"Tediousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... return thither with all speed, lest some disaster might happen during his absence, considering that he had left the colony in great want of necessaries; and though he strongly solicited and pressed the necessity of speedy succours, such was the tediousness and delay of business in that court, that ten or twelve months elapsed before he could procure the equipment of two ships, which were sent out in February 1498, under the command of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... in reviewing' Marmion, 'fixed on this narrative of the Abbess as a passage marked by 'flatness and tediousness,' and could see in it 'no sort of beauty nor elegance of diction.' The answer to such criticism is that the narrative is direct and practical, and admirably suited to ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... thereabouts, with a strong caesura in the middle, and is varied and terminated by songs from Custance's maids and others. Indeed the chief charm of the piece is the genuine and unforced merriment which pervades it. Although Merrygreek's practices on Ralph's silliness sometimes tend a little to tediousness, the action on the whole moves trippingly enough, and despite the strong flavour of the "stock part" in the characters they have considerable individuality. The play is, moreover, as a whole remarkably free from ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the fancy not uncommon among a class hereabouts to keep a tamed raccoon. He brings it with him daily, and fastens it by its chain to a tree in my front yard: a rough, burly, knowing fellow, loving wild nature, but forced to acquire the tediousness of civilization; meantime leading a desperately hampered life; wondering at his own teeth and claws, and sorely put to it to invent a decent occupation. So am I; and as the raccoon paces everywhere after the carpenter, so do I in spirit ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... have often said, here and there, when you have been at work upon the book, that I was sure it would be; and I shall insist on that debt being due to you (though there will be no need for insisting about it) as long as I have any tediousness and obstinacy to bestow on anybody. Lastly, I never will hear the biography compared with Boswell's except under vigorous protest. For I do say that it is mere folly to put into opposite scales a book, however amusing and curious, written by an unconscious coxcomb like that, and one which ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... upon me, an unworthy sinner; and this is that which encouraged me, and kept me from fainting. And thus must thou do when Satan or the law, or thy own conscience, do go about to dishearten thee, either by the greatness of thy sins, the wickedness of thy heart, the tediousness of the way, the loss of outward enjoyments, the hatred that thou wilt procure from the world or the like; then thou must encourage thyself with the freeness of the promises, the tender-heartedness of Christ, the merits of His blood, the freeness of His invitations ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... occasions by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun! What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what spelling- book moralities, what adaptations of the orator's insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding! If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... had been obliged to stop. He cancelled "Harry Lorrequer," put him back in the bookcase to make an incident, then began actively waiting for the return of the playgoers. Reference to his watch at short intervals intensified their duration, added gall to their tediousness. But so convinced was he that they "would be here directly" that it was at least half-an-hour before he reconsidered this insane policy and resumed his chair with a view to keeping awake in it. He was convinced he was succeeding, had not noticed he was dozing, when he was suddenly ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... "That's not true," he thought; "and she knows it, and I know it." Aloud he said: "Very prettily spoken, Lucy! But I am aware of my own tediousness and I won't detain you long. Will you sit down?" and he offered her an easy-chair, into which she sank with the soft slow grace of a nestling bird. "I only want to say just a few words,—such as your father might say to you if he were so inclined—about ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... are few lives, perhaps no worthy ones, without tasks that often seem monotonous and become matters of dull grinding that bring weariness and longing for relief. All worth while work involves much tediousness, painstaking exertion. All great things stand for so much life poured out, and life is never poured out ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... as a rule, details, and especially those of a political nature, are dry reading; but once take into consideration the fact that they all aid in giving a clearer idea of how one nation begins hostilities with another, and much of the tediousness may be forgiven. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... curious observer has often been called to the tediousness of existence, how our time hangs upon our hands, and in how high estimation the art is held, of giving wings to our hours, and making them pass rapidly and cheerfully away. And moralists of a cynical disposition have poured ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves.' In The Rambler, No. 5, he wrote:—'It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise of an empty mind ... or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other thought of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... mellifluousness, just conceive what your feelings would be after spending a month's holiday with a merely mellifluous man. If an author's style has pleased you, but done nothing except make you giggle, then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man who can do nothing but jest. On the other hand, if you are impressed by what an author has said to you, but are aware of verbal clumsinesses in his work, you need worry about his "bad style" exactly ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... 154: HEINECKEN'S name stands deservedly high (notwithstanding his tediousness and want of taste) among bibliographical and typographical antiquaries. Of his "Nachrichten von Kunstlern und Kunst-Sachen," Leipzig, 1768, 8vo., two vols., (being "New Memoirs upon Artists and the objects of Art"—and which is frequently referred to by foreigners,) I never saw a ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Hamlet, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Weariness. — N. weariness, defatigation|; lassitude &c. (fatigue) 688; drowsiness &c. 683. disgust, nausea, loathing, sickness; satiety &c. 869; taedium vitae &c. (dejection) 837; boredom, ennui. wearisomeness, tediousness &c. adj.; dull work, tedium, monotony, twice-told tale. bore, buttonholer, proser[obs3], wet blanket; pill*, stiff*; heavy hours, "the enemy" [time]. V. weary; tire &c. (fatigue) 688; bore; bore to death, weary to death, tire to death, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... opposite of the merely formal closing of ports which the United States had so long protested against in other countries. The hardships of the men and officers were fearful and the casualties very great. The tediousness of the service was relieved now and again by daring expeditions into the rivers and ports, where boats were cut out and taken away from beneath batteries on shore. The record of such ventures shows that the navy in 1846 ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... customers, for them, but mostly from the British Islands. I was seriously paralyzed from the Secession war, poor, in debt, was expecting death, (the doctors put four chances out of five against me,)—and I had the books printed during the lingering interim to occupy the tediousness of glum days and nights. Curiously, the sale abroad proved prompt, and what one might call copious: the names came in lists and the money with them, by foreign mail. The price was $10 a set. Both the cash and the emotional cheer were deep medicines; many ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Guianians, and that he sought to sack and conquer the empire, for the hope of their so great abundance and quantities of gold. He passed by the mouths of many great rivers which fell into Orenoque both from the north and south, which I forbear to name, for tediousness, and because they are more pleasing in ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... unfortunately, at a considerable distance from the river. Exactly how far playgoers from London had to walk to reach the theatre after crossing over the river we do not know; but the Privy Council speaks of "the tediousness of the way" thither,[198] and Stow notes that the parish church of Newington was "distant one mile from London Bridge." Further information about the building—its exact situation, its size, its exterior shape, its interior arrangement, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... what his motive for becoming a "filibuster," the reader shall be told without much tediousness ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... inferior to him in those qualities which raise men to social and political eminence. Brougham, tall, thin, and commanding in figure, with a face which, however ugly, is full of expression, and a voice of great power, variety, and even melody, notwithstanding his occasional prolixity and tediousness, is an orator in every sense of the word. Macaulay, short, fat, and ungraceful, with a round, thick, unmeaning face, and with rather a lisp, though he has made speeches of great merit, and of a very high style of eloquence in point of composition, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... questioned, and called on to parse and scan to a tiresome extent; then came mathematical demonstrations. Every conceivable variety of lines and angles adorned the blackboards; and next in succession were classes in rhetoric and natural history. There was a tediousness in the examinations incident to such occasions, and, as repeated inquiries were propounded, Beulah rejoiced at the prospect of release. Finally the commissioners declared themselves quite satisfied with the proficiency ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... I feel this tediousness will never do— T' is being too epic, and I must cut down (In copying) this long canto into two; They'll never find it out, unless I own The fact, excepting some experienced few; And then as an improvement 't will be shown: I'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is From ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... discourse with that wise reasoner, and unfortunate practitioner, who thought that brevity was the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... we have enumerated, consider the art of rhetoric in different points of view, and thus receive from each other mutual support and illustration, while they prevent the tediousness which might else arise, if they were moulded into one systematic treatise on the general subject. Three are in the form of dialogue; the rest are written in his own person. In all, except perhaps the Orator, he professes to have availed ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... The want of good machinery to free the cotton from the multitude of seeds with which it is encumbered, so as to perform the operation with ease and quickness, is the first and greatest obstacle that occurs; and its tediousness to the natives is so repugnant, that many sell their crops to others, without separating the seeds, or decline growing the article altogether, not to be plagued with the trouble of cleaning it. As the want of method is also ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... he expressed the greatest pity for him, he was almost bitter upon him. He said that poor Frederick—ha hum—drivelled. There was no other word to express it; drivelled. Poor fellow! It was melancholy to reflect what Amy must have undergone from the excessive tediousness of his Society—wandering and babbling on, poor dear estimable creature, wandering and babbling on—if it had not been for the relief she had had in Mrs General. Extremely sorry, he then repeated with his former satisfaction, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... himself better in this capacity than he has since in his political one is not known. He was afterwards sent to this capital to execute a commission, of which he acquitted himself very ill; exposing himself rashly, without profit or service to his employer. Frederick II., dreading the tediousness of a proposed congress at Augsburg, wished to send a private emissary to sound the King of France. For this purpose he chose Edelsheim as a person least liable to suspicion. The project of Frederick was to idemnify the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... should know even the name of the great father of microscopies. It may have been biology; but this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip—still concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes—a series of questions which, to avoid tediousness, I shall place with the responses, in the ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... Almagro, had accompanied him to Chili, and, as he was a cavalier of birth, and possessed of some truly noble qualities, he had gained deserved ascendency over his commander. Alvarado had frequently visited Hernando Pizarro in his confinement, where, to beguile the tediousness of captivity, he amused himself with gaming,—the passion of the Spaniard. They played deep, and Alvarado lost the enormous sum of eighty thousand gold castellanos. He was prompt in paying the debt, but Hernando ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... in a school of Roman gladiators, but at any rate it points the better way. The speech itself has a close, direct, sinewy quality, a complete freedom from anything vague or involved; and shows for the first time a perfect mastery of the art of handling detail upon detail without an instant of tediousness, and holding the attention of listeners sustained and unbroken. It was a remonstrance against false allegations of the misbehaviour of the planters since the emancipating act, but there is not ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... no folly more predominant, in the country at least, than a ridiculous and superstitious fear of ghosts and apparitions. Servants, nurses, old women, and others of the same standard of wisdom, to pass away the tediousness of a winter's evening, please and terrify themselves, and the children who compose their audience, with strange relations of these things, till they are even afraid of removing their eyes from one another, for fear of seeing a pale spectre entering ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor |
