"Tiresome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener'n wunst at the last day 'fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the dead an' answer the roll-call—an' this hyar young lot sorter found it tiresome waitin' on thar elders' solemn company. The old folks, whilst waitin', set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint, an' repeated some o' the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an' more'n one raised a hyme chune. An' the young fry—they hed hed a steady diet o' sermons an' hyme chunes ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sometimes at the cost, of others quite as valuable, but which seem cheap, because their exercise is easy and habitual,—and therefore, we may be sure, natural and pleasing,—he insists on being a little metaphysical and over-fine. What he means for his more elevated characters are tiresome with something of that melodramatic sentimentality with which Mr. Dickens has infected so much of the lighter literature of the day. Here and there the style suffers from that overmuchness of unessential detail and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... country, kings evade the tiresome features of receptions, after a time, by retiring and leaving the ceremony to be carried out by a deputy, so the daintier Presidents before the sixteenth one eluded the handshaking when possible. But, on the contrary, "the man out of the West" continued to the last, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the manner of the ostrich, and the refusal to see that which is pointed out or which stares one clearly in the face, cannot go far to establish one's case or as a method of defense. And the same thing applies to that oft-repeated and tiresome retort: "You do not (or perhaps you cannot) understand our theories and viewpoints." Or that other evasive accusation, rather than reply: "Your lack of understanding is of itself proof positive that our theories are absolutely correct in every detail." Or "Your attack or criticism just ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... very well as a game of petting, but times were serious now, and a woman of her intelligence should do something better than wallow in fears and elaborate a winsome feebleness. A very unnecessary and tiresome feebleness. He came almost to the pitch of writing ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... persuade the other Foxes to part with their tails also, and thus divert attention from his own loss. So he called a meeting of all the Foxes, and advised them to cut off their tails: "They're ugly things anyhow," he said, "and besides they're heavy, and it's tiresome to be always carrying them about with you." But one of the other Foxes said, "My friend, if you hadn't lost your own tail, you wouldn't be so keen on getting us to ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... have a strong constitution. But I suffer at times from what the doctors call nervous dyspepsia. It is a very tiresome complaint, because it takes away for the time a man's confidence in himself, reduces him to the worm-level almost; and it gives him absurd ideas. Now this morning in the pulpit I had an attack of pain and uneasiness, and my nerve quite gave out. You ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... very much good, gooder than many men, but an enemy inside there. You see a long, long road, and you go that road, then coming hills and that road grow tiresome and you stop and say, 'Not worth it, I don't care,' an ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... worse for him, for let me take the bit between my teeth, and turn my head downhill, and I will shake him off with a fall that may harm his bones. And I should not like much to hurt him neither," said he, "for the tiresome old fool has painfully laboured to teach me all he could. But enough of that—here are ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Stadholder's power in Holland, England will do well not to intervene in favour of the Orange regime. For what good can the Island Power gain by war with France? She may take the French colonies; but that will mean a tiresome struggle with the revolted negroes in the West Indies. France, meanwhile, with her new-born strength, will conquer Central Europe and then throw her energy into her fleet. The better course, then, for England will ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... believe in signs anymore," laughed Dorothy, "but I'm coming too." Sir Hokus' song had cheered them all, and it wasn't the first time the Knight had helped make the best of a tiresome journey. ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... your lordship may conclude such to be the case. Mr. Green is preparing for departure. He is very abject; very chap-fallen. I am almost sorry for Mr. Green. I am by nature sympathetic. I have promised to make my complaint to my Lord Carteret. And so, I trust there is an end to a tiresome matter." ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... to Mass," answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes, "and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God." ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Government are different both in object and in value. The first is a detailed and tiresome response to the historic imagination of Sir Robert Filmer. In his Patriarcha, which first saw the light in 1680, though it had been written long before, the latter had sought to reach the ultimate conclusion of Hobbes without the element of contract ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... people," she said to Ozma. "They don't seem to do anything in a bold straightforward manner. In making this passage they forced everyone to walk three times as far as is necessary. And of course this trip is just as tiresome to the Flatheads as ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... have been thought a tiresome matter to listen to such long, drawn-out visions as this to the very end, but Achmed was a good listener, and, besides, he delighted in such things. Nothing made him so happy as great festivals, and the surest way of gaining ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by him—by him of Gad's Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall stand with a covered ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... to look after the place for us while we were away. George won't be back for another ten days, and I've been overseeing an exhibition for him in London. Afterward I did a round of visits—tiresome enough, but among people it's well to keep in touch with ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... before reaching the top, we made a long climb through the deepest snow that we had encountered. Though the sun was warm, the air, rocks, and snow were cold. Not only was the snow cold to the feet, but climbing through it was tiresome, and at the first convenient place we stopped to rest. Finding a large, smooth rock, we lay down on our backs side by side. We talked for a time and watched an eagle soaring around up in the blue sky. I think Harriet must have recalled a suggestion which I made at timber-line, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... I had to stanch the tears and assuage the grief of Mademoiselle. So tiresome to me did this prove, that she alone well-nigh sufficed to make me quit ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society offers the man of true genius. He will be sought for with enthusiasm, but he cannot escape from his certain fate—that of becoming tiresome to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... we set out for our twenty miles' tramp, along a narrow jungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my companion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a long, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended, and we were encamped on the rocky ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... once her position became tiresome, unbearable. She wanted to go to sleep, indeed she must sleep, for she had a long hard day before her to-morrow, putting her things into her trunks. Perhaps, if she rose and walked around ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... with ideals, with purposes, with avocations, and his opinion of them was low. Women who had "missions" were always tiresome, he had discovered. This one, it appeared, was unusual only in that she had adopted a particularly exacting form of charitable work. Nursing, even as a rich woman's diversion, must be anything but agreeable. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Don't behave in that way, child; but be thankful for all the kindness that has been shown you. Have you not got into a warm room, and have you not the society of persons from whom something is to be learnt? But you are a blockhead, and it is tiresome to have to do with you. You may believe what I say; I am well disposed towards you; I tell you what is disagreeable, and it is by that one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... are there, who follow the way they have pointed out? tho' every one who seriously considers it, must be convinc'd of the Advantage; and the generality of Schools go on in the same old dull road, wherein a great part of Children's time is lost in a tiresome heaping up a Pack of dry and unprofitable, or pernicious Notions (for surely little better can be said of a great part of that Heathenish stuff they are tormented with; like the feeding them with hard Nuts, which when they have almost broke their teeth with cracking, they find either ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... Frenchman's!— That must be doing some work. And so we watch and conjecture. Shortly, an Englishman comes, who says he has been to St. Peter's, Seen the Piazza and troops, but that is all he can tell us; So we watch and sit, and, indeed, it begins to be tiresome.— All this smoke is outside; when it has come to the inside, It will be time, perhaps, to descend and retreat to our houses. Half-past one, or two. The report of small arms frequent, Sharp and savage indeed; that cannot all be for nothing: So we watch and wonder; but guessing is tiresome, ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... constant stream of them passing up and down the line; and, as everybody, under the spur of the thought of what might lie hidden there in that hole, worked with feverish haste, the water was speedily lowered, until after an hour of as hard and tiresome work as was ever done by men, the bottom of the hole was ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... all the discussions on the subject as tiresome and useless for our present aim. Indeed, they reduce themselves to these two principal propositions: for some the unconscious is a purely physiological activity, a "cerebration"; for others it is a gradual diminution ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... was followed by long and tiresome solos. The Crown Prince yawned again, although it was but the middle of the afternoon. Catching Hedwig's eye, he ran his fingers up through his thick yellow hair and grinned. Hedwig blushed. She had confided to him once, while they were walking in the garden at the summer ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... amount of rubbish among his 30,000 odd volumes, I can never hear without a bitter pang the tale that the University of Oxford many years ago shied at his offer of them, accompanied as it was by some tiresome conditions; their fate has been gradual dispersion to every part of ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... Their employer kept the glasses to his eyes, though it was tiresome work, holding them with one ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... quoties eam lego, non comici me poetae, sed philosophi Socratici opus legere mihi videar." I believe we may safely call the Trinummus the least Plautine of Plautine plays, except the Captivi, and it is by no means so good a work. The Trinummus is crowded with interminable padded dialogue, tiresome moral preachments, and possesses a weakly motivated plot; a veritable ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... after my arrival at London, I waited upon the lord chief justice, to whom I complained of the usage I had received from my lord, whose temper was teasing, tiresome, and intolerably capricious. Indeed, his behaviour was a strange compound of madness and folly, seasoned with a small proportion of sense. No wonder then, that I, who am hot and hasty, should be wretched, under the persecution of such a perverse humourist, who used to terrify me, and scold ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... hate morals!" said Cornelia. "Just as if we were to be instructed the whole livelong day, and never to have amusement without a good reason being given! That's too tiresome! I always skip the morals and the good talk, when I read stories—if they're pleasant, that's enough: I hate to be cheated into a sermon when I want a story. I feel something as the man did who was fishing for a pike: he caught ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... fence always proved a very tiresome obstacle, for horses have a great dread of them, and will not be induced to jump them on any account. If we could find out where the gate was, well and good; but as it might be half a dozen miles off, on one side or the other, we seldom lost time or patience in seeking it. When there was no ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Solesby her father and mother were abroad, and it was apparently not convenient that she should join them. Marcella, looking back, could not remember that she had ever been much desired at home. No doubt she had been often moody and tiresome in the holidays; but she suspected—nay, was certain—that there had been other and more permanent reasons why her parents felt her presence with them a burden. At any rate, when the moment came for her to leave Miss Pemberton, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... poked into pockets, and thrown on the floor; in the orderly ones they were gazed at apathetically, no one deeming it worth while to stir a hand to arrange them, save under pressure. Sticks had been presented so often and in so tiresome a manner that they produced a kind of mental atrophy in the child,—they were arresting his ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... diet him with nothing but with Rules and Exceptions, with tiresome repetitions of Amo and [Greek: Tupto], setting a day also apart also to recite verbatim all the burdensome task of the foregoing week (which I am confident is usually as dreadful as an old Parliament Fast) we must needs believe that such a one, thus managed, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... a "Royal Highness," but she knew also, the wise child!—that since the Guelphs came over to rule the English, Royal Highnesses had been more plentiful than popular; she knew that she was obliged to wear, most of the time, very plain cotton gowns and straw hats, and to learn a lot of tiresome things, and that she was kept on short allowance of pin-money ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... breath. "I didn't know that before." At this point a phaeton entered the compound, and Orde rose with "Confound it, there's old Rasul Ah Khan come to pay one of his tiresome duty calls. I'm afraid we shall never get through our little ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... usual vein; but his wife did not encourage him. Harry was apt to grow tiresome in ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... attitudes that would have driven any actual male to flight, laughter, or a call for the police. But the audience seemed to enjoy it, as a substitute, no doubt, for the old-fashioned gruesome fairy-stories that one accepts because they are so unlike the tiresome realities. Mamise wondered if vampirism really succeeded in life. She was tempted to try a little of it some time, just as an experiment, if ever ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to a great deal of harping on that tiresome old string, "Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might." It was daily dinned into my cars that the little things of life were the noblest, and that all the great people I mooned about ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... I'm tiresome very often. I'm slow and stupid. If I try you sometimes you must forgive me and be patient.... Sit down again and let's be happy. You know how I love ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... for our carriage in an open square near the mosque from which to see the procession. The parade was not to occur until one o'clock, but in order to secure the place we were there at eleven. The time of waiting was not tiresome as there was much of interest going on around us all the time. Carriages of other visitors assembled in the open square; cabs containing invited dignitaries rolled up to the ruler's palace, which was within ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... "you'll never break it in that way. Listen to me. This is the way to do it: Fly up as high as you can, and let the tiresome thing fall upon a rock. It will be smashed then sure enough, and you can eat it ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... barbarous age, but, now that the world has broadened somewhat, I think an addition to the trio is demanded. A man may be faithful, hopeful, and charitable, and yet leave much to be desired. He may be useful, no doubt, with that equipment, but he may also be both tiresome and even absurd. The fourth quality that I should like to see raised to the highest rank among the Christian graces is the Grace ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... weary of feeling and thinking. Every thought is worn down, I am weary yet cannot be vacant. Five long hours have I tossed, rheumatic heats, dry and flushing, Gnawing behind in my head, and wandering and throbbing about me, Busy and tiresome, my friends, as the beat ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... keep a hardware store gets tiresome after a while, especially if there are only two playing, and after a while Bunny Brown and his sister Sue wanted something ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... mistakenly think [he writes to Richard Henry Lee] that I am retired to ease, and to that kind of tranquility which would grow tiresome for want of employment; but at no period of my life, not in the eight years I served the public, have I been obliged to write so much myself, as I have done since my retirement.... It is not the letters from my friends which give me ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... dreadfully, Lee!" She flashed up a smile at him, caught his hand for an instant, and gave it a squeeze. A thin stream of smoke issued from one corner of Bryant's mouth at the action. "The people were proving somewhat tiresome also. So as the weather had moderated Imogene and I decided ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... It proved a tiresome ding-dong rubber, with the strength of the cards slightly on Francesca's side, and the luck of the table going mostly the other way. She was too keen a player not to feel a certain absorption in the game once it had started, but she was conscious to-day ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... greater affliction in modern life than the tiresome talker. He talks incessantly. Presumably he talks in his sleep. Talking is his constant exercise and recreation. He thrives on it. He lives for talking's sake. He would languish if he were deprived of it for a single day. His continuous ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... 'may,' Eugene. But let your decision be a speedy one, I implore you; for I long to quit a court that bristles with so many tiresome Spanish formalities. I would be glad to start to- morrow, but I will wait for you. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... pile image upon image, ornament upon ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all. Blank verse will therefore, I fear, be too often found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome. His diction is certainly poetical, as it is not prosaic; and elegant, as it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his brethren of the blank song. He rarely either recalls old phrases, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Mr. Girard in the street to-day; he asked after you," continued Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that tiresome, insistent image of him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... little bit tiresome? I mean, just being beautiful and guarded and all that sort of thing. At home we like a girl who has seen a little ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... concert in this particular manipulation—yet it is suggestive. The Impeachment had been dragging since the 22nd of February, to May 26th—more than three months,—and had been everywhere the engrossing topic of the time. It was becoming tiresome-not only to the Senate, but ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. Her sense of irony never quite deserted her, and she could still note, with self-directed derision, the abnormal value suddenly acquired by the most tiresome and insignificant details of her former life. Its very drudgeries had a charm now that she was involuntarily released from them: card-leaving, note-writing, enforced civilities to the dull and elderly, and the smiling endurance of tedious dinners—how pleasantly such obligations ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... imaginations by wonderful stories; she was a new, brilliant, wonderful element in their lives. Even the school mistress, meek through the long suffering of years, even she worshiped and feared her—the brilliant, tiresome girl, who was like a flash of light among the others. She had a face so grand and a voice so thrilling it was no unusual thing when she was reading aloud in the school-room for the others to suspend all work, thrilled to the heart by the sound of her voice. She soon learned all that ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... year, one of these—to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal—I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: "Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead." It is more defeats that ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... irregularities was a great aversion to the meal-time ceremonial. So long, so tiresome she found it, to be seated at a certain moment, to wait while each one was served at so large a table, and one where there was scarcely any conversation; from day to day it became more heavy to her to sit there, or go there at all. Often as possible she excused ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... at Cape May this summer—about six to every man," argued Mabel crossly. "I vote that we give these new persons the cold shoulder. Nobody knows who they are, nor where they come from. It is bad enough to have to associate with tiresome hotel visitors, but I shall draw the line at these water-rats, and I hope ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... in a position to sit down and generalize about the wind. It is a tiresome thing to have it as the recurring insistent theme of our story, but to have had it as the continual obstacle to our activity, the opposing barrier to the simplest task, was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... invigorating form of exercise, if conducted with judgment. One objection to it is that the girl will skate until wearied, and then, in that exhausted condition, perhaps ride home, or take a long, tiresome walk from the pond to her residence, all of which is sapping her unduly and annulling the value of the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the fact that I have received many tiresome and even carping letters from the more captious critics of this child of my brain, I feel in justice to myself and Miss Macnaughtan that it is incumbent upon me to protest, in no measured terms, against what is not only ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... peevishly, fuming and fumbling helplessly before the baffling quality of her desires. "I don't want just somebody to pick it up for me. I want it picked up by somebody that I don't care about, that I don't see, that I'd just as soon have do the tiresome things as not. I want somebody to do it, and me to feel all right about ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... tinsel. I suppose I might venture the assertion without fear of contradiction, that this is the stock in trade in most young girls in qualifying their conversation. The use of that tinsel gives a wholly unreal tone to what is being said and is so pregnant with affectation as to be tiresome. Between slang and adjectives, it is hard to choose, both are so detestable from a woman's lips. The difference is that the adjective insidiously captures the refined mind, while slang only holds captive the coarse mind. In a plain and ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... years have sprinkled down into Charley's grave business head tiresome dust of dividends and railway shares. Kate and Janet, and Will and Helen and Harry—where are you all to-day, I wonder? But though I do not know that, I do know this,—that Time has not stood still with any of you. The years have moved you along, hustled you forward, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the moon rises 'not as in northern climes obscurely bright,' but with far-spreading rays around her. The figures, costume, and attitudes that you see in the churches are wonderfully picturesque. I went afterwards to the Jesu, where there was a tiresome service (the Tre Ore), and heard a Jesuit preaching with much passion and emphasis, but could not understand a word he said. So then I called on Cheney and saw his mother's illustrations of Milton, which are admirable, full ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of his heart. He would have been a very unboyish boy if he had not been happy, for the new place was such a pleasant one, he soon felt as if, for the first time, he really had a home. No more grubbing now, but daily tasks which never grew tiresome, they were so varied and so light. No more cross Pats to try his temper, but the sweetest mistress that ever was, since praise was oftener on her lips than blame, and gratitude made willing service ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... of notes, and building his book from them. The Massis study, the most complete of its kind, may interest the student, not alone of Zola, but of literature in general. Not, however, as a model, for Zola, with all his tiresome preparations, never constructed an ideal book—rather, to put it the other way, no one of his books reveals ideal construction. The multiplicity of details, of descriptions weary the reader. A coarse spirit his, he revelled in scenes of lust, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... child. She had a way of her own too, and had it very completely. Perhaps because she was an only child, or perhaps because they were so easy-going, her parents spoiled her. She was, beyond question, the most tiresome little girl in that or any other neighbourhood. From her baby days her father and mother had taken every opportunity of showing her to their friends, and there was not a friend who did not dread the infliction. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do their duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be as disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should say to them, in a word, that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to allow peace to other men, he would simply speak ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... consisting of four verses, which produces a slight monotony, notwithstanding that the composer has displayed vast ingenuity in varying the accompaniment to each verse. The most beautiful melody is generally found to become tiresome after a third repetition. The present is sweetly plaintive and well adapted ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay—"I can imagine nothing more tiresome than to be a Soul without a Body, climbing from height to height of a heaven where there is no night, no sleep, no rest for ever and ever. Simply dreadful! But there!—one only goes to church for form's sake—just as an example to one's servants—and when it's done, don't you think it's best to forget ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... see what they are after," proposed Mac, who found sitting on the wall and being fed with blackberries luxurious but tiresome. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... all foreigners go there, and are to be heard of from other parts of the mountains in that place. It was a long and tiresome journey; the jolting stage-coach shook me very much. There was a stout woman inside, with a baby that squealed; there was a very dirty old country curate, who looked as though he had not shaved for a week, or changed ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... I must leave you to-morrow. Or is there not a train to-night? But I dare say it does not matter, only I ought to be present at the funeral of my uncle, Lord Gartley. He died yesterday, from what I can make out. It is a tiresome thing to succeed to a title with hardly property enough to pay ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... seemed in talking with them—as I have done very freely—that they regard the sexual embraces of their partners exactly in the light that I regard the process of the actual writing down of my books—as something, in itself unimportant and tiresome, but necessary to the end to be gained. This was first made clear to me in a conversation with a member of the higher demi-monde, a woman of education and considerable character. "After all," she said, "it is really a very small thing to do, and gives ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... heart to another. No girl ever yet refused an honest offer unless her mind was filled with the image of another fellow. Mr. Beauclerk found no difficulty about placing "the other fellow" in this case. Norman Beauclerk was his name! What woman in her senses would prefer that tiresome Dysart with his "downright honesty" business so gloomily developed, to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... story, I would fain have looked round at the merry chattering people behind me, Miss Pole clutched my arm, and begged me not to turn, for "it was not the thing." What "the thing" was, I never could find out, but it must have been something eminently dull and tiresome. However, we all sat eyes right, square front, gazing at the tantalising curtain, and hardly speaking intelligibly, we were so afraid of being caught in the vulgarity of making any noise in a place of public amusement. Mrs Jamieson was the most ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Roman dress, for it would be tiresome and unprofitable to enter upon the variety of garments introduced in later times from foreign nations, consisted merely of the toga and tunica, the latter being itself an innovation on the simple and hardy habit of ancient times. It was a woolen vest, for it was late before the use ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Sue doesn't like him any better than I do. He comes to see her about twice a week, and I've heard her say, "Goodness me, there's that tiresome old bachelor again." But she treats him just as polite as she does anybody; and when he brings her candy, she says, "Oh, Mr. Martin, you are too good." There's a great deal of make-believe about girls, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Charles, dear! that snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young; there is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... pretends to heal rapidly but a regime and treatment. If we ask whether the reason for following the regime is that it is good for us or that it is scientifically correct; or why we want to be well or whether health is really good: both the Buddha and the physician would reply that such questions are tiresome and irrelevant. With an appearance of profundity, they ask nothing worth answering. The eightfold path is the way and the only way of salvation. Its form depends on the fact that the knowledge of the Buddha, which embraces the whole universe, sees that it is a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... public profession. We close the third volume of the biography, as we have so often closed the third volume of her novels, feeling to the very core that in spite of a style that the French call alambique, in spite of tiresome double and treble distillations of phraseology, in spite of fatiguing moralities, gravities, and ponderosities, we have still been in communion with a high and commanding intellect and a great nature. We are vexed by pedantries that recall ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... be greasier; the barbecued ox was to be larger; the band was to be noisier; the speeches were to be longer and more tiresome; the firemen's races and the ball games, and the fat men's race, and the frog race, and the grand ball with its quadrilles and Virginia reels and "Hull's Victory" and "Lady Washington's Reel" and its "Portland Fancy," were all to be just a little superior to anything of the sort ever ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... path, much shorter and quite easy, close by here, along the face of the cliff. I am strongly inclined to take it and avoid that tiresome road." ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... became stupid. It was disgusting not to have beautiful gowns to dance in. Zada L'Etoile and others had a new costume for every dance. Kedzie had one tiresome hip-length shift and little else. As usual, poor Kedzie found that realization was for her the parody ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... long, tiresome days I worked over that cake, preparing with my own fingers every bit of the fruit, which I consider was a fine test of perseverance and staying qualities. After the ingredients were all mixed together there seemed to be enough for a whole regiment, so we decided to make two cakes ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... garnet-coloured columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the people of the villages call 'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal, with waxen bells and leaves expanded like the wings of hovering butterflies. But these lists of flowers are tiresome and cold; it would be better to draw the portrait of one which is particularly fascinating. I think that botanists have called it Saxifraga cotyledon; yet, in spite of its long name, it is beautiful and poetic. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... sloping towards the glen, were either covered with forests of spruce firs, or broken into patches of prairie grass and sage bush, the latter about as high as the strongest heather, and equally tough and tiresome. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me to speak about love." This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again:—"Love is a very papithatick thing" (it is almost a pity to correct this into pathetic), "as well as troublesome and tiresome—but O Isabella forbid ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... pains to improve or arrest this tiresome joke, and they went back to their Daughters of Dixie; but it is rather singular how sometimes an utterly absurd notion will be the cause of our taking a step which we had not contemplated. I did carry some flowers to Miss La Heu the next day. I was at some trouble to find any; for in Kings ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... He was a very harsh and a very tiresome man. Too frozen virtue which has melted, I am told. I do not want to believe it. He is the talk of the town. It is abominable, but I do not pity him. That is what comes of not making religion amiable. Although ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... "That's very tiresome," said the strawberry-plant. "I know that the squire has said he will eat no other berries than those which grow in our family; and there are so very few of us. I also heard a bird sing that he had come home from ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... Divine Fire," in fact every reader of any of Miss Sinclair's books, will at once accord her unlimited praise for her character work. "The Three Sisters" reveals her at her best. It is a story of temperament, made evident not through tiresome analyses but by means of a series of dramatic incidents. The sisters of the title represent three distinct types of womankind. In their reaction under certain conditions Miss Sinclair is not only telling a story of tremendous interest but she ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... your name unwarrantably this morning—telling a lie, in fact. I happened to be skating when the young ladies came down, and as they needed some assistance which they would hardly have accepted from a common man—excuse my borrowing that tiresome expression from our acquaintance Smilash—I set their minds at ease by saying that you had sent for me. Otherwise, as you have given me a bad character—though not worse than I deserve—they would probably have refused to employ me, or ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... "How tiresome!" Frank Hargate said. "I was watching a most interesting thing here. Don't you see this little chaffinch nest in the bush, with a newly hatched brood. There was a small black snake threatening the nest, and the mother was defending it with quivering wings and open beak. I ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... field, where, after scratching the snow from a turnip, she was able to make a hearty meal. While returning slowly towards the wood through the soft, yielding snow that rendered her journey difficult and tiresome, she unexpectedly discovered, near the hedge beyond the furrows, a tasty leaf or two of the rest-harrow, together with a few yellow sprouts of young grass where a stone had been kicked aside by a passing sheep—these were the tit-bits ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... been bedaubed with pathos. Nevertheless it is possible still to recognise in him one of the most engaging personalities that ever lived. What is the secret of this charm? He had many characteristics that belong to the most tiresome natures; he even had the qualities of the man as to whom one wonders whether partial insanity may not be his best excuse—inconstancy expressing itself in hysterical revulsions of feeling, complete lack of balance, proneness to act recklessly to the hurt of others. Yet he was loved and respected ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... and that she might have just as well bought in New York after she got home; and he putting up books and taking them down, riding out on his white horse, and having somebody to dine once in a while,—could any life be drearier and more tiresome? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... can be ventured upon, one upon education is perhaps the most tiresome. Most willingly would I pass it over, not only for the reader's sake, but for mine own; for his—because it cannot well be otherwise than dry and uninteresting; for mine—because I do not exactly know how to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... consciousness that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some novel grace of wit, or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to himself; but after they adjourned, and he was left alone, he realized the truth. He was like those ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Their churches are rough log houses, and so small that the greater part of the congregation remain out of doors. Four or more ministers are always in attendance, and all must preach. The congregation expect a tiresome time, and from the first are restless. They go out and come in, and they keep a constant march to and from the water pail, which usually sits on the desk in front of the speaker. Several grown people at a time will be standing waiting on each other ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... very tiresome, my dear; but your papa wishes it, and you see, poor thing, she can't teach you more than she knows herself; and while you are there, I am sure it is all right with ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... September night, Rachel had the delicious and exciting sensation of being unyoked, of being at liberty for a space to obey the strong, free common sense of youth instead of conforming to the outworn and tiresome code of another age. Mrs. Maldon's was certainly a house that put a strain on the nerves. It did not occur to Rachel that she was doing aught but a very natural and proper thing. The non-appearance of Louis Fores was causing disquiet, and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... and roundabout. Frequently he was turned back by blind canyons or gullies which had no outlet, and there were few places where the horse could go faster than a walk. To Buck's impatient spirit it was all tiresome and exasperating, and he had moments of wondering whether he was ever ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... joy. The infinite God owes all his worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the imperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may look beyond, and take comfort in the vision, they cannot pass beyond. As M. Benda says, the most faithful ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... I shall get old and tiresome, and there will be Anthony's children putting your nose out of joint. You will want some one to love you best of all, and you must have children of your own to love. I can't have you withering away into an old maid. I hate old maids: they make me dismal to look ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... granddaughter of your apoplectic patient—that queer patient who lives in that stone mansion some of those French refugees built over there across the Pine Plains. That's an easy enough thing to pretend, but a tiresome enough thing, too, for then you'll have to make believe you're urging your tired horse over those heavy roads to the railway station so you can get the old maid there in time for her train. She's ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... petted child, was always falling into trouble and always threatening to tell the teacher. Kyzie considered him very tiresome; but to-day when he came to her with his tale of woe, she listened patiently, because she had done him a wrong and wished to atone for it. She had "really and truly" suspected this simple child of a crime! He would not ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... it has been tiresome, and he has called me all sorts of names, and said I worried his life out; but he always ended ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... you mention, the Pucelle, and am by no means popular, for I by no means like it-it is as tiresome as if it was really a heroic poem. The four first cantos are by much the best, and throughout there are many vivacities; but so absurd, perplexed a story is intolerable; the humour often missed, and even the parts that give most offence, I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... education altogether. How very tiresome you are! He has no culture, and manners, and that sort ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... share his labours or mitigate his privations. In short, there is no link between him and the spectator. Unless we interpret the statue in this manner, it loses all interest—it never had any beauty—and the St. John becomes a tiresome person with a pedantic and ill-balanced mind. But Donatello can only have meant to teach the lesson of concentrated unity of purpose, which is the chief if not the only characteristic of this St. John. Technically the work is admirable. The singular care with which the limbs are modelled, especially ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... understand? There was no old gentleman at all; it was only something that I used to sit here and imagine, when I couldn't think of any way of procuring money. But it's all the same now; the tiresome old person can stay where he is, as far as I am concerned; I don't care about him or his will either, for I am free from care now. (Jumps up.) My goodness, it's delightful to think of, Christine! Free from care! To be able to ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... occurred a few months before to inaugurate the Baptist's ministry were re-enacted. The progress of the heaven-sent Teacher (John iii. 2) was accompanied by immense throngs of people, who, wearied with the tiresome exactions of Pharisee and scribe, turned with eagerness to the humanness and holiness of the True Shepherd. It is said that cattle, sick and harried with the voyage across the Atlantic, will show signs of revival as they sniff the first land ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... from my sweetheart, that when he entered the Palace gates, and saw the life-guards in their silver uniforms, and the lackeys on the stairs in their gold-laced liveries, he was not the least bit abashed. He just nodded to them and said, "It must be very tiresome to stand upon the stairs. I am going inside!" The rooms were blazing with lights. Privy councillors and excellencies without number were walking about barefoot carrying golden vessels; it was enough to make you solemn! His boots creaked fearfully ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... north-west and part of the south with a belt of papyrus and reeds; the central parts wooded. Part of the south side has high sandy dunes, blown up by the south wind, which strikes it at right angles there. One was blowing as we marched along the southern side eastwards, and was very tiresome. We reached Panthunda's village by a brook called Lilole. Another we crossed before coming to it is named Libesa: these brooks form the favourite spawning grounds of the sanjika and mpasa, two of the best fishes of the Lake. The sanjika is very like our herring in shape and taste and size; the mpasa ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Morris suddenly found her voice. "If it isn't that tiresome Mrs. Butler and Miss Peters. And now I won't be first with ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... though day after day she comes back jaded with her exertions. Strangers still call upon her—'hope it is not too late to do the right thing, and to welcome,' etc., etc.—and they have to be re-visited. While she is visiting them, other cards appear upon her hall table, and so the foolish and tiresome convention continues to exhaust the time and the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... bad. Rather tiresome, you know, travelin' alone, but on the return journey I fell in with a decent sort of Frenchman who helped ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... friendliness which might have been insipid but for its grace and spontaneity. She disliked no one, was bored by no one. The joy of her home-coming seemed to halo them all. Even the sour Miss Bertrams could not annoy her; she thought them sensible and clever; even the tiresome Mrs. Minchin of Minchin Hall, the "gusher" of the county, who "adored" all mankind and ill-treated her step-daughter, even she was dubbed "very kind," till Mrs. Roughsedge, next day, kindled a passion in the girl's eyes by some tales of the step-daughter. Mrs. Colwood wondered whether, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... room where the bonzes were busy praying for rain and apparently going through a species of litany with open books in their hands. Our entrance stopped proceedings for a minute or two, but they soon resumed, quite indifferently, singing and drawling as though it were tedious, tiresome work. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... conventions, of formulas. They forgot the diseased burden that lay in the chamber above, with its incessant claims, its daily problems. They forgot themselves, thus strangely brought together and revealed to each other, at one glance as it were, without the tiresome preliminary acquaintanceship of civilization. It had grown dark in the room before Sommers came back to the reality ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... passengers, all gentlemen, walked the whole of that stage. The next was no better, the fresh pair of horses jibbing and kicking worse than ever. At last one kicked himself free of all the harness, and fell on his back in a deep ditch. If it had not been so tiresome, it really would have been very laughable, especially as everybody was more or less afraid of the poor horse's heels, and did not in the least know how ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... had settled to build a moss-house for my dolls, and had borrowed the hatchet out of the wood-house, without leave, to chop the stakes with. It was entirely my idea, and I had collected all the moss and most of the sticks. It was I, too, who had taken the hatchet. Philip had been very tiresome about not helping me in the hard part; but when I had driven in the sticks by leaning on them with all my weight, and had put in bits of brushwood where the moss fell out and Philip laughed at me, and, in short, when the moss-house was beginning to look quite ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... sales-manager, that driving but festive soul, Mr. Charles Salmond, whom everybody called "Chas."—pronounced "Chaaz"—a good soul who was a little tiresome because he was so consistently an anthology of New York. He believed in Broadway, the Follies, good clothes, a motor-car, Palm Beach, and the value of the Salvation Army among the lower classes. When Mr. Fein fought for real beauty in their suburban developments it was Chas. who echoed all ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... seeing others joyful. I could not, therefore, resist the temptation of writing to you; I argued with myself it is very pleasant for me to write, and it will not be exactly painful, though it may be tiresome to monsieur to read. Do not be too angry with my circumlocution and inelegancies of expression, and, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... I shall yield to the inclination so natural to old men, of talking of themselves and their own actions, and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age, might conceive themselves obliged to listen to me, since they will always be free to read me or not. And (I may as well confess it, as the denial would be believed by nobody) ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... are going to a very interesting house with a charming host, but notice Mr Smith's habit of interlarding his otherwise agreeable conversation with tiresome references to the nobility. Why, to hear him talk, you would imagine he never consorted in England with anybody under the rank of an earl.' Later that evening, as we went to the station to take our train, Sir John said, 'Did you observe what I told you? That's ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... still less use that those tiresome men of principle demonstrated that the money spent in tobacco would, if accumulated, form a snug little fortune to retire upon in his old age. John only laughed at this. "Wot did he want with a fortin in his old age," he would say; "he would ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... be talked to sometimes. (She makes him sit down, and seats herself on the carpet beside his knee.) Now (patting his hand) you're beginning to look better already. Why don't you give up all this tiresome overworking—going out every night lecturing and talking? Of course what you say is all very true and very right; but it does no good: they don't mind what you say to them one little bit. Of course they agree with ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... Marlett answered, "that only telegrams of instant importance are to be sent on at once. It costs twelve shillings, and parents and people are so tiresome, always telegraphing about nothing in particular, and costing a fortune. These telegrams were very important, of course; but nothing more could have been done about them if they had arrived last night, than if they came this morning. I have had a great deal of annoyance ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... poet, whose works were full of stories injurious to the credit of the Gods. Hence, in time, it became circulated, that his daughters, otherwise his works, were changed into magpies, thereby meaning that they were full of idle narratives, tiresome and unmeaning. It is not improbable that the story of Typhoeus, who forces the Gods to conceal themselves in Egypt, under the forms of various animals, was a poem which Pierus composed on the war of the Gods with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... bald in story, and are not so highly embellished in narration. With that which is entitled the Thorn, we were altogether displeased. The advertisement says, it is not told in the person of the author, but in that of some loquacious narrator. The author should have recollected that he who personates tiresome loquacity, becomes tiresome himself. The story of a man who suffers the perpetual pain of cold, because an old woman prayed that he might never be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... that Mr. Haim had not been to the office on Monday either. In the interval the man had shockingly changed. He seemed much older, and weaker too; he seemed worn out by acute anxiety. Nevertheless he so evidently resented sympathy that George was not sympathetic, and regarded him coldly as a tiresome old man. The official relations between the two had been rigorously polite and formal. No reference had ever been made by either to the quarrel in the basement or to the cause of it. And for the world in general George's engagement had remained as secret ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... my foolish eyes—as though one had scrubbed all the golden varnish from an old picture, and left it crude and charmless. It is not his fault—is mine. In Europe we loved the same things; his pleasure kindled mine. But here he enjoys nothing that I enjoy; he is longing for a tiresome day to end, when my heart is just singing for delight. For it is not only Canada in the large that holds me, but all its dear, human, dusty, incoherent detail—all its clatter of new towns and spreading farms—of pushing railways and young parliaments—of roadmaking ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... work. The office of Lawson Brothers was in Lincoln's Inn. The elder brother seldom if ever appeared; the younger was always there. He gave me a very kindly welcome, said he hoped I should not find my work tiresome, showed me what I had to do, and, altogether, set me at ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the exhilaration of a spectacle; the court as a banquet—the throne, the best seat at the entertainment. The life of the heir-apparent, to the life of the king possessive, is as the distinction between enchanting hope and tiresome satiety. ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... It was tiresome walking over the uneven ground and through obstructing bushes, branches, and stumps. The tall brick barrier seemed as interminable as unbroken. How many houses, thought Balder, might have been built from the material thus wasted! If ever he came into possession of the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... take up his hornbook once in a while and say over to himself the letters and the rows of syllables. Sometimes—especially if he had been obedient and had studied well—he was given a hornbook made of gingerbread; and then, of course, he would find that the tiresome lines of letters had all at once become ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester |
