"Toiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become very familiar to us all by its use in a musical service, the Nunc Dimittis; 'Now Thou dost send away' It is the technical word for relieving a sentry from his post. It conveys the idea of the hour having come when the slave who has been on the watch through all the long, weary night, or toiling through all the hot, dusty day, may extinguish his lantern, or fling down his mattock, and go home to his little hut. 'Lord! Thou dost dismiss me now, and I take the dismission as the end of the long watch, as the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have been toiling at them for years, Percival; you know that I began them before I left college, that I regarded them as the chief work of my life, and that I devoted to them every moment of my leisure. You know, too, the pride and pleasure which I took in their progress, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Berlaymonts. Meantime, with a blast of his horn, Don John appeared at the castle gate. He entered the fortress with the castellan, while one of the gentlemen watched outside, as the ambushed soldiers came toiling up the precipice. When all was ready the gentleman returned to the hall, and made a signal to Don John, as he sat at breakfast with the constable. The Governor sprang from the table and drew his sword; Berlaymont and his four sons drew their pistols, while at the same instant, the soldiers entered. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned, Since the first man stood God-conquered with his ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the dust. A traveller in Palestine, if he had wings, could easily pass through the whole land by short flights from the summit of one holy hill to another, and look down from a series of mountain-altars upon the wrinkled map of sacred history without once descending into the valley or toiling over the plain. But since there are no wings provided in the human outfit, our journey from shrine to shrine must follow the common way of men,—which is also a symbol,—the path of up-and-down, and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight Of ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... elements—with his attitudes. Most of his thoughts, on that first occasion, were beyond me, because I had not yet learned to interpret the personal symbolism in which he thought. But I did understand his attitudes. There was Carter, for instance, toiling away out in the large laboratory; I saw at once what a plodding, unintelligent drudge he seemed to van Manderpootz. And there was Miss Fitch; I confess that she had always seemed unattractive to me, but my impression of her was Venus herself beside that ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Toiling in Town now is "horrid," (There is that woman again!)— June in the zenith is torrid, Thought gets dry ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... forth; the glare of day falls upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, tossing willows, the seething waters, the whirling rain, and in the midst the small form of the distressed steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to lighten the strain upon her anchor-chains; then all are dim ghosts again, while a peal, as if the heavens were rent, rolls off around the sky, comes back in shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that before it can ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... nearly so immortal as you think you are is proved by these winter chills along the spine. There come occasions when you get tired of your own stars and long to feel the thrill of that royal life-blood that leaps like a ruby river of love through the grimy, toiling, battling humanitarian world beneath you. Did you once intimate to me that if ever I conjured you out of the shadows which seem to surround you, I should be horrified at ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... castle's walls from Scotland's power, And leave her brave to bleed, her fair to weep; When Husbac fierce, and Olave, Mona's king,[5] Confederate chiefs, with shout and triumphing, Bade o'er its towers the Scaldic raven fly, And mock each storm-tost sea-king toiling by!— Far different were the days, When flew the fiery cross, with summoning blaze, O'er Blane's hill, and o'er Catan, and o'er Kames, And round thy peak the phalanx'd Butesmen stood,[6] As Bruce's followers shed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... father God had never poured the divine petroleum of authority. He had not the misfortune to belong to the upper classes. He had the fortune to be born among the poor and to feel against his great heart the throb of the toiling and suffering masses. Neither was it his misfortune to have been educated at Oxford. What little sense he had was not squeezed out at Westminster. He got his education from books. He got his education from ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... crimson, in the forms of blue and red shirted miners bending steadily over pickax and shovel, reminding one involuntarily of the muck-gatherer in The Pilgrim's Progress. But no; that is an unjust association of ideas, for many of these men are toiling thus wearily for laughing-lipped children, calm-browed wives, or saintly mothers, gathering around the household hearth in some far-away country. Even among the few now remaining on the river there are wanderers from the whole broad earth, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... over with good fellowship were the tones, so short, yet so deeply affectionate that Mac instinctively felt much more lighthearted as he stumbled across the shattered battlefield to the thin line of toiling, hard-pressed fighters, close to the rim where the cliff fell away on the Dardanelles side. He found a line of shallow holes, some a foot deep, some eighteen inches, aided a little by a few almost useless sandbags. The cliff brink was six or eight yards away, and under ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... resting and toiling again, we wore away the morning; and about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Alan took the first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second. We had no clock to go by; and Alan stuck a ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evening—such an evening as, from its deep quiet and unusual softness, leaves a lasting impression on the memory—the two horsemen found themselves slowly toiling up the steep acclivity of a mountain-ridge. Their advance was toilsome, for the way was rugged, and no track of any kind assisted them ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... being done?" he thought. "Why am I standing here, making them work? What are they all so busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam fell on her in the fire)" he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain, moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven, rough floor. "Then she recovered, but today or tomorrow or ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... cowardice, cruelty, all that springs From Death the Sin-born's incest with his mother,[326] In rank oppression in its rudest shape, The faction Chief is but the Sultan's brother, And the worst Despot's far less human ape. Florence! when this lone spirit, which so long Yearned, as the captive toiling at escape, To fly back to thee in despite of wrong, 130 An exile, saddest of all prisoners,[327] Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong, Seas, mountains, and the horizon's[328] verge for bars,[cn] Which shut him from the sole small spot of earth Where—whatsoe'er his fate—he still were ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... understood the spirit of the age, and had the keenest instinct to keep themselves in the advance by moving fastest in the direction whither it was marshalling all men. There were many, earnest, hard-toiling men in those days, men who believed in the work to which they devoted their lives. Perhaps, too, the devil-worshippers did their master's work as strenuously and heartily as any, and got fame and pelf for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... her beauty. She is all white, yet with streaks of pink that pass through her streets and houses like flames in the white mind of a sculptor, like desire in Paradise. She hath been carved of old out of a holy hill, no slaves wrought the City of Marvel, but artists toiling at the work they loved. They took no pattern from the houses of men, but each man wrought what his inner eye had seen and carved in marble the visions of his dream. All over the roof of one of the palace chambers winged ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... broken only by an occasional and equally dreary dom palm; past barren ledges of rock, deserted mud villages and ruined temples; battling madly with a rapid, only to find when it was overcome that another lay ahead; toiling strenuously to catch up with the enemy, only to see at nightfall their spearheads disappearing over the last brown ridge of sand hills. Scotty felt himself becoming a machine, something that did the day's work mechanically. To toil all day in the bow ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... evolution. It never has been surpassed—I venture to say it never can be—except possibly by the tape-worms. I can never help thinking with what contempt these primitive oysters, if they had had brains enough, would have looked down upon the toiling, struggling, discontented, fighting, aspiring primitive vertebrates. How they would have wondered why God allowed such disagreeable, disturbing, unconventional creatures to exist, and thanked him that he had ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... though the ship be heavily rolling. The woman is vexed that I sleep in my den. She will surely be wrath if here I abide while others are toiling ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... Two toiling ones of sober age (Their bet with Care a losing wager); They own, though now so very sage, They might have been ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... it has all been a piece of folly," insisted Converse. "Dear folly! Yes, almost noble folly! But it must end, my boy. I suppose your father is back there toiling to repay those men ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... those hills, inhaling the fragrance of the fields, while the summer fly buzzed above me, or the grasshopper leaped into my bosom, and how I have gazed with half-shut eye upon the smoky mass of London, and listened to the distant sound of its population, and pitied the poor sons of earth toiling in its bowels, like Gnomes ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... toiling men blind with sweat, blazing African sun, appalling isolation, vultures and jackals at work behind the dunes, and—back of all—ocean and Sahara, made a picture fit for any master-painter. We must throw only one glance ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... loving some one more than oneself! And oh, the blessedness of toiling together for something greater and more important than either! That is what makes it possible for the other thing to endure—not merely for a few mad, glad years, followed by drab duty and dull regret, but for ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... had unpacked it and packed it up again some thirty times he was offered work. His pictures were really rather agreeable. It was piecework, and he was to do it off the premises, no matter where. By toiling day and night he might be able to earn as much as L4 a week. He went away and toiled. His employers were pleased with what, each Monday, he brought them. They did not offer to increase his remuneration, but they encouraged ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... clad, blind of one eye, lame on one leg, and with her hair brushed into one large curl to hide the blind eye—but in vain, the defect was only the more conspicuous. This was "Lame Maren," as the neighbors called her, a friend of the washerwoman's. "Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names"—for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother— "hard that your boy should be told ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... sole resource to sell at once [29] A portion of his patrimonial fields. Such was his first resolve; he thought again, 230 And his heart failed him. "Isabel," said he, Two evenings after he had heard the news, "I have been toiling more than seventy years, And in the open sunshine of God's love Have we all lived; yet if these fields of ours 235 Should pass into a stranger's hand, I think That I could not lie quiet in my grave. Our lot is a hard lot; the sun himself [30] Has scarcely ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... But a heavy toiling of steps up the stairs checked her words. That slow tread was not her big Danny nor the young Dale! At a knock she flew ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... able to see they concluded that not one of the three missing members of the party was disabled. They were all toiling slowly up the sloping side, and it was soon manifest that every one was able to make the effort ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... are some people who do not care to sample their Spring at Kew or in the country either, but prefer to go to San Remo or spend Saturday afternoon toiling in their own back-garden. Let them mind their peas, I say, while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... question, that the unbearable miseries which have their source in the heartless exactions of excessive wealth, or extreme poverty, are more than sixty per cent. greater in New England than in these States, and that one hundred and thirty-five per cent. more of New England's toiling millions have to bear the degradation of the poor-house, or die of want, than are to be found in this condition ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... leathern valise, with a few changes of linen, and his coarse frieze great-coat were strapped on behind. Such was a typical example of the "clerical cavalry" who, in the early years of this century, ranged through the wilderness of Canada, fording or swimming rivers, toiling through forests and swamps, and carrying the gospel of Christ to the remotest settlers ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... hand in hand we see them still, When the sun had drunk up the dew; They were toiling steadfastly up the hill, Ever keeping ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... fun, Jack assured her when, soon after dinner, he came toiling up the grass path and ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... having its hoop-rolling. This is the way a senior hoop-rolling is managed: custom decrees that it may take place on any afternoon of senior week, which is the week before commencement when the seniors' work is over though the rest of the classes are still toiling over their June exams. Some morning a senior who feels particularly young and frolicsome suggests to her friends at chapel that, as the time-honored official notice ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... definite purpose in view, and this purpose will reveal itself to the eyes of all of its philanthropic readers. The true aim of the story is to make life more real and pleasant to the young girls who spend the greater part of the day toiling in the busy stores of New York. Just as in the 'What-to-do Club' the social level of village life was lifted several grades higher, so are the little friendly circles of shop-girls made to enlarge and form clubs ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... herd of the former, but could not get near to them. After walking fifteen miles we encamped. The men's provision having been entirely expended last night, we shared our small stock with them. The poor dogs had been toiling some days on the most scanty fare; their rapacity, in consequence, was unbounded; they forced open a deal box, containing tea, &c., to get at a small piece of meat which had been incautiously ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... perhaps, than in any other region of the globe. Within their respective spheres of influence each power undertook detailed surveys, and the most solid of the latest accessions to knowledge have resulted from the labours of hard-working colonial officials toiling individually in obscurity. Their work it is impossible here to recognize adequately; the following lines record only ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... indeed, it far surpasses that structure. And then we returned to the Mission House and spent a very pleasant evening, save for the knowledge (which amounted in me to remorse) that, had it not been for my edification, not one of my friends would have spent the day toiling about the town they know only too well. The Wesleyan Mission on the Gold Coast, of which Mr. Dennis Kemp was at that time chairman, is the largest and most influential Protestant mission on the West Coast of Africa, and it ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... wherewithal to 'gladden the heart of man,' while the manufactures of New England and the Middle States shall furnish the implements of labor to the brethren all over the continent, and turn the raw material both of the South and of their own sheep-feeding hills into garments for the toiling millions of America. Here, then, we shall produce, as no other country can, the great staples of life; and when we add to them those considerable minor interests which we share more equally with the rest of the world, namely, wool-growing and mining, as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sons of Antiope, daughter of Asopus, Amphion and Zethus, and Thebe still ungirt with towers was lying near, whose foundations they were just then laying in eager haste. Zethus on his shoulders was lifting the peak of a steep mountain, like a man toiling hard, and Amphion after him, singing loud and clear on his golden lyre, moved on, and a rock twice as large ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... announcement we never knew. But the "p'tit bateau" worked magically. The figure of Mere Mouchard materialized at once into such zeal, such effusion, such a zest of welcome, that we, our bags, and our coachman were on the instant toiling up a pair of spiral wooden stairs. There was quite a little crowd to fill the all-too-narrow landing at the top of the steep steps, a crowd that ended in a long line of waiters and serving-maids, each grasping a remnant of luggage. Our hostess, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Constitution; How the Autumnal season I do sway, And how I force the gray-head to obey, I should here make a short, yet true narration. But that thy method is mine imitation Now must I shew mine adverse quality, And how I oft work man's mortality; He sometimes finds, maugre his toiling pain Thistles and thorns where he expected grain. My sap to plants and trees I must not grant, The vine, the olive, and the fig tree want: The Corn and Hay do fall before the're mown, And buds from fruitfull trees as soon as blown; Then dearth prevails, that nature to suffice The Mother on her ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... they themselves have no more share in the former than in the latter. For their part, they do not hate. They are the sacrifice; and those only hate who have ordered the sacrifice. Peoples poisoned by lies, by the press, by alcohol, and by harlots. Toiling masses, who must now unlearn the lesson of labour. Generous-hearted masses, who must now unlearn the lesson of brotherly love. Masses deliberately demoralised, given over to corruption while still alive, slain. Beloved peoples of Europe, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... a perfect whirl of excitement and delight, as she always was, with anything in the shape of reins in her hand. But just then she looked back and saw Joy toiling on slowly behind the others; Billy with his head hanging and his spirits quite gone. Gypsy stopped a moment as if in thought, and then rode slowly ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... stood or grew upon it as thoroughly as she dared. Towards noon she was standing by the little gate at the back of the house, unwilling to go in, but not knowing what more to do, when Mr. Van Brunt came from the lane with a load of wood. Ellen watched the oxen toiling up the ascent, and thought it looked like very hard work; she was ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... pointing to the honeycombed ground on which the greatest modern money-power has been built. The fundament of this power is not granite, but mines. It lives and breathes in the light, because it has thousands of unfortunates toiling in the darkness. It lives and has its being in proud liberty because thousands are slaving for it, whose thraldom is the ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Pinchas, you're a very clever fellow, I know, and I'm very glad to have you with us—but remember I have organized this movement for years, planned it out as I sat toiling in Belcovitch's machine-room, written on it till I've got the cramp, spoken on it till I was hoarse, given evidence before innumerable Commissions. It is I who have stirred up the East-End Jews and sent the echo of their ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... one and all, so relieved by his words that they were doubly strong, but after toiling like giants for a while they were compelled to pause for breath. In falling the boat had so buried herself in the sand that she was harder to move than ever. It had seemed simple enough at first, but it was not so simple, ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... few of M. Renan's English admirers who do not share the regret. At the same time, there, for all to see, is the long life as it was lived—of the ever-toiling scholar and thinker, the devoted husband and brother, the admirable friend. And certainly, during the Oxford visit I remember, M. Renan was at his best. He was in love— apparently—with Oxford, and his charm, his gaiety, played over all that we presented ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you have hewed or crept your toiling way, you see, some yards or some hundred yards, as the forest is close or open, before you, a light blue curling smoke amongst the dank and lugubrious scene; you hear a dull, distant, heavy, sudden ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... watching a carriage that was toiling up the hill from the valley, and had just come through the wood. "Are we to have a visit?" he exclaimed with ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... nameless artist, whose work of many toiling days, and many sleepless nights, has been sent in unprotected to take its chance. He knows nothing of its fate until he can get a catalogue. It may be on the line in the east room; it may be above the octagon-room ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... Still is the toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, 25 Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon: Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... children, and the splash of homeward oars, came clearer and clearer to the ear at every stroke: and as we rowed on, arose the recollection of many a brave and wise friend, whose lot was cast in no such western paradise, but rather in the infernos of this sinful earth, toiling even then amid the festering alleys of Bermondsey and Bethnal Green, to palliate death and misery which they had vainly laboured to prevent, watching the strides of that very cholera which they had been striving for years to ward off, now re-admitted ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... and physique of the men and women. Having done this, an impartial observer is bound to remark that industrial and commercial Germany is taking a tremendous toll for the rapid progress she has made. It may be no worse here than elsewhere, but neither has the problem of a healthy, happy, toiling population been satisfactorily solved here, though perhaps better here than elsewhere. I have heard the women and girls in factories singing at their work, but the bird is no less caged ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... if all men were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat woman, limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited by false theories, limited by bigotry and by creeds, listening to the tramp of the weary millions as they passed on through the centuries, patiently toiling and waiting, humbly bearing the pain and weariness ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... 'Action-Drama' (or 'Tragi-Comedy') of modern times. Accordingly the costume and mask of Hercules are compounded, of his conventional appearance in Tragedy, in which he is conceived as the perfection of physical strength toiling and suffering for mankind, and his conventional appearance in Satyric plays as the gigantic feeder, etc. The two are harmonized in the conception of conscious energy rejoicing in itself, and plunging with equal eagerness into duty and relaxation, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... to most fisherfolk to know any more than the bare comforts of life. Theirs is an existence of ceaseless toiling, ceaseless danger, and very poor reward. Hardship is their daily lot, and it requires a great incentive to bring them to a full stop in ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... experienced year after year for eighteen years in the harvest field, I might say twenty years, for I worked as hard in England as I do at home, for in the harvest, wherever I am there is no rest for me. If I am guilty of no rascality why should I not be compensated for toiling to introduce an invention which I thought to be of so much advantage to the World. I know I was the first one who successfully accomplished the cutting of grain and grass by machinery. If others tried to do it before me it was not doing it; being the first who ever ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... darkness, so congenial to their habits and occupations, the Uzcoques began to recover from their alarm, and the murmur of voices was again heard as they seized the sacks, and hastily filled them with the various objects lying on the beach. Every thing being collected, the pirates commenced toiling their way up the steep mountain path leading to the castle, with the exception of a few who still lingered at the entrance of the cavern, and whom the prisoners could hear disputing about some point on which there seemed to exist much difference ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Clement's-lane, Nicholas-lane, and Abchurch-lane at the same time, destroying all in its course. The whole of Lombard-street was choked up with the ruins and rubbish of demolished houses, through which thousands of persons were toiling to carry off goods, either for the purpose of assistance or of plunder. The king was at the west end of the street, near the church of Saint Mary Woolnoth, and the fearful havoc and destruction going ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... were you but a laboring man, toiling daily for the bread you eat, you would be contented, feeling that you were fulfilling your appointed duty to the utmost," she impulsively said; "but, Archibald, can you not still be a busy man at West Lynne, although you ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Khan, then recently converted, took him to his own room, and reasoned with him till late at night. Sabbath morning found him not only fixed in his rebellion, but toiling to prevent others coming to Christ. At noon Miss Fiske went to the room where he was. (The two lower windows on the right of the engraving of the Seminary mark the place.) He sat in the only chair there, and never offered her ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... regularly paid taxation every year, and have we not supplied the Treasury with money to provide free education for Dutch children in the "Free" State and Transvaal, while we had to find additional money to pay the school fees of our own children? Are not many of us toiling in the grain fields and fruit farms, with their wives and their children, for the white man's benefit? Did not our people take care of the white women — all the white women, including Boer fraus — whose ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... landlord, and, finally, perhaps, the president of a bank; while a workman in a factory handling a wheelbarrow may afterward become the president of the greatest corporation in the world, the clerk, toiling over his papers and his books, is almost inevitably sentenced to a lifetime of similar toil, with small opportunities ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... however, has not been rare; it is the abundance of such personality that has built up silently into the rising fabric of the American Commonwealth, pioneers, roadmakers, traders, lawyers, soldiers, teachers, toiling terribly over the material and moral foundation of the country, few of whose names have emerged or survived. Lincoln was of this stock, was reared among these rude energetic folk, had lived all those sorts of lives. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... of Virginia, and it raises to the throne of grace an ardent wish for his safe return. Oh, that he may make no change of land except for the better! Then do my thoughts rest with my dear mother, toiling unremittingly through the long day and at eve, seated in her arm-chair, wrapt in solemn stillness, and later reclining on her lonely pillow. How often, when I am enjoying the sweet hour of twilight, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Eskimos, were utterly weary. Finally frequent stops were necessary to rest the poor toiling brutes, and we were glad to take advantage of each opportunity to throw ourselves at full length on the snow-covered ice for a moment's repose. Sometimes we would walk ahead of the komatik and lie down until it overtook us, frequently falling asleep ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... short. Their tunnel had begun to slope gently downward, with niches gouged here and there for the passing of burden-bearers. Rudolph, toiling after, suddenly found his head entangled ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... vision, that of the "Field Full of Folk," the poet lies down on the Malvern Hills on a May morning, and a vision comes to him in sleep. On the plain beneath him gather a multitude of folk, a vast crowd expressing the varied life of the world. All classes and conditions are there; workingmen are toiling that others may seize all the first fruits of their labor and live high on the proceeds; and the genius of the throng is Lady Bribery, a powerfully drawn figure, expressing the corrupt social life of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. And when, even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourths watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed: by them. But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... to witness the progress of which hundreds of thousands of people densely crowded the streets and clustered in the windows and on every available eminence along the route; while in Cheapside almost all the shops were shut and business was suspended; and in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch toiling thousands of artisans came forth from factory and workshop to "see the last of Braidwood," whose name had been so long familiar to them as a "household word." The whole heart of London seemed to have been moved by one feeling, and the thousands who thronged the streets "had" (in ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... commenced. This was bad enough, but though there was little of it remaining, that little was in our teeth. We however hauled our wind, and tried to beat up. When the sea went down we got the oars out, and, lowering the sails, pulled head to wind. It was greatly trying to the men, to know that after toiling away for hours, the entire distance gained might be lost in a quarter of the time. Still, as British seamen always do, they persevered. McAllister and I took our turn at the oars with the rest. For several ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... in the Lord, that you shall reap no other thing of all your labours and endeavours after the flesh, all your toiling and perplexing cares, all your excessive pains in the making provision for your lusts, and caring for the body only, you shall reap no other harvest of all, but death and corruption. Death, you think that is a common lot, and you cannot eschew ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... tremendous changes were occurring in the West, unconscious as toiling insects the various peoples in Russia were preparing for an unknown future. The Bulgarians were occupying large spaces in the South. The Finns, who had been driven by the Bulgarians from their home upon the Volga, had centered ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... was time for the first bell for dinner. The villa's omnibus was toiling up the winding road among the grape-vines. Suddenly Harrigan tilted his head sidewise, and the long silken ears of the dachel stirred. The Italian slowly closed his book and permitted his chair to settle on its four legs. The ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... classical world never contrived to do without the galley slave—and a certain restricted help from oxen in ploughing, and from horses in locomotion, all the energy that sustained the old-fashioned State was derived from the muscular exertion of toiling men. They ran their world by hand. Continual bodily labour was a condition of social existence. It is only with the coming of coal burning, of abundant iron and steel, and of scientific knowledge that this condition has been changed. To-day, I suppose, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... terror—numbers of the inhabitants became panic-struck, and actually packed up their furniture and valuables, and commenced a hasty exodus believing that they would be safer inland than by the seaboard. I saw cartload after cartload of goods, toiling up Prescot-road, Brownlow-hill, Mount Pleasant, Oldhall-street, and Preston-road, accompanied by weeping and terrified women and children, with the deepest anxiety exhibited on their countenances. The outskirt roads were like a fair. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... me, wherefore haste we not Away to this delightful land, instead Of toiling here, and struggling ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... nearly thirty offices in the building, there were of course in winter as many fires, and as many coal-scuttles required. When the eyes of the devoted Matthew gazed on the object of his heart's desire toiling up the well-stair, he felt he knew not what; and, with a heart palpitating with the apprehension that his proffered service might be rejected (poor deluded mortal!), he begged he might assist her. With a glance that he thought ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... and well-advertised endeavors to substitute a moral relationship of nations for the state of latent warfare known as the balance of power were steadily wasted. On the one side the subtle skill of Old World diplomacy was toiling hard and successfully to revive under specious names its lost and failing causes, while on the other hand the New World policy, naively ignoring historical forces and secular prejudices, was boldly reaching out toward rough and ready modes of arranging things and taking no account of concrete ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... He had been toiling at that business in the city now a long while. Sharley knew nothing about business, but she had fancied that, even though his "prospects" were not good, he must be ready now to think of a home of his own,—at least that he would give her ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... tracks that trap the stranger, endless roads that gleam and glare, Dark and evil-looking gullies, hiding secrets here and there! Dull dumb flats and stony rises, where the toiling bullocks bake, And the sinister 'gohanna', and the lizard, and the snake. Land of day and night — no morning freshness, and no afternoon, When the great white sun in rising bringeth summer heat in June. Dismal country for the exile, ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... stream that flowed from the well of Neamhtach or Pearly. But he was told it was this stream that had turned the first water mill in Ireland and that Cormac had put up the mill to save a beautiful bond-maid from toiling at the quern. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the gale blew on, accompanied with much thunder and lightning, and it was not till noon of the 9th that I descried my palkee-boat toiling down the stream. Then I again embarked, taking the lagging boat in tow of my own. Passing the mouths of the Cosi, the gale and currents were so adverse that we had to bring up on the sand, when the quantity which drifted into the boat rendered the delay as disagreeable as it was tedious. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... up from their sleep and saw that the doom of Medusa had been accomplished. The snakes hissed as they rose in knotted clusters round their heads, and the Gorgons gnashed their teeth in fury, not for any love of the mortal maiden whose woes were ended, but because a child of weak and toiling men had dared to approach the daughters of Phorkos and Keto. Swifter than the eagles they sped from their gloomy cave, but they sought in vain to find Perseus, for the helmet of Hades was on his head, and the sandals of the nymphs were bearing him through the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was visible, and the squaws and children could be seen passing to and fro through the sort of street or highway. Many of the warriors were gathered in groups, and reclined upon the ground, lazily chatting; while their far better halves were patiently toiling and drudging at the most difficult ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... his company reached before dawn the snake-like ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town, through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they came in ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... I caught her toiling at something, and she admitted being at work on a poem which would be about half as long as the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." She read me the opening lines, after that bland habit of young writer; and as nearly as I recollect, they ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... much of the province of Chung-Chong-Do as the Italy of Korea, but its beauty and prosperity required seeing to be believed. It afforded an amazing contrast to the dirt and apathy of Seoul. Here every one worked. In the fields the young women were toiling in groups, weeding or harvesting. The young men were cutting bushes on the hillsides, the father of the family preparing new ground for the fresh crop, and the very children frightening off the birds. At home the housewife was busy with her children and preparing ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... window-recesses, and after in vain struggling with the difficulties of his task, and his disinclination to learn it, he found himself involuntarily engaged in watching the movements of the other two students, instead of toiling ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands, poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toiling up hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would have said, as I have said, "Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance! Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism! Oh that Madam How would teach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run than ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... list. Among the voters he discovered a Paul Cezanne, who was born January 19, 1839, who lived at 25 Rue Boulegon. Bernard lost no time and reached a simple dwelling house with the name of the painter on the door. He rang. The door opened. He entered and mounted a staircase. Ahead of him, slowly toiling upward, was an old man in a cloak and carrying a portfolio. It was Cezanne. After he had explained the reason for his visit, the old painter cried: "You are Emile Bernard! You are a maker of biographies! Signac"—an impressionist—"told ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... general spied an officer on horseback toiling through the snowdrifts toward him. As the horseman drew nearer, he recognized ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the others, we flung ourselves down in a hay-field and watched the now continuous stream of men, batteries, transport lorries, and ambulance cars coming up the hill leading from Villequier Aumont, and toiling past us towards Ugny. There was no doubting it now: it was a retreat on a ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... before I heard a puffing and blowing behind. The sound proved to come from Jonah Wall, who was toiling after me, laden with a large basket. I had no eagerness for Jonah's society, but rejoiced to see the basket; for my private store of food and wine had run low, and if a man is to find out what he wants to know, it is well for him to have a pasty ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... his return! I was afraid that some of the savages might be lying in wait, and might catch him. My ear watched for the sound of his footsteps. Five—ten minutes—a quarter of an hour passed away. At last I thought I heard the breathing of a person toiling up a hill. It might be a savage, though. I kept my rifle ready, in case it should prove an enemy. To my great satisfaction it proved to be Ben. He came loaded with bread-fruits and cocoa-nuts, and what was undoubtedly ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... written as glistening among the "leafy tide of greenery," and on the ripening corn-fields and gaily-painted flowers in the country, was penetrating also the close streets of one of the poorest parts of London, cheering some of the hearts of the weary toiling ones there, into whose lives little sunshine ever fell, and for a while, it may be, helping them to forget the misery of their lot, or to some recalling happier days when they dwelt not in a narrow, crowded street, but in a country village ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... and Barney travel through the land on horseback, now galloping over open campos, anon threading their way through the forest, and sometimes toiling slowly up the mountain sides. The aspect of the country varied continually as they advanced, and the feelings of excessive hilarity with which they commenced the journey began to subside as they became accustomed ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... tumult or sedition, labor, watching, fasting, and so on! No mass here, no vigil, no hallucinations of a fictitious service of God; it is the true service of God, which subdues the body and mortifies the flesh. Not, indeed, as if fasting, watching and toiling are to be despised because they do not make just. Though we are not thereby justified, we must nevertheless practice those things, instead of giving rein to the flesh ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... average man on whom it leaves no obvious emotional or intellectual trace whatever. Sterne, again, declared that he must always have a Dulcinea dancing in his head, yet the amount of his intimate relations with women appears to have been small. Balzac spent his life toiling at his desk and carrying on during many years a love correspondence with a woman he scarcely ever saw and at the end only spent a few months of married life with. The like experience has befallen many artistic creators. For, in the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his steady self-criticism make him a scientific model, even if his results and theories should eventually come to possess mainly an historical interest. In the intellectual domain the primary object is to reach high summits from which wide surveys are possible, to reach them toiling honestly upwards by the way of experience, and then not to turn dizzy when a summit is gained. Darwinians have sometimes turned dizzy, but Darwin never. He saw from the first the great importance of his hypothesis, not only ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... which you pass, the dead, lying in windrows where they fell. At the front you see only, for the main part, men engaged in the most tedious, the most exacting, and seemingly the most futile form of day labor—toiling in filth and foulness and a desperate driven haste, on a job that many of them will never live to see finished—if it is ever finished; working under taskmasters who spare them not—neither do they spare themselves; putting through a dreary contract, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... by a comparatively few rich families, who did little to improve it and were content with small returns from the labor of throngs of unskilled native cultivators. Wretchedly paid and housed, and toiling long hours, the workers lived like the serfs of medieval days or as their own ancestors did in colonial times. Ignorant, poverty-stricken, liable at any moment to be dispossessed of the tiny patch of ground on which ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... Men, animals, insects—what tribe of us asks any object, except to keep trying to satisfy its own master appetite? If the ants were earth's lords they would make no more use of their lordship than to learn and enjoy every possible method of toiling. Cats would spend their span of life, say, trying new kinds of guile. And we, who crave so much to know, crave so little but knowing. Some of us wish to know Nature most; those are the scientists. Others, the saints and philosophers, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... Boody, with the stage-driver; and one day the old ladies are horrified at seeing the parson's son mounted on the box of the coach beside the driver, and putting his boyish fingers to the test of four-in-hand. Of course he is a truant that day from school, and toiling back footsore and weary, after tea, he can give but a lame account of himself. He brings, another time, a horrid fighting cur, (as Miss Eliza terms it in her disgust,) for which he has bartered away the new muffler that the spinster has knit. He thinks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... noise of trumpets! Make legs, kiss hands, and take a scatter'd hair From my lord's eminent shoulder! [Sanquinius and Haterius pass over the stage. See, Sanquinius With his slow belly, and his dropsy! look, What toiling haste he makes! yet here's another Retarded with the gout, will be afore him. Get thee Liburnian porters, thou gross fool, To bear thy obsequious fatness, like thy peers. They are met! the gout returns, and his great carriage. [Lictors, Regulus, Trio, Sejanus, Satrius, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... business: your public servant, toiling, and striving and figetting about matters of state, sacrificing health, and the snug comforts of a private gentleman, for the sake of popularity! His complaint is popular indeed. Then your physician, courting extensive practice, and ambitious of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... gladness and never to tears, Ever the gross world above; Never to toiling and never to fears, Ever to ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... the all-important point. Nothing was more easy than the defence of this pass, the ascent being considerable, rising into a narrow gorge, and as suddenly and in like manner descending on the point opposite that on which Fullam was toiling up his way. In addition to this, the gulley was winding and brokenly circuitous—now making a broad sweep of the circle—then terminating in a zigzag and cross direction, which, until the road was actually ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... machinations and by wheedling and cajolery and lies. They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys and girls. Two million of your children are toiling to-day in this trader-oligarchy of the United States. Ten millions of you slaves are not ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... could look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust and striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery. It cost six thousand dollars, twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, here it stands deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there, mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the mountain-side, which is very open and green, was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves and the insects; and nothing stirred ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under the hot sun, was carrying a long succession of planks, each nearly as long and heavy as he could manage, to other cadets who waited to nail them in place on a pontoon bridge out over an arm of the Hudson. Greg Holmes was one of four young men toiling at the rope by which they were endeavoring to drag a mountain howitzer into position up a steep slope near Crow's Nest, while Anstey, studying field fortification, was digging in a trench with all ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... G. Grierson: [557] 'Dhobi par Dhobi base, tab kapre par sabun pare', or 'When many Dhobis compete, then some soap gets to the clothes,' and 'It is only the clothes of the Dhobi's father that never get torn.' The Dhobi's donkey is a familiar sight as one meets him on the road still toiling as in the time of Issachar between two bundles of clothes each larger than himself, and he has also become proverbial, 'Dhobi ka gadha neh ghar ka neh ghat ka,' 'The Dhobi's donkey is always on the move'; and 'The ass has only one master (a washerman), ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... gave way to smoking cities, rumbling bridges, paved streets, and hurrying throngs. The lone fisherman in an 18-foot dugout had changed insensibly to darting motorboats and to huge, red-wheeled, white-castled monsters, whose passage in the midst of vast waters was attended by the sighs of toiling engines and the tossing ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... arguments, and had again and again pointed out how bad it would be both for her and her boy if she continued so obstinate. He appealed to her own good sense. How could she expect to bring him up in such poor, narrow circumstances, and with all this toiling and moiling? She would only need to give up a part of her large wages to the tinsmith, and they would look well after the boy. Besides she could often come out and see him, at least once a month!—he could promise her that on the Veyergangs' behalf, and it was very kind of them now they lived ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... a spade—that is the most productive species of cultivation; it is the last stage of agricultural progress to return to it. No steam engines or steam ploughs will ever rival it. But what is the old weaver toiling with his hands, to the large steam-power mill, turning at once ten thousand spindles? As dust in the balance. Man, by a beneficent law of his Maker, is permanently secured in his first and best pursuit. It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... then he only said: "To witness him struck down by death just as he had gained all for which he lived—to see the fruit of thirty years' labor snatched from his lips before he could taste it! O God, for what trifles are we toiling!" ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... chair. Below in the street a mighty mob of children and mothers had been for half an hour besieging the door of the schoolhouse. The yell signalized the opening of it by the policeman in charge. Up the stairs surged the multitude. We could see them racing, climbing, toiling, according to their years, for the goal above where the band was tuning up. One little fellow with a trousers leg and a half, and a pair of suspenders and an undershirt as his only other garments, labored up the long flight, carrying his baby brother on his back. I watched them go clear up, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... to Lord Lansdowne, then Lord President of the Council. In 1851, the year of his marriage, he became inspector of schools, and in this service he continued until two years before his death. As an inspector, the letters give us a picture of Arnold toiling over examination papers, and hurrying from place to place, covering great distances, often going without lunch or dinner, or seeking the doubtful solace of a bun, eaten "before the astonished school." His services to the cause of English education were great, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... melancholy; it ought rather to be considered cheerful and encouraging, in the national sense. The world, some modern writer has said, shuts up the shop for no man. Yet there is, nevertheless, a tinge of melancholy in the thought of a great man toiling, striving, giving up all his days and much of his nights to the service of some cause or country, all the while firmly believing his life indispensable to the success of the cause, the prosperity of the country; and he dies, and the cause and the country go ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... with rod in hand, away he went in happiest spirits; and ere we were ready to depart, such was the change in the state of his feelings, that he privately confided to his brother, he thought him a great muff to go toiling up the rocks instead of stopping with him to catch the fish that were jumping about, almost asking ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... weariness thou seemest spent, And toiling on the dusty road all day, Weary and pale, yet with inconstant step, Hither and thither turning,—seekest thou To find aught lost, or what dark care pursues thee? If thou art ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... endeavoring to crush the chance of competition, and some who have failed anxious for the wretched consolation of companionship—those who recollect the comforts of such an apprenticeship may duly appreciate poor Curran's situation. After toiling for a very inadequate recompense at the Sessions of Cork, and wearing, as he said himself, his teeth almost to their stumps, he proceeded to the metropolis, taking for his wife and young children a miserable lodging on Hog-hill. Term after term, without either profit or professional reputation, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous |
