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Arduous   /ˈɑrdʒuəs/   Listen
Arduous

adjective
1.
Characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort.  Synonyms: backbreaking, grueling, gruelling, hard, heavy, laborious, operose, punishing, toilsome.  "A grueling campaign" , "Hard labor" , "Heavy work" , "Heavy going" , "Spent many laborious hours on the project" , "Set a punishing pace"
2.
Taxing to the utmost; testing powers of endurance.  Synonyms: straining, strenuous.  "A strenuous task" , "Your willingness after these six arduous days to remain here"
3.
Difficult to accomplish; demanding considerable mental effort and skill.



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"Arduous" Quotes from Famous Books



... led on a grand scale. Vast encampments, which for size, regularity, and order vie with the old Roman castra, are formed at convenient spots. And here all the details of actual service are imitated; cavalry and infantry are disciplined in equally arduous labors; nor does the artillery escape the fatigue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the direction of the cage of the despised "Bandar Log," and made the smaller animals uneasy. The woman who was described on the programme as "Miss ——, Famous Society Woman," had torn herself away from her arduous social duties with the Four Hundred to exhibit a troupe of leopards to a Coney Island audience, her identity concealed by a small black mask, and her performance in the big cage was interrupted by the noise; so the Proprietor thought it ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... her a great deal in her English as she is afraid this will have to be her last year at college. She feels that she is needed at home to carry on the work of her friend and teacher Miss Allfriend, whose long and arduous labors among the mountain folk have impaired her health. Melissa thinks she should take up the work and give her friend a rest. Noble girl! Dicky Blount thinks so, too, and even more so. Did you know that he found or manufactured some business ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... an arduous labour; it is not, as some ignorant persons think, a process of idle absorption; it is rather a state of strenuous endeavour, aided at any rate in its first stages by acts of steady detachment from the world of sense. Richard Raynal had passed through ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... probable calculation, his change of purpose was politic. The fleets of England were numerous, and her seamen renowned. The Normans had neither experience nor fame in naval fights; their navy itself was scarcely formed. Thus, even William's landing in England was an enterprise arduous and dubious. Moreover, even granting the amplest success, would not this Norman Prince, so profound and ambitious, be a more troublesome lord to Earl Tostig ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nearly exhausted and his situation had became exceedingly critical. He dared not leave his fort and yet he could not hold out much longer unaided. His brave wife was equal to the emergency; she determined herself to go to France for assistance. This was indeed an arduous undertaking for a woman, but her spirit rose to the occasion, and neither the perils of the deep nor the difficulties that were to confront her at the court of France served to daunt her resolute soul. Fearlessly she set out upon the long and dangerous voyage and in the course ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... form of religious zeal. The spirit of the Crusaders was inherited by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, whose whole history had been one long crusade against the Moors. When the Portuguese started upon the exploration of the African coast, they could scarcely have sustained to the end that long and arduous task if they had been allured by no other prospect than the distant hope of finding a new route to the East. They were buoyed up also by the desire to strike a blow for Christianity. They expected to find the mythical Christian empire of Prester John, and to ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... interest, but its nearness to an attraction like the Roosevelt Dam and glimpses of it which the traveller catches as he speeds over the Apache Trail make it invaluable as a tourist exhibit. Thousands who are unable to undertake the long and often arduous journeys by trail to the greater ruins, can here get definite ideas and a hint of the real flavor of prehistoric ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... being in public life, how only the sternest sense of duty prevented him from resigning his office, and how the strain of working for a thankless constituency was telling upon him, and nothing but the fact that he felt he ought to sacrifice his comfort to the welfare of his country kept him in the arduous life of statesmanship. It went round the table until it came to my turn. This was during my first term of office as President of the United States. I said: "Now, gentlemen, I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding. I like my job, and I want to keep ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... she would always defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had dropped out of their conversation—not by Daphne's will. There had been no spoken recantation; ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... been delivering bills of lading), inquiring the prices of lobsters, pork-pies, oranges, and other delicacies, arranging for the hire of cups and saucers, ordering butter and eggs, and jam, and other such arduous and delicate duties. Then I spent the evening in discussing with myself the momentous questions whether I should lay in tea-cakes or penny buns, whether I need have brown bread as well as white, whether Mrs Nash's tea would be good enough, whether I should help my great dish—the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... the night and the stillness of the bush, looming dark and mysterious against the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... light of some glorious sunset. In this lovely season, which is most appropriately termed the fall, we wished to get along with our church, and have it enclosed before the winter. This was rather an arduous undertaking in young settlement like ours; but there were ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... which he was weary, he referred with dignity to the record of his past life. From the youthful days when he had served as a volunteer at his own expense in the perilous sieges of Haarlem and Leyden down to the time of his arrest, through an unbroken course of honourable and most arduous political services, embassies, and great negotiations, he had ever maintained the laws and liberties of the Fatherland ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... He could not help the slight sneer. Was a man never to admit that he had sought the office? Haines knew only too well of the arduous work necessary to secure nominations for high office in conventions and to win an election to the Senate from a State Legislature. In almost every case, he knew, the candidate must make a dozen different "deals" to secure votes, might promise the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... congregation, in which there was not a single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensington Gardens had shut up their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three old flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine; and Clarence Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a Treasury clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared its loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert and himself to a Bedouin wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed away a quantity of Cavendish ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thus quietly encamped, our gallant comrades of the Seventy-First and Eighth Regiments N.Y.S.N.G., whose places we had taken on our arrival at Bridgeport Heights, were having an active and arduous campaign at the front. On the evening of the 19th these two regiments under command of Colonel Varian, of the Eighth, proceeded to Shippensburg, "for the purpose," says Col. Varian in his report, quoting from the orders he had received, "of holding the enemy ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... pistols, effectually muffling the boats' oars and rowlocks, and, in fact, making every possible provision that I could think of to ensure our success. And the next day I made the men rest all day, so that they might be fit for a long and arduous night's work. ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... a land where the dog has ever played well his role of support to those who have faced its dangers and conquered its terrors, that his importance should be at last freely acknowledged, and the fact admitted that only the best possible dogs should be used for all arduous tasks. ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... at the Whig office any morning between ten o'clock and twelve. It developed that he was engaged in some not too arduous labor at the quarries of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... a Manchester cotton spinner of great wealth. Himself a man of no education, beyond such knowledge as he had picked up in the course of an arduous life, the cotton spinner was not oblivious to those advantages which ought to accrue to a liberal education; and he resolved that his son, a fine handsome lad, should not fail in life for want of them. Young Barton had, therefore, in due course been sent to ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... on its waves; a hundred times he had crossed it on horseback, a thousand times had swum across. Athos, foreseeing the period when he should make a soldier of the viscount, had inured him to all kinds of arduous undertakings. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... when the strength and endurance of the troops had been tried to the utmost throughout the long and arduous battle of Ypres-Armentieres the presence of his Majesty in their midst was of the greatest ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us to beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern our temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... three hours, but so interested were the audience, that only one or two left the Hall previously to its termination, and the loud and frequent bursts of applause attested the successful discharge of the reader's arduous task. On Thursday evening Mr. Dickens read The Cricket on the Hearth. The Hall was again well ruled, and the tale, though deficient in the dramatic interest of the Carol, was listened to with attention, and rewarded with repeated ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... voyages, of which we know nothing except the facts that he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was probably in the next year that an event very important in his life and career took place. Hitherto there has been no whisper of love in that arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in his life, for he was, in spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... could draw Socrates' disciples away from him. "That may be," said the philosopher, "for you lead them down an easy descent whereas I am forcing them to mount to virtue—an arduous ascent and unknown ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... missionary to the Indians, in the old South Meeting House, when the Rev. Dr. Sewall preached on the occasion and the Rev. Mr. Prince gave the charge. The Rev. Mr. Foxcroft and Dr. Chauncey of Cambridge, assisted upon the occasion, and Mr. Appleton. I entered upon this arduous business at Stockbridge, under the patronage of the Rev. Mr. Edwards. Was instructor of a few families of Iroquois, who came down from their country for the sake of christian knowledge and the schooling ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell

... would be useless for me to set out the details of this prolonged and arduous chase which in all endured for something over three weeks. Again and again we lost the trail and were only able to recover it by long and elaborate search, which occupied much time. Then, after we escaped from the reeds ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the front, are given a vacation and sent home. I could not ascertain the exact length of their stay in the trenches although it seems to be about a month. The artillery stay continuously on the battle-line as their work is less arduous and nerve-racking, since they are always somewhat toward the rear and usually well housed. Moreover, they fire only occasionally and have long periods of inactivity. The cavalry spends one week in action and then one ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... capable of estimating his value, having been secretary to one embassy, had, when great abilities were again wanted, the same office another time; and was, after so much experience of his own knowledge and dexterity, at last sent to transact a negotiation in the highest degree arduous and important, for which he was qualified, among other requisites, in the opinion of Bolingbroke, by his influence upon the French minister, and by skill in questions of commerce above ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... the entire street, luckily for him, he had sent his MS. to the publishers, Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley, a week or so before the conflagration broke out; so that he was, at any rate, spared the loss of his own arduous ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... provisioning, fuelling, and moving of actual forces, contests the field against an actual enemy, the size and power of which are fairly well known—and the intentions of which are sometimes known and sometimes not. The work of the strategist in war is arduous, pressing, definite, and exciting; and results are apt to follow decisions quickly. He plays the greatest and oldest game the world has ever known, with the most elaborate instruments, and for the largest stakes. In most wars, the antagonists have been so nearly ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... go and have a dip, anyway," laughed Tim. "It'll set us up and refresh us after our arduous stuffing." ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... This arduous enterprise was committed to Col. Arnold. About a thousand men consisting of New-England infantry, some volunteers,[1] and a company of artillery under Captain Lamb, and three companies of riflemen were ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking

... dictator. On this occasion they chose a person named Vilumilla, a man of low rank, but who had acquired a high character with his countrymen for judgment, courage, and extensive views, entertaining no less an object than the entire expulsion of the Spaniards from Chili. To succeed in this arduous undertaking, he deemed it necessary to obtain the support and assistance of all the native Chilese, from the confines of Peru to the Biobio, and vast as was the extent of his plan, he conceived it might be easily executed. Having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... months the Green Brigade remained quietly at Maintz, a welcome rest after their arduous labours. The town was very gay, and every house was occupied either by troops or by the nobles and visitors from all parts of Northern Europe. Banquets and balls were of nightly occurrence; and a stranger who arrived in the gay city would not have dreamt that a terrible campaign ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... had clustered together round a window and even Emily in her heart rejoiced that the gentlemen had come to relieve herself and sisters from the arduous task of entertaining women who appeared not to possess a single taste or opinion in ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... Papa, though always ready to do anything to please his boys, seemed to think that bowling all day long, with the thermometer marking some few degrees above summer heat, was rather too arduous a task, so he declined, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... low-hanging clouds. We trudged up one of the steepest ascents we have ever made with a wheel. The scenery was grand, but lonely. The wild tulips, pinks, and verbenas dotting the green slopes furnished the only pleasant diversion from our arduous labor. Just as we turned the highest summit, the clouds shifted for a moment, and revealed before us two Kirghiz horsemen. They started back in astonishment, and gazed at us as though we were demons of the air, until we disappeared again down the opposite and more gradual slope. Late in ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... of Manila was constituted on June 24, 1571. On August 20, 1572, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi succumbed to the fatigues of his arduous life, leaving behind him a name which will always hold a prominent place in Spanish colonial history. He was buried in Manila in the Augustine Chapel of San Fausto, where hung the Royal Standard and the hero's armorial bearings until the British troops occupied ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... or cartoon; and his first style was gigantic and unnatural. Subsequently, however, he checked this impetuosity, and it was in the middle of his life that he produced his best works. His fertility of invention was wonderful; his genius grappled with and conquered the most arduous difficulties of the art, and he shows his powers in foreshortening in the most daring variety. He was rapid and bold in design, yet was selected by Boschini as a model of correctness; hence his drawings, though numerous, are highly esteemed. His Rape of the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... protection from the stinging blasts, and their nights in holes burrowed in the snow, like the igloos of Esquimaux. On no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in the frozen Mazurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked mud of Flanders, does the fighting man lead so arduous an existence as up here on the roof of the world. I remember standing with an Italian officer in an observatory in the lower mountains. The powerful telescope was trained on the snow-covered summit of one of the ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... lectures" forwarded to you the other day, and in the theses of which I send the first seven herewith, seems to me the best to begin with. If it should be made a part of the "Major Course in English" (where it seems properly to belong), I could easily arrange a simpler and less arduous modification of it ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... Schuyler; and Philip, having learned by the experience of his journey that his wound left him incapacitated for arduous service afoot, desired an arrangement by which he might join the cavalry branch of the army. Mr. Schuyler was pleased to put the matter through for him, and to send him to Morristown, New Jersey, (where the rebel main force was then in Winter ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... every obstacle in front in preference to flanking it, until it reaches the sea, which the little animals boldly enter, only to perish there. No conceivable advantage to the lemming is known to have ever resulted from these long and arduous marches. The losses in swimming large rivers, from fire, the attacks of predatory animals, hunger, and fatigue, are so great that but few reach the sea, and the remnant always perish there. Mr. W. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... parent will smile and take his part against me. Thus, not only have I the father's spirit in the son to contend against, the germs of his evil tendencies to search out and eradicate, and his corrupting intercourse and example in after-life to counteract, but already he counteracts my arduous labour for the child's advantage, destroys my influence over his tender mind, and robs me of his very love; I had no earthly hope but this, and he seems to take a diabolical delight ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... embarrass, ravel, entangle; put a spoke in the wheel &c. (hinder) 706; lead a pretty dance. Adj. difficult, not easy, hard, tough; troublesome, toilsome, irksome; operose[obs3], laborious, onerous, arduous, Herculean, formidable; sooner said than done; more easily said than done, easier said than done. [pertaining to person's disposition sensu 802] difficult to deal with, hard to deal with; ill-conditioned, crabbed, crabby; not to be handled with kid gloves, not made with rose ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... due to Mr. W.D. Moore and Mr. C. Nairn, who on every occasion endeavoured to relieve me as much as possible from some of the many arduous duties that usually devolve on the leader of an exploring party. Chainer Fairburn and the native Dugel also gave general satisfaction in the performance of ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... his department; he imagined himself gifted for diplomacy, lacking only the chance to become a power in statecraft. But when Iris had given herself and her six hundred a year, she soon remarked a decline in her husband's aspiration. Presently Woolstan began to complain of an ailment, the result of arduous labour and of disillusion, which might make it imperative for him to retire from the monotonous toil of the Civil Service; before long, he withdrew to a pleasant cottage in Surrey, where he was to lead a studious life and compose a great political ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... hut was uncomfortably crowded that night with seven people in it, but the thermometer stood at -56 deg. and was rising, and gave us hope that we might move along to-morrow. Augmented as our party was into seven men, three sleds, and nineteen or twenty dogs, trail breaking would not be so arduous and progress would be much accelerated. There was good hope, moreover, that the heavy snow was confined to the Koyukuk valley and that when we passed out of it ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... and arduous career was now, however, fast drawing to a close. So early as the summer of 1854 it became evident that the health of General Sleeman was breaking up, and in the August of that year he was attacked by alarming illness. "Forty-six ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... known no real youth. They had fought the battle of life from the earliest childhood, they had lived lives as dispassionate and cold as the glaciers of their mountain home. Recreation was almost unknown to them. Toil, unremitting, arduous, had been their lot. Thus Nature had been defied; and now she was coming back on them as inevitably as the sun rises and sets, and the seasons come and go. They failed to realize their danger; they had no understanding of the passions that moved them, and so they hurried headlong ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... Queen feels deeply in her desolate and isolated condition how, one by one, tried servants and advisers are taken from her.... The Queen can turn to no other than Lord Russell, an old and tried friend of hers, to undertake the arduous duties of Prime Minister, and to carry on the Government.' Such a command was met by Lord John with the response that he was willing to act if his colleagues were prepared to serve under him. Mr. Gladstone's position in the country and in the councils of the Liberal Party had been ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... being one it is not easy to make definitely without its reducing itself to nullity!) that woman should seek no fields of labour in the new world of social conditions that is arising about us, as she has still her function as child-bearer: a labour which, by her own showing, is arduous and dangerous, though she may love it as a soldier loves his battlefield; and that woman should perform her sex functions only, allowing man or the state to support her, even when she is only potentially ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... The arduous task which she had performed a short time before for her widowed sister had increased the seriousness of her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... particular request of an estimable friend, I have endeavoured to draw the contrast which, in 1789-90 and 1801-2, Paris presented to the eye of an impartial observer. In this arduous attempt I have not the vanity to flatter myself that I have been successful, though I have not hesitated to lay under contribution every authority likely to promote my object. The state of the French capital, before the revolution, I have delineated from the notes I had myself collected ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... arduous struggle I went to bed, and slept more calmly than for several nights before. The next morning I wrote a farewell letter to Eliza, (a copy of which I shall enclose to you,) and, ordering my horse to ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... Lochiel, had long exercised the authority of a chieftain, before the Rebellion of 1745 entailed upon him a participation in occupations still more arduous. He had, in short, arrived at middle age when he was called upon to support ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... rich, are indispensable for our use; she charges accordingly. The time may come when we shall be more independent of her, and then, then only, she will conform to altered circumstances. The able and distinguished diplomatist at her court, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, who succeeded in the arduous task of negotiating the recent treaty of navigation with that crafty Government, is the man also who will not be slow to avail himself of any favourable conjuncture for turning circumstances to account, and redressing the adverse balance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... the dumb man down don't turn out no arduous task. It's doo mainly, however, because the pinto sticks a cactus thorn in its hoof an' goes lame in less time tharafter than it ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... illustrate and establish. This seems to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous: "to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the pioneer has always been arduous. Not all succeed, and many disappear leaving no trace on the pages of history. Here, painstaking search has uncovered enough of the record to permit us to review the errors of design and manufacture ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison

... usually fatal form of fever set in. Krishnu-pal, the first convert, who had for twenty years been a consistent Christian, was one of the first to be taken away. Dr. Carey himself, though exceedingly ill, recovered his former state of health, and continued his arduous labours, he being by this time the ablest philologist in India; but the little band had come to the time of life when "the clouds return after the rain," and in 1823 Mr. Ward died of cholera. For twenty-three years had the threefold cord between Carey, Marshman, and Ward, been unbroken. They ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... was not eating, sleeping, or scolding some one, she was engaged over the wash-tub. It might have puzzled an outsider to know what results she achieved from such arduous labor, for she scorned to take in washing as a profession; and neither she nor her good man, a certain lanky-looking Patrick O'Flaherty, were remarkable for the whiteness of their linen, or the general cleanliness of ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... himself in the first instance to the principal shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him—an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables—a piece of salt ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... the most part watching their women-folk at work. They were also to an astonishing extent mere spectators in the arduous work of hauling the cobles one by one on to the steep bank of shingle. A tackle hooked to one of the baulks of timber forming the staith was being hauled at by five women and two men! Two others were in a listless ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... recall them. Wherefore let them rest untold. I recollect nothing so well as the aspect of some fringed gentians, which we saw growing by the roadside, and which were so beautiful that I longed to turn back and pluck them. After an arduous journey, we arrived safe home in the afternoon of the second day,—the first time that I ever came home in my life; for I never had a home before. On Saturday of the same week, my friend D. R—— came to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... to the old ruins would be a very arduous and difficult one for all but the young and robust, were it not for the assistance that is afforded by the donkeys that are kept at the foot of every remarkable hill that travellers might be supposed desirous to ascend. These donkeys have a sort of chair fitted upon ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott

... praised the bold enthusiasm and liberal confidence of the barons and their deputies: in such a cause, and with such associates, he should aspire, were he a private man, to terminate his life; but he was the servant of the republic, and some delay was requisite to consult, on this arduous business, the judgment of his colleagues. The proposal of the French was first debated by the six sages who had been recently appointed to control the administration of the doge: it was next disclosed to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... reason, too, for she might be three hours gone; though, equally of course, only two, or perhaps—she was capable of anything unpleasant and unexpected—only one. He began to dress as quickly as he could; but, owing to long habit of doing it as slowly as he could so as to postpone more arduous tasks, that was not very fast. He wished he had known sooner that Julia was going to Halgrave, he would have begun getting up before this; he would even have got to breakfast if only she had let him know; so he fumed to himself as he shuffled about, dropping things with his shaking ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... certain temperaments that when they first face life they should run away from it as Mr. Wilson did when, having studied law and having been admitted to the bar, he abandoned practice and went to teach in a girls' school. That was the early sign in him of that sense of unfitness for the more arduous contacts of life which was so conspicuous a trait during his presidency. He could not endure meeting men on an equal footing, where there was a conflict of wills, a rough clash of minds, where no concession was made to ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... I say to myself, 'I must try not to be wedded to this practice: I hope to leave it off the moment it proves inexpedient.'.... I have taken to the Syrian gown and slippers; to walk actively in these is arduous and, I suppose, very singular. Here is a question: May not my bodily habit change with it? and may not that affect my mind?... The gown is ridiculously feminine, beyond what I had been aware; not merely in length and amplitude, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... word-painting, might have produced as perfect a gem of English description as this. But who besides of our contemporaries has? To my mind, it is the proof of the perfection of the technical skill in expression to which Field arrived through arduous years, softened and refined by the emotions of affection and gratitude which swept over him as he thought of her who had been a mother to him. It has its counterpart in the succeeding description of the Pelham hills, in which "the yonder glimpse of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... was overgrown with brambles, the roof-tree of the ruined house lay on the ground; and Jean, bearing his heavy burden of affliction with humble resignation, went his way, his face set resolutely toward the future, toward the glorious and arduous task that lay before him and his countrymen, to create a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... are, of course, mainly journals and letters. How much I shall quote and how much epitomize must be determined by considerations of space. The proper understanding of the situation has necessitated a little—not very arduous—research, which has been greatly facilitated by the excellent illustrations and text of the Barchester volume in ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... imported from the banks of the Danube, compared with which their mute relations, the emigrants from Exeter 'Change, and Polito (late Pidcock's) show-carts, were tame and inoffensive. Could an heroic project, at once so refined and so arduous, be consistently entrusted to, could its success be rationally expected from, a mercenary manager, at whose critical quarantine the lucri bonus odor would conciliate a bill of health to the plague in person? No! As the work proposed, such must be the work-masters. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... construction of regular galleries and shafts for the entrance of skilled workmen, and to remove the rubbish displaced to the outer air. Perhaps some multi-millionaire might be found ready to undertake so arduous, yet so fascinating a task, though we fear that the Italian Government, which has always shown itself as tenacious of its subterranean wealth of antiquity as it appears languid in the work of quarrying it, would indignantly refuse to accede to any such offer. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun. Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You don't know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... our noisy visitors always departed, leaving only their footprints. Early next morning, while the green moon was still shining (the color of this heavenly orb perplexed us, it was a pure bottle green), each one arose to his work. This was no pleasure excursion, and duties, many and arduous, lay before the explorers. The hunter sallied forth with his gun, and returned laden with pheasant and mountain hen, and over his shoulder a fine duck, which, unfortunately, however, had already begun to smell—the heat was so intense. In his wanderings ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... party at Mr. Wharton's table was only three, and they were all of them men who, under the rough exterior induced by actual and arduous service, concealed the manners of gentlemen. Consequently, the interruption to the domestic privacy of the family was marked by the observance of strict decorum. The ladies left the table to their guests, who proceeded, without much superfluous diffidence, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... honor, from his long and terrible administration. His own letters, on the contrary, accused the King of ingratitude, in permitting an old soldier to ruin himself, not only in health but in fortune, for want of proper recompense during an arduous administration. At any rate it is very certain that the rebellion had already been an expensive matter to the Crown. The army in the Netherlands numbered more than sixty-two thousand men, eight thousand being Spaniards, the rest Walloons ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the enemy, their clansmen will as surely follow them; in fine, that having drawn the sword we should throw away the scabbard, and trust our cause to battle and to the God of battles. Will Mr. Waverley favour us with his opinion in these arduous circumstances?' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... manual of literature. But for most of us we may gaze until our eyeballs twitch with weariness; unless we seize and hold the flying picture in some steadfast memorandum, the greater part of our experience dissolves away with time. If a man has thought sufficiently about the arduous and variously rewarded profession of literature to propose seriously to follow it for a living, he will already have said these things to himself, with more force and pungency. He may have satisfied himself ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... scientific readers who, after a lifelong study of the habits of these creatures may feel impelled to question the accuracy of my statements and add to my perplexities by so advertising my book that I shall be put to the arduous necessity of chiseling out another edition, a labor which I have no desire ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... which had been so long detached, engaged in the arduous and thankless duty of guarding the wagon-trains, rejoined Dwight's division. Brigadier-General James D. Fessenden having succeeded Currie in command the 5th of January, 1865, the brigade was again detached to Winchester; McMillan was at Summit Point; and Beal, as ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... of Burlington Bay is an arduous and very expensive undertaking. The opening from Lake Ontario was formerly liable to great changes and fluctuations, and the provincial work, originally undertaken to fix the entrance more permanently, was ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... himself from nothing to a principality, which, though petty, might compare with many of some name in Italy—with Carpi, for example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet in the prime of life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events restored Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 1529, Il Medeghino refused to obey his old lord. Pretending to move under the Duke's orders, but really ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... and, again commending the tale, rose: it was time to re-embark—an operation less arduous than before, for in the present state of the tide it was easy to bring the cutter so close to a low rock that even Lady ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... attracted general attention from those occupying that part of the grand stand. The young officer who had accompanied Susan to the races was angrily confronting a thick-set man, the latest recruit to her corps of willing captives. The lad had assumed the arduous task of guarding the object of his fancy from all comers, simply because she had been kind. And why should she not have been?—he was only a boy—she was old enough to be—well, an adviser! When, after ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... beings. The verses seem to have been hammered out on an anvil, by blows from a blacksmith's sledge. In all parts of the book is manifest the agony it cost the writers to find two words that would rhyme—-more or less; and so often as this arduous feat is achieved, the poetic athlete appears to pause awhile from sheer exhaustion, panting heavily for breath. Let us now read, for our improvement, a part of the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... that morning to the task of investigating the symbolical fauna of the Middle Ages. At first sight the subject had struck him as newer and less arduous, and certainly as less lengthy, than the article he had thought of writing on the Primitive German Painters. But he now sat dismayed before his books and notes, seeking a clue to guide him through the mass of contradictory ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... them days, I'm a heap arduous about the dance-hall. I gets infatyooated with the good fellowship of that hurdygurdy; an' even after I leaves Tucson an' is camped some miles away, I saddles up every other evenin', rides in an', as says the poet, "shakes ontirin' laig even into ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... it was requisite to search out the means by which I might effect it. These were not clearly or readily suggested. The more I contemplated my project, the more numerous and arduous its difficulties appeared. I had no associates in my undertaking. A due regard to my safety, and the unextinguished sense of honour, deterred me from seeking auxiliaries and co-agents. The esteem of mankind was the spring of all ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... mines and paid nearly all the taxes, complained that the laws made by the Boers were unjust and oppressive. They demanded the right to vote. The Boers, on the other hand, refused to give them that right, except under arduous restrictions, lest the foreigners should get the upper hand in the Transvaal Republic, and then manage it ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... through natural selection will disappear. For whenever, through changes of climate, or of altitude, or of the nature of the soil, or of the area of the country, any species are exposed to new dangers, and have to maintain themselves and provide for the safety of their offspring under new and more arduous conditions, then, in the variability of all parts, organs, and structures, no less than of habits and intelligence, we have the means of producing modifications which will certainly bring the species into harmony with ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... public speaking is so simple that it is difficult. There is an erroneous impression that in order to make a successful speech a man must have unusual natural talent in addition to long and arduous study. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser

... on the 12th of November 1882. During her husband's lifetime the young queen kept studiously apart from politics, so much so that her inexperience caused much anxiety in November 1885, when she was called upon to take the arduous duties of regent. During the long minority of the posthumous son of Alphonso XII., afterwards King Alphonso XIII., the Austrian queen-regent acted in a way that obliged even the adversaries of the throne and the dynasty to respect the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... and it is probable that the pleasures of the table, in which no man more joyously engaged, shortened his life. To write the life of a great man is no easy task, and to write that of a big one may be no less arduous. Whether the Alderman really expected to be held up to future fame by the Biographer of Johnson, cannot be very easily ascertained; however that wish and expectation, if it ever existed, was completely frustrated by the death of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... we bade adieu (an eternal one, alas! for many of the gallant souls assembled) to the comrades we were leaving behind; the band struck up, and we set off in high spirits on our long and arduous march of ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... arduous labor of making sail over for the time, was devoting his energies to the task of piecing out from what Theriere had told him and what he had overheard outside the skipper's cabin some sort of explanation ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... honest and faithful to his purpose. I was not. He saw one object far in the distance before him, and looked neither to the right nor left, but dug his arduous way towards it. He craved not the false excitement of temporary applause, nor deemed the opinion of weak men essential to his design. He had a sacred duty to perform, which left him not the choice of action, and he performed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... his time and attention. A great many people, if they happened to have their feelings touched by some scene of distress, seemed to think they had fulfilled their whole duty by sending the sufferer to Isaac T. Hopper. Few can imagine what an arduous task it is to be such a thorough philanthropist as he was. Whoever wishes for a crown like his, must earn it by carrying the martyr's cross through life. They must make up their minds to relinquish their whole time to such pursuits; they must be prepared to encounter ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... clothes of Jimmie Dale; and, when half dressed, turned to the table again to remove the characteristic grime, stain, and paint of Larry the Bat from face, hands, wrists, throat, and neck. This was a longer, more arduous task. He reached for the cracked pitcher to pour more water into the basin—and, snatching up his revolver instead, whirled ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... most difficult of Plato's dialogues, that one must often wait long for the hour when one is strong enough to grapple with and master it, but sooner or later the fitting morning will come. It is the morning which gives us faith in the most arduous achievements, and invigorates us to undertake them. In the morning all things are possible because the heavens and the earth are so visibly united in the fellowship of common life; the one pouring down a measureless and penetrating tide of vitality, the other eagerly, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie



Words linked to "Arduous" :   difficult, effortful



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