"Taskmaster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sovereign remedies for the relief of your sorrow, a life of work, or a life of pleasure. But work needs to be done under the influence of the Gospel of Progress. Without a belief in progress, man cannot believe that work is prayer, and that God is a taskmaster. His soul wakes up. He commits suicide or crime. Or he deserts the city, and goes, as you have done, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... him, lost not a moment in getting to work. He found the crank go easy enough at first, but the longer he was at it the stiffer it seemed to turn. And after about four hundred turns he was fain to breathe and rest himself. He took three minutes' rest, then at it again. All this time there was no taskmaster, as in Egypt, nor whipper-up of declining sable energy, as in Old Kentucky. So that if I am so fortunate as to have a reader aged ten, he is wondering why the fool did not confine his exertions to saying he had made the turns. My dear, it ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... their sake, as well as for your own, try by God's help to live worthy of Christian English men. Let them see you going out and coming in, whether on duty or by your own firesides, as men who feel that they are "ever beneath their great taskmaster's eye;" who have a solemn duty to perform, namely, the duty of living like good men toward your superior officers, your families, your neighbours, your country, and your God—even towards that Saviour who so loved you that He died for you on the cross, to set you the example of what true men ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... earliest stories of his life is of the five-year-old little child made to stand on a bench before the piano laboring over the notes, while the tears flowed fast down his cheeks at the cold and aching pain, from which his hard taskmaster would not release him. Besides his father, a clever musician who lodged in the house, Pfeiffer, an oboist at the theatre, gave him lessons. Beethoven used afterward to say that he had learnt more from this Pfeiffer than from any one else; but he was too ready to abet the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... British. Napoleon's determination to have his decrees executed in the Papal States, as well as his high-handed treatment of matters affecting the Catholic Church in France, brought him into conflict with Pope Pius VII, a gentle but courageous man, who in daring to excommunicate the European taskmaster was summarily deprived of his temporal rule and carried off a prisoner, first to Grenoble, then to Savona, and finally to Fontainebleau, where he resided, heaped with disgrace and insults, until 1814. In 1809 Napoleon formally incorporated ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... timely-happy spirits endu'th. Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... and Toby, believing that everything which he had said had been understood by the animals, went out of the door to meet his other taskmaster. ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... become too apt to deem the world our enemy, to case ourselves in defiance, to wrestle against our softer self, and to indulge the darker passions which are so easily fermented by the sense of injustice. Sold early into slavery, sentenced to a sordid taskmaster, exchanging her situation, only yet more to embitter her lot—the kindlier feelings, naturally profuse in the breast of Nydia, were nipped and blighted. Her sense of right and wrong was confused by a passion to which she had ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... down, and while Nicol tore open the dirty envelope, and read his taskmaster's orders, Tough lit a pipe, and watched him out of the corners of his ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... You know how blameless he has always been at Eton and Oxford; and though he may view his work rather in a school-boy aspect, and me as a taskmaster, as long as he is doing right the growth is going on. Don't be unhappy, Jenny! His great clear young voice is delightful to hear; he is capital at choral practices, and is a hero to all the old women and boys, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has not the workman a right to expect to be supplied with the ingredients? Is the blame altogether his if, when exposed to the heat of a tropical sun, his hurriedly constructed clay crumbles to pieces for want of the straw with which his taskmaster failed to supply him? We think not. But that night at Richmond Road we had no time to ruminate upon our difficulties. We had to surmount them, and with our brigadier we took our coats off and buckled ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... people of Babylon and the other great cities of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. The laborious work of brickmaking was generally assigned to captives as taskwork, and it appears to me highly probable that "the tale" of the brickmaker or his taskmaster might be most readily marked by simply indenting the side of the soft tale brick with the corner angle of a dry one; and that thus the strikingly peculiar character of the cuneiform character ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... hard taskmaster!" he muttered facetiously. "I'm afraid I'm not very presentable this evening—no bath this morning, and no shave, and, after nearly a month of make-up, that beastly grease paint gets into the skin creases in a most intimate way." He chuckled as the thought ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... made up the required sum sobbing bitterly in anticipation of the treatment in store for them. Give them a penny or two, should they ask it, reader. You will not miss it. It will go to the brutal parent or taskmaster, it is true, but it will give the little monkey-faced minstrel a supper, and save him from a beating. It is more to them than to you, and it will do you no harm for the recording angel to write opposite the follies and sins of your life, that you cast one gleam ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... thou know this blessed servitude? Canst thou say with a joyful heart, "O Lord, truly I am Thy servant?" He is no hard taskmaster. Would Satan try to teach thee so? Let this be the refutation, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." True, the yoke is the appointed discipline he employs in training his children for immortality. ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... was not man enough, had not sense enough, to give her this poor chance of matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny hand to claim her as another of his innumerable slaves. Though a life of lonely, ill- paid toil would have been better for Edith than marriage to Gus, he was missing the one golden opportunity ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Harrow indicated a clever, but not an extraordinary boy. He formed a few friendships there, in which his attachment appears to have been, in some instances, remarkable. The late Duke of Dorset was his fag, and he was not considered a very hard taskmaster. He certainly did not carry with him from Harrow any anticipation of that splendid career he was destined to run as ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... confidence was out of the question with The Avenger in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an antechamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park corner to see ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... than the Hanover troops. It is likely to turn out as laborious a session as ever was. All the comfort is, all the abuse don't lie at your door nor mine; Lord Carteret has the full perquisites of the ministry. The other day, after Pitt had called him "the Hanover troop-minister, a flagitious taskmaster," and said, "that the sixteen thousand Hanoverians were all the party he had, and were his placemen;" in short, after he had exhausted invectives, he added, "But I have done: if he were present, I would ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because he swore ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Scott has made this district famous, and we could have lingered long in the region of the Trossachs, and should have been delighted to see Loch Katrine, close by, which the "Lady of the Lake" had rendered so familiar, but time is a hard taskmaster and we had to be content with what Loch Lomond provided ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... trades: shoemakers ply the awl, glassmakers blow through their tubes, metal founders watch over their smelting-pots, carpenters hew down trees and build a ship; groups of women weave or spin under the eye of a frowning taskmaster, who seems impatient of their chatter. Did the double in his hunger desire meat? He might choose from the pictures on the wall the animal that pleased him best, whether kid, ox, or gazelle; he might follow the course of its life, from its birth in the meadows to the slaughter-house ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Percy Dacier's threw the fancied danger into remoteness. The world was her stepmother, vigilant to become her judge; and the world was his taskmaster, hopeful of him, yet able to strike him down for an offence. She saw their situation as he did. The course of folly must be bravely taken, if taken at all: Disguise degraded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which the now resuscitated members of the crew and Constantio took part, Frank called them forward and told them of the fate of Malvoise. None of them seemed particularly grieved, as the man had undoubtedly been a hard taskmaster. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... because the suffering would be short, was I to stand by and to witness the degradation—the pollution—attempted to be fastened upon her. What! to know that her beautiful tresses would be shorn ignominiously—a felon's dress forced upon her—a vile taskmaster with authority to——; blistered be the tongue that could go on to utter, in connection with her innocent name, the vile dishonours which were to settle upon her person! I, however, and her brother had taken such resolutions ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... brings out the gifts of horse and rider, and discomfits all followers not similarly gifted, the skilled crosser of them got his name, naturally, of 'moss-rider,' or moss-trooper. In which manner the moss of Norway and Scotland has been a taskmaster and Maker of Soldiers, as yet, the strongest known among natural powers. The lightning may kill a man, or cast down a tower, but these little tender leaves of moss—they and their progenitors—have trained ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... God were, and to follow them in singleness of heart? To a certain extent, yes; but he had not been thorough; he had not given up all for God. He knew that very well he had done little as compared with what he might and ought to have done, but still if he was being punished for this, God was a hard taskmaster, and one, too, who was continually pouncing out upon his unhappy creatures from ambuscades. In marrying Ellen he had meant to avoid a life of sin, and to take the course he believed to be moral and ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... had absorbed the government of the country were expelled or slain; their weaker brethren, the Israelites in Goshen, were enslaved. Egypt became for them a house of bondage, and they had to toil under the lash of the taskmaster at the cities and temples which the Pharaoh built. Ramses held his court at Zoan, like the Hyksos of old days, but it was to keep guard over the Asiatic frontier, not to be in touch with a kindred ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... bullets or bayonets. But the method of scoring is the same in each case—one down or one up. And of them all the bayonet is the counter which is at once the most deadly and the most intolerant of mistakes. A good friend, a hard taskmaster is the bayonet, and O'Shea was the greatest of all its prophets. . . . The main object of his life was to imbue his men, and any one else he could persuade to listen, with its song. His practical teaching was sound, very sound; his verbal lashings ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... who in this respect resembled each other, that they were both bankers and both antiquarians more or less distinguished. Dawson Turner was a man of middle height and of saturnine aspect, who had the reputation of being a hard taskmaster to the ladies of his family, who were quite as intelligent and devoted to literature as himself. He published a 'Tour in Normandy'—at that time scarcely anyone travelled abroad—and much other matter, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... trivial faults—a word, a look—and had them flogged by sentence of the court, by the scourger of the district, till the blood streamed from their backs. Knowing how little consideration there is for the unhappy convict in all cases of difference with his taskmaster, and that however unjust or unreasonable the latter's complaints may be, they are always readily entertained by the subordinate authorities, and carefully recorded against the former to his prejudice, I took care to give him no offence. To say nothing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... the small begin to assert themselves—think that you are serving the Lord.' Will that not freshen you up? Will that not set you boiling again? Will it not be easy to be diligent when we feel that we are 'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye'? There are many reasons for diligence—the greatness of the work, for it is no small matter for us to get the whole lump of our nature leavened with the good leaven; the continual operation of antagonistic forces which are all round us, and are working ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... is your father, Sir Henry! It is strange I should not have seen him before;—but I heard my father often speak of him as being among the flower of our real old English gentry. By the mode in which he began to school me, I can guess you had a tight taskmaster of him, Albert—I warrant you never wore hat ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and merrily at the cost of a soul, which is no good but to cause fear and pain? We take men's souls and liberate them from all pain and care and remorse, and we give in exchange money, much money, to procure comforts and ease; we enrol men as vassals of our great lord, and he is no hard taskmaster to ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... been signed between the Central Empires and their Bulgarian taskmaster; but the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus was as well understood in Bulgaria as in Prussia, and the treaty would have remained a scrap of paper had Russia expelled the German invaders or Britain broken the barrier at the Dardanlles. As it was, nothing occurred in August or September to ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... ourselves we conclude nothing can be done at all. This is to make the command the last word, and the end of God's speaking. Doth not the child of God frequently sit down and droop over his duty, while he looks upon the Egyptian taskmaster, the command, charging the whole work and portion of brick, and giving no straw to work upon? So are many in duties. While the aim and eye is upon some measure according to the perfect rule, the hands fall down feeble, and none is wrought ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... very young Minister, worked hard all day by Mr. Childers, a very strict but very friendly taskmaster, and never, according to the Treasury Bench discipline of those heroic times, allowed to be absent from the House of Commons for a single moment. I used to come to the House unlunched, and desperately hungry; and I got my dinner at four o'clock in an empty dining-room. Afternoon ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... writes of him, "He was a severe and unsparing taskmaster, and allowed no shirking. No other officer could have got half the work out of the men that he did. He used to keep them up to the mark by exclaiming, whenever he saw them flag: 'Another five ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... have felt, and on the emotions other and greater authors had felt. There was a time, "in the days that were earlier," when the writing of a book was a rare and solemn task, to be approached—like the writing of "Paradise Lost"—after years of devout and arduous preparation, under the "great Taskmaster's eye." Now it is all a rush and a fever and a fret, and the mad breathlessness of the New York newspaper office has spread from journalism to literature, and novelists cheerfully contract to write books in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... sufficiently scourged her husband, she departed in due course to visit her own taskmaster, little guessing what awaited her at his hands. After all, there is a deal of poetic justice in the world. Little Smith, fresh from his mother's apron-strings, is savagely beaten by the cock of the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... to think of coming over here now," Peace assured her confidently, and that was all the satisfaction she could get, so she lapsed into silence, and worked like a beaver until the second big bucket was brimming over. Then the small taskmaster drew a deep breath of relief and said graciously, "Now we will go home. These ought to make quite a little jelly. We must have as much as twenty quarts. They don't take ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... therefore, tortured in his soul, with all the sweet or bitter memories of his past life crowding on his mind, and the dreary prospect spreading before him, to the end of his life, of no change from his rude and slavish occupation under the burning sun, hearing no voice but that of the harsh taskmaster; his eyes saddened and his heart sickened by the open and daily spectacle of immorality and woe, with ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... an incident of great importance occurred. To superintend the service of the children of Israel, an officer from among them was set over every ten, and ten such officers were under the surveillance of an Egyptian taskmaster. One of these Hebrew officers, Dathan by name, had a wife, Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan, who was of extraordinary beauty, but inclined to be very loquacious. Whenever the Egyptian taskmaster set over her husband came to their house on business ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... she often spoke of the years of the presidency as her "lost days." New York and Philadelphia, she said, were "not home, only a sojourning. The General and I feel like children just released from school or from a hard taskmaster.... How many dear friends I have left behind! They fill my memory with sweet thoughts. Shall I ever see them again? Not likely unless they come to me, for the twilight is gathering around our lives. I am again fairly settled down to the pleasant duties of an old-fashioned Virginia-housekeeper, ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Christ of the other, doing to our neighbour as Christ does to us. But now, in the doctrine of men, we are taught only to seek after merits, rewards, and things which are already ours, and we have made of Christ a taskmaster far more ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... individuals themselves. It will not be "by the favour of the MANY, but by the wisdom and energy of the FEW." It is not even in the power of royalty to create at a word what can only be formed by the co-operation of the workmen themselves, and of the great taskmaster, Time! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... true. While he raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the speech of the honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt. So, even while he was their griping taskmaster and never gave them a good word, he had written their names down in his will. So, even while it was his daily declaration that he mistrusted all mankind—and sorely indeed he did mistrust all who bore any resemblance to himself—he was as certain that these two people, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... should know and lament (to himself) his own shortcomings—should mourn over and mend, as he best can, the "confusions of his wasted youth;" he should feel how ill he has put out to usury the talent given him by the Great Taskmaster—how far he is from being "a good and faithful servant;" and he should make this rather understood than expressed by his manner as a writer; while at the same time, every man should deny himself the luxury of taking his hat off ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... purposeful prayer to live this life as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, and whose Paradise Lost is the colossal epic of the loss of Eden through sin; (2) JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688), whose Pilgrim's Progress addressed itself in simple, earnest English to each individual human being, telling him what he must do to escape the City of Destruction and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... but little of rest or recreation; from the editor's chair up to the pulpit, they are under a lash as relentless as that of the taskmaster of Egypt. For instance, we might refer to Buchanan, of the Mercury. He has sat at his desk until he has become an old man, with the smallest imaginable subtraction of time for food and sleep, writing night and day, and carrying, in his comprehensive ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... now perched on a lonely rock, my hard taskmaster having routed me out of a very comfortable place under a blue pine, whose discarded needles afforded me a really agreeable resting-place, and dragged me away down again through the pine forest and jungle; hurried me across a roaring torrent on a fallen tree trunk; personally conducted me ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... slum from the pot and their chunk of bread from the loaf and talked all through this never-started and never-ended lunch. With the delicacy of his "inside" life, Jake knew the value of herbs and spices and he was a hard taskmaster. But inevitably, Jimmy learned the routine of brewing a bucket of slum that suited Jake's taste, after which Jimmy was now and then permitted to take on the more demanding job of cooking the steaks and chops that made their final ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... N. director, manager, governor, rector, comptroller. superintendent, supervisor, straw boss; intendant; overseer, overlooker^; supercargo^, husband, inspector, visitor, ranger, surveyor, aedile^; moderator, monitor, taskmaster; master &c 745; leader, ringleader, demagogue, corypheus, conductor, fugleman^, precentor^, bellwether, agitator; caporal^, choregus^, collector, file leader, flugelman^, linkboy^. guiding star &c (guidance) 693; adviser &c 695; guide &c (information) 527; pilot; helmsman; steersman, steermate^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... deaths from other causes than consumption was that of a poor feeble-minded man whose brother, a sturdy, devout, severe puritan, was a very hard taskmaster. Poor half-witted Charlie was kept steadily at work,—although he was not able to do much, for his body was about as feeble as his mind. He never could be taught the right use of an axe, and when he was set to chopping down trees for firewood he feebly hacked ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... virtue, recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous. Right Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. Giri thus understood is a severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should be the ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... propose that we shall give way a little on both sides. I won't hurry you; I will wait a reasonable time. If I promise that, surely you may yield a little in return. Money seems to be a hard taskmaster, my darling, after what you have told me about your uncle. See how he suffers because he is bent on being rich; and ask yourself if it isn't a warning to us not to follow his example! Would you like to see me too wretched to speak to ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... Legislation, which are not real wool or substance, but Devil's-dust, accursed of God and man! No man has worked, or can work, except religiously; not even the poor day-labourer, the weaver of your coat, the sewer of your shoes. All men, if they work not as in a Great Taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, work unhappily ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... authority over us, while in the legitimate exercise of their functions—we submit to the decrees of Providence, because they are not to be resisted—a coward submits to be insulted—a pusillanimous wretch to be despised—and a knave, if detected, must submit to be scouted—a slave submits to his Taskmaster; but, the Freeholders of Westmoreland, cannot, in reason, be said to submit to the House of Lowther naming their Representatives, unless it can be proved that those Representatives have been thrust upon them by an unjustifiable agency; and that they ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... work in college—original theme writing with new ideals of composition or at least new methods of suggesting those ideals. Miss Keller began to get the better of her old friendly taskmaster, the phrase. This book, her first mature experiment in writing, settles the question of her ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... be admitted, had been something miserly in his home life, as Marcia had so rashly reminded his son. But he had never stinted Jocelyn. He had been rather a hard taskmaster, though as a paymaster trustworthy; a ready-money man, just and ungenerous. To every one's surprise, the capital he had accumulated in the stone trade was of large amount for a business so unostentatiously carried on—much larger than Jocelyn had ever regarded ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... through the temple grounds we saw a number of men and boys at work, as the dragoman had stated. These excavators scooped the sand and debris into small baskets, while a taskmaster stood over them, whip in hand. Then placing the filled baskets on their heads they started off in long lines, singing as they marched to the deposit heap. The men, we were informed, earned twenty-five cents a day ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... something of what it would be to be employed by Mr. Graham. Tom Tripp worked early and late for a dollar and a half per week, without board, for a hard and suspicious taskmaster, who was continually finding fault with him. But for sheer necessity, he would have left Mr. Graham's store long ago. He had confided the unpleasantness of his position to Herbert more than once, and enlisted his sympathy and indignation. ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... chose for himself a severe taskmaster, with plenty of added work, yet, with some special kindliness in trustful tones that proved part-pay, some needed, minor chord was touched in the soul-life of the lad, that gave him hope in himself and in his future, which proved very true. He has long been a kind and useful ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... as it lasts. But with all its dangers it is likely to last as long as that of a galley slave. What with bad food and hardship and toil and the taskmaster's whip and the burning sun, a galley slave's life is a short one; while a skilful gladiator may live for many years, and in time save money enough to set up a school ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... medicine," she answered. "I have had it specially prepared from a recipe given me ten years ago at a time when I thought of resorting to the same contrivance to escape from my taskmaster." ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... over by the taskmaster, Israel toiled in his pit. Though this condemned him to a sort of earthy dungeon, or gravedigger's hole, while he worked, yet even when liberated to his meals, naught of a cheery nature greeted him. The yard was encamped, with all its endless rows of tented sheds, and kilns, and mills, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... hand, experience is a severe taskmaster, and it taught me to be somewhat insubordinate in my notions. I fear I must confess that this spirit of insubordination has ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... evangelization of the world will be done through native teachers, educated here or in our missions, rather than directly. The reformer, too, finds in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart the final assurance of success; when the "fullness of time" has come and any form of bondage is ripe for overthrow, the taskmaster's demand for "bricks without straw" gives the final ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... 9:4, 5] For the burdensome yoke and the crossbar on his shoulder, The rod of his taskmaster, thou breakest as in the day of Midian. For every boot of the warrior with noisy tread, And every war-cloak drenched in the blood of the slain Will be completely burned up as fuel for ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... Odysseus, "I am no stranger to blows, for I have been sore buffeted on land and sea. The belly is a stern taskmaster, which compels us to face both wounds ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... king was no more moved when was done than before; and being very angry, he said that he should gain nothing by this his cunning and shrewdness against the Egyptians;—and he commanded him that was the chief taskmaster over the Hebrews, to give them no relaxation from their labors, but to compel them to submit to greater oppressions than before; and though he allowed them chaff before for making their bricks, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... a stewardship, which he was administering, and for which by-and-by he would have to render a reckoning. "And," says he, "it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."[54] Similarly, he thought of himself as a workman with a certain portion of a temple to build; but the great Taskmaster was coming round in the evening to inspect the work—ay, and even to test it with fire; and, when that testing-time came, he desired to be a workman not needing to be ashamed. All the work of his apostleship appeared to him ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... vanities and levities, played his part to my admiration. He had his own view; he might be wrong; but the performances (he would remind us) were after all his, and he must decide. He was, in this as in all other things, an iron taskmaster, sparing not himself nor others. If you were going to do it at all, he would see that it was done as well as you were able. I have known him to keep two culprits (and one of these his wife) repeating the same action and the same two or three words for a whole weary afternoon. And yet ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and some intelligence of men and business. Alone in his islands, it was he who dealt and profited; he was the planter and the merchant; and his subjects toiled for his behoof in servitude. When they wrought long and well their taskmaster declared a holiday, and supplied and shared a general debauch. The scale of his providing was at times magnificent; six hundred dollars' worth of gin and brandy was set forth at once; the narrow land resounded with the noise ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... morning to work. Young and hungry, we were not long in dispatching our meal, when, pointing to a quantity of dry grass at one end of our prison (for I can call it by no other name), he lifted his lanthorn, and left us to ruminate upon our melancholy situation and dreary prospects under such a taskmaster. None of us felt inclined to speak; yet it was some time ere any of us could close our eyes, in consequence of the noise made by the bull-frogs in a swamp near the farm. If we had not heard them as we approached the place, and inquired what caused the, to us, strange sounds, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the canebrake above, and, when sufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three days. He would have struck altogether, but he had found a taskmaster. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... much sympathy is given to her whose husband refuses to harmonize with the pose of the moment? Scant justice has, for instance, been done to the misunderstood wife whose husband persists in understanding her; to the submissive helpmate whose taskmaster shuns every opportunity of browbeating her; and to the generous and impulsive being whose bills are paid with philosophic calm. Mrs. Fetherel, as wives go, had been fairly exempt from trials of this nature, for her husband, if ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... desire to break away from the herd. It will force him to place the good of society before his own. It is the very strong link that attaches the individual to the whole. And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster. He sits him in a seat of honour. At last, like a courtier fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the sensitiveness of his conscience. Then he has no words ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... life subject to the taskmaster Popularity are endless. One day he wrote:— "A stranger called here and asked if Shakespeare lived in this neighborhood. I told him I knew no such person. ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Fortune," the career of Dave Dashaway has been told. The father of the young airman had been a noted balloonist, and when he died a mean old skinflint named Silas Warner had been appointed Dave's guardian. Warner had acted the tyrant and hard taskmaster for the youth. A natural love for aeronautics had been born in Dave. He had made an airship model which his guardian had maliciously destroyed. Warner had also appropriated a package dropped accidentally by a famous aviator, named Robert ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... "Old Welborne is charging you too high interest. You ought to shift the mortgage to somebody more human—somebody with at least a thimbleful of soul. That man is the hardest taskmaster on earth. He'd skin a flea ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... he was a very hard taskmaster, but as a matter of fact he demanded nothing of his soldiers that he was not ready to undertake himself. Like a true duke, he was his own commander, drew up his own troops himself in battle array, and then passed from one end of the line to the other, encouraging ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... though but to dash away; was he now—he, still to his own conviction, the heir of an ancient and spotless name—to be hunted as a thief; or, at the best, what right over his person and his liberty had he given to his taskmaster? Ignorant of the law—the law only seemed to him, as it ever does to the ignorant and the friendless—a Foe. Quicker than lightning these thoughts, which it takes so many words to describe, flashed through ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... And now listen: if you marry me, I'll treat 'ee like a span'el dog. Fetch you shall, an' carry, for my pleasure. You shall be slave, an' I your taskmaster; an' the sweetness o' your love shall come by crushin', like trodden ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... sailor's shoulder, "it is useless for you to try to lessen the services you have rendered us. Think of what I was but an hour since — a captive with the most horrible of all fates before me, and with the belief that my father was dying by inches in the hands of some cruel taskmaster, and now he is beside me and I am free. This has been done by two strangers, men of a nation which I have been taught to regard as an enemy. It seems to me that no words that I can speak could tell you even faintly what I feel, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... steadfastly on the deities of his worship engendering his destruction beneath him. His cheek—the cheek which had rested in boyhood on his mother's bosom—was pressed against the gilded breast of the god Serapis, his taskmaster ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... give us all our ages. I think when they say we was free that meant every man was to be his own boss and not be bossed by a taskmaster. Cose old master was good to us but we wanted to have our own way 'bout a heap ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... arms against tyranny were not allowed to forget that grim taskmaster with the two great hands stretched upwards, holding the knife which descended mercilessly, indiscriminately on necks that did not bend willingly ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... as a certain well-to-do farmer and dairyman who had an unenviable reputation as a cruel taskmaster with his hired help. He was also known to be exceedingly harsh in his treatment of any with whom he had dealings, who chanced to be unable to meet their obligations to the minute. Because he had been able to accumulate his "pile," Mr. Abel ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... opposition was filled with incompetent political hacks, that had been fastened upon the management by men of influence. Selwyn's force, from end to end, was composed of able men who did a full day's work under the eye of their watchful taskmaster. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... this heavy labour had begun to tell, was taking advantage of the absence of his taskmaster, Jacob, to sleep awhile in the hut which they had now built for themselves beneath the shadow of the baobab-tree. As she reached it he came out yawning, and asked her where she had been. Benita ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... so much in mental power that he took interest in fairy tales, and he was a rigorous taskmaster. I was obliged to illustrate the stories in varied ways. Once I was asked, "What's a gian'?" I said, "A very, very big man." "Big as you?" "Far bigger." "How bigger? Has he got legs, and heads, and—and things like that?" "We'll see. When I stand on this chair I'm as big as a giant," ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... and oppressive nature still remain. But the grand misfortune is that the spirit which these oppressive laws engendered remains. The Protestant still looks upon the Catholic as a degraded being. The Catholic does not yet consider himself upon an equality with his former tyrant and taskmaster. That religious hatred which required all the prohibiting vigilance of the law for its restraint has found in the law its strongest support; and the spirit which the law first exasperated and embittered continues to act long after the original ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Pamela; and this also was why, in despairing of gaining it, she bent herself to her unthankful labor again, and patched and darned until the tide had swept back again under the curtain of fog, and there was no more light, even for the stern taskmaster, poverty. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which every hard-working brain knows of; but it is an enemy, not of the workman, but only of the taskmaster. The student may resort to what healthful contrivances he pleases to avoid fatigue; but when it appears, he should not excuse himself, but yield to its impulse. He should learn to distinguish indolence, and other counterfeits, from that genuine weariness which makes the sleep of a laboring man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the manager in his sanctum of polished wood—a comptoir where there was little to count. Managers were a fleeting race in the Kursaal Promontonio. The Count was a kind master. But he was a Russian, and a taskmaster like those of Egypt, in that he expected his managers to make the bricks of dividends without the straw of visitors. With him I covenanted to be roused ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... instant imagine that Browning was indolent or indifferent; it is known that he was a taskmaster to himself. But he could not write other than he did. When the music came and the verse caught the flame, and his words became sweeter, and his thought clearer, then he could sweep down like an archangel bringing new strains of beauty ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... Harvard class who were heard from in later years. Ed Twitchell for one, and "Sam" Caldwell, who was one of the nominees for vice president in '92. I sat next to Sam in "Bull" Warren's Greek class. THERE was one of the finest scholars this country has ever produced—a stern taskmaster, and a thorough gentleman. It would be well for this younger generation if they could spend a few hours in that old classroom, with "Bull" pacing up and down the aisle and all of us trembling in our shoes. But Delenda est Carthago—fuit Ilium—Requiescat in pace. I last ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... lay a little longer. It was a pleasant thought that there was no stern taskmaster to force him up. He might lie as long as he wanted to, till noon, if he chose. Perhaps he might have chosen, but the claims of a healthy appetite asserted themselves, and ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... in mortal strains, I've stolen one hour From anxious self, life's cruel taskmaster! And the warm wooings of this sunny day Tremble along my frame and harmonise The attempered organ, that even saddest thoughts Mix with some sweet sensations, like harsh tunes Played ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the fight for mastery as between body and spirit: evolution proceeds apace when spirit takes command and bids the body minister to its progress, but evolution halts when the body clogs the spirit. Then Nature, our taskmaster, punishes us, ever choosing that way which is entirely appropriate and induced by the fault itself: this is the purpose and the cause of our pecks of trouble. The battle has to be fought—and won—by each of us: the only effect of temporary surrender is indefinite delay. ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Even so!—but not so stupid, blind, that I, Whom thus the great Taskmaster of the world Has set to meditate, mistaken work, My dreary face against a dim blank wall, Throughout man a natural life-time,—could pretend ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and the hour for resuming and though she was inexperienced in such matters, her native intelligence was so far above that of the men or the apes that she did better than they could have done. She was a hard taskmaster, too, for she looked down with loathing and contempt upon the misshapen creatures amongst which cruel Fate had thrown her and to some extent vented upon them her dissatisfaction and her thwarted love. She made them build her a strong protection ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more respect for Reynolds than I have for Richer; for, happen how it will, there have been more people in the world who could dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like Sir Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his profession to the other, it is true; but then he had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose will was more wayward and obscure, and whose instructions it was more difficult to practise. You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of success, if they are but sound ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the embodiment of the very opposite conception, a wise and affectionate husband, instead of a taskmaster exploiting his slaves. In its true aspect the relation of husband and wife is entirely devoid of any question of relative superiority or inferiority. As well ask whether the front wheel or the back wheel of your bicycle is the more important. The two make a single whole, in which the functions of ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of the conqueror, before, too, the act of conquest had been consummated; for already fresh troops were arriving from Mongolia and Manchuria, and the valor of Sankolinsin was beginning to revive. That the Chinese government had under the hard taskmaster, necessity, made great progress in its views on foreign matters was not to be denied, but somehow or other its movements always lagged behind the requirements of the hour, and the demands of the English were again ahead of what it was disposed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... imitation of my own. I am satisfied that his particularly soulless laugh was not derived from any amusement he actually felt, yet I could not say it was forced. In his accurate imitations, I fancied he was only trying to evade any responsibility of his own. THAT devolved upon his taskmaster! In the attention he displayed when new ideas were presented to him, there was a slight condescension, as if he were looking down upon them from his ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... of Chnem-hotep, at Beni Hasan, there is a wall painting of a horizontal loom with two weavers, women, squatting on either side, and at the right in the background is drawn the figure of the taskmaster. There are also figures represented in the act of spinning, etc. For the present we are concerned ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... without conviction because it cannot believe even in itself. Reflecting thus, he can scarcely fail to realize that materialism, everywhere entrenched, was entrenched strongest in the camps of the rich—-not the idle rich, for materialism is so terrible a taskmaster that it makes its votaries its slaves. These slaves, in turn, made a slave of the artist, a minister to their pride and pretence. His art thus lacked that "sad sincerity" which alone might have saved it in a crisis. When the storm broke militant democracy turned ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... had been sent to clean the riding-boots of one of the bachelors, instead of which he had lolled idly on a cot in the dormitory, until he had at last fallen asleep. He had been awakened by the opening of the dormitory door and by the sound of voices—among them was that of his taskmaster. Fearing punishment for his neglected duty, he had slipped out of the cot, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... and illumination, between priest and prophet, which has produced the deepest tragedies in human history, and will probably continue to do so while the world lasts. The legalist—with his conception of God as the righteous Judge dispensing rewards and punishments, the "Great Taskmaster" in whose vineyard we are ordered to labour; of the Gospel as "the new law," and of the sanction of duty as a "categorical imperative"—will never find it easy to sympathise with those whose favourite words are St. John's triad—light, life, and love, and who find ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... had fallen by the ashes of her hearth and prayed in futile agony to the gods of her home. Now she stood erect and looked out upon the city and with a solemn faith prayed to the greater gods. Later she slept peacefully, for the first time in fifteen months, as one whose taskmaster has turned comrade. ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... was haughty and arrogant, caring for naught but his own personal advantage, consulting only his own tastes and pleasures. He was a stern officer to his soldiers, a cruel taskmaster to the serfs he had inherited, and a bitter foe of the Jews ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... victory—the victory of a full and complete life, marked by earnest endeavour, untiring industry, continuous devotion and self-sacrifice, together with an abiding and ever-present sense of dependence on the will of Heaven. His work was done, to quote the Puritan poet's noble line: 'As ever in his great taskmaster's eye'; and never for a moment did he waver in his feeling of personal responsibility to a personal God. Others will speak to you of his record as a scientific man. I shall permit myself only to say that few can have ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... a kind friend but occasionally it was a hard taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its banks the noble art of "team-work." They depended upon each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their dikes in repair. In this way they learned how to get along with their neighbours and ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... one No-heart, with one Linger-after-lust, and with one Sleepy-head, and with a young woman, her name was Dull, to turn out of the way, and become as they. Besides, they brought up an ill report of your Lord, persuading others that He was a taskmaster. They also brought up an evil report of the good land, saying it was not half so good as some pretend it was. They also began to vilify His servants, and to count the very best of them meddlesome, troublesome, busybodies. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the archaic statues of the Athenian Acropolis (pages 151 f.). On one side we have one of the old stock subjects of the vase-painters, treated with unapproached vivacity and humor. Among the labors of Heracles, imposed upon him by his taskmaster, Eurystheus, was the capturing of a certain destructive wild boar of Arcadia and the bringing of the creature alive to Mycenae. In the picture, Heracles is returning with the squealing boar on his shoulder. The cowardly Eurystheus has ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... this iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow and repentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they would then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything, and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the church, etc.... Finally myself and the overseer became ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... soured by disappointment, Churchill returned to his father's house; and, being idle, soon obtained work from the proverbial "taskmaster" of all idle people. Having become acquainted with a young lady, named Scott, whose father lived in the vicinity of Westminster School, he, with true poetic imprudence, married her privately in the Fleet, to the great annoyance of both their parents. His father, however, was ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of his faith. He believed that the unseen God had given him these ties, had given him his parents, his children, and that to love them was to love God, to do his duty to them was to do his duty to God. This was part of his walking with God, continually under his great Taskmaster's eye,—walking about his daily business with the belief that a great loving Father was above him, whatever he did; ready to strengthen, and guide, and bless him if he did well, ready to avenge Himself on him if he did ill. These were ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the wicked cease from troubling, And there the weary be at rest; There the prisoners repose together, Nor hear the taskmaster's voice. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... employer on week-days, and would have preferred to pass a Sabbath afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore to receive her taskmaster and ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... like the bole of a tree, alight with fire, determination, love of sport, and hunger for the task in hand. He was no easy taskmaster, but always a just one. Many a young man of that period will remember, as I do, the grinding day's work when everything seemed to go wrong, when mere discouragement was gradually giving way to actual despair, when, somewhat clogged ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... had none. He was happily quite free from that tormenting taskmaster, who, next perhaps to praise, makes the severest demand on human faculty, and human labour. To maintain in the spot where he was born, the character for honesty, independence, and industry, that his father had borne before him, to support in credit and comfort the sister ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford |
