incidents do to the terrestrial common sense of our ordinary nature, and at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail with which he narrated them, rather than any, even the smallest, special susceptibility of his own brain to thrills of the preternatural kind, which gave him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with such preternatural elements. Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a little too ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... sides the sheep Came with their wonted drivers, Medon then (For he of all the heralds pleas'd them most, And waited at the board) them thus address'd. Enough of play, young princes! ent'ring now The house, prepare we sedulous our feast, 210 Since in well-timed refreshment harm is none. He spake, whose admonition pleas'd. At once All, rising, sought the palace; there arrived, Each cast his mantle off, which on his throne Or ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... and dislike, remembering all the hopeless beginnings he had made. But now he understood that to begin a romance was almost a separate and special art, a thing apart from the story, to be practiced with sedulous care. Whenever an opening scene occurred to him he noted it roughly in a book, and he devoted many long winter evenings to the elaboration of these beginnings. Sometimes the first impression would yield only a paragraph or a sentence, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... bond of affection between these women, and this was Barbara's fault, for Dona Magdalena's experience was the same as Don John's. She perceived with shame how greatly she had undervalued Don John's mother—nay, how much she had wronged her—but her sedulous efforts to make amends for the error produced an effect upon Barbara different from her expectations; for the great lady's manner seemed like a confession of guilt, and kept alive the memory of the anguish of soul which Dona Magdalena had so often ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eleven summers I've written things that aimed to teach Our careless mealy-mouthed mummers To be more sedulous ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... remember their duty to their own families, and do not sacrifice domestic happiness to fame and fortune. Personally he was pleasant to every one, mere acquaintances as well as intimate friends, and his house was always the centre of a lively gathering. With his wife, he took sedulous care of the education of his children, of whom there were no less than six at her early ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... returning from a country which their readers cannot easily visit, give such exaggerated accounts of it, and relate so many marvels, as to hazard their own character for veracity. I shall rather endeavour to characterize them as they appear to me after sedulous and repeated study, without concealing their defects, and to bring a living picture of the Grecian stage before the eyes ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... playing on the affections of children prematurely and far too frequently. The lady who says that as her religion is love, her children shall be brought up in an atmosphere of love, and institutes a system of sedulous endearments and exchanges of presents and conscious and studied acts of artificial kindness, may be defeated in a large family by the healthy derision and rebellion of children who have acquired hardihood and common sense in their conflicts with one another. But the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... the cardinal; still dressed with sedulous care, his hair well arranged and curled, his person perfumed, he looked, owing to his extreme taste in dress, only half his age. But Rochefort, who had passed five years in prison, had become old in the lapse of a few years; the dark locks of this estimable friend of the defunct ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... very weedy, Sir! in worthless phrases, 125 A sedulous eschewer of the popular And the colloquial—one who seeketh dignity I' th' paths of circumlocution! It would have Surpris'd you tho', to hear how nat'rally He squeak'd when Curio had him by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for him with sedulous care, not only her room and her clothes, but herself. She was determined she would comport herself creditably, would be equal to the occasion and fulfill the highest expectations. She was going to act like a lady—no one would ever suspect she ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... be said about style. Stevenson said that he arrived at flexibility of style by frank and unashamed imitation of other writers; he played, as he said, "the sedulous ape" to great authors. This system has its merits, but it also has its dangers. A sensitive literary temperament is apt to catch, to repeat, to perpetuate the charming mannerisms of great writers. I have ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... letters which I shall by and by have to introduce; but I may add that I have no doubt this unfortunate passion, besides one good effect already adverted to, had a powerful influence in nerving Scott's mind for the sedulous diligence with which he pursued his proper legal studies, as described in his Memoir, during the two or three years that preceded his call ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... a sedulous artist; some of his books, it is true, are very hurried productions, finished in haste for the market with no great amount either of inspiration or artistic confidence about them. But little slovenly work will be found bearing his name, for he was a thoroughly trained writer; a suave ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... early-Victorian consciousness of nothing save a golden time. It was all so full and mellow that he was forty before he had his only love affair of any depth—with the daughter of one of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a, natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking. His wife had been a hard, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is a more and a less of scoundrelism, as there is a more and a less of black annihilation, and we must have systematic jurisprudence, with its classification of caitiffs and its graduated blasting. Has Mr. Carlyle's passion, or have the sedulous and scientific labours of that Bentham, whose name with him is a symbol of evil, done most in what he calls the Scoundrel-province of Reform within the last half-century? Sterling's criticism on Teufelsdroeckh told a hard but wholesome ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... occupations, the routine duties of constitutional royalty have doubtless a calm and chastening effect. The insanity with which he struggled, and in many cases struggled very successfully, during many years, would probably have burst out much oftener but for the sedative effect of sedulous employment. But how few princes have ever felt the anomalous impulse for real work; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere; how little are the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it; how little can it be relied on as an ordinary breakwater to their habitual temptations! ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... details of the prescription, while the main substance is unquestionable. Nowhere in the universe, save in improved habits, can we ever find health for our girls. Special delicacy in the conditions of the problem only implies more sedulous care in the solution. The great laws of exercise, of respiration, of digestion are essentially the same for all human beings; and greater sensitiveness in the patient should not relax, but only stimulate, our efforts after cure. And the unquestionable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... troubled politics, and conflicting interests, Aaron Burr came exploring, vigilant to note and sedulous to question. The sum of the impressions which he received confirmed him in the belief that the people of the West and Southwest were ready and anxious to separate their section from the Atlantic States; and he felt ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Elizabeth Fry seemed quite unwilling to breathe the same atmosphere with her. During the six weeks that many of us remained in London after the convention we were invited to a succession of public and private breakfasts, dinners, and teas, and on these occasions it was amusing to watch Mrs. Fry's sedulous efforts to keep Mrs. Mott at a distance. If Mrs. Mott was on the lawn, Mrs. Fry would go into the house; if Mrs. Mott was in the house, Mrs. Fry would stay out on the lawn. One evening, when we were all crowded into two parlors, and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... judge in Hone's trials for the publication of certain blasphemous parodies. At this time he was suffering from the most intense exhaustion, and his constitution was sinking under the fatigues of a long and sedulous discharge of his important duties. This did not deter him from taking his seat upon the bench on this occasion. When he entered the court, previous to the trial, Hone shouted out, 'I am glad to see you, Lord Ellenborough. I know what you are come here for; I know what you want.' 'I am come ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... he received me back on civil and equal terms, not alluding beyond a word or two to my long absence. We began again as friends; and our mutual knowledge of my mother's fatal malady softened our hearts and manners toward one another. Whenever he was in-doors he waited upon her with sedulous attention. But, for the certainty that death was lurking very near to us, I should have been happier in my home than I had ever been since that momentous week in Sark. But I was also nearer to Olivia, and every throb of my pulse was quickened by the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... meantime Harrison eagerly improved every incident from which he might derive further information. There was a clergyman who came every Sunday to the village to officiate in the neighbourhood; and having heard of the sedulous application of the young carpenter, he lent him a manuscript copy of Professor Saunderson's discourses. That blind professor had prepared several lectures on natural philosophy for the use of his students, though they were not intended ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... he combined with some of the elements of the detective novel, or roman policier, careful study of character. Except Great Expectations, none of his later tales rivals in merit his early picaresque stories of the road, such as Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby. "Youth will be served;" no sedulous care could compensate for the exuberance of "the first sprightly runnings." In the early books the melodrama of the plot, the secrets of Ralph Nickleby, of Monk, of Jonas Chuzzlewit, were the least of the innumerable ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and connected me with several respectable families and accomplished persons. My education had been a good one, although I was deprived of its full benefit by indifferent health, just at the period when I ought to have been most sedulous in improving it." He then describes his circumstances as easy, with a moderate degree of business for his standing, and "the friendship of more than one person of consideration, efficiently disposed to aid his views in life." In short, he describes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... reduced by the jaghires which Mr. Hastings granted, but to what amount does not appear. He mentions the increase in the revenue by the confiscation of the estates of the Baboos, who had been in rebellion. This he rates at six lacs. But we have inspected the accounts, we have examined them with that sedulous attention which belongs to that branch of the legislature that has the care of the public revenues, and we have not found one trace of this addition. Whether these confiscations were ever actually made remains ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... state affairs to follow a Cyprian, even at the risk of injuring a deserving wife—Military Ciphers, who forsake the pursuit of glory, and distrustful of their own merit or courage, affirm their distrust by a sedulous attendance at the levees of men of power. In short, every man, in my humble opinion, is no other than a Cipher who does not apply his talents to the care of his morals and the benefit of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... should "commence poet," he and his father came to the conclusion that a university training had many elements foreign to the aim the youth had set before him, and that a richer and more directly available preparation could be gained from "sedulous cultivation of the powers of his mind" at home, and from "seeing life in the best sense" at home and abroad. Mrs. Orr tells us that the first qualifying step of the zealous young poet was to read and digest the whole ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... did not cancel Helen's name from his will; he let every thing stand as before her marriage; but he took the most sedulous care to secure her fortune unalienably to herself and her offspring. This, because, if Captain Bruce were honest, such precaution could not affect him in the least: man and wife are one flesh—settlements were a mere form, which love would only smile ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... had this among other singular habits, that he could never see a soul pass along the street, but he must needs ask any that was by, who that man was; and he was as observant of all the doings of men, and as sedulous to store his memory with such matters, as if they were to serve him to compound the drugs that he was to give his patients. Now, of all that he saw, those that he eyed most observantly were two painters, of whom here to-day mention has twice been made, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... She spoke with sedulous calmness; but there was a jar in her voice which did not sound quite natural. Maurice simply repeated his question, and Francis Trent ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... spent the morning in bringing up my journal; interrupted by two of these most sedulous visitants who had objects of their own to serve, and smelled out my arrival as the raven scents carrion—a vile comparison, though what better is an old fellow, mauled with rheumatism and other deplorables? Went out at two and saw Miss Dumergue and other old friends; Sotheby in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... irony, in which Mr. S. has more than once succeeded. All the songs to "persons of quality" seem to be written on that purest model, "the song by a person of quality;" whose stanzas have not been fabricated in vain. This sedulous imitation extends even to the praise ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... April, 1792. Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. If a weapon of political warfare failed to be handled with craft and with courage, its skilful use ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... so far have forgotten myself as to have struck him while he was unarmed, when it was so easy to have otherwise fastened an insult on him. Such," bitterly pursued Wacousta, "was the consolation I received from men, who, a few short weeks before, had been sedulous to gain and cultivate my friendship,—but even this was only vouchsafed antecedent to my trial. When the sentence was promulgated, announcing my dismissal from the service, every back was turned upon me, as though ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... now infinitely better regulated in the British navy, and with most admirable and infinitely important advantages. By the most minute, sedulous, and perpetual attention to cleanliness, all noisome stench and all vermin are prevented, by which doubtless diseases are in a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann.[3] I remember one of these monkey tricks, which was called The Vanity of Morals: it was to ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the blue canvas and the classes above, a difference not simply of circumstances and habits of life, but of habits of thought—even of language. The underways had developed a dialect of their own: above, too, had arisen a dialect, a code of thought, a language of "culture," which aimed by a sedulous search after fresh distinction to widen perpetually the space between itself and "vulgarity." The bond of a common faith, moreover, no longer held the race together. The last years of the nineteenth ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... Lamoureux's defect was the exuberant liveliness with which he interpreted compositions of a romantic nature. He did not fully understand these works; and although he knew much more about classic art than his rival, he rendered its letter rather than its spirit, and paid such sedulous attention to detail that music like Beethoven's lost its intensity and its life. But both his talents and his defects fitted him to be an excellent interpreter of the young neo-Wagnerian school, the principal representatives of which ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... know it so fully. Heavens! There doesn't seem to have been the actual time. It must have been when I was taking my baths, and my Swedish exercises, being manicured. Leading the life I did, of the sedulous, strained nurse, I had to do something to keep myself fit. It must have been then! Yet even that can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long conversations full of worldly wisdom that Leonora has reported to me since their deaths. And ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... him to dispense with form. Whether he succeeded or not is a matter of opinion which does not at present concern us. The point to be noted is the essential difference between the formless continuity of Getting Married, and the sedulous ordering and balancing of clearly differentiated parts, which went to the structure of a Greek tragedy. A dramatist who can so develop his story as to bring it within the quasi-Aristotelean "unities" performs a curious but not particularly difficult ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... come home to him. His mind in the first few moments was occupied with the problem of how the door had got that way. He could not remember shutting it. Probably he had done it unconsciously. As a child, he had been taught by sedulous elders that the little gentleman always closed doors behind him, and presumably his subconscious self was still under the influence. And then, suddenly, he realised that this infernal, officious ass of a subconscious self had deposited him right in the gumbo. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. Maw. He assures them that their last sample is impure and quite useless for his present purpose. In the year 18—-, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M. He now begs them to search with the most sedulous care, and should any of the same quality be left, to forward it to him at once. Expense is no consideration. The importance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated." So far the letter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer's ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... assured me that there had not—but I was inclined to believe that by deceiving me in this particular they sought to allay the violence of my grief. However that might be, this incident showed plainly that the Typees intended to hold me a prisoner. As they still treated me with the same sedulous attention as before, I was utterly at a loss how to account for their singular conduct. Had I been in a situation to instruct them in any of the rudiments of the mechanic arts, or had I manifested a disposition to render myself in any way useful among them, their conduct might have ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville |
