"Taskmaster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should know and lament (to himself) his own shortcomings—should mourn over and mend, as he best can, the "confusions of his wasted youth;" he should feel how ill he has put out to usury the talent given him by the Great Taskmaster—how far he is from being "a good and faithful servant;" and he should make this rather understood than expressed by his manner as a writer; while at the same time, every man should deny himself the luxury of taking his hat off to the public, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... friend!" said Mr Meldrum, shaking the hand outstretched cordially. "I see we understand each other; and, believe me, I'll not be a hard taskmaster." ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... starvation, they had never had a thought about pirates. Then the sight of a prau—even with the certainty of its being a piratical craft—would have been welcome; since death by the Malay kris, or slavery to the most cruel taskmaster, would have been a relief from the sufferings they were enduring, from hunger as from thirst. Now, however, that these were things of the past, and they were not only safe delivered from the perils of the deep, but seemed ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... headache. An unfortunate lad, who at thirteen fell from a scaffolding and was taken up for dead, and escaped only with total deafness and a supposed permanent injury to the brain. A hapless apprentice, who suffered at the hands of a cruel taskmaster all that brutality and drunken fury could suggest. A youth, thirsting for knowledge, but able to obtain it only by the hardest ways, peering into booksellers' windows, reading at book-stalls, purchasing cheap books with pennies stained all over with the sweat of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... no more moved when was done than before; and being very angry, he said that he should gain nothing by this his cunning and shrewdness against the Egyptians;—and he commanded him that was the chief taskmaster over the Hebrews, to give them no relaxation from their labors, but to compel them to submit to greater oppressions than before; and though he allowed them chaff before for making their bricks, he would ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... also said that he was a very hard taskmaster, but as a matter of fact he demanded nothing of his soldiers that he was not ready to undertake himself. Like a true duke, he was his own commander, drew up his own troops himself in battle array, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... as the father became more and more addicted to drink. Just at this time, a new lodger appeared, who was something of a musician, and arranged to teach the boy in part payment for his room. Ludwig wondered if he would turn out to be a more severe taskmaster than his father had been. The times and seasons when his instruction was given were at least unusual. Tobias Pfeiffer, as the new lodger was called, soon discovered that father Beethoven generally spent his evenings at the tavern. As an act of kindness, to keep his drunken landlord out of the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives but also because they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have never had the time to get acquainted with them. Life, for most of us, is not so much a hard as an exacting taskmaster. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... the life's habit of Enoch. The one expression suggests simple companionship and communion; the other suggests rather the vivid and continual realisation of the thought that we are 'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye.' To walk before God is to feel thrillingly and continually, and yet without being abased or crushed or discomposed, but rather being encouraged and quickened and calmed and ennobled and gladdened thereby: 'Thou God seest me.' It seems to me that one of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... old mine buildings and appliances left by the ancient gold-miners, who were mostly State prisoners. Some of these mines were worked by the Pharaohs of, and before, the time of Moses; and in these dreadful places thousands of Israelites were driven to death by the taskmaster's whip. Amongst the old appliances is one which approximated very closely to the amalgamating, or blanket table, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... brute who prefers to sham sick rather than endure the tedium of toil. Or suppose that the grave official is not an angel, but a man of hateful heart or one with a personal spite to vent upon his victim. What then? How could one face a regime in which the everlasting taskmaster held control? There is nothing like it among us at the present day except within the melancholy precincts of the penitentiary. There and there only, the ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... the canebrake above, and, when sufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three days. He would have struck altogether, but he had found a taskmaster. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... blame?' he returned, so harshly that I remained silent: 'it is no fault of yours if people will not be silent. But all the same I am sorry that you know; your opinion of me is quite changed now, eh? You think me a hard-hearted taskmaster of a brother. Well, it does not matter: Gladys would have made ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in his soul, with all the sweet or bitter memories of his past life crowding on his mind, and the dreary prospect spreading before him, to the end of his life, of no change from his rude and slavish occupation under the burning sun, hearing no voice but that of the harsh taskmaster; his eyes saddened and his heart sickened by the open and daily spectacle of immorality and woe, with no ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... footsteps, should I consider it misspent for that. I should have given my conscience a fair field; when it has anything to say, I know too well it can speak daggers; therefore, for this time, my hard taskmaster has given me a holyday, and I may go in again rejoicing to my breakfast and the human ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sat down, and while Nicol tore open the dirty envelope, and read his taskmaster's orders, Tough lit a pipe, and watched him out of the corners of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... was that of finishing five hundred ruching-boxes. Henrietta urged me frequently to hurry, as we were away behind with the order. I soon discovered that for all her Manners blood and alleged gentle breeding, she was a harder taskmaster than the good-natured but plebeian Phoebe. Her obvious greed for every moment of my time, for every possible effort of my strength and energy, I gladly excused, however, when she revealed the fact that all her surplus earnings went toward the support of a certain ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... nature without ceasing to belong to their school, yet freed, as on a holiday, from the constraint of being actually in it. Yet, in regard to their personal and social life, at least north of the Alps, the majority of such men were very consciously and dutifully under "their great taskmaster's eye"; and in that also they differ in a measure from the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Meanwhile, the taskmaster, having issued commands to his black subordinates, felt justified in neglecting his own duties, in a dignified way, by seeking a shady retreat in which he lingered contemplating the charms of Nature and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... friend and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an antechamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park corner to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... wrong and robbery may triumph over right and innocence. Thou hast raised thyself, good Bumpkin, from the humblest poverty to comparative wealth and a lawsuit: but boast not overmuch lest thou find Law a taskmaster instead of a Protector! ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... suppose that Andrew Drever was a severe taskmaster, however, let me here hasten to assure you that his nature was as sweet as summer. His methods of punishment and reward were the perfection of justice. In stature he was a small man, but his back was broad and strong, and his hands were firm and large. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... fair-dealing and justice. If their commune owned the land it tilled, they all shared the benefit of the harvests, paid their tax to the state, and all was well. If not, it swarmed like a community of bees to some wealthy neighbor's estate and sold its labor to him, and then if he proved too hard a taskmaster—even for a patient Russian peasant—they might swarm again and work ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... pliant body. His thought is father to his deed, and there is the usual resemblance between son and parent. What matters it that he has lived in his employer's house, and has found him no Egyptian taskmaster, but a benefactor, lavish of favours? What matters it that he has in charge things of trust and moment which, by miscarrying, will work distress to many? What matters it that others are about him, engaged ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... his friends writes of him, "He was a severe and unsparing taskmaster, and allowed no shirking. No other officer could have got half the work out of the men that he did. He used to keep them up to the mark by exclaiming, whenever he saw them flag: 'Another five minutes gone, ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... from other causes than consumption was that of a poor feeble-minded man whose brother, a sturdy, devout, severe puritan, was a very hard taskmaster. Poor half-witted Charlie was kept steadily at work,—although he was not able to do much, for his body was about as feeble as his mind. He never could be taught the right use of an axe, and when he ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... stand by and to witness the degradation—the pollution—attempted to be fastened upon her. What! to know that her beautiful tresses would be shorn ignominiously—a felon's dress forced upon her—a vile taskmaster with authority to——; blistered be the tongue that could go on to utter, in connection with her innocent name, the vile dishonours which were to settle upon her person! I, however, and her brother had taken such resolutions that this result was one barely possible; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... lay a little longer. It was a pleasant thought that there was no stern taskmaster to force him up. He might lie as long as he wanted to, till noon, if he chose. Perhaps he might have chosen, but the claims of a healthy appetite asserted themselves, and Sam sprang ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... answered. "I have had it specially prepared from a recipe given me ten years ago at a time when I thought of resorting to the same contrivance to escape from my taskmaster." ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Pagan, as he looked down steadfastly on the deities of his worship engendering his destruction beneath him. His cheek—the cheek which had rested in boyhood on his mother's bosom—was pressed against the gilded breast of the god Serapis, his taskmaster ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... made this district famous, and we could have lingered long in the region of the Trossachs, and should have been delighted to see Loch Katrine, close by, which the "Lady of the Lake" had rendered so familiar, but time is a hard taskmaster and we had to be content with what Loch Lomond ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... 50 miles distant in 36 hours. If bricks have to be made, has not the workman a right to expect to be supplied with the ingredients? Is the blame altogether his if, when exposed to the heat of a tropical sun, his hurriedly constructed clay crumbles to pieces for want of the straw with which his taskmaster failed to supply him? We think not. But that night at Richmond Road we had no time to ruminate upon our difficulties. We had to surmount them, and with our brigadier we took our coats off and buckled to ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... Even so!—but not so stupid, blind, that I, Whom thus the great Taskmaster of the world Has set to meditate, mistaken work, My dreary face against a dim blank wall, Throughout man a natural life-time,—could ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... turn out as laborious a session as ever was. All the comfort is, all the abuse don't lie at your door nor mine; Lord Carteret has the full perquisites of the ministry. The other day, after Pitt had called him "the Hanover troop-minister, a flagitious taskmaster," and said, "that the sixteen thousand Hanoverians were all the party he had, and were his placemen;" in short, after he had exhausted invectives, he added, "But I have done: if he were present, I would say ten times more."(899) Murray shines as bright as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... young philosopher chose for himself a severe taskmaster, with plenty of added work, yet, with some special kindliness in trustful tones that proved part-pay, some needed, minor chord was touched in the soul-life of the lad, that gave him hope in himself and in his future, which proved very true. He has long been ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... this heavy labour had begun to tell, was taking advantage of the absence of his taskmaster, Jacob, to sleep awhile in the hut which they had now built for themselves beneath the shadow of the baobab-tree. As she reached it he came out yawning, and asked her where she had been. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... our enemy, to case ourselves in defiance, to wrestle against our softer self, and to indulge the darker passions which are so easily fermented by the sense of injustice. Sold early into slavery, sentenced to a sordid taskmaster, exchanging her situation, only yet more to embitter her lot—the kindlier feelings, naturally profuse in the breast of Nydia, were nipped and blighted. Her sense of right and wrong was confused by a passion to which she had so madly surrendered herself; and the same intense ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... history, etymology, and geography, are not tasks set over school-children by a hard taskmaster, who keeps them from sunshine and out-of-door play. They are catch-words of the universe. They are the implements by which each brain is to be trained to do great work for the one in whom it lives. What every earnest soul asks is not gold, fame, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the despot's vaunted virtue, pride, Shows small indeed. Can Power lay aside Its swaggering port, and low petition make (Driven by those Treasury thirsts which never slake) For help from those it harries? PHARAOH's scourge Was the taskmaster's weapon, used to urge The Hebrew bondsmen to their tale of toil, But they round whom the Russian's knout thongs coil, Are of the breed of those the Russian palm Can make petition to. Could triumph balm The wounds of ages, here were balm indeed; But blood ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on—her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women. Besides, you've got the laws on your side. Moses knew. Don't you call to mind ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... incidents of a life subject to the taskmaster Popularity are endless. One day he wrote:— "A stranger called here and asked if Shakespeare lived in this neighborhood. I told him I knew no ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... enjoyed in Egypt, and murmured against God and against Moses. The patience of their leader, under this new provocation, completely broke down, so that he went so far as to accuse God Himself of being a hard taskmaster, who had laid too much upon him. With infinite forbearance, allowance was made for the manner in which Divine counsel and help had been asked for, and the promise was graciously fulfilled, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He will never ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... went away, only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed, have forgotten any number of such directions, that he looked on the present period of anxiety in the light of a holiday and festival, devoutly praying that his taskmaster might never come back again. Finally in despair poor Bargrave cast himself on the sympathy of Dorothea, who listened to his bewailings with stolid indifference when sober, and replied to them by surmises of the wildest ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied laborers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. "Glorious summer twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad bodyguard (of Prismatic Colors); and the tired brickmakers of this clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would not tell ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... all other times ready to proceed with stringent severity wherever he discovered slight breaches of discipline or of the mechanical details of drill, and who knew no clemency where nothing was to be feared for himself by playing the rigid taskmaster, in this instance tolerated this shameful thing; for he knew that interference in this particular would mean for him, in any case, serious inconvenience. Two things were possible. Either he would be charged with falsely accusing ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... been my foe? She had been a cockering, fawning nurse to me not so many months ago. Months!—yesterday. Why should the steward, who was used to flatter and caress me, now frown and threaten like some harsh taskmaster of a Clink, where wantons are sent to be whipped and beat hemp. I slunk away scared and cowed, and tried to learn a chapter out of Deuteronomy; but the letters all danced up and down before my eyes, and the one word ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... light. They were closely connected, if not identical, officials. They had charge of the levy, the local quota for the army, or for public works. Hence "levy-master" and "warrant-officer" are suggestive renderings. For the former official, "taskmaster," the one over the gang of forced laborers and reminiscent of the old time press-gang officers, is a fair translation. "Field cornet" would perhaps suit the military side. For some aspects of their office the ancient ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... resuscitated members of the crew and Constantio took part, Frank called them forward and told them of the fate of Malvoise. None of them seemed particularly grieved, as the man had undoubtedly been a hard taskmaster. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... were invited to be the guests of some prominent resident of the town we were in. It had been so with Dr. Talmage for years. He always refused, however, because he felt that his time was too imperative a taskmaster. For thirty years he had never visited anyone over night, until he went to my brother's house in Pittsburg. But we were constantly meeting old friends of his, friends of many years, in every stopping place of our journeys. I remember particularly ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... coming into my mind in the most foolish way often. 'Fire is a good servant but a bad master.' That was the sentence. The times I've written it, thick down strokes, thin upstrokes! Well, that's like any of these ologies—biology especially. It's a good teacher. You don't have to let it be a taskmaster." ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... which the Egyptians were decked; and, finally, the Israelites were to enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their enemies suffer. With their finger thy could point them out one by one, saying, "This one way my taskmaster, who beat me with those fists of his at which the dogs are now gnawing, and yonder Egyptian, the dogs are chewing the feet with ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... futile agony to the gods of her home. Now she stood erect and looked out upon the city and with a solemn faith prayed to the greater gods. Later she slept peacefully, for the first time in fifteen months, as one whose taskmaster ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... be admitted, had been something miserly in his home life, as Marcia had so rashly reminded his son. But he had never stinted Jocelyn. He had been rather a hard taskmaster, though as a paymaster trustworthy; a ready-money man, just and ungenerous. To every one's surprise, the capital he had accumulated in the stone trade was of large amount for a business so unostentatiously carried on—much larger than Jocelyn ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... when I attempted to set my feet to the ground, I was in such anguish that I nearly fell down; but what will not "needs must" effect? The poor galley-slaves at Marseilles and Dunkirk can tell how, when it seems impossible for them to pull another stroke, the taskmaster's whip, mercilessly applied, proves that they not only can pull still, but pull well too. I am ashamed to say how these two beloved women had almost to carry me, a stout youth; and even all their strength might have been insufficient but for the potent spur of the dragoons' return. With an arm ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... and dramatic interest. The great crisis in Moses' early manhood came when he woke to a realization of his kinship with the despised and oppressed serfs and an appreciation of the cruel injustice of which they were the helpless victims. Was Moses justified in resisting the Egyptian taskmaster? Are numbers essential to the rightness of a cause? What right had Ramses II to demand forced labor from the immigrants within his border? Was he justified in his method of exacting tribute? Is peonage always disastrous not ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... of her flag; while your stars, as they increase in numbers, will be overcast by the murky vapors of oppression, and the only portion of your banners visible to the eye will be the blood-stained stripes of the taskmaster." ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... not for an instant imagine that Browning was indolent or indifferent; it is known that he was a taskmaster to himself. But he could not write other than he did. When the music came and the verse caught the flame, and his words became sweeter, and his thought clearer, then he could sweep down like an archangel bringing new strains of beauty to the earth. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... and would have preferred to pass a Sabbath afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore to receive her taskmaster and benefactor alone. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... other hand, experience is a severe taskmaster, and it taught me to be somewhat insubordinate in my notions. I fear I must confess that this spirit of insubordination has ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... legs. Some went through a pantomime, which told its tale of an attack upon some solitary hut, the slaughter of the old and infirm, and the dragging away of the men and women into slavery. Others spoke of long periods of labor, in a bent position, in a mine, under the cruel whip of the taskmaster. All had their tale of barbarity and cruelty to recite and, as each speaker contributed his quota, the anger and excitement of the ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... yourself, which is far better. As I am your pupil, you are bound to undertake the task of criticising and scolding me for all the things ill done and not done at all, which I fear I shall need much; but I hope for the best, and I am sure I have a good if not too easy taskmaster. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the crown of eternal life sparkles on his forehead. Such faithfulness and wisdom (which are at bottom but two names for one course of conduct) find their motive in that watchfulness, which works as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye, and as ever keeping in view His coming, and the rendering of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... all, I think, to have a just appreciation of one's own powers or lack of powers," said Denham, slowly. "Ambition, without the corresponding strength to gratify it, is a cruel taskmaster." ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... any newcomer's eyes; but Frank could see nothing but a long wide stretch of desert country, at the horizon of which were a few palms overshadowing dingy, sun-baked mud buildings, houses formed of the brick made of straw now as in the days when the taskmaster-beaten Israelitish bondmen ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... and arrogant, caring for naught but his own personal advantage, consulting only his own tastes and pleasures. He was a stern officer to his soldiers, a cruel taskmaster to the serfs he had inherited, and a bitter foe of the Jews whom ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Jews, or unbelieving Nazarenes, who will not accept the blessing offered them, for six months shall they groan beneath the taskmaster, toiling in the sun; and then, if yet obstinate, they shall die, for the edification and warning of others, and the manner of their death shall be in fit proportion ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... childhood were Dawson Turner and Hudson Gurney, who in this respect resembled each other, that they were both bankers and both antiquarians more or less distinguished. Dawson Turner was a man of middle height and of saturnine aspect, who had the reputation of being a hard taskmaster to the ladies of his family, who were quite as intelligent and devoted to literature as himself. He published a 'Tour in Normandy'—at that time scarcely anyone travelled abroad—and much other matter, and perhaps as an autograph-collector ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... as Mrs. Caudle herself was wont to declare, "put upon from the beginning," the slightest means of defence—if we have supplied a solitary text to meet any one of the manifold wrongs with which woman, in her household life, is continually pressed by her tyrannic taskmaster, man,—we feel that we have only paid back one grain, hardly one, of that mountain of more than gold it is our felicity to ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... which are not real wool or substance, but Devil's-dust, accursed of God and man! No man has worked, or can work, except religiously; not even the poor day-labourer, the weaver of your coat, the sewer of your shoes. All men, if they work not as in a Great Taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, work unhappily for ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... serious and oppressive nature still remain. But the grand misfortune is that the spirit which these oppressive laws engendered remains. The Protestant still looks upon the Catholic as a degraded being. The Catholic does not yet consider himself upon an equality with his former tyrant and taskmaster. That religious hatred which required all the prohibiting vigilance of the law for its restraint has found in the law its strongest support; and the spirit which the law first exasperated and embittered continues to act long ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... give any spoken evidence that Dorgan had stolen him, so there the matter rested. And there was something else to occupy the boys' minds. There seemed to be a vague feeling of unrest at the ranch. There always had been bad blood between Gil Steele and the workers. He not only was a hard taskmaster, getting the last ounce of work out of the men, but he was close in money matters, and had all sorts of fines and penalties he imposed when the men were late or neglected their work. There was continual wrangling ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... the temple grounds we saw a number of men and boys at work, as the dragoman had stated. These excavators scooped the sand and debris into small baskets, while a taskmaster stood over them, whip in hand. Then placing the filled baskets on their heads they started off in long lines, singing as they marched to the deposit heap. The men, we were informed, earned twenty-five cents a day at this labor, and ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... the very opposite conception, a wise and affectionate husband, instead of a taskmaster exploiting his slaves. In its true aspect the relation of husband and wife is entirely devoid of any question of relative superiority or inferiority. As well ask whether the front wheel or the back wheel of your bicycle ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... and Percy Dacier's threw the fancied danger into remoteness. The world was her stepmother, vigilant to become her judge; and the world was his taskmaster, hopeful of him, yet able to strike him down for an offence. She saw their situation as he did. The course of folly must be bravely taken, if taken at all: Disguise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... honest and true. While he raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the speech of the honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt. So, even while he was their griping taskmaster and never gave them a good word, he had written their names down in his will. So, even while it was his daily declaration that he mistrusted all mankind—and sorely indeed he did mistrust all who bore any resemblance to himself—he was as certain that these two people, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... said the haughty Syrian, "shall spend their superfluous strength, as did their Samson of old, in grinding corn for their victors, or in tilling the fields which they once called their own, with the taskmaster's lash to quicken their labours. Ha! ha! it were good subject for mirth to see the lordly Maccabeus himself, with blinded eyes, turning the wheel at the well, and bending his proud back to serve as my footstool when ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... to have said that he rejoiced in the old age which delivered him from a severe and importunate taskmaster. —Athen., lib. 12, p. 510. But the poet, nevertheless, appears to have retained his amorous propensities, at least, to the last.—See ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dollar had the idle, drunken father earned during the week, that he had not expended in self-indulgence; and yet, in his brutality, he could roughly chide this little girl, yet too young for the taskmaster, because she had lost half a dollar of her week's earnings through an accident, the very nature of which he would not hear explained. So grieved was the poor child at this unkindness, that when supper was on the table she shrunk ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... honourable agreement, or by open trial thereof with our weapons, in a fair field—seeing that it neither becomes thy place and courage to die the death of a slave who hath been overwrought by his taskmaster, nor befits it our fame that a brave adversary be snatched from our weapon by such a disease. And, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... might see by his example, the glory of their Father in heaven, and understand that God is a God of Love, of mercy, a deliverer, a Saviour, and not, as the Scribes and Pharisees made him out, a hard taskmaster, keeping his anger for ever, and extreme to mark ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... her temper. In truth, the brother and sister were not without affection for one so beautiful and good, but they had been torturing slaves all their lives, and their affection was, and could be, but that of a taskmaster or ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to join the national ships, and, if denied your independence and rights, blockade the Hellespont, thus carrying the war into the enemy's country. Then the fate of the cruel Sultan, the destroyer of his subjects, the tyrant taskmaster of a Christian people, shall be sealed by the hands of the executioners who yet obey his bloody commands. Then shall prophecy be fulfilled, and Moslem sway be overthrown by the corruptions itself has engendered. Then shall the sacred banner of the Cross once more wave on the dome of Saint Sophia. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... safe! By this good hand, too, that wrought your misery. Oh! that a life of penitence and prayer might atone for my guilt. It was a thought inspired by Heaven, prompted me to set on fire that insatiate demon, to whom my taskmaster offered those wretched victims, and every month a bride, on pain of his own destruction. What might be the nature of that skeleton form, or their compact, thou canst neither know nor understand. Even I, though nightly witnessing horrors ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... unhappy about. You know how blameless he has always been at Eton and Oxford; and though he may view his work rather in a school-boy aspect, and me as a taskmaster, as long as he is doing right the growth is going on. Don't be unhappy, Jenny! His great clear young voice is delightful to hear; he is capital at choral practices, and is a hero to all the old women and boys, the more so for ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He was happily quite free from that tormenting taskmaster, who, next perhaps to praise, makes the severest demand on human faculty, and human labour. To maintain in the spot where he was born, the character for honesty, independence, and industry, that his father had borne before him, ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... cost of a soul, which is no good but to cause fear and pain? We take men's souls and liberate them from all pain and care and remorse, and we give in exchange money, much money, to procure comforts and ease; we enrol men as vassals of our great lord, and he is no hard taskmaster to those ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... assistance, and we will then, if Bellevue is really besieged, do our best to go to the relief of our friends. The slaves are, I suspect, especially bent on revenging themselves on Thompson, the overseer, who is looked upon by them as a hard man and a severe taskmaster, though our friend Twigg thinks well of him, and is satisfied with his management of the estate. A slave who has become one of their leaders—Cudjoe, I am told by our people, is his name—was flogged some time back by Thompson, and the savage has ever since threatened to revenge himself ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... of what it would be to be employed by Mr. Graham. Tom Tripp worked early and late for a dollar and a half per week, without board, for a hard and suspicious taskmaster, who was continually finding fault with him. But for sheer necessity, he would have left Mr. Graham's store long ago. He had confided the unpleasantness of his position to Herbert more than once, and enlisted his sympathy and indignation. Herbert felt that he would not like to work for Mr. Graham ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... give us all our ages. I think when they say we was free that meant every man was to be his own boss and not be bossed by a taskmaster. Cose old master was good to us but we wanted to have our own way 'bout a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... from sheer malice and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, with the object of 'hazing' or driving them, as only slaves and sailors can be driven in these days by a brutal captain and hard taskmaster! ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the camps, she set the hour for halting and the hour for resuming and though she was inexperienced in such matters, her native intelligence was so far above that of the men or the apes that she did better than they could have done. She was a hard taskmaster, too, for she looked down with loathing and contempt upon the misshapen creatures amongst which cruel Fate had thrown her and to some extent vented upon them her dissatisfaction and her thwarted love. She made them build her a strong protection and shelter each night and ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in our sight. It is the fact that they sought truth and ensued it, not thinking of the practicable nor cautiously counting majorities and minorities, but each man pondering and searching so 'as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye.' ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... have given time to the vineyard, but nothing at all of myself. I held myself aloof and apart while Duty, like a stern taskmaster, urged me to the things I hated, merely to please Mother, who had done so much for me that she had the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh yes! It must have been a pretty sight. He saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because he swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... in the legitimate exercise of their functions—we submit to the decrees of Providence, because they are not to be resisted—a coward submits to be insulted—a pusillanimous wretch to be despised—and a knave, if detected, must submit to be scouted—a slave submits to his Taskmaster; but, the Freeholders of Westmoreland, cannot, in reason, be said to submit to the House of Lowther naming their Representatives, unless it can be proved that those Representatives have been thrust upon them by an ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to say to them?" Lord John spoke but after a long moment, during which he had only looked hard and—an observer might even then have felt—ominously at his taskmaster. ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to the camp Rachel met Atsu, mounted and attended by a scribe, the taskmaster's secretary. The two officials were on their way to Memphis to worship in the great temple and to spend a night among free-born men. Once every month, no oftener, did Atsu return to his own rank in the city. Recognizing Rachel, he drew ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... as a certain well-to-do farmer and dairyman who had an unenviable reputation as a cruel taskmaster with his hired help. He was also known to be exceedingly harsh in his treatment of any with whom he had dealings, who chanced to be unable to meet their obligations to the minute. Because he had been able to accumulate his "pile," Mr. Abel Bernard seemed to believe ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... insurrection, a calamity in fear of which such communities must always live. The Montero is rarely a slaveholder, but is frequently engaged on the sugar plantations during the busy season as an overseer, and, to his discredit be it said, he generally proves to be a hard taskmaster, entertaining an intuitive ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... continuous devotion and self-sacrifice, together with an abiding and ever-present sense of dependence on the will of Heaven. His work was done, to quote the Puritan poet's noble line: 'As ever in his great taskmaster's eye'; and never for a moment did he waver in his feeling of personal responsibility to a personal God. Others will speak to you of his record as a scientific man. I shall permit myself only to say that ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... its ears to every cry of protest or of agony, and said: "We will not aid you nor protect you. Though you are ignorant, from you will we demand the works of wisdom. Though you are weak, great things shall be required at your hands." Like the ancient taskmaster, the Nation said: "There shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... of Chnem-hotep, at Beni Hasan, there is a wall painting of a horizontal loom with two weavers, women, squatting on either side, and at the right in the background is drawn the figure of the taskmaster. There are also figures represented in the act of spinning, etc. For the present we are concerned with the ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... laughing. "If I do not follow my work, my work follows me; and then it comes like a taskmaster, and carries a whip." ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... much in mental power that he took interest in fairy tales, and he was a rigorous taskmaster. I was obliged to illustrate the stories in varied ways. Once I was asked, "What's a gian'?" I said, "A very, very big man." "Big as you?" "Far bigger." "How bigger? Has he got legs, and heads, and—and things like that?" "We'll see. When I stand on this ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... your father, Sir Henry! It is strange I should not have seen him before;—but I heard my father often speak of him as being among the flower of our real old English gentry. By the mode in which he began to school me, I can guess you had a tight taskmaster of him, Albert—I warrant you never wore hat in ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... society before his own. It is the very strong link that attaches the individual to the whole. And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster. He sits him in a seat of honour. At last, like a courtier fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the sensitiveness of his conscience. Then he has no words hard enough for the man ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the water. His shirt, too, was soak'd; and as she pass'd her fingers down his shoulder she left a sharp twinge in her heart, for she knew that moisture to be the hard wrung sweat of severe toil, exacted from her young child (he was but thirteen years old) by an unyielding taskmaster. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was not unacquainted with the sudden rise to unexpected celebrity of Indian boys in his tribe, and knew something about the capacity of even cripples to overcome difficulties when driven by that stern taskmaster, Necessity. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... student teachers, one of whom, Lydia Mott, became Susan's lifelong friend. Susan worked hard, for she was a conscientious child, but none of her efforts seemed to satisfy Deborah Moulson, who was a hard taskmaster. Her reproofs cut deep, and once when Susan protested that she was always censured while Guelma was praised, Deborah Moulson sternly replied, "Thy sister Guelma does the best she is capable of, but thou dost not. Thou hast greater abilities and I demand of thee the ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Evangelists, and whose importance he seemed to consider at least equal to theirs. But now and then he gave us a sermon of a different order—what some would call a very good one; but sunless and severe: representing the Deity as a terrible taskmaster rather than a benevolent father. Yet, as I listened, I felt inclined to think the man was sincere in all he said: he must have changed his views, and become decidedly religious, gloomy and austere, yet still devout. But such illusions were usually dissipated, on coming ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... everything, and the one function of our government, as at present conducted, is to see that this legislation is enforced. Yes, it is beyond the reach of contradiction that this government, that was founded in the interests of All, has degenerated into a merciless taskmaster, ever ready to beat into submission the slaves of the country, when their few owners give ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... ambitions. But in its proper sense, culture is far more than that; it is the comprehension of the meaning of life and the appreciation of its beauty. And grim as is the age-long struggle with evil, insistent as is the duty to toil and suffer and achieve, it were a harsh taskmaster who should refuse to poor driven men and women the right to snatch such innocent joys as they can by the way, to try to understand the whirl of existence in which they are caught; in short, to really live, as well as to earn a living. It would be a sorry outcome if when we ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. Nobody can do anything with it. I have seen Copley Fielding come very close to the jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very successfully, and without any look of its having been in papers, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous. Right Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. Giri thus understood is a severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should be the law. I deem ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... it is PLAY; and I have seen a little "colley" running along, barking, and endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load that any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty. Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to it. When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the dog, either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the shafts, or by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly scatters any such delusion of even the ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... up the required sum sobbing bitterly in anticipation of the treatment in store for them. Give them a penny or two, should they ask it, reader. You will not miss it. It will go to the brutal parent or taskmaster, it is true, but it will give the little monkey-faced minstrel a supper, and save him from a beating. It is more to them than to you, and it will do you no harm for the recording angel to write opposite the follies and sins of your life, that ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... N. director, manager, governor, rector, comptroller. superintendent, supervisor, straw boss; intendant; overseer, overlooker^; supercargo^, husband, inspector, visitor, ranger, surveyor, aedile^; moderator, monitor, taskmaster; master &c 745; leader, ringleader, demagogue, corypheus, conductor, fugleman^, precentor^, bellwether, agitator; caporal^, choregus^, collector, file leader, flugelman^, linkboy^. guiding star &c (guidance) 693; adviser &c 695; guide &c (information) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But one ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Churches in Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, and France. Besides his "Institutes," he found time to write Commentaries on nearly all the books of the Bible; was a man of masculine intellect and single-hearted devotion to duty, as ever in the "Great Taskmaster's" eye. His greatest work was his "Institutes," published in Basel in 1535-36. It was written in Latin, and four years after translated by himself into French. "In the translated form," says Prof. Saintsbury, "it is beyond all question the first serious work of great literary merit ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... vigilance of the slave-breaker and made his way back to his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster. Anticipating the most direful consequences, Douglass made the desperate resolution to resist any further punishment at Covey's hands. After a fight of two hours Covey gave up his attempt to whip ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... ground, while the old man prayed, and a more sincere, heart-touching prayer never went up from human lips to that God "who hath made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth." Though clothed in rags, and in feeble age at the mercy of a cruel taskmaster, that old slave was richer far than his master. His simple faith, which saw through the darkness around him into the clear and radiant light of the unseen day, was of far more worth than all the wealth and glory of this world. I know not why it was, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... other exercise. Some distance away stood a house, and at the front gate was a man, and Romulus knew man to be the meanest and most cruel of all living things and the conscienceless taskmaster of weaker creatures. So Romulus avoided the house and struck out across the fields. Presently he came upon a very large thing which awed him. It was a live-oak, and the birds were singing in the foliage. But his persistent curiosity put a curb upon ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... with an aching pity. Circumstance had been to them a relentless taskmaster. Perhaps they had not rubbed the magic ring of will, and summoned the obedient genius. Perhaps circumstance had forbidden them even the rag wherewith to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... answered Odysseus, "I am no stranger to blows, for I have been sore buffeted on land and sea. The belly is a stern taskmaster, which compels us to face ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... godfather, a worthy man who was greatly addicted to adopting the wretched little beings whom he ushered into the world, had conceived the idea of placing her in Father Fouchard's family as small maid of all work. True it was that the old boor was a terrible skinflint and a harsh, stern taskmaster; he had gone into the butchering business from sordid love of lucre, and his cart was to be seen daily, rain or shine, on the roads of twenty communes; but if the child was willing to work she would have a home and a protector, perhaps some small prospect in the future. At ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... is but one way of saying that the Forester should be his own severest taskmaster. The Forester must keep himself up to his own work. In no other profession, to my knowledge, is a man thrown so completely on his own responsibility. The Forester often leads an isolated life for weeks or months at a time, seeing the men under whom he works only at distant intervals. Because ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... a less severe taskmaster to those who fail," said he. "You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten paths. Never dream of rising superior, ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... entirely destitute of common fairness, common honesty, common humanity. Mr. McCoy holds that England exploits Ireland for her own purposes, is a merciless sucker of Hibernia's life-blood, a sweater, a slave-driver, a more than Egyptian taskmaster. Remove the hated English garrison, abolish English influence, let Ireland guide her own destinies, and all will at once be well—trade will revive, poverty will disappear, emigration will be checked, a teeming population will inhabit ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... in which he admitted no [Greek: adiaphora] and only the relaxation of a rare genial laugh, are more satisfactory than his conception of their sanction, which is grim. His "Duty" is a categorical imperative, imposed from without by a taskmaster who has "written in flame across the sky, 'Obey, unprofitable servant.'" He saw the infinite above and around, but not in the finite. He insisted on the community of the race, and struck with a bolt any one who said, "Am I my ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... kept for long weary hours practising the piano, and one of the earliest stories of his life is of the five-year-old little child made to stand on a bench before the piano laboring over the notes, while the tears flowed fast down his cheeks at the cold and aching pain, from which his hard taskmaster would not release him. Besides his father, a clever musician who lodged in the house, Pfeiffer, an oboist at the theatre, gave him lessons. Beethoven used afterward to say that he had learnt more from this Pfeiffer than from any one else; but ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... man enough, had not sense enough, to give her this poor chance of matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny hand to claim her as another of his innumerable slaves. Though a life of lonely, ill- paid toil would have been better for Edith than marriage to Gus, he was missing the one golden opportunity of his life, when he thought of Edith ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... received the commiseration of the world because they were scourged to work fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. But there is many a theoretical republican who is a harsher taskmaster to his stomach than this; who allows it no more resting time than he does his watch; who gives it no Sunday, no holiday, no vacation in any sense, and who seeks to make his heart beat faster for the sake of the exhilaration he can ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the school was all eyes and mouths. Blue-nose Crawford bore the reputation of being a very hard taskmaster, and of holding to the view that severe discipline was one of the virtues that wisdom ought to visit upon the youth. He once lent to Abraham Lincoln Weems's "Life of Washington." The boy read it with absorbing interest, but there came a driving storm, and the rain ran in ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... engaged in rendering the English answers into German. A sentiment of keen pleasure accompanied this first effort to earn my own living—a sentiment neither poisoned nor weakened by the presence of the taskmaster, who stood and watched me for some time as I wrote. I thought he was trying to read my character, but I felt as secure against his scrutiny as if I had had on a casque with the visor down-or rather I showed him my countenance with the confidence ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... had been to many of them a torturer, full of anguish and disappointments—a hard taskmaster, driving them on from day to day with weary feet and heavy heart, as over arid deserts where no sweet waters were springing from the wells of human love, or friendship, to slake their thirst for sympathy; they had prayed for death, they had writhed in the power of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... cannot believe even in itself. Reflecting thus, he can scarcely fail to realize that materialism, everywhere entrenched, was entrenched strongest in the camps of the rich—-not the idle rich, for materialism is so terrible a taskmaster that it makes its votaries its slaves. These slaves, in turn, made a slave of the artist, a minister to their pride and pretence. His art thus lacked that "sad sincerity" which alone might have saved ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... had been signed between the Central Empires and their Bulgarian taskmaster; but the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus was as well understood in Bulgaria as in Prussia, and the treaty would have remained a scrap of paper had Russia expelled the German invaders or Britain broken ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... of being driven by a taskmaster, whether it be the foreman of the shop, or the manager of the works, could give place to a truer co-operation in the management, and a larger measure of responsibility for the worker, we should be well on the road to eliminating one of ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... trades: shoemakers ply the awl, glassmakers blow through their tubes, metal founders watch over their smelting-pots, carpenters hew down trees and build a ship; groups of women weave or spin under the eye of a frowning taskmaster, who seems impatient of their chatter. Did the double in his hunger desire meat? He might choose from the pictures on the wall the animal that pleased him best, whether kid, ox, or gazelle; he might follow the course of its life, from its birth in the meadows to the slaughter-house and the kitchen, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... your duty, Arthur, I shall never complain of neglect. If you had told me before, that you had anything to do, it would have been half done before this; and now you must make up for lost time by redoubled exertions. Tell me what it is; and I will be your taskmaster, instead ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the horrors of discomfort and vexation endured by simple-hearted citizens in pursuit of a light-hearted Saturday and Sunday, we often wonder how it is that humanity will so gleefully inflict upon itself sufferings which, if they were imposed by some taskmaster, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... for his father was a slave-owner; and his mother's wedding dowry consisted in part of two or three slaves. Judge Clemens was a very austere man; like so many other slave-holders, he silently abhorred slavery. To his children, especially to Sam, as well as to his slaves, he was, however, a stern taskmaster. Mark Twain has described the terms on which he and his father lived as a sort of armed neutrality. If at times this neutrality was broken and suffering ensued, the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between them —his ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... operandi, but, rather, a modus vivendi, not a way of doing things, merely, but a manner of living. The work of the school is redeemed from the plane of a task and lifted to the plane of a privilege. The pupil's initiative is given full recognition and inspiriting freedom ensues. The teacher is not a taskmaster but a friend in need. Pupils and teacher live and work together in an enterprise in which they have common interests. The emoluments attending success are shared equally and there is no place for envy in the distribution of dividends. There is fair dealing in every detail of the work, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... by-and-by he would have to render a reckoning. "And," says he, "it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."[54] Similarly, he thought of himself as a workman with a certain portion of a temple to build; but the great Taskmaster was coming round in the evening to inspect the work—ay, and even to test it with fire; and, when that testing-time came, he desired to be a workman not needing to be ashamed. All the work of his apostleship appeared to him a curriculum which he had to cover before ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... abode in Goshen, an incident of great importance occurred. To superintend the service of the children of Israel, an officer from among them was set over every ten, and ten such officers were under the surveillance of an Egyptian taskmaster. One of these Hebrew officers, Dathan by name, had a wife, Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan, who was of extraordinary beauty, but inclined to be very loquacious. Whenever the Egyptian taskmaster set over her husband ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... strong, supple body trembled as he leaned for a while upon his hoe and gazed down the road after the rapidly disappearing car. He must have remained thus for several minutes oblivious to everything else. Neither did he see his hard taskmaster watching him in the distance. But when he again resumed his hoeing he worked more fiercely than ever, and there was danger at times lest the frail hoe should break beneath his tremendous strokes. Up one row and down another he moved all the afternoon. He ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... things of the past, Malcolm looked at him a little sadly. "I can't help it, old fellow," he said gravely; "my social qualities are a bit rusty, but I will behave better by and bye;" and then he nodded to Verity, and went back to his papers and wrote on grimly, as though some unseen taskmaster were behind him, ready to scourge him on ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... moment in getting to work. He found the crank go easy enough at first, but the longer he was at it the stiffer it seemed to turn. And after about four hundred turns he was fain to breathe and rest himself. He took three minutes' rest, then at it again. All this time there was no taskmaster, as in Egypt, nor whipper-up of declining sable energy, as in Old Kentucky. So that if I am so fortunate as to have a reader aged ten, he is wondering why the fool did not confine his exertions to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade |
