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Toil   Listen
noun
Toil  n.  A net or snare; any thread, web, or string spread for taking prey; usually in the plural. "As a Numidian lion, when first caught, Endures the toil that holds him." "Then toils for beasts, and lime for birds, were found."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Toil" Quotes from Famous Books



... with his time and fortunes, and perhaps encouraging in himself a love of ease, or some other desire which he was not entitled to gratify. He would rather go to some new country, where he might eat in rough independence the rewards of an actual toil. What is really required, however, is not that men should leave their own country, but enter upon such pursuits there as may preserve an equal instead of an unequal distribution of industry throughout the various fields in which there is something to be done for the general advantage. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various

... finally went over to the general election. There was no money for salaries and very little for expenses. Mrs. Boyer conducted a very efficient publicity service and was obliged to fill many appointments as a speaker, besides having all the office work in charge, making it necessary for her to toil far into the nights. Mrs. Biggers carried on the work during Mrs. Boyer's absences. Often there was no money for postage and Dr. Gay would go out and beg a few dollars from ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... the work slowly progressing on the lonely rock at Land's End. But it was finished. Arthur Pendrean wrote to many rich ship-owners in London and elsewhere, and at length, by the aid of their money and the toil of skilful workmen, a light began to burn in the Longships Lighthouse on September 29, 1795. Those were early days of lighthouses, and experience had hardly yet proved the risk and the danger of leaving one man alone on a solitary rock to attend to the lights, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... not think nor own How with toil we bend us, Not to feed ourselves alone, But the folk who tend us: On all comers, all who come, We our substance lavish, Therefore 'tis a trifling sum ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... the coast, at the place where Cortes and his Spanish soldiers were moving about for a considerable time, yet they do not appear to have ever seen the splendid ruins, or to have at all suspected their existence. Even if the natives knew, the Spaniards might have found the toil of forcing a passage through such forests too laborious. The name of the city which had so long been buried under the tropical vegetation was quite unknown, nor was there any tradition of it; but when found it was called "Palenque," from the nearest inhabited village. There were substantial ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... into the gathering gloom, but was back in the hour with a great bunch of yellow bananas, a calabash of goats'-milk, and a young kid, showing no signs of weariness for all her toil. Those bananas, growing with an upward curve against the stem to relieve the dead weight on the branch as they grew, were just then a finer sight than the most magnificent scenery, and the travellers made a great feast, which done, they stretched themselves out on the clean dry sand up ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... enters his workroom, the Watteau chamber, where he remains at work all day. The dark evenings he spends in industrious preparation with the crayon for the pictures he is to finish during the hours of daylight. His toil is also his amusement: he goes but rarely into the society whose manners he has to re-produce. The animals in his pictures, pet animals, are mere toys: he knows it. But he finishes a large number of works, door-heads, clavecin cases, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... Africa. Differing in much else, the race instinct binds the whites together to demand recognition as a member of the ruling and inviolable caste, even for the poorest, the degraded of their race. And this position connotes freedom from all manual and menial toil; without hesitation the white man demands this freedom, without question the black man accedes and takes up the burden, obeying the race command of one who may be his personal inferior. It is difficult to convey to one who has never known this distinction the way in which the very ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... any new enterprise and in looking out for new things to do which would contribute to their pleasure and comfort. The boys now learned what they had never dreamed of before; that life is a most complex problem; that to secure pleasures toil is necessary, and that the greatest happiness comes from knowing you have succeeded. Pursuit, not possession, is man's greatest joy. To the brute the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... would rather possess The gear I have toil’d so to gather, Though for me fervent love they profess, Than the body ...
— Marsk Stig's Daughters - and other Songs and Ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... the steadfast goodly Odysseus, fordone with toil and drowsiness. Meanwhile Athene went to the land and the city of the Phaeacians, who of old, upon a time, dwelt in spacious Hypereia; near the Cyclopes they dwelt, men exceeding proud, who harried them continually, being ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... particularly the Sunday newspaper and popular magazine. If a man is to be a figure in the day's conflict and on its wider issues, he needs the special training just outlined, and when this outline is begun, he will find the toil of the years in these fields has but begun. About the safe harbors of journalism where men come and go, dealing with the affairs of and ending the ready market of the day, are the reefs strewn with ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... with the brave and strong My portioned task might lie; To toil amid the busy throng, With purpose ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... classed, catalogued, and labelled! Will the results of so much toil be buried in some carefully laid down atlas, to be sought only by professional savants? No! it is reserved to our use, and to develope the resources of the globe, conquered for us by our fathers at the cost of so much danger and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... modern type of mind and character. In some form every modern man travels the road over which his predecessors have passed, but he no longer blazes his path; a highway has been built for him. He is spared the immense toil of formulating the ideas by which he lives, and of passing through the searching experience which is often the only approach to the greatest truths. If he has originative power, he forms ideas of his own, but they are based on a massive foundation of ideas which others have worked ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Block". You hear the moans and screams of mothers torn from their offspring. You see them driven away, herded like cattle, chained like convicts, sold to "master's" in the "low lands", to toil...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... liberty of requesting from you a narration of the results of your indefatigable exertions in the cause of science during the past twelve months. They avail themselves of the occasion to testify their gratitude for your desinterested toil and the high respect with which they have the ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... the toil and thrift of its owners, the State of Georgia resolved not merely to subjugate to its jurisdiction, but to steal from its rightful and lawful owners, driving them away as outlaws. As a sure expedient for securing popular consent to the intended infamy, the farms of the Cherokees were parceled ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... knowledge of many scientific facts. There seems to be no good reason why the utile (considered intellectually as well as bodily) should not find its place in the sports of young people, if it be so skilfully combined with the dulce as not to convert pleasure into toil. ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin

... moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... "And what would the people do who wish to fill our places? You are unfair, Septimius. Live and let live! Turn about! Give me my seventy years, and let me go,—my seventy years of what this life has,—toil, enjoyment, suffering, struggle, fight, rest,—only let me have my share of what's going, and I ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... hearts of people to emigrate to so happy and rich a country. They give such descriptions of America as make one believe it to contain nothing but Elysian fields, bearing seed of themselves, without toil and labor, mountains full of solid gold and silver, and wells pouring forth nothing but milk and honey, etc. Who goes as a servant, becomes a lord; who goes as a maid, becomes a milady; a peasant becomes a nobleman; a citizen and artisan, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... (Sunday), whilst Arnaud and his men were on the heights of Angrogna, two messengers, sent by General Palavicini, announced the decision of Victor Amadeus, and offered terms of peace in his name. The sudden pleasure of such a communication, after nine months of hardship, toil, and fighting, might have been too much for these poor persecuted ones, had it not been tempered with doubts as to its truthfulness. But gradually events confirmed their hopes, and scattered their fears. Provisions were sent to ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... of his speech he said that he was a foreigner, he came to this country when he was fourteen years old, landing in New York with his only possessions tied in a handkerchief, went to work in an iron foundry, and after many years of toil he found himself at the head ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... lady," said I, "when you know our friend a little better, you will make a large allowance for his warm heart. My goodness has consisted in allowing him to feed and clothe and toil for me when he could ill afford it. If I am now alive, it is to him I owe it; no man had a kinder friend. You must take good care of him," I added, laying my hand on his shoulder, "and keep him in good order, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... councillor to Francis I. of France, who repaired this castle in 1528. Abroken staircase leads up to the top. "No warrior's tread is echoed by their halls, no warder's challenge on the silence falls. Around, the thrifty peasants ply their toil, and pluck in orange groves the scented spoil from trees that have for purple mountains made a vestment bright, of green and gold inlaid." —Guido and Lita, by the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... home thus, after a day of toil and pleasure, drunk with the sound of his own voice celebrating his own prosperity. On his thirtieth birthday he went home thus. He had spent in good company a nice, noisy evening, and, as he walked along the empty street, the feeling of his own greatness grew ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... flights, are still in existence, and that, according to tradition, Goldsmith's house was not on the steps, but was the first house at the head of the court, on the left hand, going from the Old Bailey. See "Notes and Queries" (2d. S. ix. 280).) Here, at thirty, the unlucky adventurer sat down to toil like a galley slave. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the 8th. Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know by experience that a man's individual self is a good deal, but believe me, a wife and family of children, whenever you have the honour to be a ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... minute Machine-Fixer's colossal self-pride eliminated any possibility of material assistance. What we did, about every other night, was to entertain him (as we entertained our other friends) chez nous; that is to say, he would come up late every evening or every other evening, after his day's toil—for he worked as co-sweeper with Garibaldi and he was a tremendous worker; never have I seen a man who took his work so seriously and made so much of it—to sit, with great care and very respectfully, upon one or the other of our beds at the upper end of The Enormous Room, and smoke a black ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... the history of mankind. Thousands of years ago it was heard and acted on; and, in the lapse of centuries, its reverberations have but swelled in volume. Again and again, the altruist has arisen in politics, has bidden us share with others the product of our toil, and has proclaimed the communistic dogma as the panacea for our social ills. So today, amid the buried hopes and buried projects of the past, the doctrine of communism still lives in the minds of men. Under stress of misfortune, or in dread of tyranny, ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo

... the young Pretender. His person, at this time, is thus described by Lord Mahon: "The Prince was tall and well-formed; his limbs athletic and active. He excelled in all manly exercises, and was inured to every kind of toil, especially long marches on foot, having applied himself to field-sports in Italy, and become an expert walker. His face was strikingly handsome, of a perfect oval, and a fair complexion; his eyes light blue; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... somnolence of wearied adolescence, he stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been more noise in it. He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him hastily, "Steady, man—a friend!" as the half-roused soldier clutched his rifle. Then ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... Hebrews, always the Hebrews! Centuries have passed since this people wandered into our land. They have increased without disturbing us. I neither love nor hate them; but now I fear them. They have had to toil, of late more severely than ever, but they do not murmur; they are patient as though they expected something ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... allowed her gaze to travel about the room. In the entire atmosphere of the place was no besmirching suggestion of toil. She returned again to Zenie. The latter was like some tropical flower in full bloom. She began, selecting carefully her ground: "You haven't any place to put your baby, no one to watch him while you work, have you?" This was spoken with ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... expeditions of his earlier life. It is to be supposed that with Kit he has acquired some experience. With Kit therefore he shall now receive his final polishing, and if he does not in the end catch a beaver, he shall at least learn how they are caught, and all the necessary minutiae of toil which he must expect ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... spoiled his life. He had always meant to do something, and Amy's advice was quite unnecessary. He had only been waiting till the aforesaid blighted affections were decently interred. That being done, he felt that he was ready to 'hide his stricken heart, and still toil on'. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... on the whole, For an ordinary soul, (So I gather from this song I've tried to sing,) For to take the luck that may Chance to fall within his way, Than to toil for an imaginary thing. ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... perhaps by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march. The exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adventure of exploration; and the weariness, from the interminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the grim monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky. Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, lonesome lakes paddled over, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... expansive forehead, a clear blue eye, rather commonplace features, a thin, brown, pointed beard, and a slight moustache. Though low of stature, he was broad-chested, with well-knit limbs. His hands, which were small and nervous, were brown and callous with the marks of toil. There was something in his brow and glance not to be mistaken, and which men willingly call master; yet he did not seem, to have sprung of the born magnates of the earth. He wore a heavy gold chain about his neck, and it might be observed that upon the light full sleeves of his slashed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... yet he had already learned the secrets of the toil necessary to meet the needs of life. He swung a woodman's axe with any man. He could plow and plant a field, make its crop, harvest and store its fruits and cook them for the table. He could run, ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... famine. Stormy lakes, those great inland seas, are no obstacles to his wanderings: in his light canoe of bark he sports like a feather on their waves, and darts with the swiftness of an arrow down the roaring rapids of the rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the chase: he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buffalo, and sleeps among the thunders of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... from that which we now travelled. The peaks of this screen of mountains were as wildly varied and distinguished, as the hills which we had seen on the right were tame and lumpish; and while I gazed on this Alpine region, I felt a longing to explore its recesses, though accompanied with toil and danger, similar to that which a sailor feels when he wishes for the risks and animation of a battle or a gale, in exchange for the insupportable monotony of a protracted calm. I made various inquiries of my friend Mr. Jarvie respecting the names and positions of these remarkable ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Hear this which saith: Who can doth never will. Lo, thou hast lent thine ear to fables still. Rewarding those who hate the name of truth. I am thy drudge, and have been from my youth— Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill; Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill: The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth. Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height; But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need. Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite Here on the earth, if this be our reward— To seek ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... science of biblical criticism. And now the question was, whether the Church of northern Germany would accept this great gift—the fruit of centuries of devoted toil and self-sacrifice—and take the lead of Christendom ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... years have seemed so long; And toil like mine is wondrous dreary; And every body thinks ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... he had camped high up among the pines. The sough of the wind pleased him, like music. There had begun to be prospects of pleasant experience along with the toil of chasing Wildfire. He was entering new and strange and beautiful country. How far might the chase take him? He did not care. He was not sleepy, but even if he had been it developed that he must wait till the coyotes ceased their barking round his camp-fire. They came so close ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... man is engaged through life in grinding labor to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when, at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served, a poor pension of eight pence a day, he can only get it through a revolution, and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbor receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table of that law come from? Whose ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... of such testimonials as the above, but deem these sufficient to convince any honest person that my toil is not ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... people like burned-out ashes, and again they walked through the streets, with black, smoke-covered faces, radiating the sticky odor of machine oil, and showing the gleam of hungry teeth. But now there was animation in their voices, and even gladness. The servitude of hard toil was over for the day. Supper awaited them ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... opinions of Christendom on subjects pertaining to religion or morals. They have been sublimely unconcerned as to results in any such direction. They have investigated, examined, compared, collated, with long-continued and patient toil, to gather from the buried past the actual story of its departed cycles; they have not been troubled lest they should impinge on the creeds of the religious world, or compel important modifications in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... must remember what swore to me your hand, That soon as Lady Brunhild were come into this land, To me you 'd give your sister, your oaths now where are they? On me throughout your journey much toil and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... coward and a tramp. The bully had seen just how matters stood, and whenever it pleased him he would stamp into the house and demand the pay that Salome earned by sewing at the machine, at five centimos per two yards. Unresistingly she handed him the product of her sweating toil, and many a time the ruffian, not content with depriving her of the money, gave her a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... all this I had to give up my system, which, after so much toil, was just beginning to produce results. In desperation I carried the whips bank to the school the next day and began the barbarous practice again. Serenity disappeared and sadness reigned in the faces of the children, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... 'twere to take the relic whilst Philip sleeps upon my bosom—but how treacherous! And yet a life of competence and ease, a smiling family, a good old age; what offers to a fond and doting wife! And if not, toil, anxiety, and a watery grave; and for me! Pshaw! that's nothing. And yet to die separated from Philip, is that nothing? Oh, no, the thought is dreadful.—I do believe him. Yes, he has foretold the future, and told it truly. Could I persuade Philip? No! I know ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... splendors of the sun; next best to traverse as soon as possible the gates of Hades." See also the almost identical passage in Oedipus in Colonus, 1225.—The Anthology is full of pessimistic utterances: "Naked came I upon the earth, naked I go below the ground—why then do I vainly toil when I see the end naked before me?"—"How did I come to be? Whence am l? Wherefore did I come? To pass away. How can I learn aught when naught I know? Being naught I came to life: once more shall I be what I was. Nothing and nothingness is the whole race of mortals."—"For death ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... somewhat moderately. There was no disguising the penalty of his deed of kindness. To Ann Jimmy Crocker was no rescuer, but a sort of blend of ogre and vampire. She must never learn his real identity—or not until he had succeeded by assiduous toil, as he hoped he would, in neutralising that ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... may be called an intimate relationship compared with intercourse here, which is, in fact, nothing more than mutual mistrust and espionage, if there only were anything to spy out or to conceal! The people toil and fret over nothing but mere trifles, and these diplomats, with their consequential hair-splitting, already seem to me more ridiculous than the Member of the Second Chamber in the consciousness of his dignity. If foreign events ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... sympathy with old-world sorrows that have left behind no chronicles save these silent stones. It is indeed a path sacred to meditation! One has there an overpowering sense of waste—a depressing feeling of vanity. On every side are innumerable tokens of a vast expenditure of human toil, and love, and sorrow; and it seems as if it had been all thrown away. For two miles and a half from the tomb of Caecilia Metella I counted fifty-three tombs on the right and forty-eight on the left. The margin of the road on either side is strewn with fragments of hewn marble, travertine, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... like myself, should'st mount and stay To wait this battle's end, the lovely dame, Before she fly yet further on her way. The lady taken, we repeat our claim With naked faulchion to that peerless prey: Else by long toil I see not what we gain But simple loss and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... the harvest shall spring up and ripen, if not for himself, yet for others, who, as they bind the full sheaves and gather in the heavy clusters, may perchance remember him with gratitude and set up stones of memorial on the fields of his toil and sacrifices. We may regret that in this stage of the spirit's life the sincere and self-denying worker is not always permitted to partake of the fruits of his toil or receive the honors of a benefactor. We hear his good evil spoken of, and his noblest sacrifices counted ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... day one grave-eyed Fate, Pausing in her toil, shall say, "Lo, one mortal has achieved 15 ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman

... with great difficulty. Her husband must 'tell Father that she had loved him.' Joern Uhl sobbed violently: 'Who has never spoken a kind word to you, poor child.' She tried to smile. 'You have had nothing but toil and work,' he said. Then she made him understand in labored speech that she had been very happy." The last fever phantasies finally put her back into her childhood. Her love went out to the old teacher Karstensen, then again ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... she herself, in the royal attire of her everlasting youth and beauty, descended upon the earth; for she had heard that there men lived, who passed their lives in sorrowful seriousness, in the midst of care and toil. Unto these she had sent the finest gifts out of her kingdom, and ever since the beauteous Queen came through the fields of earth, men were merry at their labor, and happy ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... all that constitutes its beauty, and among our girls who are compelled to earn their livelihood in factories and offices, one will behold faces delicate and features classically beautiful. The anxieties attending daily toil do not destroy their beauty, and some of these girls have features that light up with expressions wondrously charming, and here also the types are varied, and it is wonderful how an impression will sometimes be mutually made. This is what ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey

... on Indian Soil, Soon as the burning Day was clos'd, I could mock the sultry Toil When ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face,— Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart— When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory—to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die,— This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! Never may I commence my song, my due To God who best taught song ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... to toil; Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil; Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... being known to the king our sovereign who is in glory, your Majesty's grandfather, he appointed him governor and captain-general of the provinces of Nueha Vizcaya, where with great valor, continuous toil, and at his own cost, he made war upon the rebel Indians, until he had reduced more than sixty towns, and brought down many men from the mountains, where they were committing great depredations. By those means they were able to discontinue several presidios, and save ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... fishermen of various nationalities, among whom Englishmen were now much more numerous than formerly, were in the habit of frequenting the shores of the island during the summer and using the harbors and coves for the cure of their fish, returning home with the products of their toil on the approach of winter. Eighty-six years had passed away since Cabot's discovery, and we now arrive at the year 1583, a memorable date in the history of Newfoundland. On August 5th of that year there were lying in the harbor of St. John's thirty-six vessels belonging to various nations, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... had been conducting the religious services in the church. Very thankful were we that after our long and adventurous journeyings for two months and eighteen days, by land and water, through the good providence of God we had reached our field of toil among the Cree Indians, where for years we were to be ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... life of toil,' he wrote afterwards, 'I cannot but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early education; and, were it possible, I should like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... We first unburdened it but this did not help; no more did our shouting and threats. He only stood with his head down and looked so exhausted that we realized he had reached the further bourne of his land of toil. Some Soyots with us examined him, felt of his muscles on the fore and hind legs, took his head in their hands and moved it from side to side, examined his head carefully after that and ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... Thy recognition of the use of life; Nor call thy spirit barely adequate To help on life in straight ways, broad enough For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. Thou, in the daily building of thy tower— Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil, Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth, Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect— 30 Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake— Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope Of ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... to see the young confront the uncertainties of the future, and look forward with faith to happiness and success. I am proud of young women who are willing to devote their evenings, when they must toil for a livelihood through the day, to a course of study which will secure to them the knowledge of a mechanical art. This knowledge becomes a treasure which no disaster of fire or flood can ever destroy, and a source of comfortable income through life. It makes dependent young women ...
— Silver Links • Various

... after the necessary materials had been collected—and then the collecting of the materials themselves—what strange ideas of difficulty and danger arise in our minds at the sole mention of that most important point! But here is the work before us; the splendid result of the toil, travel, genius, and learning of one man, and that man an Englishman. The above is no overstrained panegyric; we refer our readers to the work itself, and then fearlessly abandon the matter to their decision. ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... shaking and worn out. He was only eleven. His fragile body had undergone a fearful hour of toil and hardship. As he was drawing in his breath for a cry to any chance searchers, the boy was aware of a swift pattering, above his head. He looked up. The sky was shade or two less densely black ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... of these works seems, it does not represent more than Defoe's average rate of production for thirty years of his life. With grave anxieties added to the strain of such incessant toil, it is no wonder that nature should have raised its protest in an apoplectic fit. Even nature must have owned herself vanquished, when she saw this very protest pressed into the service of the irresistible and triumphant worker. All the time he was at large upon bail, awaiting ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... blow, he started up with great agility, and executed his office in sight of several evidences whom he had assembled in the street for that purpose; so that I could not possibly disentangle myself from the toil without incurring an escape-warrant, from which I had no protection. But, had I known the contents of the chest, by all that's good! I would have ordered my porter to raise it up as high as the crane would permit, and then have ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... when like Mercury, I leaped the walls and flew amidst the foe, And like a baited Lion dyed myself All over in the blood of those bold hunters; 'Till spent with toil I battled on my knees, Plucked forth the darts that made my shield a forest, And hurl'd them back with the most unconquer'd fury, Then shining in my arms, I sunned the field, Moved, spoke and fought, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... toil, rescuer and rescued reached the drier land that sloped up to the levee, it was hard to tell which was the more exhausted. To the last, however, Ross refused to let his chum bear the burden of the puppies, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... across the great abyss of time and space and thought and custom which separates him from us, warms a true man's heart even now. With touching fidelity he pictured the sad life of the lower orders,—their thankless toil, their constant misery; then, with a sturdiness which awes us, he arraigned, first, royalty for its crushing taxation,—next, the whole upper class for its oppressions,—and then, daring death, he thus launched into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... serious part of his speech, there was silence. His voice reached to the farthest corners of the crowd, as he reminded them what slavery really meant. He summed it up in a few words: "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah

... thy grave with garlands, but thou didst reproduce thyself in thought, and on the minds of men thou didst leave thy impress. And thy ten thousand sons will keep thy memory green so long as men shall work, and toil, and strive, and hope." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... yard away a fissure in the rock grinned at them. La Bijou leaped and shot ahead, and the water, slipping away underneath, kept her always in one place. Now they surged out from the fissure, now in; ahead for half a yard, then back again; and the fissure mocked their toil. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... on the waves: their stormy voices teach That not on earth may toil and struggle cease. Look on the mountains: better far than speech Their silent promise ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... all to their own republic, and with this they are well pleased. I learned that cannon and typography were invented by the Chinese before we knew of them. There are magistrates who announce the meaning of the pictures, and boys are accustomed to learn all the sciences, without toil and as if for pleasure; but in the way of history only until they are ten ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... my own memory. I must describe my own sensations. If I reckon by the toil and turmoil of the mind, I am already an old man. I have lived for ages. I am far, very far, on my voyage. Let me cast my eyes back on the vast sea that I have traversed; there is a mist settled over it, almost as impenetrable as that which glooms ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... faint and distant, in rising and falling cadence of a marching military band. In at it also, and rising superior to all these in imperativeness and purpose, came the voice of Naples itself—no longer that of a city of toil and commerce, but that of a city of pleasure, a city of licence, until such time as the dawn should once again break, and the sun arise, driving back man and beast alike to labour, the one from merry sinning, the other from hard-earned ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... lips. They wheeled forward a low bed that I knew well. Oh, the slow starting of the socket! Oh, the long wrench of tendon and nerve! A bed of steel and cords, rollers and levers, bound me there, and bent to their creaking toil. I was strong to endure; I had set my teeth and sworn myself to silence; no woman should hear me moan. Even in this misery I saw that she who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... doubt. You always are. But look how strong our force is, men tried in toil and battle, and they are many! What have ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the man who has no employment but to watch his own digestions; and who, on waking in the morning, has no useful occupation of the day presented to his mind. To such a one respiration is a toil, and existence a continued disease. Self-oblivion is his only resource, indulgence in alcohol in various disguises his remedy, and death or superstition his only comfort and hope. For what was he born, and why does he live? are questions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... were there; a lad teased a lass; a girl hunched her shoulder to provoke more teasing. An old priest paused with a finger in his breviary to smile upon a heap of ragged urchins tumbling in the dust. The air breathed benevolence, the peace of afternoon, the end of toil. Round about, so still and easeful after the day's labour, were the white houses, green-shuttered, half hidden in the trees, the minarets, the domes, the coursing swallows: over them the golden haze of afternoon, a sky yellowing at ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... he vowed, burgher or angel? A spell is woven of shadow and falling light, and of chimes floating over meadow and stream. Yet this sense of something remotely and unutterably beautiful, this transfiguration of life, is as real and vital an experience as the daily, dreary toil, and to be welcomed as such. Nay, more! it is better, because it gives one a deepened sense of value, of significance, of eternal greatness, to which we must cling as firmly as we may, because it is there ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to see the intelligence in her mutinous eyes, and the sweet lines of her mouth, too often shaped in sullen mould, and no less quick to recognise that she would carry herself well, with spirit and dignity, once she were relieved of household toil and moil, once given the chance to discard her shapeless, bedraggled and threadbare garments for those dainty and beautiful things for which her starved heart must ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... to tree, while we followed slowly in his wake, as often as not being obliged to make a slip-rope of the line to enable us to cross some exceptionally wide or awkward gap. In this manner, after about half an hour's arduous toil, with the perspiration pouring out of us until our clothes were saturated with it, while we were driven nearly frantic by the attacks of the mosquitoes and stinging flies that beset us by thousands, and could by no means be driven away, we contrived at length to reach ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... by war and everything to lose. As we have seen, force ruled the world, and the common people had no voice in their government. The workers were looked down upon by the members of the fighting class, who never did a stroke of work themselves and considered honest toil as degrading. In fact, as one writer has said, the only respectable trade in Europe in those days was what we ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... if you know of any one who, under my influence, has been changed from a religious into an irreligious man; who, from being sober-minded, has become prodigal; from being a moderate drinker has become a wine-bibber and a drunkard; from being a lover of healthy honest toil has become effeminate, or under the thrall of some other ...
— The Apology • Xenophon

... English-speaking race. In speaking thus, as a lover or a child, I am certainly not pointing to the road of selfishness. If the English- speaking kin is to take the lead and to bring mankind from out the shadow and once again into the light, it can only be through care, toil, and sacrifice-things little consistent with ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... "You toil not, neither do you spin, yet God takes care of you and your little ones. It must be, then, that He loves you. So, do not be ungrateful, but sing His praises and thank Him for ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... lovers. The former sacrifice the dignity of existence, the latter that which is the charm of existence. So that, in decisive moments, when the man of pleasure appeals to his intelligence, he finds he is unfit for duty, and when the man of toil appeals to his heart, he finds that he is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... grew tired, and sat down on a grassy slope, and I sat down at her feet, and took her hands, her little hands, that were so marked with the needle, and that moved me. I said to myself: 'These are the sacred marks of toil.' Oh! Monsieur, do you know what those sacred marks of labor mean? They mean all the gossip of the workroom, the whispered blackguardism, the mind soiled by all the filth that is talked; they mean lost chastity, foolish chatter, all the wretchedness of daily bad habits, all the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... reins let loose and the spears shaken aloft, and the swords drawn on either side, in such wise that no semblance was there that any should escape alive. But God the all mighty who seeth all, and who setteth an end to the toil of the righteous, did to hold aback them of one part and of the other when they were now hard on each other, for then said Amis: "Who are ye knights, who have will to slay Amis the exile and his fellows?" At that voice Amile knew Amis his fellow and said: "O thou ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den. Here, powerless and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... past youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... in the kitchen. All the other dwellers on the estate were lying asleep; for it was just before the harvest-time, when peasants have the least to do, and the workmen use every spare minute for sleep, in order to prepare themselves, in a measure, for the approaching days of toil and sweat. For in general, country people, like dogs, can, if they wish to, sleep at all hours of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... do?" said I, in Andaluz as lazy as the other Cristobal could have used. I took off my cap to the ladies, and so did Dick and the Cherub, exposing heated foreheads, damp from honest toil. "Sorry to find you in such a difficulty. But we'll soon get you out of that, won't we, Senor Waring? Here are three of us with stout ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... gladly welcoming every help, and respecting every personality. But we should also respect our own, and bear in mind, that "though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to us but through our toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to us to till." To undervalue our own thought because it is ours, to depreciate our own powers or faculties because some one else's are more vigorous, to shrink from doing what we can because we think we can do so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... sustains arduous and perilous philanthropic enterprise*. The martyr for opinion suffers or dies rather than stain his soul with the positive guilt of falsehood; while the philanthropist might evade toil and danger without committing any actual sin, or making himself liable to censure or disapproval either from God or man. In the former case, hardship or danger is rendered inevitable by the felt necessity of self-respect; in the latter, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... Cultivated leisure is a thing practically unknown. However, the country is merely passing through a necessary phase of development. In the near future, each of these shabby home—stations will be replaced by a noble mansion, with its spacious park; and these bare plains will reward the toil of an industrious and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... the harvesters lay upon their backs under the trees as we passed. The women appeared to do most of the out-door, as well as the in-door work. They are certainly far more industrious than the men, who, judging from what I saw of them, are downright indolent Evidences of slow, patient, plodding toil, one sees truly; but active industry, thrift, and honest ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... thought the thing out, faced all its most sordid aspects. Yes, he was fighting with these people for daily bread; he and his could live only if his three farthings of profit were plucked out of that toil worn hand of charwoman or sempstress. Accept the necessity, and think no more of it. He was a man behind the counter; he saw face to face the people who supported him. With this exception had not things been just the same when he sat in the counting-house ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... Christie, and claimed a good deal of praise for so doing; but it weren't a very one-sided bargain, after all, for she worked like a pony, and proved more than worth her keep. In fact, there was little in her days but work, and for a young pretty maiden not turned nineteen, there's no doubt the toil and trouble of 'Passage House' and the money-grubbing passion of her uncle and aunt were ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... him to decline the offer of a valuable benefice in Lincolnshire, which was made him by the father of his friend, Langton, provided he could prevail on himself to take holy orders, a measure that would have delivered him from literary toil for the remainder of his days. But literary toil was the occupation for which nature had designed him. In the April of 1758, he commenced the Idler, and continued to publish it for two years in ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... rose, To toil and spin they ne'er were given; Yet God on them a robe bestows, More rich than ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... as a board, and seem to have no fat; the countenance is bronzed, and there is no dyspepsia. Africa is a most wonderful country for appetite, and it is only when one gloats over marrow bones or elephant's feet that indigestion is possible. No doubt much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travellers in the more temperate climes can form but a faint conception; but the sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God: it proves a tonic to the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... followed the Bloemfontein Conference a burden of toil and responsibility was laid upon Lord Milner which would have crushed any lesser man into utter passivity or resignation. An Afrikander Cabinet, with a nationalist element reporting its confidential councils with the Governor to Mr. Hofmeyr, the Bond Master, and President Steyn, the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... every one about him was sound asleep. It could not be for lack of the bath; he had already slept well without it too many nights hand-running. Nor could it be a want of special nightclothes; he had won his election over a nightshirt aristocrat, as being not too pampered to sleep, like the sons of toil, in the shirt he had worn all day and would wear again to-morrow. Nor yet was it nicotine or alcohol, the putting of which into him was like feeding cottonwood to Hayle's old Huntress. Such, at least, was his private conviction. Oh, he knew the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... old-fashioned habit, or instinct, of seeking work by direct assault; the method of the male being rather to sit on a bench and discuss the obstacles, the injustices, and the unendurable insults heaped by a plutocratic government in the path of the honest son of toil. ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... hopelessly passee. Yet it was the revealing of the inner woman, rather than the withering of the exterior, which betrayed her years. The woman who understands the art of bodily preservation can, with constant toil and care, retain an appearance of youth and charm into middle life; but she who would pass that dreaded meridian, and still remain a goodly sight for the eyes of men, must possess, in addition to all the secrets of the toilet, those divine elixirs, unselfishness and ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... on your shawl, and let us go; For one day let us think Of something else than daily care, Or toil, and meat, and drink: For one day let our children sport And feel their limbs their own: For one day let us quite forget The grief that we have known:— Let us forget that we are poor; And, basking in the ray, Thank God that we can still enjoy ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... but satisfy their longing. You behold the Irish nation, Who expect to hear God's truth From your lips. Oh, chosen youth, Leave your slavery. The vocation God has given thee is to sow Faith o'er all the Irish soil. There as Legate thou shalt toil, Ireland's great Apostle. Go First to France, to German's home, The good bishop: there thou'lt make Thy profession: there thou'lt take The monk's habit, and to Rome Pass, where letters thou'lt procure For that mighty work of thine, In the ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... McGaw,—honest Daniel McGaw I should call him if his presence did not deter me,—stood wan side in obadience to the will of the people and the laws of the State, and accepted his defate with that calmness which always distinguishes the hard-workin' sons of toil, who are not only the bone and sinoo of our land, but its honor and proide. But, gintlemen,"—running his hand lightly through his hair, and then laying it in the bulging lapels of his now half-buttoned coat,—"there were other ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... time when all men should realize that, in the words of Governor Coolidge himself, "Laws must rest on the eternal foundations of righteousness"; that "Industry, thrift, character are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil." It is a time when we must "have faith in Massachusetts. We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people,—a faith that men desire to do right, that the Commonwealth is founded upon ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... felt such a sentiment of reverential admiration for the acquired talents of any man as I did for those of the Major when I heard him pronounce, fluently and gracefully, this extraordinary sentence. My mind was hopelessly lost in attempting to imagine the number of years of patient toil which must have preceded his first request for food, and I contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... Night! She rules, with such noble repose, over men and animals alike, kindly loosed by her from the yoke of daily toil; and even I feel her beneficent influence, although my habits of sixty years have so changed me that I can feel most things only through the signs which represent them. My world is wholly formed of words—so much of a philologist I have become! Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... artist who brought me my pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to do something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child. I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did not know that "Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil." ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a cheerful front, and went about his daily toil, as he needs must, with as little outward show ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... a man to be witness of the inevitable. For each time a piece of their land was taken by the sea with all their toil and daily bread on its back, they themselves declined. For every fathom that the ocean stole nearer to the threshold of their home, nibbling at their good earth, their status and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... of the Universe, and the Holy Temple should descend from Heaven already built, that the Jews might offer sacrifice therein for ever. But these hopes found no lodgment in the breasts of the Jewish governors of the Smyrniote quarter, where hard-headed Sephardim were busy in toil and traffic, working with their hands, or shipping freights of figs or valonea; as for the Schnorrers, the beggars who lived by other people's wits, they were even more hard-headed than the workers. Hence constant ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... help feeling thankful to the kindly writer who attempts to perpetuate their memories beyond the generations which profit immediately by their toil. If she is not a great dramatist, she is at least an exquisite describer. But one can as little help feeling that it is no more than a strictly logical retribution, that in her hour of need (dramatically speaking) she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... ignorant, heals her sick, renews her old, sweetens her bitter, fills her when empty, adorns her homely, honours her when base. The old mass falls to the foundation and the new rises; and the state of it as it rises, sets forth the fitting form of the cross. The difficult toil unites three whole parts; for the most solid mass of the foundation rises from the centre,{21} the wall carries the roof into the air. [So the foundation is buried in the lap of earth, but the wall and roof shew themselves, and with proud daring ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... secluded and less pretentious barroom, at least, come the better class of miners, those who have no special taste for bloodshed and other deviltry, and who occasionally go so far as to leave their firearms at home. Some slight prejudice, to be sure, was created among the independent Sons of Toil, when it was found that the Mountain Lion did not permit its waiters to smoke cigarettes while on duty; but such cavillers were much soothed upon learning that a "bust dude" had been quite as summarily dealt with when he broke forth into song ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... man who undertakes the breaking of virgin prairie in the remoter districts. He must have unflinching courage and stubbornness, and be able to dispense with all the comforts and amenities of civilized life. No interests are offered him beyond those connected with his task; for half the year he must toil unremittingly from dawn till dark, and depend upon his own resources through the long, bitter winter. For society, he may have a hired hand, and the loungers in the saloon of the nearest settlement, which is often a day's ride away; and they are not, as a rule, men of culture or pleasing manners. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... a musician needs to toil more assiduously to acquire skill in the art, however strong his desire or great his taste, than ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... harbour of the Saints! O sweet and pleasant soil! In thee no sorrow may be found, No grief, no care, no toil. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... case of the living. As a rule, the living calf should be preserved, if possible, but if this threatens to entail the death of the cow it is only in the case of offspring of rare value that its preservation is to be preferred. To those acquainted with the toil, fatigue, and discomfort of embryotomy, no discussion is necessary so long as there is a prospect of success from the simple and generally easier method of rectifying the faulty position of the calf. When the correction of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... youth springs to the battlefield of life! Hope exorcises the gaunt spectre of defeat, and fancy fingers unwon trophies and fadeless bays; but slow-stepping experience, pallid, blood-stained, spent with toil, lays her icy hand on the rosy veil that floats before bright, brave, young eyes, and lo' the hideous wreck, the bleaching bones, the grinning, ghastly horrors that strew the scene of combat! No burnished ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... cried Zeyn, in astonishment, "where could my father find such rarities?" The ninth pedestal redoubled this amazement, for it was covered with a piece of white satin, on which were written these words, "Dear son, it cost me much toil to procure these eight statues; but though they are extraordinarily beautiful, you must understand that there is a ninth in the world, which surpasses them all: that alone is worth more than a thousand such as these: if you desire to be master ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... on hearing the voice of Chalciope; and straightway all the court was filled with a throng. Some of the thralls were busied with a mighty bull, others with the axe were cleaving dry billets, and others heating with fire water for the baths; nor was there one who relaxed his toil, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... a roving wing, A sprightly dance, a voice to sing, To sport 'mid flowers and crowns of spring, Such, such be the life for me. No care to-day, no toil the morrow, Ever sunshine, never sorrow: I sip and quaff the honied wine With my rosy lips divine. Fearless I stray, whate'er my will, Seeking pleasure, pleasure still. Such, such be the life for me: Who aims at ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... in the River Maas, which opened its laughing mouth wide to let in our boat. But soon it was so busy with its daily toil that it forgot to smile and look its best for strangers. We saw it in its brown working-dress, giving water to ugly manufactories, and floating an army of big ships, black lighters, and broadly built craft, which coughed spasmodically as they forged ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... her crosses and difficulties, when she marries, what is it but to exchange a life of comparative ease and comfort, for one of toil and uncertainty? Perhaps, too, the lover for whom in the fondness of her nature she has committed herself to fortune's freaks, turns out a worthless churl, the dissolute, hard-hearted husband of low life; who, taking to the ale-house, leaves her to a cheerless ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... hopeless than the condition of the British army, or more desperate than that of their General, as described by himself. In his letter to Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for American affairs, he says: "A series of hard toil, incessant effort, stubborn action, until disabled in the collateral branches of the army by the total defection of the Indians; the desertion or timidity of the Canadians and provincials, some individuals excepted; disappointed in the last hope of any cooperation from other ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... stepped out after me once more. It was dead toil in the soft snow, and it was slow; for Macartney or no Macartney, there was no making time in the untrodden bush. I cut our way as short as I dared, but do the best I could it was dark when we came to that forlorn, evil hollow in the gap of desolate hills that Caraquet ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of these delights, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... amusement-seekers care about any one's duty? They are out to enjoy life. They are the well-to-do, the well-fed, the careless livers. Many of them are keen, relentless business-men wearied by the day's toil. They are now seeking relaxation, and not at all concerned with acquiring wisdom or grace. They are, indeed, the very kind of men to whom my play sets the cold steel, and their wives, of higher purpose, of gentler wills, are, nevertheless, quite as incapable of steady ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... appealed to the men to discard disorder and take a hand in the orderly reconstruction of the new Russian State, in which they were now guaranteed a place. Madame Frank's translation made a profound impression upon these toil-worn men and women. It was clear that the people were tired of the horrors of revolution and yearned for ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... getting women at the very lowest possible wage—(I want you to notice the low wage is the main consideration in all this)—men get these women, that they say are so tender and delicate, to undertake the almost intolerable toil of the rope-walk. They get women to make bricks. Girls are driven—when they are not driven to worse—they are driven to being lodging-house slaveys or over-worked scullions. That's all right! Women are graciously permitted to sweat over other people's washing, when they ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... I, "it is a proved fact that wimmen's votes do help in these matters. And do you think, Lorinda, that if educated, motherly, thoughtful wimmen helped make the laws so many little children would be allowed to toil in factories and mines, their tender shoulders bearin' the burden of constant labor that wears out the iron ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley

... have to accept their religions ready made. Their daily tasks leave them no time or opportunity for a personal search. The toil for bread is incessant, there is not sufficient leisure to verify the sources of their religious beliefs. Moreover, the ecclesiastic's answers to the riddles of life are easier, by far, to grasp than the answers ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... who dare not risk a change for fear of to-morrow's hunger—people for whom the crust is too uncertain for its certainty to be questioned. We often ask why it is that the poor—the working-people—endure their poverty and perpetual toil without overwhelming revolt. The reason is that they have their eyes fixed on the evening meal, and for the life of them they dare not lose ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... est per omnia secula benedictus." It would be wantonly violating probability and the unity of a great life to suppose that this purpose, though transformed, was ever forgotten or laid aside. The poet knew not, indeed, what he was promising, what he was pledging himself to—through what years of toil and anguish he would have to seek the light and the power he had asked; in what form his high ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... maintained here aloft by her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might have before him the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and untarnished by the struggle for existence? Her shapely hands, I observed, wore very fair and white; they lacked the traces of what is called honest toil. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... laid aside, And Industry in festal garb arrayed; Let busy brain and hand from toil and ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard



Words linked to "Toil" :   elbow grease, travail, effort, slavery, manual labor, drudge, sweat, overworking, haymaking, donkeywork, work, moil, exertion, labour, hunting, hunt, labor, do work, plodding, roping, manual labour, toiler, overwork, hackwork, drudgery



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