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Laborious   Listen
adjective
Laborious  adj.  
1.
Requiring labor, perseverance, or sacrifices; toilsome; tiresome. "Dost thou love watchings, abstinence, or toil, Laborious virtues all? Learn these from Cato."
2.
Devoted to labor; diligent; industrious; as, a laborious mechanic.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Laborious" Quotes from Famous Books



... simple and pious people. The fugitive Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests, suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant states, (five hundred having been consigned to Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia,) and others, lonely and bereft, found a home with the humble and laborious farmers of this hardy state, whose finest quality is an open-handed hospitality. These intermarrying with our people here, have left traces of their blood and fine moral qualities to enhance the excellence of a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose the tragedians—with pure and native passion the lyrists —fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. "Operosa parvus carmina fingo." "I, little thing that I am, weave my laborious songs" as earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes, and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the noble youth and maids of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... actually exists—his reckless gaiety, his wild frolics, his open disposition. That he is careless and dissipated we admit, but these attributes end with his pupilage; did they not do so spontaneously, the up-hill struggles and hardly-earned income of his laborious future career would, to use his own terms, "soon knock it all out of him;" although, in the after-waste of years, he looks back upon his student's revelries with an occasional return of old feelings, not unmixed, however, with a passing reflection upon the lamentable inefficacy of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... established myself comfortably near to Miss Van Tyck's hotel, and found a landlady after my own heart in Mrs. Pickles, No. 6, Micklegate, when Miss Van Tyck, aided and abetted, I fear, by the romantic Miss Schuyler, elected to change her quarters, and I, of course, had to change too. Mine is at present a laborious (but not unpleasant) life. The causes of Miss Schuyler's removal, as I have been given to understand by the lady herself, were some particularly pleasing window-boxes in a lodging in High Petergate Street; boxes overflowing with pink ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... decisions. This, however, was not without some beneficial consequences to the individuals before him; as it often happened, that when he seemed to have committed some hardened offender, after the infliction of a long, laborious, obscure harangue, he has immediately ordered him to be discharged. And, on the contrary, when some innocent individual heard with delight the sentence of the court apparently, in his favor, judge of what he must have felt on finding himself sent off to Newgate, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... et mon menage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless; nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... stone to breathe a soul of light, With the dull matter to unite The kindling genius, some great sculptor glows; Behold him straining, every nerve intent— Behold how, o'er the subject element, The stately thought its march laborious goes! For never, save to toil untiring, spoke The unwilling truth from her mysterious well— The statue only to the chisel's stroke ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... from the laborious sawing of a log, blinking and tremulous in the hard brilliancy of midday. "Beyond," he answered vaguely, waving up the valley; "Sim Caley's wife sent for him from Hollidew's farm. Sim or his wife think they're going to die two or three times the year, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... and the first part was written (which is my reason for recalling it, ghost-like, from its ashes) no less than three times: first in the manner of Hazlitt, second in the manner of Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne. So with my other works: CAIN, an epic, was (save the mark!) an imitation of SORDELLO: ROBIN HOOD, a tale in verse, took an eclectic middle course among the fields of Keats, Chaucer ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... juice has a powerful anti-tumor effect, is very perishable, is laborious to make, but is worth the effort because it contains powerful enzymes and nutrients that help detoxify and heal when taken internally or applied to the skin. As a last resort with dying patients who can no longer digest anything taken by mouth I've implanted wheat grass juice ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... where he went to school with one Green, and having got into his accidence, was bound apprentice to a Waterman in London, which, though a laborious employment, did not so much depress his mind, but that he sometimes indulged himself in poetry. Taylour retates [sic] a whimsical story of his schoolmaster Mr. Green, which we shall here insert upon the authority ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... already passed us. I am sorry that we did not leave some signals at our stopping-places, which might show them where we have been, and lead them to us. Then, again, as Senor Fiel might not have been able to procure messengers at once, and as the voyage up the stream is laborious, they may not have got as far as this. Thus we are right in remaining at this spot, whence we can see them should they approach. I therefore hold to the opinion that the large canoe should be constructed ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... the desire of domination should in time usurp the place of those laborious, enthusiastic, and pious missionaries who, so happily for the natives, had managed to revolutionize their minds, and so spared their country those scenes of blood which blot with a fearful stain the history of Spanish power in America. But the influence of churchmen, as ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... such a common man as Kilquhanity do with a private income! It seemed almost suspicious, instead of creditable, to the minds of the simple folk at Pontiac; for they were French, and poor, and laborious, and Kilquhanity drew his pension from the headquarters of the English Government, which they only knew by legends wafted to them over great tracts of country from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the "Great Cotton," and minister of Plymouth. But not an individual exists in our day by whom it can be understood. The fragments of the subject tribes, broken in spirit, lost the savage freedom and rude virtues of their fathers without acquiring the laborious industry of the whites. Lands were assigned them in various places, which they were prohibited by law from alienating. But this very provision, though humanely intended, operated to perpetuate their indolence and incapacity. Some sought a more congenial occupation in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... in time to give his vote for the Clayton compromise,[252] but when this laborious effort to adjust controverted matters failed, he again pressed his original bill.[253] Hoping to make this more palatable, he suggested an amendment to the objectionable prohibitory clause: "inasmuch as the said territory is north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30' of north latitude, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... width of its range, or even in the impetuosity of its vehemence. Indeed, the wider its reach, and the greater its energy, the better will it be for the interests of science. The only danger of speculation consists in its momentum being apt to carry away the mind from the more laborious work of adequate verification; and therefore a true scientific judgment consists in giving a free rein to speculation on the one hand, while holding ready the break of verification with the other. Now, it is just because Darwin did both these things with so admirable a judgment, that he gave the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... the Colombo fort at 5 A.M. and the coach starts. Miles are passed, and still the country is thickly populated—paddy cultivation in all the flats and hollows, and even the sides of the hills are carefully terraced out in a laborious system of agriculture. There ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... been carried. We found no signs of a trail, except for a short distance, but, on the contrary, a country so difficult to traverse, on account of swamps and fallen timber, that the transportation of canoes through it would be a most laborious undertaking. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... of Dante has hitherto appeared in our language. . . . The author has been solicited to execute an entire translation of Dante, but the extreme inequality of this poet would render such a work a very laborious undertaking; and it appears very doubtful how far such a version would interest our country. Perhaps the reception of these cantos may discover to the translator the sentiments of the public." Hayley adopted ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... which the secret if revealed to an enemy might profit him. We rely not upon management and trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are ready to face the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... Saint-Antoine, more than any other group of the population, as we stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation and made it felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled like an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was quivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult. Everything was in a state of agitation there, without any interruption, however, of the regular work. It is impossible ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... upon me. Everything was in accordance with my state of feeling, and I experienced a glow of pleasure at finding that what of poetry and romance I ever had in me, had not been entirely deadened by the laborious and frittering life I had led. Nearly an hour did I sit, almost lost in the luxury of this entire new scene of the play in which I had been so long acting, when I was aroused by the distant shouts of my ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... as extravagant and superstitious as Surius, and Suetonius was most laborious and careful, and was the friend of Tacitus and Pliny; Suetonius gives us prodigies, when Surius has miracles, but that is all the difference; each follows the form of the supernatural which belonged to the genius of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... mother protested that he was foolish and that Presley and Vanamee had no great interest in "young ones," insisted upon showing the visitors Sidney's copy-books. They were monuments of laborious, elaborate neatness, the trite moralities and ready-made aphorisms of the philanthropists and publicists, repeated from page to page with wearying insistence. "I, too, am an American Citizen. S. D.," "As the Twig is Bent the Tree is Inclined," "Truth Crushed ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... and fortune is the first matter to be considered. A woman of good sense will not wish to expend in unnecessary extravagances money wrung from an anxious, laborious husband; or if her husband be a man of fortune, she will not, even then, encroach upon her allowance. In the early years of married life, when the income is moderate, it should be the pride of a woman to see how little she can spend ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... old work—those laborious little studies of still life or nature, the public would have none. Even the two life-sized pictures, which had more than a little merit in them, remained unpurchased. Both were for sale now; for Joseph needed no portrait of what was his; and Prince G—— naturally never commanded ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... the rules of life enjoined by St. Benedict in the sixth century were observed with great rigor. Frequent watchings, fasts, bleedings, and scourgings, for the purpose of mortifying the body; abstinence from conversation or laughter; habits of perpetual devotion, laborious exertion, and humble obedience to the abbot, were the main features of the system. Bernard undertook the duties of his office with such incessant zeal, and displayed such amazing control over his appetites, that he seriously weakened his health, but at the same time enlarged his reputation to such ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... for talking so much," concluded Rachel, and, with a courtesy first to the one then to the other, walked away. Her gait was no square march like her uncle's, but a sort of sidelong propulsion, rendered more laborious by the thick ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... Polygnotus. There he taught for nearly sixty years, and voluntarily ended his life when close on a century old. His life, as Antigonus, King of Macedon, recorded on his tomb, was consistent with his doctrine—abstemious, [386] frugal, laborious, dutiful. He was succeeded by Cleanthes, a native of Assos in Asia [387] Minor. But the great constructor of the Stoic doctrine, without whom, as his contemporaries said, there had been no Stoic school at all, was Chrysippus, a native of Soli or of Tarsus in Cilicia. He wrote at enormous ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... to re-amassing the capital that Europe has squandered, the concentration on business will be as fatal to the hopes of social reformers as the poverty that provokes it. One foresees the hard, unimaginative view of life regaining the ascendancy, laborious insensibility re-crowned queen of the virtues, "Self-help" by Smiles again given as a prize for good conduct, and the grand biological discovery that the fittest to survive do survive adduced again as an argument against income-tax. When one remembers the long commercial ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... and I could pass it unobserved. In the evenings I took shelter in the villages. I bent my steps to a mine in the mountains, where I hoped to meet with work underground; for besides that my present situation compelled me to provide for my own support, I felt that incessant and laborious occupation alone could divert my mind from dwelling on painful subjects. A few rainy days assisted me materially on my journey; but it was to the no small detriment of my boots, the soles of which were better suited to Count Peter than to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... centuries relied upon the mechanical skill of their pupils to assist them in producing the great works which bear their names. All the painters of note of that time, like many of the present day, had their pupils, to whom was intrusted much of the laborious portion of their work, the master furnishing the design and superintending its execution. Raphael, for instance, could never have left one half the treasures of Art which adorn the Vatican and enrich other galleries, had he depended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... in his Account of Oxford, relates that at the sign of Whittington and his Cat, the laborious antiquary, Thomas Hearne, "one evening suffered himself to be overtaken in liquor. But, it should be remembered, that this accident was more owing to his love of antiquity than of ale. It happened that the kitchen where he and his companion were sitting was neatly ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... out of his own brain, deducing from a priori conceptions all the relations of the three kingdoms into which he divided all living beings, classifying the animals as if by magic, in accordance with an analogy based on the dismembered body of man, it seemed to us who listened that the slow laborious process of accumulating precise detailed knowledge could only be the work of drones, while a generous, commanding spirit might build the world out of its own powerful imagination. The temptation to impose one's own ideas upon nature, to explain her mysteries by ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... would induce the planters to part with their services, or white laborers to occupy their places. In the great cities, and in various parts of the southern States, free persons of color constitute a laborious and useful class. In a pecuniary point of view, the banishment of one-sixth of our population,—of those whom we specially need,—would be an act of suicide. The veriest smatterer in political economy cannot but perceive the ruinous ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... Street, peers behind the veil of the seen into the unseen, interprets the great bard, grubs at the root of all evil, faces the three great problems—Birth—Death—Time—and finally, in passing thru the laborious process of becoming ten, discovers the great illusion," ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... amusing matter, such as a review of Paracelsus, Cardan, Old Fuller; a review of Jest Books, tracing the various metempsychosis of the same joke through all ages and countries; a History of Court Fools, for which a laborious German has furnished ample and highly interesting materials; foreign writers, though alive, not to be excluded, if only their works are of established character in their own country, and scarcely heard of, much less translated, in ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... version of this brief but laborious score has been preserved, and all the stages in its progress have been abundantly annotated. To follow it through in detail, however, would be but weariness. All the salient points in its production fall under one of three heads. There are, first, the ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... are characterised by a simple constriction of the nuclear body. So long as the two kinds of indirect nuclear division were not clearly distinguished, their correct interpretation was impossible. This was accomplished after long and laborious research, which has recently been carried out and with results which should, perhaps, be regarded ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... been confronted through the curtains by a female figure, was to get back to his bedroom undetected. He supposed that one of the feminine members of the house-party must have been taking a stroll in the grounds, and he did not wish to stay and be compelled to make laborious explanations of his presence there in the dark. He decided to postpone the knocking on the cupboard door, which had been the signal arranged between himself and Sam, until a more suitable occasion. In the meantime he bounded silently out into ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... the children who had written them, rather more than the company who read them; sums in compound addition were rehearsed and re-rehearsed until all the children had the totals by heart; and the preparations altogether were on the most laborious and most comprehensive scale. The morning arrived: the children were yellow-soaped and flannelled, and towelled, till their faces shone again; every pupil's hair was carefully combed into his or her eyes, as the case might be; the girls were adorned with snow-white tippets, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... CHAP. II. 1. The Master said, 'Respectfulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes laborious bustle; carefulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes timidity; boldness, without the rules of propriety, becomes insubordination; straightforwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness. 2. 'When those who are in high stations perform well all their duties ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

... that will find grateful response from every industrious citizen, whether employer or employed, who understands that "trade is the calm health of nations." There is nothing in this world of material things more to be feared than the wanton destruction of industries that have been built up by laborious endeavour and the unstinted expenditure of energy in brain and hand. Such destruction leads to endless suffering amongst the innocent and to the business stagnation which brings calamity in its wake. To guard against these dread contingencies the Mounted Police are on hand. They ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... that shall be found in the day of their resurrection, when they shall have all their good things brought upon the stage; they I say, that then shall be found the people most laborious for God while here; they shall at that day enjoy the greatest portion of God, or shall be possessed with most of the glory of the Godhead then. For that is the portion of saints in general (Rom 8:17; Lam 3:24). And why shall he that doth most for God in this world, enjoy most of him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... were you," remarked Major Ralston with the air of a man performing a laborious duty. "You ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... too laborious, and of too little profit, to be often repeated, and the missionary sought anxiously for more stable instruction. To find such was not easy. The interpreters—Frenchmen, who, in the interest of the fur company, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... his senior partner, and a few minutes later was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth Avenue line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle dropped him at old Catherine's. The sitting-room window on the ground floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May. The hall ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... on the 28th of August. The Queen's Speech was read by the Lord Chancellor. Her Majesty referred with thanks to the public spirit shown by the members of both Houses, in their attention to the business of the nation, during a laborious and protracted session She, of course, lamented the recurrence of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, and had given, she said, her cordial assent to the measures framed to meet that calamity. After the fashion of most royal speeches, she expressed ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... empires, England stood alone. Still she held back from war, still disavowed The deeds of Drake to Spain; and yet once more Philip, resolved at last never to swerve By one digressive stroke, one ell or inch From his own patient, sure, laborious path, Accepted her suave plea, and with all speed Pressed on his huge emprise until it seemed His coasts groaned with grim bulks of cannonry, Thick loaded hulks of thunder and towers of doom; And, all round Antwerp, Parma still prepared To hurl such armies o'er the rolling ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... come to her that she loved and was loved. Though she might never see him again, this supreme experience for man or woman, this unsealing of the sacred fountain of life, would be for her an enduring sweetness in her lonely and laborious pilgrimage. How strong love is they best know to whom it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even their rulers in awe. In regard to their intellectual traits, he affirms their minds were not formed for laborious research, and though they seized a subject as it were by intuition, yet wanted patience and perseverance for a thorough examination of all its bearings. "An observation," says the writer of the article on "Attica," in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "more superficial in itself, and arguing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... terrors of servile insurrection All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the slave that he had no cause to rebel. I found the dungeon, the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obedience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious, controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. I have demonstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your borders. I have added a million of dollars to your wealth in the form of new land from the batture of the Mississippi. I have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... words. Studious thy country's worthies to defame, Thy erring voice displays thy mother's shame. Elusive of the bridal day, she gives Fond hopes to all, and all with hopes deceives. Did not the sun, through heaven's wide azure roll'd, For three long years the royal fraud behold? While she, laborious in delusion, spread The spacious loom, and mix'd the various thread: Where as to life the wondrous figures rise, Thus spoke the inventive queen, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... copy of their archetype—in fact, they may probably have avoided doing so purposely. By the help of such a catalogue we can search through collections of MSS., noting the second leaves in each case, and, it may be, identifying a considerable number of books. It is a laborious ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... reason of this is that the coat must, from time to time, be oiled in order to keep the cords supple and prevent them from snapping, and, of course, as their coats cannot be brushed, the only way of keeping the dog clean is to wash him, which with a corded Poodle is a lengthy and laborious process. Further, the coat takes hours to dry, and unless the newly washed dog be kept in a warm room he is very liable to catch cold. The result is, that the coats of corded Poodles are almost ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... again; but directed straight to the end of your destination, no matter how far off. Turnings to the right, and turnings to the left, short cuts across moors five miles away, churches that you must keep on this hand, and rocks that you must keep on that, are impressed upon your memory with the most laborious minuteness, and shouted after you over and over again as long as you are within hearing. If the utmost anxiety to give the utmost quantity of good advice could always avail against accident or forgetfulness, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... holds the larger part of the Donetz coal district and has destroyed the mines in the portion of the district which he has evacuated. As a result of this, locomotives, electrical power plants, etc., must be fed with wood, which is enormously expensive and laborious and comparatively ineffectual. ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt

... water; and they were not even able to make it into a warm mess by heating the water, as they had no vessels; moreover, when their hard day's work was at an end, they had but a handful of straw on which to lie. These privations, added to their hard and laborious life, brought on an endemic fever, which incapacitated for work many soldiers and labourers, numbers of whom had to be dismissed. Very soon the unfortunate men, who were almost as much to be pitied as those whom they were persecuting, waited no longer ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Joao VI. the nearest trouble was always the greatest, and the courtier at hand, able to gain the royal ear, had far more chance of success with him than the one who proffered his request by letter. Joao found it difficult to refuse, disagreeable to inquire, and laborious to discuss. He was, in fact, an amiable man, but ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... equal times; the third, that the squares of the times of revolution of the planets about the sun are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from that body. The first two laws were discovered by Kepler in the course of a laborious examination of the theory of the planet Mars. A full account of this inquiry is contained in his famous work, 'De Stella Martis' [Of the Planet Mars], published in 1609. The discovery of the third law was announced to the world in his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... he seemed to have imbibed with his earliest breath the impression that he was comparatively poor, and that only the most laborious drudgery of mind and body, to which the toil of the slave in the cotton-field is little more than play, could keep him from becoming still poorer. He had been a miser at once of his pennies and his hours, when a boy; and as he had grown older he had become a still worse miser ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... in conversation there was clearly no constitutional objection, but that the leadership of the House was so laborious that an office without other duties ought ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... spente y^e most of his means, haveing a great charge, and many children; and, in regard of his former breeding & course of life, not so fitt for many imployments as others were, espetially such as were toylesume & laborious. But yet he ever bore his condition with much cherfullnes and contentation. Towards y^e later parte of those 12. years spente in Holland, his outward condition was mended, and he lived well & plentifully; for he fell into a way (by reason he had y^e Latine tongue) to teach many students, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... was undoubtedly thriving. A daughter had been born to the young couple during their first year of wedlock, and all three of them looked blooming. The business went on prosperously, without any laborious fatigue, just as Lisa desired. She had carefully kept free of any possible source of trouble or anxiety, and the days went by in an atmosphere of peaceful, unctuous prosperity. Their home was a nook ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... life; at times some characters in it gave evidence of being human and alive; they were beginning to act now and then spontaneously, beginning to say and to do things after the manner of human beings; the long vista before me, the months of laborious drudging toil and pain, the long agony of effort necessary to write any book, even a poor one, was beginning to appear less weary, less futile; there was the first faint glow of ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... forger. He was one of that band of manufacturers of antiquities who have played such a part in the dealings of foreign collectors during the last century, and whose occupation, though slow and laborious, occasionally produces immense profits. He had not given up his calling with the deliberate intention of resorting to this method of earning a subsistence, but had drifted into his evil practices by degrees. In the first instance he had quitted the bar in consequence ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... surrounding counties is interwoven with that of our common country, and how valuable as data of the past are the materials which invited the lover of truth to their discovery. One can scarcely estimate the laborious research involved in the task of gathering the component parts of a history which stretched over a period of nearly two hundred and seventy-five years. Old volumes, musty records, masses of court documents, correspondence (official and otherwise), previous historical attempts, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... freely enough to the party of progress within his dominions, and to be as loyally eager to accept the new constitution which the National Assembly was busy framing as the most ardent patriot among its members. Even the flight of the Royal Family, the attempted flight that began with such laborious pomp at Paris to end in such pitiful disaster at Varennes, the flight that condemned the King and Queen to a restraint far more rigorous than before, did ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... However, when it is dry, or nearly so, as was the case when we were there, you are obliged to roll the casks a considerable distance from the beach to a well in the Governor's garden, from which they must be filled. This mode is both tedious and laborious, while the sailors are almost sure to get drunk on a bad spirit called aqua dent, which is sold to them secretly by the blacks, who are ever on the watch to elude the vigilance of the officers employed in ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... may have to-day in England, and yet both be in vain. Only a few years ago, in one of our northern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and natural art-faculty set himself to learn engraving;—made his own tools; gave all the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it; and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver would be ashamed of. He engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of a beam of a steam engine. This, to him, was the power of God,—it was his life. No greater earnestness was ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... to the perusal of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth's letters. The pale ink, the quaint cramped hand, the old-fashioned abbreviations, and very doubtful orthography rendered the task laborious; but I stuck to my work bravely, and the old clock in the market-place struck two as I began the last letter. As I get deeper into this business I find my interest in it growing day by day—an interest sui generis, apart from all ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... of the poet's. Note first the exquisite painting of the vine leaves, and of these flowers in the foreground, as an instance of the "constant habit of the great masters to render every detail of their foreground with the most laborious botanical fidelity." "The foreground is occupied with the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose (more correctly the Capparis Spinosa); every stamen of which latter is given, while ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... away from him the laborious study of the Doctrine of Nirvana, Doshaku, the Great Teacher, himself trusted only in the power of the Divine Promise, and he persuaded men to follow ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... and defiling lesson of ages of darkness was to confer a priceless blessing. Every prejudice should surely be in favour of the men who have by general confession accomplished the first and apparently most laborious part of this task; instead of which a large class of writers find a species of satisfaction in thinking ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... for you and Brownie tomorrow," Mr. Linton said. "I'll have a laborious time myself, fixing up fishing tackle—if Jim and his merry men left me with any. As for Billy, he will spend the day grubbing for bait. Wherefore, everything being settled, come and play me 'The Last Rose of Summer,' and ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... there exist, the same delicacy of proportion, the same effeminacy of person, the same slenderness of hand and foot, which characterise the female of refined society; in despite too of the fact, that every laborious duty and every species of drudgery, are imposed on them from childhood. Their faces are broad, and between the eyes they are exceedingly wide; their cheek bones are high and the eyes black in both sexes—the noses of the women inclining generally to the flat ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... arm with her bony old woman's hand, Miss O'Donoghue began a laborious ascent, pausing every five steps to breathe stertorously and reproachfully, and look round upon the sandstone walls with supreme disdain; but this was nothing to the air with which, when at last installed upon a ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... sight they saw was a plain, of some miles in extent, completely covered with shattered pieces of quartz, which shone with specks and veins of pure gold. Of course they had neither time nor inclination to attempt the laborious task of pulverising this quartz in order to obtain the precious metal; but Ned moralised a little as they galloped over the plain, spurning the gold beneath their horses' hoofs, as if it had been of ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... him alone and went back to the sputtering fireside—for the rain was now beating down the chimney—and in awe-struck whispers Christina told her mother of the money which Andrew had hoarded through long laborious years, and of the plans which the loss of it ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... into routine for a time. The wheels of all his affairs went so smoothly that he and his assistant found many easy breathing-spaces. But Paul was of a mind just now to scorn delight and live laborious days. He confined himself for many hours of each day to his bedroom, and on the weekly railway journey with his chief he sat for the most part in a brown study, And made frequent entries in a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... places—that we had serious thoughts of abandoning the enterprise altogether. However, we did not like to be beaten after having achieved so much, so we persevered, and at last, after a most perilous and laborious climb, actually succeeded ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... patriot's name, but now his statue stands in his city, near to where he laid the foundations and built the Chateau St. Louis. Most unfortunately his last resting place is unknown, notwithstanding the laborious and learned efforts of the many ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... offered his ideas in a sidelong fashion, as if the presumption were against them. His modesty set them off, and they were eminently to the point. He was so perfect an example of the little noiseless, laborious artist whom chance, in the person of a moneyed patron, has never taken by the hand, that Rowland would have liked to befriend him by stealth. Singleton had expressed a fervent admiration for Roderick's ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... patron of the arts. Though not social, he was a man of literary interests and of elegant and cultivated taste. Possessed of immense wealth, with every source and avenue of enjoyment at his command, it is no slight merit in him that he preferred to such refined enjoyment the laborious service of his country. He was no holiday or dillettanti statesman. His industry was prodigious, and he seemed actually to love work. His toil in the memorable six months of 1835 was something absolutely prodigious; in 1842 and 1843 scarcely less so. His work was always ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... or faltered at any sacrifice of personal ease or interest to the demands of his country. His patient, skilful, laborious efforts in France did as much for the final victory of the American cause as any soldier's sword. He yielded his own opinions in regard to the method of making the treaty of peace with England, and thereby imperilled for a time his own prestige. He served ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke

... attention be kept long on the subject, for this course only injures the faculty, and leads to confusion of mind. To persist in a constantly baffled effort to recover a word, or other forgotten link in memory, is a laborious attempt which is itself likely to cause failure, and induce a distrust of the memory which is far from rational. The forgotten object will probably recur in no long time after, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... some difficulty, moving his lips as he did so, in order to get the matter clearly before his mind. He regarded it as a laborious task, and would sooner have chopped a cord of wood than read for half an hour. Notwithstanding the irksomeness of reading, there were two books which led him conscientiously through their pages to the end—those of Gordon Cumming and Jules Gerard on ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... of jurisprudence: I had the right; but I should be unjust did I not distinguish between this pretended science and the men who practise it. Devoted to studies both laborious and severe, entitled in all respects to the esteem of their fellow-citizens by their knowledge and eloquence our legists deserve but one reproach, that of an excessive ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Instruction requires a peculiar cast of mind. It requires a genuine liking for a tread-mill round of merely mechanical duties; it requiers a taste for rising in the chill and cheerless dawn, at the unwelcome summons of "reveille," to a long day filled with a tiresome routine of laborious drills alternating with tedious roll-calls, and wearisome parades and inspections; it requires pleased contentment with walks continually cut short by the camp-guard, and with amusements limited to rough horse-play on the parade-ground, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... one of the islands in the group among which, whenever there was cargo to be got, he wandered with his crazy old schooner. The Kanakas have little love for work, and the laborious Chinese, the cunning Japs, have taken the trade out of their hands. Her father had a strip of land on which he grew taro and bananas and he had a boat in which he went fishing. He was vaguely related to the mate of the schooner, and it was he who took Captain Butler up to the shabby little frame ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... at my disposal for publication by Father Egedi and in having had further material added to it by Dr. Seligmann and Mr. Sidney H. Ray. I have thought it better to deal with it in five appendices, and I am greatly indebted to Mr. Ray for having undertaken the laborious task of their compilation. I give the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... animals were capable of reasoning in a rudimentary way, Mr. Burroughs laid him out in the same fashion by saying: "But Darwin was also a much greater naturalist than psychologist"—and this despite Darwin's long life of laborious research that was not wholly confined to a rural district such as Mr. Burroughs inhabits in New York. Mr. Burroughs's method of argument is beautiful. It reminds one of the man whose pronunciation was vile, but who said: "Damn the dictionary; ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... and uncapacious has been the range of intellect in many first-rate Grecians; though, on the other hand, the reader would deeply deceive himself if he should imagine that Greek is an attainment other than difficult, laborious, and requiring exemplary talents. Greek taken singly is, to use an indispensable Latin word, instar, the knowledge of all other languages. But men of the highest talents have often beggarly understandings. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... servant-maids, whose white caps gleam on every side; the serene visages of shopkeepers slowly imbibing great glassfuls of beer; the peasants with their monstrous ear-rings; the cleanliness; the flowers in the windows; the tranquil and laborious throng; all give to Rotterdam an aspect of healthful and peaceful content, which brings to the lips the chant of "Te Beata," not with the cry of enthusiasm, but with the smile ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... not our flocks and herds that our Father desires nor the sweet-smelling herbs of this world, but a temple in which there shall be nothing but the love of God. It is for the building of this temple that I have been called hither; and not with hands during laborious years will it be built, but at once, for the temple that I speak to you of, is in the heart of every man; and woe, woe, woe, I say unto you who delay to build this temple, for the fulfilment of the prophecies is at hand, and when the last day of this world begins to dawn ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... casual reader, but to the scholar. Its preparation involved a great diligence, and its study is not to be undertaken lightly. What the psychologist will find to admire in it, however, is not its learning and painstaking, its laborious erudition, but its compression. It establishes, we believe, a new and clearer method for a science long run to turgidity and flatulence. Perhaps it may be even said to set up an entirely new science, to wit, that of descriptive sociological psychology. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... calm, unmoved by blame or praise, By local checks or Fortune's strange caprices, You dedicate laborious nights and days To shattering the Hun machine to pieces; And howsoe'er at times the battle sways The Army's trust in your command increases; Patient in preparation, swift in deed, We find in you the leader ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... of my boyish imagination. Their trot was awkward and heavy, they carried their heads low, and their panting breaths and gaping mouths were constantly suggestive of complete exhaustion, and excited pity for their apparently laborious exertions, rather than admiration for the speed which they really did exhibit. My ideal reindeer would never have demeaned himself by running with his mouth wide open. When I learned, as I afterward did, that they were compelled to breathe ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... an honour in Copy-Books, and she meant to take an honour this year. But the road to fame is laborious. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... the lower part of the garden. It is covered with turf which, as he removes, he banks up to form a little shelter from the wind for the vegetables, if ever there are any. Flax shelters the bed on the other side. The digging is rather laborious, as there are large stones which have to be extracted with a crowbar. The soil is first-rate, and so far no mildew has been met with. One of the greatest enemies to the seeds will be the fowls, and ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... note is that Mr. McFee imposed upon these laborious years of physical toil a strenuous discipline of intellect as well. He is a born worker: patient, dogged, purposeful. His years at sea have been to him a more fruitful curriculum than that of any ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... are too great for any people luxurious or idle by temperament; and the demon of Luck is set upon the altar which should be dedicated to Industry. If one happy chance can bring a fortune, who will spend laborious days to gain a competence? The common classes in Rome are those who are most corrupted by the lottery; and when they can neither earn nor borrow baiocchi to play, they strive to obtain them by beggary, cheating, and sometimes theft. The fallacious hope that their ticket will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... he appeared to suffer much agony, which he vented in low groans; the perspiration hung on his forehead in large beads, and his breathing became laborious. The sun rose and had nearly set again before Jackson spoke; at last he asked for ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... efficient something more is necessary. We must have the scale which is to tell us how many millions of miles on the heavens correspond to one inch of the map. It is at this point we encounter a difficulty. There are, however, several ways of solving the problem, though they are all difficult and laborious. The most celebrated method (though far from the best) is that presented on an occasion of the transit of Venus. Herein, then, lies the importance of this rare event. It is one of the best-known ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... amazed. I saw a dozen men, each attired as Prefect of the Palace; a score of loose women dressed in an unmistakable imitation of the Empress, consuls by scores and similar counterfeits of every honored official or acclaimed individual. In particular, every corner had a laborious presentation of Murmex Lucro, the most popular gladiator in Rome. Almost equally frequent were presentments of Agilius Septentrio, the celebrated pantomimist; and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... her to seek illustrations from every department of letters, and convert her theme into a focus, upon which to pour all the concentrated light which research could reflect, assuring her that what is often denominated "far-fetchedness," in metaphors, furnished not only evidence of the laborious industry of the writer, but is an implied compliment to the cultured taste and general knowledge of those for whose entertainment or edification they are employed—provided always said metaphors and similes really illustrate, elucidate, and adorn ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... an ass were turning the wheel which raised cooling waters from the Nile and poured them into a large tank from which they flowed through narrow rivulets to irrigate the beds. This toil was now very laborious, for the river had fallen to so low a level as to give cause for anxiety, even at this season of extreme ebb. Numbers of birds with ruffled feathers, with little splints on their legs, or with sadly drooping heads, were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... it becomes nearly full-grown. This is best done in the cool of the morning, while the insects are still; their habits of fear and quiet, when there is a noise about, are greatly in favor of their destruction by this method. This is somewhat laborious, but is a sure remedy, and will pay well in all plum-orchards, large or small. After two or three years of this treatment, there will be few or none of ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... large, spare man, with a swarthy skin, a wide mouth, a dark, steady eye, and a long jaw. There was an appearance of power and will about him which was well borne out by his character. He had been a systematic though not a laborious student, and while maintaining a stand comfortably near the head of the class, had taken a course in the Law School during Senior year, doing his double duties with apparent ease. He was a constant speaker in the debates of the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... Thither flocked sturdy Britons in knickerbockers, stockings, and cloth caps, Teutons with tin botanizing boxes (for lunch transportation), and American school-marms realizing at last the dream of their modest and laborious lives. Accommodation was cheap, manners were easy, and knowledge of the gay ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... pretending to admire what you do not admire, or to despise what in secret you rather like, nor surcharging your admiration and enthusiasm to bring you into unison with the public chorus. This vigilance may render Literature more laborious; but no one ever supposed that success was to be had on easy terms; and if you only write one sincere page where you might have written twenty insincere pages, the one page is worth ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... Minanguoit's; but they have lived in the country, and have seen the peasants; they know their own nurse and maid, whose father and brother are poor, for whom the earning of a hundred and fifty rubles for a cottage is the object of a long, laborious life. Each woman knows this. How could she enjoy herself, when she knew that she wore on her bared body at that ball the cottage which is the dream of her good maid's father and brother? But let us suppose that she could not make this reflection; ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... vanished. Disappointed, he went back into the house. Straying to the piano, he sat down and began to play a Chopin prelude. It was John's one and only instrumental achievement, learned by ear, and dug out of the ivories, as one might say, by long hours of laborious search for its harmonies. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... In those days, so he remembered, he had boasted of three three things to Kamala, had been able to do three noble and undefeatable feats: fasting—waiting—thinking. These had been his possession, his power and strength, his solid staff; in the busy, laborious years of his youth, he had learned these three feats, nothing else. And now, they had abandoned him, none of them was his any more, neither fasting, nor waiting, nor thinking. For the most wretched things, he had given them up, for what fades most quickly, for sensual lust, for ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... the country, giving notice that they could no longer be harassed by such laborious expeditions, nor suffer the Roman standards, with so large and brave an army, to be worn out by sea and land by fighting against these unwarlike, plundering vagabonds; but that the islanders, inuring themselves to warlike weapons, and bravely fighting, ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas

... with purpose; hast become Laborious, persevering, serious, firm— For this, thy track, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... and domestic consumption, reproducing, with the means of life, the multitudes which they use and waste, (and which many of them devour much more surely and much more largely than the war,) have always found the laborious hand ready for the liberal pay. That the price of the soldier is highly raised is true. In part this rise may be owing to some measures not so well considered in the beginning of this war; but the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the room with some indistinct mutterings; but whether negative or acquiescent, Edward could not well distinguish. The hostess, a civil, quiet, laborious drudge, came to take his orders for dinner, but declined to make answer on the subject of the horse and guide; for the Salique law, it seems, extended to the stables of the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the laws of the Knights was this: "Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace: and to do good unto others.") 1. Do a good turn to somebody every day. (3 points.) 2. Control tongue and temper. (5 points.) 3. Participate in some entertainment. (2 points.) 4. Secure the approval of the leaders. (2 points.) 5. Promptness in attending ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... Hapsburg, like Vercingetorix before Caius Julius. Ziska's cry of havoc to all the earth is not redeemed by fanaticism and has no intelligible end. And the noblest figure in Czech history, George of Podiebrad, whose portrait Palacky[7] has etched with laborious care and unerring insight, is essentially a statesman, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... cars bumped and clanked, and the train came to a laborious stop with the outermost cars beneath the lofty latticed framework of the main traveller. At once the electro-magnetic cranes began to descend, ready to swing off whole carloads of steel in their ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... continue. When the faithful, laborious, successful missionary women who are now the admiration of the church and the world fall beneath the pressure of disease, toil, and time, a missionary Church will send out her daughters, who are reposing at home, to take ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... been made up of allusions, half-words, petrified witticisms, that have become part of our language. Each sentence would require a dictionary of explanation to any strange hearer. Now, if I wish to be understood, I must say my meaning in plain English, and very laborious I ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... being located in a prairie, all fuel used there had to be carried for a distance of nearly two miles, and after our mules and oxen were butchered we had no other recourse than to carry the wood on our backs or haul it on sleds, a very tedious and laborious alternative. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... the righteous should not be utterly forsaken. During his seclusion from society, he had cultivated and improved the powers of that never-dying mind which was destined to expatiate for ever amid the unveiled glories of creation, and to enjoy, after its probationary trials in this laborious world, a ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... ten, getting out very little—a practice quite different from their later habits. He seized the opportunity of starting various pursuits which formed afterwards the chief recreation of his and the Queen's laborious days. He tried etching, which afforded the two much entertainment, and he began his essays in landscape gardening, developing a delightful faculty with which ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... relieved of the drudgery of menial work. Major E. Backus also noted (Schoolcraft, IV., 214) that Navajo women "are treated more kindly than the squaws of the northern tribes, and perform far less of laborious work than the Sioux or Chippewa women." But when we examine the facts more closely we find that this comparative "emancipation" of the Navajo women was not a chivalrous concession on the part of the men, but proceeded simply from the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... in pouring scorn upon the work of our immediate spiritual forefathers, the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. It is accepted as a truth which is indisputable, that, for seven or eight centuries, a long succession of able men—some of them of transcendent acuteness and encyclopaedic knowledge—devoted laborious lives to the grave discussion of mere frivolities and the arduous pursuit of intellectual will-o'-the-wisps. To say nothing of a little modesty, a little impartial pondering over personal experience might suggest a doubt as to ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... should proceed to test as many "unknowns" as his time and industry permit in order to really make his own the matter of these lessons. It may be added here that the task of testing a stone is much more rapid than this laborious effort to teach others how to do it might indicate. To one skilled in these matters only a few seconds are required for the inspection of a stone with the lens, the dichroscope, or the refractometer, and hardness tests ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... expectation—about his having a house to build? What would it seem to her,—his busy life all spring and summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting, chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... father's circle, for some days. It was in piety to him I lingered; and I might have spared myself the pain. His memory was already quite gone out. For his sake, indeed, I was made welcome; and for mine the conversation rolled awhile with laborious effort on the virtues of the deceased. His former comrades dwelt, in my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no more. My father had loved me; I had left him alone to live and die among the indifferent; now I ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... be evident that the first portion of this task, which is all that I have yet been enabled to offer to the reader, cannot but be the least interesting and the most laborious, especially because it is necessary that it should be executed without reference to any principles of beauty or influences of emotion. It is the hard, straightforward classification of material things, not the study of thought or passion; and therefore let me not be accused of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... actively practising among the poor and laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in suicide or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... the east and glimmered with a faint warm flush against the dim blue shadow. Smoke and puffs of steam floated up from the gorge, and the ringing clang of steel pierced the turmoil of the river. Charnock felt braced but dizzy. Now he came to think of it, he had eaten no supper, and after a day of laborious effort the night's watch had fatigued him. Besides, his face smarted under the bandage, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... less than half a century, the aboriginal race was extinct. The country was beautiful beyond description: rich in its mines, and its soil of unexceeded fertility. But the Spaniard, if not by nature indolent, is prone to luxury. The earth producing by handfuls, the colonists saw little necessity of laborious exertion. They accordingly degenerated from the spirit and enterprise of their ancestors, and fell into habits of voluptuous idleness. Agriculture was neglected, and the mines deserted. Contenting themselves with a bare supply of the wants of nature, they sank into such a state of indolence, that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... It was like seeing suddenly the whole bulk of some ocean craft, of which before one had noticed only the sociable and very insignificant decks and riggings, lifted, for one's scientific edification, in its docks. All the laborious, underlying meaning of Franklin's life was symbolised in these neat papers and heavy books. Gerald tried to remember, with only partial success, what Franklin's professional interests were; people's professional interests had rarely engaged ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... safe from the assault of man in consequence of their light weight permitting them to scamper away on the surface of the snow, into which man or horse, from their greater weight, would sink, so as to render pursuit either fearfully laborious or altogether impossible. In spring, however, when the first thaws begin to take place, and commence that delightful process of disruption which introduces this charming season of the year, the relative position of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne



Words linked to "Laborious" :   gruelling, backbreaking, arduous, punishing, hard, operose, laboriousness, labor



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