"Working-day" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be an Illusion. She thinks it a subject fit only for the fevered imagination of the poet, or for tales of fiction and romance. With the realities of life it has no concern. In this plain, matter-of-fact, working-day world, there is no room, she thinks, for this creature of the brain. Therefore does she determine to fortify herself against its approaches. Others may pursue the phantom, if they will, but she is resolved to be never so cheated, as to "fall ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... can always keep pace with my Lady, and at times I am aware of a feeling of being driven on faster than I can go without being out of breath, and perhaps risking a fall. A little occasional rest would certainly be a relief. Howbeit, life is our working-day: and there will be time to ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... contrive to repair to their lodgings, make the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour. In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average throughout the year of twelve and a half hours. This is a serious evil, demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic. Both classes—the employer and the employed—would in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... solace," said Martin, "that must be denied to no man. It seems that I must help you out to the last. And if you will take one glance out of doors, you will see that the working-day is over." ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... whoever knows Rome will at least recognize in Claude's pictures some reflex of that enchantment that still hangs over the wondrous city, and draws to it generation after generation of pilgrims. In what does the mysterious charm consist? Is it not that the place seems set apart from the working-day world of selfish and warring interests? that here all manner of men, for once, lay aside their sordid occupations and their vulgar standards, to come together on the ground of a common humanity? It is easy to sneer at the Renaissance, but to understand it we must take it in its connection. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... those speeds which are allowed before the working-day begins or the police are thawed out. We were blocked near Portsmouth by a battalion of ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... that we all know very well that this generous gift can inspire but one sentiment in the breast of every lover of the dramatic art. As it is far too often forgotten by those who are indebted to it for many a restorative flight out of this working-day world, that the silks, and velvets, and elegant costumes of its professors must be every night exchanged for the hideous coats and waistcoats of the present day, in which we have now the honour and the misfortune of appearing ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... and the mind sent rambling off into pastures, fields, boundless deserts of imaginary pleasures, where only is warmth and sunshine and rest, where only poets dwell, and beauty wanders abroad with her sweeping train, and the realities of the working-day world are for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... than I could have hoped, so far from cultivated Europe. One or two of my friends are, indeed, like costly jewels, not to be worn every day; but there are several of sterling metal that even here disarm the ills of this "working-day world" ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... on the road I hear, Not far away, the solitary song Of workman, who returns at this late hour, In merry mood, unto his humble home; And in my heart a cruel pang I feel, At thought, how all things earthly pass away, And leave no trace behind. This festal day Hath fled; a working-day now follows it, And all, alike, are swept away by Time. Where is the glory of the antique nations now? Where now the fame of our great ancestors? The empire vast of Rome, the clash of arms? Now all is peace and silence, all the world At rest; their very names ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... brief apprenticeship I had looked forward to? Unable to sleep, I was up an hour earlier than usual, and after I had breakfasted—again by the courtesy of the matron—I was off to work long before the working-day began. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the Justices at sessions. I was determined—like Horace's whetstone, which can sharpen other things, though blunt itself, to put an edge on him—to say something deep and decisive on some of the subjects, but I got nothing from him but working-day talk. Perhaps (like the character with the Greek name in the Rambler, who tells his guest, showing him his fine things, that they were only brought into service when persons of consequence visited him) he disdained to pull out ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... said, "I can't bear you to work so hard for me," everything would have been different, the fatigue wiped out. But he didn't; he didn't even know they were working for him, working beyond the limit of an ordinary working-woman's working-day, hard ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... what Dame Care then promised to you, Life has so faithfully made it true In sighs and weeping and ever and aye, In troubles of weary working-day, In pain of so many a sleepless night, With need and ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... this forest is not respectable!" said Jurgen. "Have you no ethics and morals, you People of the Wood! Have you no sense of responsibility whatever, thus to be frolicking on a working-day?" ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... important part in the conflict, not only because he suffered directly from the temporary paralysis of the industry, but also because his indifference to the claims of the worker for a just wage, sanitary factory conditions, abolition of home work, and for a decent working-day was equivalent to an active complicity in the guilt of the manufacturer. Through Mr. Filene's intervention, the manufacturers and the Union officials agreed to confer, and to request Mr. Louis Brandeis of ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... live in name and in association, and we trust in reality, as an essential feature of family life, even though the nature of the repast has greatly changed. The pleasantest part of the working-day in former years was the occasion when the family, drawn together by common interests and sympathies, after the heavier tasks of the day were completed, gathered around the table whose crowning symbol of ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... at the busy scene on the beach and watching with interest the boys guiding down the steep road the bullock-carts, which at times looked as if they would heave over, and indeed one did. The men will probably not be back till the small hours of the morning, which will make a working-day of nearly twenty-four hours for them, as they were up very early ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... Honest Henry Smith, whose working-day in Clayton Centre began at five in the morning and ended at six at night, and whose evenings were usually spent in the sleep of utter exhaustion, found himself relaxing deliciously under her words. It was good, very good, to rest, and to know they didn't ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... is this working-day-world,'" quotes Monica, gayly. "There, now I am all right, and I have got my pretty roses into the bargain. Are they not sweet?—sweet?" holding them right under ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... to me of any paradises, mamma. We are in the working-day world, and we must make out our ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... became a vigorous institution. The church not less so. More children were born to Thursday October, insomuch that he at last had one for every working-day in the week; more yam-fields were cultivated, and more marriages took place—but hold, this ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... large meeting-house, where he continued to preach with little interruption till his death. Once a year he visited London, and was there so popular, that twelve hundred people would gather together at seven in the morning of a winter's working-day to hear him. Amongst the admiring listeners, Dr Owen was frequently found; and once when Charles the Second asked how a learned man like him could sit down to hear a tinker prate, the great theologian is said to have answered, "May ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... the borders of truth in the delicious Gardens of Irresponsibility, where many strange people dwell together, who might be real, and may be alive some day, but who have not yet made up their minds to exchange the flowery paths of fiction for the stony roads and dusty lanes of this working-day world. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... we must rise by logical necessity to the Christian view" (p. 25) and it must be hard not to agree with him. It is difficult to suppose that any one who considers the facts oL life, who contemplates not the individua vaga of theories, but the men and women of this working-day world can think otherwise. Surely no one who really surveys mankind as they are, as they have been in the past, and, so far as we are able to judge, will be in the future, can suppose that this Natural Religion, even if embodied in a Natural Church, and equipped with "a ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... its tutelar genius or nymph, and threatened disaster to all who should molest the hamadryads in their leafy abodes. Alas! for the sordid propensities of modern days, when everything is coined into gold, and this once holiday planet of ours is turned into a mere 'working-day world.'" ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving |
