"Drudgery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which give me most trouble and teach me least.' They are 'wretched' things to occupy a man of 'any sort of mind.' Mr. Smith, as he says a year afterwards, is the 'kindest and most liberal of masters,' but he feels the drudgery of such work. Reading Bossuet (February 28, 1864), he observes that the works are so 'powerful and magnificent in their way' that they make me feel a sort of hatred for 'the trumpery that I pass my time in manufacturing.' It ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of thing Tony Lattimer wanted to get away from, the detail-work and the drudgery. Let the infantry do the slogging through the mud; the brass-hats ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... invite, or die without the Blessing; for likely the Fool you make choice of wants Wit or Confidence to ask first; you are fain to whistle before the Dogs will fetch and carry, and then too they approach by stealth: and having done the Drudgery, the submissive Curs are turn'd out for fear of dirtying your Apartment, or that the Mungrils should scandalize ye; whilst all my Lovers of the noble kind throng to adore and fill my Presence daily, gay as if ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... more people than "agricolae." Clerks of the India House are as blind to their own advantages as the blindest of ploughmen. Lamb was summoned, it is true, through the larger and more genial section of his life, to the drudgery of a copying clerk—making confidential entries into mighty folios, on the subject of calicoes and muslins. By this means, whether he would or not, he became gradually the author of a great "serial" work, in a frightful number of volumes, on as dry a department ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... were so exhausted, that they were able to do nothing; the consequence was, that the whole drudgery fell on me; and I shared with them the little food which I procured, by labouring to make myself useful; for our master gave them nothing ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... perfect craft, was at the bottom of all. And on the other hand, a nail ill-driven, a joint ill-fitted, a tracing clumsily done, anything to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, moved him to shame and anger. With such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at Fairbairn's. There would be something daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practiced scales, impatient of his own ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... echoes of the war die away the sound of a new conflict rises on our ears. All the world is filled with industrial unrest. Strike follows upon strike. A world that has known five years of fighting has lost its taste for the honest drudgery of work. Cincinnatus will not back to his plow, or, at the best, stands sullenly between his plow-handles ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... being call'd so, and attend the outward Worship of some Sect or other, it saves the Clergy a vast Deal of Trouble, from Friends as well as Foes. For to quiet and satisfy all scrupulous Consciences, is as great a Drudgery as it is to write in ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... had worked on board the barges plying up and down the canal and had occasionally been harnessed with other women to the towing rope of a pakschuyt plying between Broek and Amsterdam. But when Hans had grown strong and large, he had insisted on doing all such drudgery in her place. Besides, her husband had become so very helpless of late that he required her constant care. Although not having as much intelligence as a little child, he was yet strong of arm and very hearty, ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... was the frank admission. "I like the excitement attending a case, and the fight to win, but it's drudgery between times—like soldiering ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... arrive there, I could say to you: 'No, Roswitha, not there, the wardrobe must stand here and the mirror there,' why, that would be worth while, and I should like it. Then when we got tired of all the drudgery I should say: 'Now, Roswitha, go over there and get us a decanter of Munich beer, for when one has been working one is thirsty for a drink, and, if you can, bring us also something good from the Habsburg Restaurant. You can return the dishes later.' Yes, Roswitha, when I think ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... determined to go to London and enjoy myself. Why should not I?—I was young, animated, joyous; had plenty of funds for present pleasures, and my uncle's estate in the perspective. Let those mope at college and pore over books, thought I, who have their way to make in the world; it would be ridiculous drudgery in a youth of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Aunt Marthe with a happy smile. She went into the house and returned with a book in her hand. "You asked what culture really was. This writer says 'Drudgery.' Listen while I give you a few snatches, then you shall have the ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... to preserve the finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects that she will ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... slaves, we would observe that slavery exists among several of the tribes beyond the Rocky Mountains. The slaves are well treated while in good health, but occupied in all kinds of drudgery. Should they become useless, however, by sickness or old age, they are totally neglected, and left to perish; nor is any respect paid to their bodies ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... him meat, drink, washing, and lodging during the said term. Steele was no great artist, though he had studied under Carlo Vanloo, of Paris. He troubled himself little enough as to his pupil's progress, employing him for the most part in grinding colours and in the drudgery of the studio. But George Romney made the best of his opportunities. And he was not unhappy. He had fallen in love with Mary Abbott, one of two sisters living with their widowed mother, in humble circumstances, at Kendal. But soon Steele was bent ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... muttered James, as he finished. 'Thirty years of drudgery! When shall I be able to relieve her? Ha! O. J. F. Dynevor, Esquire, if it were you who were coming from Peru, you would find a score ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first place, we must actually memorize from one to three thousand words which are spelled in more or less irregular ways. The best that can be done with these words is to classify them as much as possible and suggest methods of association which will aid the memory. But after all, the drudgery of memorizing must be ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... all save certain stated times when they were taken abroad for a walk under charge of the matrons. In return for a scant education in the rudimentary branches, and a very generous tuition in the drudgery of the kitchen, the laundry, and the sewing-room, they received in all these years only their board and clothes and a certain nominal protection against the vices and corruptions of the street and the gutter from ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... fifteen or sixteen hours in study: for by some of whom this is reported it has never been done; others have done it for a short time only; and of the rest it appears, that they employed their minds in such operations as required neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the palsying weariness of the day's drudgery, would find a cheery welcome—and the work not done; no vegetables for dinner, no fresh boric-acid solution prepared for washing ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Not, however, by Johnson's testimony: Vide Adventurer, No. 39. "Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,—the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... enter into production are estimated. Some writers, for example Gilbreth, see in this movement a great advance. It is a way of giving equal opportunity to all. Economy becomes a factor in freedom, since it helps to eliminate the drudgery and ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... slightly but with courteous interest to each. To each one he raised his eyebrows and permitted himself a small significant smile, as though to convey that this was a moment he had long been anticipating. How different, he thought, was this life of enigmatic gaiety from the suburban drudgery of recent months. If only Mrs. Spaniel could see him now! He was about to utilize a brief pause by sipping his tea, when a white-headed patriarch suddenly ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... unfortunately become fashionable to inveigh against the necessary labour of learning by heart the essential principles of grammar, as a useless and intolerable drudgery. And this notion, with the vain hope of effecting the same purpose in an easier way, is giving countenance to modes of teaching well calculated to make superficial scholars. When those principles are properly defined, disposed, and exemplified, the labour of learning them is far less than ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and, warming with his sympathy, whilst she gloated over the anticipated revenge, she exclaimed, as her face assumed a dark, prophetic aspect: "Yes, we will humble that mongrel, and her proud, petted child. What better are they than we, what nearer to thy father? See how I toil, and do his drudgery; keep him a home, who, but for me, would have no home, and no one to care for him. Yet no fine country house for me, fine clothes, rich presents; no fine gifts for thee, my child, no endless schooling, no sending thee to travel; no allowance, no expense ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... another man, especially when that man is one's mate. Neither were we much given to finding fault with one another; how, indeed, could one of us poor devils be in a position to find fault with another, when we were all of us half dead and, as it were, turned to stone? For the heavy drudgery seemed to crush all feeling out of us. But silence is only terrible and fearful for those who have said everything and have nothing more to say to each other; for men, on the contrary, who have never begun to communicate with one another, it is easy ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... those whom she would love to think of as brethren, were vile and degraded: she saw lazy, drunken men, lounging about at the doors of smoky huts, or administering chastisement to yelping curs, or to women as noisy, reduced by ill-treatment and domestic drudgery to be the cunning, spiteful slaves they were. Every thing shocked the noble and pure spirit of Orikama: there were none here that she could make companions and friends, nor would Towandahoc and Ponawtan have been pleased to have her associate with them. It could not be expected ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not only permitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, who is well known to have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his friend Hope: and the lady Maria has made his beliefs begin to fail and totter, and he feels for something to hold firmly. He seems to think, at one moment, that the mere knowledge of the existence of such an one ought to compensate for lives of drudgery hemmed in with want; then he turns round on himself with, "How shall that be?" And, at length, he appeases his questions, saying that it must and should be ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... art, as the disinterested cognition devoid of Will, can afford an interval of rest from the drudgery of Will service. But esthetic beatitude can be obtained only by a few; it is not for the hoi polloi. And then, art can give ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... reflected, they realized it. And it had been a wicked thing to face—the prospect that they might quit! With Latisan of the Latisans present with them, pursuing an honest vengeance, there were lift and sweep and swing which made their toil an adventure rather than plain drudgery. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... grocery business The change from the study of the classics at Magdalene College to the weighing-out of halfpenny worths' of soap and sugar to the rustics of Lincolnshire, amounted to a melancholy fall in life; however, Octavius Gilchrist bore it gaily, softening the drudgery by a continuation of his studies in spare hours, and frequent attempts to contribute to the periodical literature of the day. The Stamford Mercury having inserted several of his articles, he got ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... the value of distracting Dave's attention from the unpleasantness of his work. Mrs. Metford, handicapped by her numerous offspring, embittered by the regular recurrence of her contributions to the State, and disheartened by drudgery and overwork, had long ago ceased to place any store on personal appearance or even cleanliness. As Dave watched her slovenly shuffle to and from the kitchen, preceded and pursued by young Metfords in all degrees ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... clause, Makes drudgery divine: Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, Makes that and ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,—indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could not ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of great central principles, nowhere is human life more enriched by minor philosophy; it may be a fate, a routine, a drudgery, and an accident in other parts of the world, but in Paris it is or can easily be made an art. The science of substitution, the law of compensation, nowhere more obviously triumphs; taste cheaply gratified atones for limited destinies; manners yield a charm, which, for the time, renders ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... titles to the kingdom, and infallible signs of charity. And then they foolishly deplore their own state as far removed from that perfection, because forsooth their minds are uncultured, their faith simple, and their time taken up with the drudgery ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... well-to-do girls in the last part of the nineteenth century were educated. Kindly doctors and gentle old professors had taught her the rudiments of about ten different branches of knowledge, but they would as soon have forced her to go through one piece of drudgery thoroughly as they would have told her that her hands were dirty. The one hour or the two hours weekly passed very pleasantly, partly owing to the other pupils, partly to the fact that the window looked upon the back of a shop, where figures appeared against the red windows in winter, partly to ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... much to him to stand well in the estimation of this man, himself distinguished for the cool daring of his work, his endurance of the hard drudgery of his profession as well as the brilliant performance on occasion. "I'm glad you think so—Red Pepper Burns," King answered daringly. Then, as the other laughed, he added: "Do you know what would make me the most docile patient you ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... we have seen, through the ordinary art drudgery of the school, recognizing, no doubt, with Michael Angelo, with all good artists, that correct drawing is the foundation of every art into which drawing enters and applying himself industriously to it. As a young soldier at Potsdam he spent a good deal of his time, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... is the Irish language," Marsh persisted, as if the Irishness of the tongue transcended the drudgery ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Not only does he like to hear stories; he likes to tell them. And where the short-story course is rightly used, he likes to write them. He finds that the pleasure of exercising creative power more than offsets the drudgery inevitable in composition. A plan that has been satisfactorily carried out in the classroom ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Waally any longer. Freedom possesses a charm for which no other advantage can compensate, and those two old sea-dogs, who had worked like horses all their lives, in their original calling, preferred returning to the ancient drudgery rather than live with Waally, in the rude abundance of savage chiefs. The escape was easily enough made, as soon, as it was dark, Brown and Wattles being on shore most of the time, under the pretence ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... discouraged lately, although she would not own it even to herself. She saw Robert but seldom, and her aunt was no better. She often wondered if there could be anything before her but that one track of drudgery for daily bread upon which she had set out. She wondered if she ought not to say positively to Robert that there must be no thought of anything between them in the future. She wondered if she were not wronging him. Once or twice she had seen him riding with Miss Hemingway, and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... theatrical life means drudgery, but the Christmas tour of the Glee and Mandolin clubs is drudgery amidst bowers of roses. The hard-working professional would call it play; yet, even in this gilded stage-life, there is the common affliction of being forced to appear at every concert, ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Poor Lady H(ertfor)d['s] civilities in inviting so many of the Opposition to her Ball, afford a great deal of mirth. Charles did not go; he has not leisure for those trifles. Hare and Lord Robert have the drudgery of dealing between them. Your kinsman Walker is a cul de plomb at the table, and has lost, I believe, both his eyes and fortune at it. He seems so blind as not to see the card which is before him. Keene seems to have surrendered in his mind this forteresse, so I take for granted that he knows ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... ambitious dreams. Not for him, he thought, was the drudgery of an apothecary store. He felt that he had in himself the making of a famous man, and he resolved that he would leave no science unexplored. He set to work with a will. His quick mind soon grasped the sciences not only of mathematics and chemistry, but of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Dickens lived from 1817 to 1821, and at No. 18 St. Mary's Place from 1821 to 1823, the financial troubles, which eventually drove the family into the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and Charles himself into the sordid drudgery of the blacking-shop by Hungerford Stairs, having already enforced a migration to a cheaper and meaner house. In Clover Street (then Clover Lane) the little Dickens went to a school kept by a Mr. William Giles, who years afterwards sent to him, when he was halfway through with ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship that will answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition [Commodore Wilkes's]; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposing ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... view of getting rid of troublesome pupils. Balzac, however, welcomed the relief from ordinary school life, and indeed manoeuvred to be shut up. In the cells he had leisure to dream as he pleased, he was free from the drudgery of learning his lessons, and he managed to secrete books in his cage, and thus to absorb the contents of most of the volumes in the fine library collected by the learned Oratorian founders of the college. The ideas in many of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... sight? If work were to remain what most work is now, no doubt it would be very hard to induce people to undertake it except from fear of destitution. But there is no reason why work should remain the dreary drudgery in horrible conditions that most of it is now.[43] If men had to be tempted to work instead of driven to it, the obvious interest of the community would be to make work pleasant. So long as work is not made on the whole pleasant, it cannot be said that anything like a good ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... dim figures, already beautiful, though they had caught the artist and his work in the very act of true creation—when after weeks or months of brooding, of hard work, of searching study of this or that, of inspiration tested and verified, of mechanical drudgery, of patient construction, birth begins—the birth of values, relations, distances, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... study and labor, if only to get at the facts; whilst on the path where the greatest and most widespread fame is to be won, the facts may be grasped without any labor at all. But just in proportion as less labor is necessary, more talent or genius is required; and between such qualities and the drudgery of research no comparison is possible, in respect either of their intrinsic value, or of the estimation in which ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... liable at any moment to be dispossessed of the tiny patch of ground on which they raised a few hills of corn or beans, most of them were naturally a simple, peaceful folk who, in spite of their misfortunes, might have gone on indefinitely with their drudgery in a hopeless apathetic fashion, unless their latent savage instincts happened to be aroused by drink and the prospect of plunder. On the other hand, the intelligent among them, knowing that in some of the northern States of the republic wages were higher and treatment fairer, felt a sense of ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... two ladies continued on their way to the abbey. "I don't see why I mayn't sketch things I see about me," said the young lady impatiently. "Of course, I understand that I must go through the rudimentary drudgery of my art and study from casts, and learn perspective, and all that; but I can't see what's the difference between working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that I know is only a STUDY, and sketching ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... drudgery has given a fuller meaning to American life. Our people are better educated; we have more opportunities for travel and recreation and enjoyment of the arts. We enjoy more personal liberty in the United States today ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... could not wait to put my dress in order before running out into the street to see how my windows shone. Every workman who carries a dinner pail has these moments of keen delight in the product of his drudgery. Men of genius, likewise, in their hours of relaxation from their loftier tasks, prove this universal rule. I know a man who fills a chair at a great university. I have seen him hold a roomful of otherwise restless youths spellbound for an hour, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Pleasure came to them but rarely, and when it came, they caught at it wildly and crushed its fluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard life enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labor and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But what matter? To-night there was hot liquor ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... all the heavy work and drudgery about camp, and it troubled Bob not a little to see them working while the men were idle. Several times he attempted to help them, but his efforts were met with such a storm of protestations and disapproval, not only from the men, but the women ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... old woman, the gardener's wife, showed Miss Herschel the shops, where the high prices of every article, from coals to butcher's meat, appalled her. But of these inconveniences Herschel took no account. Enough for him that he was released from the drudgery of teaching, and free thenceforth to devote himself to the heavens and their wonders. A man whose thoughts are always with the stars can hardly be expected to trouble himself about the price of tallow-candles! Were there not capacious stables in which mirrors of any size could ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... earliest times taken the standpoint that the masses of people are of crude susceptibility and clumsy intelligence, "sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery; and religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the high import of life." (Schopenhauer.) Thus the theist is led to the conclusion that the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Children, servants, the home!—they are too much for her "nerves." And now there comes this new development, appealing to the intellectual woman. Is there not danger of her preferring political ambition, the excitement of public life, to what has come to be regarded as the "drudgery" of turning four walls into a home, of peopling the silence with the voices of the children? [He crosses to the table- -lays his hand again upon the open letter.] How do you know that this may not be her answer—"I have no children. I never ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... my mode of life and my enjoyments are necessarily very different from Eurie's and Marion's. Those two naturally look upon this place as an escape from every-day drudgery; in short, as an economical place in which to enjoy a vacation and see a good deal of first-class society; for there are a great many first-class people here, there is no denying that. Not many from our set, you know, but a great many celebreties in the ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of one of her oldest and most faithful Ministers, being himself the ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had been condemned by her to drudgery, to obscurity, to poverty. She had depreciated his acquirements. She had checked him in the most imperious manner, when in Parliament he ventured to act an independent part. She had refused to him the professional advancement to which he had a just claim. To her it was owing that, while younger ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in her; but she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... that from appearances, Peter," replied Mrs. Conant. "She can at least wash dishes and sweep and do the drudgery. Why not keep her?" ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... ... toward vaster victories. To me a certain memory lives clear in every detail. I see a small girl with her thin little body shaking with sobs ... because her life seemed doomed to drudgery and emptiness. I see my mother and my aunt and my father suffering like beasts of burden under the goad and yoke of poverty. I see a boy, ragged and rebellious, declaring war on the world and swearing to wrest from it every good thing that ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... not say all this to make you give up attending lectures. Heaven forbid. They amuse, that is, they turn the mind off from business; they relax it, and as it were bathe and refresh it with new thoughts, after the day's drudgery or the day's commonplaces; they fill it with pleasant and healthful images for afterthought. Above all, they make one feel what a fair, wide, wonderful world one lives in; how much there is to be known, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... you, Edward, I was thinking what a pity it is that two such sweet girls as your sisters should be employed here in domestic drudgery, and remain in such an uncultivated state—if I may be pardoned for speaking so freely—but I do so because I am convinced that, if in proper hands, they would grace a court; and you must feel ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... been doing," she said, with evident vexation, "that my God should make you undertake such drudgery? Whenever I come, I ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... that the drudgery of summer was over would have been a delightful one. Why, he could remember the exultation with which he had burned the last cornstalks at the end of the season when at home in Vermont. The ceremony had been a rite of hilarious rejoicing. But this year, strange to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... It was a tower of strength within him. It told him that he could do wonders; that he could go out into the world and accomplish all that would be required to free his mother from debt, and relieve her from the severe drudgery of ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... soon as sleep had sealed my eyes, I invariably dreamt that I had the power of aerostation, and, in my imagination, cleaved through the air with the strength of an eagle, soaring above my fellow-creatures, and looking down upon them and their ceaseless drudgery with contempt. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... basis: that the will exists—that is, has been developed, and has become strong. One of the examples usually given to our children, to teach them to admire strength of will, is that of Vittorio Alfieri, who began to educate himself late in life, overcoming the drudgery of the rudiments by a great effort. He, who had hitherto been a man of the world, set to work to study the Latin grammar, and persevered until he became a man of letters, and, in virtue of his ardent genius, one of our ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... no very great favour, though what he had done to deserve the disdainful expression which appeared in their faces he was at a loss to divine. But on their going upstairs to their bedrooms—which they very soon did—Mr Bevan informed him that domestic drudgery was far beneath the exalted range of these Philosophers, and that the chances were a hundred to one that not one of the three could perform the easiest woman's work for herself, or make the simplest article of dress for any ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... activity in which we are engaged; means when it marks off the present direction. Every divorce of end from means diminishes by that much the significance of the activity and tends to reduce it to a drudgery from which one would escape if he could. A farmer has to use plants and animals to carry on his farming activities. It certainly makes a great difference to his life whether he is fond of them, or whether he regards them merely as means which he has ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... summit of laudable ambitions into the sultry plains of domestic drudgery and menial toil, nearly every ray of hope had perished upon the strained vision of the Negro. The only thing young Colored men could aspire to was the position of a waiter, the avocation of a barber, the place of a house-servant or groom, and teach or preach ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... confined to the sordid drudgery of facsimile representations of merely mortal and perishing substances, and not be as poetry and music are, elevated into its own proper sphere of invention and visionary conception? No, it shall not be so! Painting, ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... not to let his face portray his feelings of defeat. This after all was a probationary assignment, and the supervisor had the power to send Ronny Bronston back to the drudgery of his office job ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Some hopes indeed I had that my new patron would go to sea again, where he might be taken by a Spanish or Portuguese man of war, and then I should be set at liberty. But in this I was mistaken; for he never took me with him, but left me to look after his little garden, and do the drudgery of his house, and when he returned from sea, would make, me lie in the cabin, and look after the ship. I had no one that I could communicate my thoughts to, which were continually meditating my escape; no Englishman, Irishman, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... Grace did go, a little puzzled and doubtful still, but thankful beyond words to escape the drudgery of the counter and the noise and heat of the city. Bertha went home, feeling a little bit blue in secret, it cannot be denied, but also feeling quite sure that if she had to do it all over again, she would do ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the Indian village Martin was given to understand, by signs, that he was to reside with a particular family, and work every day in the maize and mandioca fields, besides doing a great deal of the drudgery of the hut; so that he now knew he was regarded as a slave by the tribe into whose hands he had fallen. It is impossible to express the bitterness of his feelings at this discovery, and for many weeks he went about his work scarcely knowing what he did, and caring little, when the hot sun beat ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... possessed of an uninterpreted longing to join their brothers of the wilderness in their care-free wanderings, and be forever free themselves from the yoke of sledge and whip and the toil and drudgery of the trail. But so like men were the beasts that they never had the courage to cast themselves free from the shackles of their man-master, though it required but a resolution and ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... steamship. It was making a junk-pile of her, and they confessed to themselves that they would probably be obliged to keep on in the work of destruction. In the past their bitterest toil had been spiced with the hope of big achievement; the work they now set themselves to do was melancholy drudgery. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... asking eager, intelligent questions and noting with wistful curiosity the speech and manners of the nurses who served her. She was a raw recruit from Nature, unsophisticated, illiterate. Under a bondage of poverty and drudgery she had led her starved life in the mountain fastnesses; but now she had opened her eyes on a new ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... I am mistaken or not. And when shall I know? The day after the first performance, if I have it performed, which is not certain. There is no fun in anything except work that has not been read to any one. All the rest is drudgery and PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS, a horrible thing. So make fun of all this GOSSIP; the guiltiest ones are those who report it to you. I think it is very odd that they say so much against you to your friends. No one indeed ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... had held but drudgery— She spelled her Bible thro'; Of books and lore she knew no more Than little children do. (Oh! the weird wonder of that ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... there is some promise of success, some relief from drudgery, and with it a little leisure for companionship—then, too, there is opportunity for an estimate of intellectual quality. Then it is that the man of genius discovers that the woman who has stood by him through his poverty lacks the graces of ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... conversation will inform a man of sense that he is only a conceited fool. As to his political transactions, he has by his side, as a secretary, a man of the name of Petry, who has received a diplomatic education, and does not want either subtlety or parts; and on him, no doubt, is thrown the drudgery of business. During a European war, Turreaux's post is of little relative consequence; but should Napoleon live to dictate another general pacification, the United States will be exposed, on their frontiers, or in their interior, to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... construed coolly. Milton's L288 a year for his lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's L600 a year, or Thurloe's L800, for their more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if now ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... describe the havoc made by drought, and frost, and cutting sand. Then there's the other side of the matter; the hardships a woman must bear on the plains when money's scarce. The loneliness, the monotonous drudgery, the ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... forth in this manner: "There the old rascal goes, and the d—l go with him. You see how the world wags, gentlemen. By gad, this rogue of a vicar does not deserve to live; and yet he has two livings worth four hundred pounds per annum, while poor I am fain to do all his drudgery, and ride twenty miles every Sunday to preach—for what? why, truly, for twenty pounds a year. I scorn to boast of my own qualifications but—comparisons are odious. I should be glad to know how this wag-bellied doctor deserves to be more ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... it would have been to the apprentice lad, could he have known how all his daily drudgery was fitting him to understand, to comfort, and to help the toiling masses ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... and Simplicity, as they use to do, who thinking themselves safe and secure, behold the Captain comes into the City, where they were to do their work, and commands all these Indians, sleeping and taking their rest, after Supper, being wearied with the heavy drudgery of the day, to be slain by the Sword: And this stratagem he put in practice, to make a greater impression of fear on all the minds of the Inhabitants; and another time a certain Captain commanded the Spaniards to declare upon ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... hoop of rattan, and descends down to the knees, they expose every other portion of their bodies. Their hair, which is fine and black, generally falls down behind. Their feet are bare. Like the American squaws, they do all the drudgery, carry the water, and paddle the canoes. They generally fled at our approach, if we came unexpectedly. The best looking I ever saw was one we captured on the river Sakarron. She was in a dreadful fright, expecting every moment to be killed, probably ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... university have been the turning-point of their life; but it was not so with Bismarck. To those who have been brought up in the narrow surroundings of civic life, student days form the single breath of freedom between the discipline of a school and the drudgery of an office. To a man who, like Bismarck, was accustomed to the truer freedom of the country, it was only a passing phase; as we shall see, it was not easy to tie him down to the drudgery of an office. He did not even ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for. That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as I was out of all fear of being ill-treated under the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... place for me," she said. "I have no genius to glorify the drudgery, keep me from temptation, and repay me for any sacrifice I make. Other women can lead this life safely and happily: I cannot, and I must not go back to it, because, with all my past experience, and in spite of all my present good ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... than the stamp of his seal. At present he almost feared him as a Caliban to whom he might not be able to play Prospero, an Ufreet half-escaped from his jar, a demon he had raised, for whom he must find work, or be torn by him into fragments. The slave must have drudgery, and the master must take heed that he never send him alone to do ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... other characteristics, he was of rather an imperious nature. He liked to be waited on. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. The greater part of his attention being occupied at this period with the important duty of chewing his thumb, he assigned the drudgery of life to his dependants. Their duties were to see that he got up in the morning, dressed, and took his tub; and after that to hang around on the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... like anybody else, I might have had some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any; and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery—I have to thank Ma for that, at all events— and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the world over." Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really rattled ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... portion of their capital released by the superior cheapness of the process executed by the mills, found it their interest to apply more labour to other operations. The women, disengaged from mere drudgery, were thus profitably employed in dressing the ores, a work which required skill and ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... ear-rings nor nose-rings; and some, more lucky than the rest, wear a necklace of beads. They prefer the smallest Venetian beads to the larger and more gaudy ones of England. The labor of the house, and all the drudgery, falls on the females. They grind the rice, carry burdens, fetch water, fish, and work in the fields; but though on a par with other savages in this respect, they have many advantages. They are not immured; they eat in company with the males; and, in most points, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... worshipped the boy, was charmed with his merry laughter, and felt infinite joy in seeing him about him, healthy and vigorous, and without a care. Florent for his part remained very slim and lean in his threadbare coat, and his face began to turn yellow amidst all the drudgery and worry of teaching; but Quenu grew up plump and merry, a little dense, indeed, and scarce able to read or write, but endowed with high spirits which nothing could ruffle, and which filled the big gloomy room in the Rue ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... wages are increased of late to six, seven, nay, eight pounds per annum, and upwards; insomuch that an ordinary tradesman cannot well keep one; but his wife, who might be useful in his shop or business, must do the drudgery of household affairs; and all this because our servant- wenches are so puffed up with pride nowadays, that they never think they go fine enough: it is a hard matter to know the mistress from the maid by their dress; nay, very often ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... With such an aim we shall, incidentally and naturally, find ourselves accomplishing more work than if we aimed directly at the work itself. Moreover, when such ideals are attained, work instead of turning into drudgery tends to turn into play, and the hue of life seems to turn from dull gray to the bright tints of well-remembered childhood. In short, our health ideals should rise from the mere wish to keep out of a sick bed to an eagerness to become a ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... made a part of such education as she had the opportunity of acquiring. True, the girl learned right from wrong, also her religion was very clear on the point, but she could not then believe it was wrong to fly from the horrors of mill drudgery, made unbearable by the more intimate environment of a ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used to say to me—'How I should like to be an officer, a gallant naval officer, to lead on my men through fire and smoke to victory!' And then the little fellow would wave ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... absence of love, of beauty, of all that is valuable to the heart, if we can but put away a little money, if we can enlarge our business, if we can make a bigger figure in the world. Nay, we go beyond this: we believe that work, that drudgery, is a beautiful thing in itself, that perpetual toil and ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... and is now available, to do thousands of the disagreeable and hurtful things now done by human beings. Professor Franklin H. Giddings is perfectly right when he says: "Modern civilization does not require, it does not need, the drudgery of needle-women or the crushing toil of men in a score of life-destroying occupations. If these wretched beings should drop out of existence and no others take their places, the economic activities of the world would not greatly suffer. A thousand devices latent in inventive brains would quickly ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... closed the latest edition of the "Maximes," declaring that "the splendour of dying with a firm spirit, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave a fair reputation behind us, the assurance of being released from the drudgery of life and of depending no more on the caprices of fortune," are remedies which would medicine our pain in approaching the dreaded goal of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the one on which I am writing. After correcting the manuscript, it is put in typewriting and again revised. There are also two revisions of the proof. While I do not shirk the tasks which approach closely to drudgery, especially since my eyesight is not so good as it was, I also obtain expert assistance. I find that when a page has become very familiar and I am rather tired of it, my mind wanders from the close, fixed attention essential to the best use of words. Perhaps few are endowed with both the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... no servants at Brook Farm. Every one served but no one was hired to serve. Household drudgery was reduced to the lowest practicable minimum. We did not live on the fat of the land, and that made a wonderful difference in the kitchen work,—that was at first. Later we had to employ farm-laborers and mechanics and as they needed meat for strong men, it became ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... likely to cut each other; and there for a good hour the sun flashed on the blades, as the sword exercise was gone through, with its cuts, points, and guards, the men taking to it eagerly as a pleasant change from the drudgery of the mine, and ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... youths today, promotes restlessness and the craving for excitement. The normal all-round occupations of primitive men tended to work off their energies and satisfy their natural impulses. But the dulled and tired worker released from eight or ten hours' drudgery in a factory is apt to be in a psychological state that demands variety, excitement, pleasure at any cost. It does not pay to repress human nature too much, or to try to make out of a red-blooded young man or woman a mere ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake |
