"Plodding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somehow made people feel like smiling too, and put them into a good temper in spite of themselves. She was neither dull nor particularly clever, only possessed of average abilities, able to remember lessons when she tried hard, and gifted with a certain capacity for plodding, but not in the least brilliant over anything she undertook. She was never likely to win fame, or set the Thames on fire, but she was one of those cosy, thoughtful, cheery, lovable home girls, who are often a great deal more pleasant to live with than some ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Academy; in the Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with small but critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews—plain, plodding, conscientious Jane—carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in attendance at Queen's. So it may be fairly stated that Miss ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... looked eagerly in every direction. And finally she spied Madame Tortoise plodding along towards the school, with the lunch for ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... is fatherhood in its sweet nobleness; and Gwynplaine, disfigured and deserted—a little lad set ashore upon a night of hurricane and snow, who, finding in his wanderings a babe on her dead mother's breast, rescues this bit of winter storm-drift, plodding on through untracked snows, freezing, but no more thinking to drop his burden than the mother thought to desert it—Gwynplaine is a hero for whose deed an epic is fitting. Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, found, after long years, holding in his skeleton arms a bit of woman's drapery ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... that it seemed a very probable contingency, and she was beginning to weary of plodding over the boggy land, alternately slapped by outstanding branches or—when a little puff of wind raced overhead—drenched by a shower of garnered raindrops from some tree which seemed to shake itself in the breeze just as a dog may shake ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... pitying mirth had succeeded to the struggle and the violence. He let Captain Hahn preach his German gospel of system on earth and organization to man, and walked beside him in silence, with pensive eyes fixed ahead, where the prisoner and his escort moved in a plodding black group. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and into the treadmill of schooling that begins with b, a, ba and sometimes never ends. Side by side, the two small youngsters entered the low doorway of the primary school; side by side, a few years later, a pair of lanky striplings, they were plodding through their intermediate studies which seemed to them unending. Catie was eagerly looking towards the final pages of her geography and grammar, for beyond them lay the entrance to another perpetual holiday, this time ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought—'What if, after all, he were to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... heard the landlord's refusal and the miner's angry profanity. A moment later she saw the traveller plodding up the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... know where I was, but I knew I was drifting downstream. I kicked until I had headed the plank at right angles to the shore, and remained on the plank until my feet touched bottom; then I got up and began plodding along upstream, knowing that, sooner or later, I should find some of you folks. I heard someone call. Was it ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... meaning, Mr Drummond thought that a cask had surged, when coming out of the lighter, and struck them down. He desired old Tom to be more careful, and walked away, while we proceeded to unload the lighter. The new clerk was a very heavy, simple young man, plodding and attentive certainly, but he had no other merit; he was sent into the lighter to rake the marks and numbers of the casks as they were hoisted up, and soon became a butt to young Tom, who gave him the wrong marks and numbers of all the casks, to ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to mould your brilliant life to my plodding one," he said wistfully, as if he were reading my thoughts. "But I don't mean to be selfish. I love you—and—you're ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... wounded men slowly making their way to the rear; the groups of dejected prisoners plodding along under guard, and you have about as much of a battle as one private ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks—clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... responsible driver having been secured for the morrow, Peggy returned to the cottage highly elated over her success, and lent her aid to the disheartened cooks. When Joe drove the plodding team up to the cottage on the following morning, the array of baskets on the porch promised satisfaction for the appetites of double the number awaiting his coming. Lucy Haines sat in the hammock beside Peggy, her sunbonnet replaced by a little black hat, which had done service through ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... and gusty. Storm-clouds were gathering thickly overhead, and the ground beneath was covered with rustling leaves, which, blighted by the early frosts, lay helpless and dead at the roadside, or were made the sport of the wind. A solitary horseman was slowly plodding along the road but a few miles from the village of Salem. In truth he was so near to the famous Puritan village, that, through the hills and intervening tree-tops, he could have seen the spires of the churches had he raised his melancholy eyes from the ground. The rider was ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... with you, Patty. I'm not that sort. You know very well I've only a plain, plodding sort of a mind, and I can't keep up with this repartee and persiflage that you carry on with ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... Brown and General Toombs continued strained. The latter never lost an opportunity to upbraid him in public or in private, and some of his keenest thrusts were aimed at the plodding figure of his old friend and ally, as it passed on its lonely way through the shadows of its ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... command, and Molly, plodding obstinately after the carriage, was enveloped shortly in the cloud of dust that floated ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... purpose of overcoming more deftly the opposition of the current. The second personage is a short but square-shouldered Irishman, with massive breast, arms like the piston-rods of an engine, and a broad, good-natured face. He is one of those beings who may be aptly termed "machines," a patient, plodding, ox-like creature who takes to the most irksome labor as a flail takes to the sheafs on the threshing-floor. Work was his element, and nothing, it would seem, could tire or overcome those indurated muscles and vice-like nerves. The only appellation with which he was ever known ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... through my mind while we were descending the steps to the roadway. When we reached the ground we turned back toward the garage, and with slow, plodding steps the leader of the Mercutians preceded me to its entrance, his companions following close behind me. They had evidently been here before, I could tell from their actions. I realized that probably they had all ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... master said, "thy Moses was a mighty man, but—ha, ha ha!—I must laugh when I think of his allowing thy fathers the plodding ox and the dull, slow-natured ass, and forbidding them property in horses. Ha, ha, ha! Thinkest thou he would have done so had he seen that one—and that—and this?" At the word he laid his hand upon the face of the first to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... was so thick we could see nothing, therefore, without a word of remonstrance, we followed our pilot, plodding through grass soaked in moisture which reached to our knees, feeling very chilled, wet, and weary, but all trying to keep stout hearts and turn ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... after-reflection that for all he knew his services might not be required on the Eleven, that very possibly his brand of football was not good enough for Brimfield, had caused a relapse into depression. Thrice he had told himself that as soon as the plodding horse reached the further turn he would get up and go back to his room, and thrice he had failed to keep his promise. He wondered who his room-mate was to be and whether that youth had yet arrived, but his curiosity was not strong ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a lack of vitality and elasticity, a stodgy, plodding way of working, much indulgence in gregarious eating and drinking, and very mild forms of exercise and holiday-making, comparatively little sport, almost no game-playing where boys and men hustle one another about as in foot-ball and polo, and very long hours ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... life on the road would build up knowledge for me of my people and my country. I should not be studying it in any obvious, guide-book way, and I should learn more of real Spain in a few weeks than in months of conscientious railway plodding from one ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by way of contrasting what he supposes to have been the former vivacity of the nation with its present monotonous character. "John Bull," he will say, "was then a gay cavalier, with his sword by his side and a feather in his cap; but he is now a plodding citizen, in snuff-coloured coat ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... that they even extended to the very pests of society—the men who lived by plunder. It is to this desire for change, then, that we are indebted for those admirable novels of the French writer Paul de Kock, which have lately appeared; and wherein are portrayed, with such faithfulness, the plodding manners and steady characters of shop-keepers, instead of the high-toned conversation of polished society or the homely but innocent simplicities of a country life—that old ground-work of fiction. The same may be said of those "Essays on the Condition of the People,"—"Household ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... that this windfall meant a short cut to things which she had only looked to attain by plodding over economic hills. She could say good-by to singing in photoplay houses, to vaudeville engagements, to concert work in provincial towns. She could hitch her wagon to a star and go straight up the avenue that led to a career, if it were in her ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... those of the highest rank scarcely cared to fill. Under these circumstances the choice fell upon Lord Robartes, who had rendered some good service in Cornwall, and who had the reputation of more than respectable abilities, of careful and plodding industry, and of an integrity which was at least above the moderate average standard of Charles's Court. But he had defects of character which were apparent to a judge so acute as the Chancellor, and these soon made ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... bornes kilometriques, line the roadways of Continental military Europe mercilessly, and it's a bad sign when the chauffeur begins to count them off. All the same, he knows his destination a great deal better than does some plodding tourist by rail who scorns him for rushing off again immediately ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Soon the track became soft and sticky. She sank ankle deep in mire. Then gradually the morass grew deeper and she was in mud and water up to her knees. Later she was plodding half-leg deep, panting deeply. ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... suddenly dropped into a place as assistant quartermaster-general, useful and important enough, but stripped of the glory usually preferred by the hot blood of a gallant youth. In time, the faithful, efficient quartermaster became a plodding, painstaking lawyer, a safe, industrious attorney-general, and a dignified, respectable judge; but he had not distinguished himself, nor did he possess the striking, showy characteristics of mind or manner ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... procession was again plodding, Indian file, through the still, dew-fragrant, midnight woods. The little raccoon, its heart now beating quietly, nestled in secure contentment under the young schoolmaster's arm, untroubled even by the solemn and deep-toned menace of a horned-owl's cry from the spiky ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a glance; he knew because he knew; and if others would not follow, he had the audacity to push on alone. This recklessness to the opinion of the slow and plodding, this indifference to the dull, gradually drew upon him the hatred of ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... opportunity to place himself even more definitely on record in the hearing of Flagg. After the sun was up Latisan expected to be able to grasp that opportunity at almost any turn of the tote road. He knew he would meet the upcoming crew. Flagg's horses on the trip north had made twice the speed of the plodding woods teams, and the crew had been ordered to spend the night at any camp where darkness ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... before his desperately fixed gaze. And presently, within the field of his vision, something moved—a man going westward among the trees his rifle slung over his shoulder. And there were others, too, plodding stolidly back toward the western forests of Les Errues—forms half-seen between trees, none near, and only two who passed within hearing, the trample of their heavy feet loud among the fallen leaves, their guttural voices distinct. And, as they swung westward, rifles ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... opposed to ideas; incidents as opposed to propositions. Sometimes, it is true, the author of a story is in reality dealing with ideas. In the fable about "The Hare and the Tortoise," the tortoise stands for the idea of slow, steady plodding; while the hare is the representative of quick wits which depend on their ability to show a brilliant burst of speed when called upon. The fable teaches better than an essay can that the dullness which perseveres will arrive at success sooner ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge, and that I was both surprised and offended at the laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, enquired what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of the older girls around me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as no line ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... writer is, by an ever-living commonplace, considered to be inaccurate: the donnish historian may, by his plodding want of imagination, give us only the strict facts. The lively writer, perhaps, in the desire to round out a character of a man concerning whom little is known or to perfect the rhythm of a paragraph, will consult his convenient fancy ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... friction; the heat and burden of the day borne by mature men and women on the other hand, increased by their consciousness of youth's misunderstanding and high scorn. It may relieve the mind to break forth in moments of irritation against "the folly of the coming generation," but whoso pauses on his plodding way to call even his youngest and rashest brother a fool, ruins thereby the joy of his journey,—for youth is so vivid an element in life that unless it is cherished, all the rest is spoiled. The most praiseworthy ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... to be, did not in reality reach below the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to be foreigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation at work, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow and plodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as a rival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to his children the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot the Greek which ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... * Thus through life with thee I'll glide, Happy still what'er betide, And while plodding sots complain Of ceaseless toil and slender gain, Every passing hour shall be Worth ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Markovitch was standing behind the chair with the strangest look on his face. Suddenly, just as I came in he bent down and I heard him say: 'Won't you stop the beastly thing?' 'Certainly,' said Semyonov, and he went across in his heavy plodding kind of way and stopped it. I went off to my room and then, upon my word, five minutes after I heard it begin again, thin and reedy through the walls. But when I came back into the dining-room there was no one there. You can't think how that tune irritated me, and I ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... way out. Thanks to this string of light, he retraced without difficulty, through the suite of saloons and galleries, the way which he had followed on his arrival with the King-at-Arms and the Usher of the Black Rod. He saw no one, except here and there some old lord with tardy steps, plodding along heavily ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... room he would peer, to be sure there were no watching eyes, then he would slip over to the fireplace, lift the lion, draw out the cipher message, place it sometimes in his mouth, sometimes in his shoe, and as soon as his morning chores were done he would be seen plodding down the dusty road leading to the farm, where some one was eagerly waiting for the tidings he carried. Well had the Spy trained ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... plodding heavily over the sand that was soft as velvet. He, on the sandhills, watched the great pale coast envelop her. She grew smaller, lost proportion, seemed only like a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the strong, and the children know it themselves, and prize-winners often become the object of the "word in season," pointing out how rarely they will be found to distinguish themselves in after life; while the steady advance of the plodding and slow mind is dwelt upon, and those who have failed through idleness drink up the encouragement which was not intended for them, and feel that they are the hope of the future because they have won no prizes. It is difficult ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... standing close to me as I write this to you. Did she but know! I would sacrifice everything to her except my duty and my conscience. Yes, if God exacted of me, in order to spare her this pain, that I should extinguish my thought and condemn myself to a plodding, vulgar existence, I would submit. Many a time I have endeavoured to deceive myself, but it is not in human power to believe or not to believe at will. I wish that I could stifle within me the faculty of self-examination, for it is this which has caused all my unhappiness. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... final test arrives When once more he tees and drives. Joy! As soon as he has hit he Sees it toddling down the pretty, Never swerving left or right Till it waddles out of sight, Plodding through a bunker and Braying like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... better things in the future, and yet attempting to succeed in a business which requires care, infinite pains and precautions. Thoughtless, impulsive, frivolous people are always trying to do work requiring careful, plodding, painstaking, methodical ways; while thoughtful, philosophic, and deliberate people oftentimes find themselves distressed, bewildered, and inefficient in the hurly-burly of some ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of course Eleanor felt a difference in him; all day long, in the loneliness of their third-floor front, under the gaze of Daniel Webster, she brooded over it. Even while she was reading magazines and plodding through newspaper editorials on public questions she had never heard of, so that she could find things to talk about to him, she was thinking of the change, and asking herself what she had done—or left undone—to cause it? She also ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... myself with books, pictures, talk? No, because it is all a purposeless passing of dreary hours. Before, there was always an object ahead of me, a light to which I made my way; and all the pleasant incidents of life were things to guide me, and to beguile the plodding path. Now I am adrift; I need go neither forwards nor backwards; and the things which before were gentle and quiet occupations have become duties to be ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... secret joy In school to hear the finest boy. Her knowledge with her fancy grew, She hourly pressed for something new; Ideas came into her mind So fact, his lessons lagged behind; She reasoned, without plodding long, Nor ever gave her judgment wrong. But now a sudden change was wrought, She minds no longer what he taught. Cadenus was amazed to find Such marks of a distracted mind; For though she seemed to listen more To all he spoke, than ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... they muffle themselves up in a complicated language, and make superhuman and prodigious efforts, go into orchestral fits, or cultivate inorganic harmonies, an obsessing monotony, declamations a la Sarah Bernhardt, beginning in a minor key, and going on for hours plodding along like mules, half asleep, along the edge of the slippery slope—always under the mask Christophe found the souls of these men, cold, weary, horribly scented, like Gounod and Massenet, but even less natural. And he repeated the unjust comment ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... load behind them plodding On the ass! Silenus he, Old and drunken, merry, nodding, Full of years and jollity; Though he goes so swayingly, Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.— Youths and maids, enjoy to-day; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ax and the rude saw, which are still found among them, caused them to pass at one stride from the Stone to the Iron Age, which, but for the intervention of the Spaniards, they would not naturally have reached without centuries of patient plodding. Moreover, before the arrival of the Europeans, the Aborigines of America had never seen horses, cows, sheep, or dogs, and the turkey was the only domestic animal known to them. Hence, in ancient American society there was no such thing as a pastoral stage of development; and ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... substitutes the mule-team plodding through the Gallic mire for Catullus' graceful yacht speeding home from Asia, follows the original phraseology with ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... steep hills and narrow, crooked streets of this old town during three hours, yesterday, in a sleigh, in a driving snow-storm. The people here don't mind snow; they were all out, plodding around on their affairs—especially the children, who were wallowing around everywhere, like snow images, and having a mighty good time. I wish I could describe the winter costume of the young girls, but I can't. It is grave and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wave of immigration receded the Teutonic wave rose and brought the second great influx of foreigners to American shores. A greater ethnic contrast could scarcely be imagined than that which was now afforded by these two races, the phlegmatic, plodding German and the vibrant Irish, a contrast in American life as a whole which was soon represented in miniature on the vaudeville stage by popular burlesque representations of both types. The one was the opposite ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... wings wet and bedraggled in the first rains, homeless and hopeless. The scientific Lacy, who lately spent most of his time as a bar-room oracle in the settlement, was away, and from our dripping canvas we could see Captain Jim returning from a visit to him, slowly plodding ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... indelible impression on some observant mind amongst her companions. My second sister, Elizabeth, too, may perhaps be remembered, but I cannot conceive that I left a trace behind me. My career was a very quiet one. I was plodding and industrious, perhaps I was very grave, for I suffered to see my sisters perishing, but I think I was remarkable for nothing.—Believe me, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... brazen sun had fully risen on the second day these late peaceful farmers of Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, were plodding along once more beside their sore-footed oxen; passing out unaided into a land which many leading men in the Government, North and South, and quite aside from political affiliations, did not value ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the men who are full of the vision of what can be done with them rolled into one, and of what is the matter with them if they are not rolled into one, must be the controlling powers in the new organization. The Civic Federation has been a safe plodding vague institution because it has not had a vigorous vision of itself, and has not been conducted by men who have a personal genius for conceiving and carrying out cooeperation between capital and labor. It has been weak, theoretical, and full of generalization because it has not had the driving ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to propel Kaydessa ahead. At the moment he did not know which was worse, to enter the ship expecting the fear to strike, or to meet it unprepared. He was ready to refuse to enter, not to allow the girl, sullenly plodding on under his compulsion, to face that unseen ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... read in European history, on my making a remark on this subject, reminded me that Athens and Sparta had once obtained almost equal celebrity, although they were so small as not now to be visible. As I slowly passed the telescope over the face of Europe, I pictured to myself the fat, plodding Hollander—the patient, contemplative German—the ingenious, sensual Italian—the temperate Swiss—the haughty, superstitious Spaniard—the sprightly, self-complacent Frenchman—the sullen and reflecting Englishman —who monopolize nearly all the science and literature of the earth, to which they ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... wonderful prospects; all the great men the books had ever heard of had been poor lads like himself, who had reached their high estate through good fortune and their own valor. But all the men in town who possessed anything had attained their wealth by wearily plodding forward and sucking the blood of the poor. They were always sitting and brooding over their money, and they threw nothing away for a lucky fellow to pick up; and they left nothing lying about, lest some poor lad should come and take it. Not one of them considered ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... entered. He performs his duty from day to day sufficiently well, and does what he is expected to do. But it does not enter into his mind to do anything beyond what is required, nor to enlarge his capacities by reading or reflection. He is, at the best, a steady plodding man, who will go forward, if at all, very slowly, and will rise, if at all, to no great elevation. He is not the sort of person who is looked for to occupy a higher position. One opportunity of advancement after another may come directly within his reach, and he asks the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... while others could not even live out that short span of existence. Every evening produced new schemes and every morning new projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared forty thousand pounds by his speculations. The Duke of Bridgewater started a scheme for the improvement of London and Westminster, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... acquainted with my character from my youth up, will give me credit for sincerity when I say, that it never entered into my head to blazon forth any acquisition of my own. All that I have accomplished, or expect, or hope to accomplish, has been, and will be, by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap,—particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... the diffusion of primary instruction, the number of visitors has increased enormously.[5348] Not only has curiosity been aroused among the workmen in towns, but also with the peasants formerly plodding along in the routine of their daily labor, confined to their circle of six leagues in circumference. This or that small daily journal treats of divine and human things for a million of subscribers and probably for three millions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... they were plodding on their winding way Through orange bowers, and jasmine, and so forth: (Of which I might have a good deal to say, There being no such profusion in the North Of oriental plants, et cetera, But that of late your scribblers think ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... people were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep shadow, partly illuminated by the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... sage, Who, plodding on from youth to age, Has proved all other reasoners fools, And bound all Nature by his rules,— So fares he in that dreadful hour When injured Truth exerts her power Some new phenomenon to raise, Which, bursting on his frighted gaze, From its proud summit to the ground, Proves the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... envy you," she said drily, when he had finished. "You hardly realise what lies before you, I think. There are people here who are glad to get fifty pfennigs an hour, for piano lessons. Think of plodding up and down stairs, all day long, for fifty ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... enmity, and in general all equally disposed, in consequence of their previous libations, to either one or the other. Here they meet a solitary traveler, fatigued and careworn, carrying a bundle slung over his shoulder on the point of a stick, plodding his weary way to the next village. Anon they were passed by a couple of gentlemen-farmers or country squires, proceeding at a brisk trot upon their stout cobs or bits of half-blood, as the case might be; and, by and by, a spanking gig shoots rapidly ahead of them, driven ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... half so low beneath her as I put myself when in imagination I took advantage of her noble trustfulness, took the fortune that I knew she must possess in her own right, and left her to find herself, in the zenith of her beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty, plodding me. ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... then in a dazed way blundered into his room. He was a good-hearted man in a way, and pushing open the little casement he thrust out his head and sighed with genuine feeling as he thought of his poor old friend plodding slowly to Mapleden. Incidentally he felt a little bit sorry for ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... which she referred to his size, the scars on his face, or some latent hardness of expression, but was relieved to see that he had not observed it. Yet this was the man that made grown women cry; she thought of old Mrs. Jackson fervently grasping the plodding ankles before her, and a hysteric desire to laugh, with the fear that he might see it on her face, overcame her. Then she wondered if he was going to walk all the way home without speaking, yet she knew she would be more embarrassed if he began ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Vickers regained the top of the cliff and once more looked across the island towards the far-off point, the figure which he had previously seen making for it had turned back, and was plodding steadily across the coarse grass and rock-strewn moorland in his own direction. Chatfield had evidently taken a bird's eye view of the situation from the vantage point of the slope and had come to the conclusion that the higher part of the island was the most likely point from ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... near Cape Felix. The walking, however, was developing new tortures for us every day. We were either wading through the hill-side torrents or lakes, which, frozen on the bottom, made the footing exceedingly treacherous, or else with seal skin boots, rendered soft by constant wetting, painfully plodding over sharp clay stones, set firmly in the ground, with the edges pointing up, or lying flat and slipping as we stepped upon them and sliding the unwary foot into a crevice that would seemingly wrench it from the body. These are some of the features of a walk on King William Land, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... he surveyed his business horizon with an eagle eye. Nothing there took him by surprise; he foresaw all things, knew all that was happening, and kept his own counsel; he was a diplomatist in his quick comprehension of a situation; and in the routine of business he was as patient and plodding as a soldier on the march. But beyond this business horizon he could not see. He used to spend his hours of leisure on the threshold of his shop, leaning against the framework of the door. Take him from his dark little counting-house, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... plodding along in the horse-trampled, deep snow, with a big, black hat pulled down to his ears, an empty gunny sack over his shoulders like a cape, a quart bottle sticking out of each coat pocket. They took him into the sleigh and went on, through ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... tragedy, built upon tense, striking lines. It is strong and modern enough to be suitable, with some changes, for our present day stage. The day of the playwright's immaturity (noticed in the three preceding plays) is past. With this, as with all of Balzac's work, he improved by slow, laborious plodding, gaining experience from repeated efforts ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... your lawyer, courtier, etc., and each of these so truly, as you would swear, but that your eye shall see the variation of the lineament, it were my most proper and genuine aspect. First, for your merchant, or city-face, 'tis thus; a dull, plodding-face, still looking in a direct line, forward: there is no great matter in this face. Then have you your student's, or academic face; which is here an honest, simple, and methodical face; but somewhat more spread then the former. The third is your soldier's face, a menacing and astounding ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... pity, Mr. Longface, that God made horses as they are, and gave them such grandeur of appearance and action, and put such an eaglelike spirit between their ribs, so that, quitting the plodding motions of the ox, they can fly like that noble bird and come sweeping down the course as on ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... the moon had not risen. Jake used his eyes as well as ears. On the prairie, as well as elsewhere, eyes have a lot to do with hearing. He sought to penetrate the darkness around him, but his efforts were unavailing. He could hear no sound but the voice of Jim Bowley and the steady plodding of his horse's feet as he ceaselessly circled the band of somnolent cattle. The sky was cloudy, and only here and there a few stars gleamed diamond-like in the heavens, but threw insufficient light to aid the eyes which sought to penetrate the surrounding gloom. The old ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... reefs; the bee's o'erflowing cells; The Pyramids; all things that shall endure; The books on books wherein all wisdom dwells, Are wrought with plodding patience, slow and sure. Yours the time-tempered fashioning that spells Of chaos, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... mother died he sold the farm to his cousin, Stephen Marshall. He supposed it still belonged to him. Stephen had been a good sort of a fellow, a bit slow and plodding, perhaps, bovinely content to dwell within the hills, never hearkening or responding to the lure of the beyond. Yet it might be he had chosen the better part, to dwell thus on the land of his fathers, with a wife won in youth, and children to grow up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the gravity, of the Teuton—his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of the minutiae of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet, plodding thoroughness—a looking at things in all their bearings, an exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of fact or of speculation, a constant striving to find out all about whatever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... squadrons, and rushed to hide themselves from the ferocity of the tempest. To right and left nought could be descried but the broad expanse of the moor, and the figures of their fellow-rebels seen dimly through the murky night, plodding onwards through the sinking moss. Those who kept together—a miserable few—often halted to rest themselves, and to allow their lagging comrades to overtake them. Then onward they went again, still hoping for assistance, reinforcement, and supplies; onward again, through ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glance could never have suspected him a poet-musician; as little could even such a glance have failed to see in him an honest man. He was powerfully built, over the middle height, but not tall. He spoke very fair old-fashioned English, with the Yorkshire tone and turn. His walk was rather plodding, and his movements slow and stiff; but in communion with his violin they were free enough, and the more delicate for the strength that was in them; at the anvil they were as supple as powerful. On his face ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... polished the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers, have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... on the cultivator straightened as the horses walked from the soft, spongy ground of the cornfield to the firmer turf at the side of the road. He spoke sharply to the plodding team and turned the cultivator around, lowering the blades for another row. Then, when the horses had fallen into a slow walk, he slouched down, and with bent head watched the hills of young corn ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... tyranny of material things, which is as oppressive as the tyranny of men, Man falls below himself. Never will a citizen be made out of a poor fellow condemned to remain valet, hireling or beggar, reduced to thinking only of himself and his daily bread, asking in vain for work, or, plodding when he gets it, twelve hours a day at a monotonous pursuit, living like a beast of burden and dying in a alms-house.[2162] He should have his own bread, his own roof, and all that is indispensable for life; he must not be overworked, nor suffer ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to riding to King's Bridge of late. Sometimes he would start out early in the morning, just about the time when young Van Riper was plodding by on his way to the shop. Young Van Riper liked to be at the shop an hour earlier than his father. Old Mr. Dolph was always up, on these occasions, to see his son start off. He loved to look at the boy, in his English riding-boots and breeches, ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... through the blackthorn thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and debris of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in itself. And occasionally, once in ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... found the ground of study's excellence Without the beauty of a woman's face? From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They are the ground, the books, the academes, From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long-during action tires The sinewy vigour of the traveller. Now, for not looking on a woman's face, You have in that forsworn the use of eyes, And study ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... which she was the ornament; in which she was the brightest little star that ever shone, to shut her up from day to day in my dull house, and keep my tedious company? Did I consider how little suited I was to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome a plodding man like me must be, to one of her quick spirit? Did I consider that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I loved her, when everybody must, who knew her? Never. I took advantage of her hopeful nature and her cheerful disposition; ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... wilderness, wherein man had always been obliged to fend for himself. And, as ever, the wilderness had its own wild deeds. Flatboats were halted and robbed; caravans of travelers were attacked; lonely wayfarers plodding on horseback were waylaid and murdered. In short, the story of that early day shows our first frontiersman no novice ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... Soon they were plodding on by starlight, and by midnight had reached, unmolested, a road that seemed to lead due north. They went around all villages, and learned to consider dogs a nuisance in so doing. At first they were unduly ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... These persons are diverse in character. All Scotchmen are not canny, nor all Irishmen happy-go-lucky. Those who know a great many Chinamen are acquainted with those who are idealists with little taste for plodding industry. It is only the outsider who is greatly impressed by the family resemblance. To the more analytic mind of the parent each child is, in a most remarkable degree, different from ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... educations through the evening classes which have grown out of that first effort; bidding fair to become leading and honored citizens when they actually take their places as men. But Mark Calkins, faithful, plodding, good-hearted, patient Mark, has surpassed them all! The truth is "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart," what sort of magnificence surrounds him now. He has gone to court. The chief Ruler of the realm has sent for Mark to be always ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... exclaimed the Governor-General. "No pleasures to distract her, an atmosphere of plodding commercialism, an abundance of health-giving nourishment! Perhaps the mere change of climate will have the desired effect. We will make the experiment. She is doomed if she remains here, and America seems to be our only hope. I suppose ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... left him for two hours together, except when he slept. The plan of work was faithfully kept; though by this time shoemaking had lost its charms. He shortened his sleeping hours, and rose at any moment that he awoke—at two, three, or four in the morning. He got his brother, who had been plodding with him over shorthand, to study horticulture, and fruit and vegetable culture; and that brother shortly after took a high place in an examination held by the Royal Horticultural Society. For a time, however, they worked together; and often did their mother get up at ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... retained as a useful appendage to a party containing his kinswoman, from whom he, of course, saw no reason to be separated. To Edith herself, the delay was far from being disagreable. It promised a gay and cheerful gallop through the forest, instead of the dull, plodding, funeral-like march to which she had been day after day monotonously accustomed. She assented, therefore, to the arrangement, and, like her kinsman, beheld, in the fresh light of sun-rise, without a sigh, without even a single foreboding of evil, the departure of the train of emigrants, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... you really want me to stay, I'll give it up. But you are a good deal to blame. You have told me of what you saw when you were in the army. You have showed me that there are bigger things in this world than plodding after a plough, and more exciting chases than those after foxes. I want to do more than sit on a nail-keg in the store and discuss big events. I want to have a little ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... ring of hope came back into his voice: the "shop-leg" dragged ever so little, as he walked across the park daily to where the ploughs were turning the grass of the farm fields into stretches of brown, dotted with white gulls that followed the horses' slow plodding up and down. The other guests took up a good deal of Mr. Linton's time: he was not sorry to have an overseer, since Hawkins, while honest and painstaking, was not afflicted with any undue allowance of brains. Together, in the study at night, they planned out the farm into little ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... plodding at his accustomed pace in his morning's work, he met Wright on horseback, who asked him if he had any commissions that he could execute in York, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... A Plodding Student is a kind of alchemist or persecutor of Nature, that would change the dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with success many times as unprosperous, or at least not quitting the cost, to wit, of his own oil and candles. He has a strange forced appetite to learning, and to achieve it ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... ambitions, my life itself have come to centre in you. It was the thought that it was for you that kept me going when I have been so tired doing two men's work that I could scarcely drag one foot after the other. It made me take risks I might otherwise never have dared to take. It kept me plodding on when one failure after another smashed me in the face so fast that I could not see ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... "This plodding team seems fitting in such a peculiar place," remarked one of the quartet in our sled. "Although it is not rapid transit, it is comfortable. But look, there is a more luxurious mode of traveling." As he spoke he pointed to two Portuguese bearing suspended on a pole a ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... bed for sorrow, Sprigs of lavender between the pillow and the sheet?" "No," she says, "I've got to get to Piddinghoe to-morrow! P'raps they'd tell the work'us! And I've lashings here to eat: Don't the gorse smell sweet?"... Well, I turned and left her plodding on beside the wheat. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was accompanied by his shadow, a gigantic and grotesque figure that danced fantastically along the snow before him. As the moon climbed the icy heaven, the shadow shortened and acquired more sobriety of demeanour. Plodding doggedly onward, too tired to think, Dave amused himself with the antics of the shadow, which seemed responsible for a portion of the crisp music that came from ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Once more, we may conclude that Haydn, before he commenced writing clavier sonatas, had made acquaintance with those of Paradies and of Alberti. These early Italian influences should be noted, for one is apt to think rather of the young composer as plodding through Fux's "Gradus" and playing Emanuel Bach's sonatas on his "little worm-eaten clavier." During his last years Haydn told his friend Griesinger that he had diligently studied Emanuel Bach, and that he owed very much to him. From the painter Dies, in his biographical notice of the master, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... see the grey bark of the oak Look bright through the underwood now; To the plough plodding horses they yoke, But Mary is not with her cow. The birds almost whistle her name: Say, where can my Mary be gone? The Spring brightly shines, and 'tis shame That she ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... sandy hole, and in an hour was fast asleep, while Sam was plodding steadily on toward the great city, growing more and more weary as the hours passed, and longing to lie down and sleep, but dreading to do this for fear of some policeman or tramp coming upon him, when ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... with a conscious being all their own, Superior and apart from what we know In this close keep we call our waking state, Lie growing with our growth the lofty powers We reck not of; which some may live a life And never heed, nor know they have a soul; Which many a plodding anthropologist, Philosopher, logician, scientist, Ignore as moonshine; but which are, no less, Actual, proven, and, in their dignity And grasp and space-defying attributes, Worthy to qualify a deathless spirit To have the range ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... exercise or fun. There are better and easier ways of acquiring fun than by plodding for hours in the hot sunshine. And of getting exercise, too. I was on my way to Homestead or to some farming place along the line, where I might pick ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... rather for his dog-like devotion to Napoleon than for any martial genius; and the brilliant Marmont had openly scoffed at his receiving the title of Marshal. But, under his quiet exterior and plodding habits, there lay concealed a variety of gifts which only needed a great occasion to shine forth and astonish the world.[109] The time was now at hand. Frederick William and Brunswick were marching from Auerstaedt to make good their retreat ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Indian Missions have prospered best. Schwartz was the very type of a founder, with his quiet, plodding earnestness, and power of being generally valuable; and the impression he made had not had time to die away before the Episcopate brought authority to deal with the difficulties he had left. Martyn was, like Brainerd before him, one of the beacons of the cause, and did more by his ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... like delicate carvings against the remote purple spaces or against the tawny, seamed desolation that burned as with raw colors of fires primeval. Here, there, patches of stunted tamarisk bushes were visible. A moving line of dust showed where a distant caravan was plodding eastward over the sparkling crystals of an ancient salt sea-bottom. A drift of low-hanging wood-smoke, very far away, betrayed the presence of a camp of the Ahl Bayt, the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England |
