"Irksome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The conversation had become irksome to him; but some person at the table took the last word from Olympia's ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... then come to this, that there are men, say a class of men, whose daily work, though maybe they cannot escape from doing it, is chiefly pleasure to them; and other classes of men whose daily work is wholly irksome to them, and only endurable because they hope while they are about it to earn thereby a little leisure at ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... have already secured partners at the Retreta and elsewhere, and as at all respectable gatherings in Cuba everybody is supposed to know everybody else, the irksome formalities of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... I would no longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... to a correspondent he apologized for not sooner replying, and pleaded "debilitated health, occasioned by the fever wch. deprived me of 20 lbs. of the weight I had when you and I were at Troy Mills Scales, and rendered writing irksome." ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... house; for whilst the father, mother, sisters, and two elder sons were all hard at work doing all in their power for the relief of the sick, the younger lads were kept at home, to be as far as possible out of harm's way, and they had felt the confinement and idleness as most irksome. Their mother employed them about the house when she could, but it was not much she could find for them to do. To be sure there was some amusement to be found in watching the life on the river; for though traffic ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... grappling with his corruptions, and striving to pull down his base lusts, after he hath waited upon the Lord in a constant course of obedience. Take but such a man, and ask him, now his conscience is opened, whether the ways of holiness and sincerity be not irksome to him, whether he be not grieved with himself for undergoing so much needless trouble (as the world thinks it); and his soul will then clear this matter. It is true he hath a tedious course of it, but now his death will be blest. He hath striven for a crown, and now beholds a crown. Now he is beyond ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... with the abnormal insensibility, sometimes seen in the dying. He seemed to be trying in that latter stage to escape from a full and clear understanding of his position. Certain essential facts which required immediate consideration were particularly irksome to him. How glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the neglect of which would have threatened ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that liberty you have so generously sacrificed to my interests. Conscious of the ennui which oppresses you in this part of the country, I write to entreat that you will allow no consideration connected with me to detain you longer in a place so irksome, but, since our visit to Marly is concluded, fly upon the wings of impatience to the gay scenes of Paris and Luxembourg. Be assured that it will at all times afford me much pleasure to evince the gratitude with which I shall ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... yet been heard of. But no sooner did the inhabitants perceive the 'War Sprite' and the 'Dreadnought,' than they began to throw up defences and remove their valuables into the interior. It was in the highest degree irksome to Raleigh to wait thus inactive, while this handsome Spanish colony was slipping from his clutch, but he had been forbidden to move without orders. After three days' waiting for Essex, a council of war was held on board the 'War Sprite.' On the fourth Raleigh leaped into his barge at the head of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... afternoon when a man, unless he is in strong health or enjoys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a cool corner of a house and sit upon the chairs of civilisation. About that time, the sharp stones, the planks, the upturned boxes of Silverado, began to grow irksome to my body; I set out on that hopeless, never-ending quest for a more comfortable posture; I would be fevered and weary of the staring sun; and just then he would begin courteously to withdraw his countenance, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... action of the administrative rolling-pin which thins the mind as it spreads it out. Exhausted by irksome toil, as much as by his life of gallantry, the ex-sub-director had well-nigh lost all his faculties by the time he came to live in the rue Saint-Dominique. But his weary face, on which there still ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... dust in the little streets was precious with specks of gold: but the poor children shivered for the want of a mother's love; they all pined for the dear home-people. If a certain task seemed to them particularly irksome, the heartless Queen was sure to find it out, and oblige them to perform it, day after day. If they disliked any article of food, that, and no other, were they forced to eat, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... conversation when Distin was there—which was not regularly, for the accident on the river served as an excuse for several long stays in bed—but a free and unfettered form when he was not present. For Macey soon freed Vane from any feeling of an irksome nature by insisting to Gilmore how he ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... exacting conditions which, as it was believed, Philip had imposed upon him, he was almost as subservient to Edward as to the King of France. His deference to his natural lord enabled Edward to renounce the most irksome of the obligations which he had incurred to his subjects, to punish Winchelsea, and to restrain Roman authority by laws which anticipate the legislation of the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... him or not, he could not be sure, but from that day forward he became much more careful in his movements, went regularly to his work with Andrew Black before daylight, and did not venture to return each night till after dark. It was a weary and irksome state of things, but better—as Black sagaciously remarked—than being imprisoned on the Bass Rock or shut up in Dunnottar Castle. But the near presence of Jean Black had, no doubt, more to do with the resignation of our hero to his position ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... fires, in direct and frequent communication with Hamburg, Russia, France and Austria, and without the advantage of a sea frontier. Cholera was repeatedly brought into Berlin, but never obtained a footing, and its successful repression was accomplished without any irksome interference with traffic or the ordinary business of life. The general success of Great Britain and Germany in keeping cholera in check by ordinary sanitary means completed the conversion of all enlightened nations to the policy laid down so far back as 1865 by Sir ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... During the formative period of the Army of the Potomac, when all were drilling, all studying tactics, all teaching guard duty and all striving hard to establish a satisfactory state of military discipline, Smith varied this irksome work by an occasional review, or by the still more exciting exercise of a reconnaissance in force, thus adding practice to precept, and bringing regiments and brigades to act coherently together. In all this he handled his division skillfully and well, and consequently soon had the satisfaction ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... proceeding to the Consulate I became aware that I was being shadowed. An individual resolutely dogged me. I had seen him previously but had taken no serious notice of his presence. Now he began to get a bit irksome. I bought some picture post-cards and addressed them to friends at home, announcing my immediate return, also introducing brief comments on the condition of things in Berlin as they appeared to me. A few hours later I regretted ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... cords by which he held her. If it were an unholy spell, it was, now, at least, in her desolation, a consoling one. He loved her; he wanted her. She knew that he was passionately eager to devote his life to her. He would wait expectantly until she wrote. With a few strokes of her pen she might end her irksome captivity in this wall-less prison of desert plain—this wilderness of gum ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... imagination, a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance and good-nature ... Common humanity and justice are little better than vague terms to him: he acts upon his immediate feelings and least irksome impulses. The King's hand is velvet to the touch—the Woolsack is a seat of honour and profit! That is all he knows about the matter. As to abstract metaphysical calculations, the ox that stands staring at the corner of the street troubles ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... was expected to furnish them with a marriage-portion. This was not obligatory, being probably a matter of negotiation with the parents of the bridegroom. In later times the obligation evidently became irksome and oppressive, and Law E was passed to relieve the strain. A father was bound to do his best to fulfil his promise to dower his daughter, but no more. A father could not hinder his daughter from becoming a votary.(355) ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... with her brood, denotes that, if you are a woman, your cares will be varied and irksome. Many children will be in your care, and some of them ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... put yourself in my position. However, I know they will all go to sleep, so I do not fret myself. I can say truly, no man has ever been so forced into a high position as I have. How many I know to whom the incense would be the breath of their nostrils. To me it is irksome beyond measure. Eight or ten men to help me off my camel! as if I were an invalid. If I walk, every one gets off and walks; so, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... wagging of heads ensued in the cold, irksome silence which fell upon the room. Then Morano summed up the matter in a few bitter words, in which he accused the despoilers, the men of the Quirinal, of being the sole cause of all the frightful misery of Rome. Were not people ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... though little suited either to the taste or inclination of Sophia, were, however, less irksome to her than her own thoughts, that formed the entertainment of the night, during which she ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... calamities. The Christians considered Julian as a cruel and crafty tyrant; who suspended the execution of his revenge till he should return victorious from the Persian war. They expected, that as soon as he had triumphed over the foreign enemies of Rome, he would lay aside the irksome mask of dissimulation; that the amphitheatre would stream with the blood of hermits and bishops; and that the Christians who still persevered in the profession of the faith, would be deprived of the common ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and communion become godlike and open heaven. We are none of us so little that we can do nothing; we are all necessary to the good of the whole. The highest individuality and freedom should generate the widest social love and charity. No labor is really irksome that helps the masses of our fellow men. If we have the Promethean fire, let it burn to light and warm them. The race is one, nor can we be happy while its members suffer. The moment we have done one duty faithfully, another and a higher awaits us. To be condemned to work only for ourselves were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... five centuries, either the spiritual power of Christianity itself, or the instruction in classic art and science which accompanied it, you cannot rightly judge, without taking the pains, and they will not, I think, be irksome, of noticing carefully, and fixing permanently in your minds, the separating characteristics of the greater races, both in those who learned and ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... great gift, and in such surroundings most obviously so. Lincoln as a lad was a valuable workman at the varied tasks that came his way, without needing that intense application to manual pursuits which the bent of his mind made irksome to him. And he was a person of high consideration among the lads of his age and company. The manners of the people then settling in Indiana and Illinois had not the extreme ferocity for which Kentucky had earlier been famous, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... How irksome were these three days to me! All sleep and appetite fled from me; I could only read and re-read his letter, and in the solitude of the woods imagine the moment of our meeting. On the eve of the third day I retired early to my room; I could ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... obstinate and would not come, he would hold out again for more payment. In this manner my old sorcerer was very seldom mistaken in his forecasts, and the influence he exerted over the clerk of the weather must have been very irksome to that functionary. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... charmed the Queen, had, by saving her life, made England her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded by other destructive emotions. It was true that Angele had saved her life, but Michel had charmed her eye. He had proved himself a more gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had done it, as he had said, in her honour. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Recorder of Dublin, and grandson of one of those Grattans who, according to Dean Swift, "could raise 10,000 men." The youth of Grattan had been neither joyous nor robust; in early manhood he had offended his father's conservatism; the profession of the law, to which he was bred, he found irksome and unsuited to his tastes; society, as then constituted, was repulsive to his over-sensitive spirit and high Spartan ideal of manly duty; no letters are sadder to read than the early correspondence of Grattan, till he had fairly ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Island, which we haue now examined in our former sections at whose railing and filthy speeches we haue bene ashamed on his behalfe: insomuch that those things which he with satyrical, satyrical? nay sathanicall biting and reuiling of our nation, hath not blushed to write, are irksome for vs to repeat: so great and abominable is his insolency and his reproches so heinous. Good God! whosoeuer shall view this cartlode of slanders (for we haue mentioned the least part thereof, because I was loth to lose ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... I suppose, my Lord, your embarrassments proceeded, if not from some entanglement grown irksome?—No; before I can promise myself happiness, I must be first satisfied I do not borrow that happiness ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... It is very irksome for these soaring thoughts winged to "wander through eternity," to come down and work out the terms of a tedious apprenticeship to the senses. And yet, what were thoughts unlocalized and unembodied? ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... was ever an easy matter. There was nothing unfeminine or sullen in Lucilla's irregulated moods; a kind word—a kind caress—allayed them in an instant, and turned the transient sorrow into sparkling delight. But they who know how irksome is the perpetual trouble of conciliation to a man meditative and indolent like Godolphin, will appreciate the pain that even her tenderness ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "you're not after her for anything? Contempt of court, or something British? A proud-spirited young American girl might find your rules and regulations in war time rather irksome, and get up against it. If that's the case, and there's such a thing as graft in this ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... chance of harm. If he sacrifices a large portion of his income to the State, he deprives himself for a time of the pleasures of affluence; but to the poor man death is embellished by no pomp or renown, and the imposts which are irksome to the rich are ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a little disillusioning to discover, as during her first weeks in the new work she did discover, that almost no duties whatever would be required of her. It seemed to make more irksome the indefinite thing that was required of her; her constant interested participation in just whatever happened to interest Emily at the moment. Susan loved tennis and driving, loved shopping and lunching in town, loved to stroll ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... meant a man of great valour and fame, went home for a short space to see his wife and his little daughter, who by this time was seven years old and had never beheld her father. Rest was sweet to Don Rodrigo, but before it could grow irksome to him he was summoned to court by the death of Fernando, who left all his children under the wardship of the Cid. Unluckily, the old man's will had not been a wise one, and bitter quarrels soon raged between the new king Sancho and his brothers and sisters. In vain Don ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... off towards the close of the Tatler, but that it was not want of matter that brought about the abandonment of the paper is proved by the commencement only two months later of the Spectator. Steele himself said that on many accounts it had become an irksome task to personate Mr. Bickerstaff any longer; he had in some places touched upon matters concerning Church and State, and he could not be cold enough to conceal his opinions. Gay tells us, in "The Present State of Wit," that the town being generally of opinion that Steele was quite spent as ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... not in this dissuading him from industry, but only from such labour as is beneath a gentleman; so, on the other hand those men are over scrupulous who are offended by my devoting myself to a labour which is far from irksome ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Julia briskly. "That's the only thing that keeps me from your side. The duties of the class president are many and irksome. At the present moment I've a duty on hand that I don't in the least relish, and I want your august assistance. Will you promise to help before I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... the inchantmentes of Circes, the vanitie of licencious pleasure, the inticementes of all sinne, is, in Homere, the herbe Moly, with the blacke roote, and white flooer, sower at the first, but sweete in the end: which, Hesiodus termeth the study of vertue, hard and // Hesiodus irksome in the beginnyng, but in the end, easie // de virtute. and pleasant. And that, which is most to be marueled at, the diuine Poete Homere sayth plainlie that this medicine against sinne and vanitie, is not found // Homerus, out by man, but ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... celerity of labor. Now, in spite of all my vigilance, how am I to prevent my workmen from wasting the materials? How am I to induce them, each in his own province, to seek for the most simple and least irksome processes?" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... retired from the posts they filled; Bismarck, with growing misgivings, stayed on. His promises to his old master, his love of power, his distrust of the capacity of others, all made it hard for him to withdraw when he still might have done so with dignity. We cannot doubt that his presence was irksome to his master; his influence and authority were too great; before them, even the majesty of the Throne was dimmed; the Minister was a ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... plunges her head into the strange cell, to disgorge honey, and then her abdomen, to deposit pollen. And this is not an action due to the imperative need of ridding herself as quickly as possible, no matter where, of an irksome load, for the Bee flies off and soon comes back again with a fresh supply of provender, which she stores away carefully. This carrying of provisions to another's larder is repeated as often as I permit it. The other Bee, finding instead of her one cell a roomy ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... wear this irksome character of mutual forbearance; and when Dryfoos returned in October and Fulkerson revived the question of that dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every Other Week,' he carried his complaisance to an extreme that alarmed March for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is well named the Redeemer, because He frees the sinful soul from all this. He delivers it from the penalty, by assuming it all upon Himself, and making complete satisfaction to the broken law. He delivers it from the perpetual restraint and the irksome effort, by so renewing and changing the heart that it becomes a delight to keep the law. We observed, in the first part of the discourse, that if man could only bring the inclination of his heart into agreement with his ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... duties of any occupation, however arduous. Nay, as the brute grows accustomed to the mill, so have I grown wedded to business; and even the brief relaxation I have now allowed myself seems to me rather irksome than pleasurable." ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to overawe them. "As far as I can judge of my son," says Petrarch, "he has a tolerable understanding; but I am not certain of this, for I do not sufficiently know him. When he is with me he always keeps silence; whether my presence is irksome and confusing to him, or whether shame for his ignorance closes his lips. I suspect it is the latter, for I perceive too clearly his antipathy to letters. I never saw it stronger in any one; he dreads and detests nothing so much as a book; yet he was brought up at Parma, Verona, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... anxious about her dear child. I will not touch upon a matter so very irksome to you to hear of. But, though the time may be some months off, she every hour prays for your safety and happiness, and all the increase of felicity that his honour's generous heart can wish for.—That is all we will say at present; only, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... was sick of where he was and of those about him. His friends, whom he knew too well, had nothing more to teach him, and could not help him in the only search which passionately interested him. And his entanglement became irksome. Here was nine years that this sharing of bed and board had lasted. His son was at that unattractive age which rather bores a young father than it revives an affection already old. No doubt he did not want to abandon him. He did not intend to break altogether with his mistress. But he ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... led to economy, though it was said he seldom paid the full market price for them. He had walked home because it was impossible to keep warm driving, and felt tired and morose. The man had passed his prime and was beginning to find the labour he had never shirked more irksome than it had been, while he dispensed with a hired hand in winter, when there was less to be done. Clarke neglected no ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... feeling very sorry for her. If she had lived a free-and-easy life on her father's plantation, never having known a mother's care, it was no wonder that she should be a little wild and find her present life irksome. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... He was at too great a distance for his features to be distinguished. He appeared to be bound hand and foot— with his ankles lashed together, and his wrists tied behind his back. He was thus lying upon his arms, in an irksome position; but the attitude showed that he was alive. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... gratified at the assent and modesty—"Dutiful you have always been. We parents have no eyes. The whole matter is left to you. If Jinnosuke can be taken by your person, perchance he will devote his time to home and the farm work, now so irksome to his father. Where he goes in these long absences is not known; they can be for no good purpose." Thus the arrangement was made. The girl now busied herself about and with Jinnosuke. She was the one to attend to all his ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... own neck broken by the frequent stumbling of the unsure-footed beast. But the Captain as often returned to the charge, for, in addition to a sincere desire to rally his companion, he began at length to find it exceedingly irksome to travel with one who neither spoke himself nor appeared to enjoy speech in another; and when he had amused himself with whistling, singing, hallooing, and cutting a thousand antics with his arms, until he was heartily tired of each of these several diversions, he would rein in his horse to suffer ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the Castle of Zenda, where the prince was then staying in company with his sister Osra. There the marquis on his arrival was greeted with much joy by Prince Rudolf, who found his sojourn in the country somewhat irksome, and was glad of the society of a friend with whom he could talk and sport and play at cards. All these things he did with Monsieur de Merosailles, and a great friendship arose between the young men, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... him, on a damsel's part, 'that he To her would think not irksome to repair; Whom of unequalled affability And sweetness, he would find, as well as fair; Or otherwise would be content, that she Should to his bark resort, to seek him there, Nor prove less pliant than had been before All the knights errant, who had ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... reluctantly. He would have liked to push on if only to lull thought by the monotony of their march. Moreover during these last two hours, some faint rushlight of hope had been kindled in his mind which made all delay irksome. He himself would not believe that his friend John Lattery, with all his skill, his experience, had slipped from his ice-steps like any tyro; Michel, on the other hand, would not believe that he had fallen ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... herded together. They fought, quarreled, divided into cliques; the big boys bullied the little ones. Fagging was the law; so the upper forms enslaved the lower ones. There was no home life, and the studies were made irksome and severe, purposely, as it was thought that ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Guienne had left me at Toulouse; another friend whom I had arranged to pick up at Avignon on his way from Monte Carlo was unexpectedly delayed. I was therefore condemned to a period of solitude somewhat irksome to a man of a gregarious temperament. At first, for company's sake, I sat in front by my chauffeur, McKeogh. But McKeogh, an atheistical Scotch mechanic with his soul in his cylinders, being as communicative as his own differential, I soon relapsed into ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... became associated with his father in the already great banking house of Ames and Company. But the animality of his nature soon found the confinement irksome; his father's greater conservatism hampered his now rapidly expanding spirit of commercialism; and after a few years in the banking house he withdrew and set up for himself. The father, while lacking the boy's fearlessness, had long since recognized dominant qualities ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dear madam; you are all that is benevolent, but Singleton requires a care which many men would feel to be irksome. It is at moments like these, and in sufferings like this, that the soldier most finds the want of female tenderness." As he spoke, he turned his eyes on Frances with an expression that again thrilled to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... without the brilliancy and enthusiasm of a few months past—as a man steadied by some great sorrow, striving more strenuously to give of his best where honor is concerned, because he is conscious that the heaviness of his heart makes all duty irksome. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... constitution of England were to be set at stake. So I gave myself up to reading newspapers and listening to the click of the telegraph, like other people; until, after a great many months of such pastime, it grew so abominably irksome that I determined to look a little more closely at matters with my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... India the holy milkman, who acts as priest of the sacred dairy, is subject to a variety of irksome and burdensome restrictions during the whole time of his incumbency, which may last many years. Thus he must live at the sacred dairy and may never visit his home or any ordinary village. He must be celibate; if he is married he must leave his wife. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... all abed, now, and the camp is still. Labor in loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last few notes, I have been sitting outside the tent for half an hour. Night is the time to see Galilee. Genessaret under these lustrous stars has nothing repulsive about it. Genessaret with the glittering reflections ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not here willingly," answered the voice. "But pardon me, Lady, if I have disturbed your rest; I knew not that I was overheard. Sleep had forsaken me; I left a restless couch, and came to waste the irksome hours with gazing on the fair approach of morning, impatient to be ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... warehouse, the workshop, the counting-house, &c., with probity and success; why then should I not equally succeed in the management of public affairs? And this swarm of new statesmen were in a hurry to commence work; hence all control was irksome to them, and each wished to be able to say on returning home, "I have framed such or such an act that will tie the hands of faction for ever; I have repressed this or that riot; I have, in short, saved the country by proposing such or such a measure for the public good, and ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... your list: we met him yesterday, a fine countenance and simple manners; he conversed freely with my father, not at all afraid of committing himself. In general I do not see that prodigious fear of committing themselves, which makes the company of some English men of letters and reputation irksome even to their admirers. Mr. Palmer, the great man of taste, who has lived for many years in Italy, is here, and is very much provoked that the French can now see all the pictures and statues he has been admiring, without ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Benares must be slow, the soldier seems to have so much routine work in India when there is no frontier campaign going on. It must be irksome for anyone fond of fighting. My cousin here (a Captain) is Cantonment Magistrate, which means he has to turn his sword into a foot rule and do Government's factory work—lets you a plot of land for your house and sees ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... details of such work are welcome in themselves, simply as an occupation. Her early training had kept her aloof from such womanly labours; and if she had not brought to them the inspiration of her deepest feelings, they would have been irksome to her. But they had come to be the one unshaken resting-place of her mind, the one narrow pathway on which the light fell clear. If the gulf between herself and Tito which only gathered a more perceptible wideness from her attempts to bridge it by submission, brought a doubt whether, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... longer; but that if I am enabled to overcome them sooner, and His Majesty's Ministers are ready to give me their final opinions earlier than I have expected they will be able to do, that I shall embrace with pleasure an opportunity to relieve your Lordship from a situation you feel so unpleasant and irksome ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... sometimes, but it has its drawbacks, both for the girl and the "family." Husband and wife, brother and sister, inevitably find the constant presence of a stranger with whom they have little in common very irksome. While the girl herself is equally conscious of restraint when forced to spend her leisure time with her employers. She would usually infinitely prefer the solitude of the kitchen, if combined with a good fire, a comfortable ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... rather glad of this intelligence, for it prevented her from having a very bad case of the blues in thinking over her lover's coldness, and how irksome this betrothal ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... day called together to oration. On this morning, however, their reunion was earlier than usual: since it had for its object not only the ordinary prayers, but preparation for the combat that was to decide the issue of a long and irksome siege. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... dress'd up in most horrid Shapes of Imps and Devils, and so delivered to the executioner.... St. JAGO, or St. James's Day, is the Day for the AUCTO DE FIE." And in chapter v. of the same Letter he states that, when he was at Goa, "all Butcher's Meat was forbidden, except Pork" — a regulation irksome enough even to the European residents, but worse for those Hindus allowed by their caste rules to eat meat, but to whom pork is always especially distasteful. Linschoten, who was in India from 1583 to 1589, mentions the ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... army only a few months, when his regiment was suddenly ordered to march from very pleasant quarters in Devonshire to the north-west of Ireland. The change at any time would have been unpleasant, but the service they were entering upon was particularly irksome and jarring to the feelings. Grumbling, in a military man, is, however, downright folly, and they soon made themselves tolerably at home in their new quarters. It is needless to dwell upon the disturbed and distracted state of the country, or on the military movements ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... I lie, sit, or walk alone, I sigh, I grieve, making great moan; In a dark grove or irksome den, With discontents and furies then, A thousand miseries at once Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce. All my griefs to this are jolly; None so sour ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... servant, discontinuing his work on the coat sleeve, and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a sort of timid apprehensiveness, as one charged with a duty, the discharge of which, it was foreseen, would prove irksome to the very person who had imposed it, and for whose benefit it was intended, "master told me never mind where he was, or how engaged, always to remind him to a minute, when shaving-time comes. Miguel has gone to strike the half-hour ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... for his son, but she now excused herself from dancing any more, and sat quietly as a spectatress till the rest of the company gave over. Mr Marriot, however, would not quit her, and she was compelled to support with him a trifling conversation, which, though irksome to herself, to him, who had not seen her in ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... that early drive, if Fleda might have enjoyed it in peace. The sweet morning air was exceeding sweet, and the summer light fell upon a perfect luxuriance of green things. Out of the carriage Fleda's spirits were at home, but not within it; and it was sadly irksome to be obliged to hear and respond to Mrs. Carleton's talk, which was kept up, she knew, in the charitable intent to divert her. She was just in a state to listen to nature's talk; to the other she attended and replied with a patient longing ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... involuntary sham of it, the shirking of a dull and irksome duty—a bore, though the route be only a mile or so. The satisfied undertaker, and the hard-up professional mutes and mourners in seedy, mouldy, greeny-black, and with boozers' faces and noses and a constant craving for beer to help them bear up against their grief and keep their ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... daughter and the maid to watch the springes, and see whether His wrath might be turned from us. That they should, meanwhile put my manse to rights to the best of their power, seeing that the cold was become very irksome to me. This they promised me, and departed with many sighs. What a little flock! I counted but twenty-five souls where there used to be above eighty; all the rest had been slain by hunger, pestilence, or the sword. [Footnote: This took place in the year 1628, and the horrors of the Thirty ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... anything that I experienced in South Africa. The roads, where there were any that might be dignified by that name, were extremely bad, the dust was intense, the supply of water of the most inferior quality, and the expedition, not being under the command of one general, added irksome difficulties by the uncertainty of the movements of its constituent ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... are all by nature, so often do I recognize that this present work will, to your thinking, have a grievous and a weariful beginning, inasmuch as the dolorous remembrance of the late pestiferous mortality, which it beareth on its forefront, is universally irksome to all who saw or otherwise knew it. But I would not therefore have this affright you from reading further, as if in the reading you were still to fare among sighs and tears. Let this grisly beginning ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... nor men are yet alive to its practical application. Had these men been placed at once where something seemed to depend on their activity, instruction in tactics would have been eagerly sought after, instead of being looked upon as an irksome daily task. Nor would it have been necessary for this purpose to place raw troops in positions of critical importance. The vast extent of our line of operations, and the wide tracts of disaffected country which were, or might easily have been, left behind it, offered an ample ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at this time. Certainly nothing could be more irksome than the daily task of reading to poor Mrs. Mortlock, but the fifteen shillings a week which she now earned regularly was a wonderful help to the household purse, and Primrose performed her irksome duties ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... exertion in the case of freemen. It abstracted from the master, in a state of things then barely remunerative, one fourth of the time and labor required in cultivation, and gave it to the servant, while it compelled the master to supply the same allowances as before. With many irksome restraints, conditions, and responsibilities imposed on the master, it had no equivalent advantages. There appeared no reason, in short, why general emancipation would not do as well in 1834 as in 1840. Finally, a strong conviction existed that from peculiarity of climate and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that the task may be achieved during the years of childhood; and that, by an early habit of study, the memory is so improved, as to render those exercises easy and familiar, which, at a later period, would be found very difficult and irksome. Upon this plan, and perhaps upon every other, some words will be learned before the ideas represented by them are fully comprehended, or the things spoken of are fully understood. But this seems necessarily to arise from the order of nature in the development of the mental faculties; and an ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... you?" asked the reluctant fair one. "If we journey with the troops, though we may find their presence irksome, shall we not feel better assurance of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... was going along one of the lower paths, she perceived at the farther end of it two horses tied to a tree and recognized them at once; they belonged to Gilberte and Julien. The loneliness of the place was beginning to be irksome to her, and she was pleased at this chance meeting, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... travelling public who had constantly demanded to be taken to his journey's end in the shortest possible time, and had "made a row" about it if he was likely to be late. There are some business men to whom the five or six days on board are exceedingly irksome and represent a waste of time; even an hour saved at the journey's end is a consideration to them. And if the demand is not always a conscious one, it is there as an unconscious factor always urging the highest speed of which the ship ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... this, and in clinging to them the villagers have clung to something which they need and cannot get elsewhere. It is idle to pretend that the "Institute" which was started a few years ago provides a satisfactory alternative. Controlled by people of another class, whose "respectability" is irksome, and open only to members and never to women, the Institute does not lend itself to the easy intercourse which tired men enjoy at the public-house. Its billiard-table is not for their heavy hands, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Amabel could not put much faith in the change, it was a subject of real rejoicing to her. Though scarcely conscious of it herself, he sensibly won upon her regards, and she passed many hours of each day in his society without finding it irksome. Seeing the advantage he had gained, and well aware that he should lose it by the slightest indiscretion, Rochester acted with the greatest caution. The more at ease she felt with him, the more deferential did ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... schools, or find teachers at home, altogether made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as well as all the hands I could impress into the service. Then, too, the novelty of housekeeping had passed away, and much that was once attractive in domestic life was now irksome. I had so many cares that the company I needed for intellectual stimulus was a trial ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... woman is expected to call on her friends once a year at least. The "Day at Home" has rather gone out of fashion. It imposed an obligation on the hostess which often proved irksome, interfering with engagements she might wish to make. If, however, one has "a day," her friends should so far as ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of the irksome duty on which the Patrick Henry was employed, Tucker determined to take her down the river, feel of the enemy, and warn him of what might be expected if boat expeditions should attempt to ascend the river. On the afternoon of Friday, September 13th, 1861, the Patrick Henry weighed ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... relieved from her most painful task; for, although she now no longer felt herself the daughter of the murderer, there was so much disingenuousness in her position as the most loved and trusted friend of the woman who still regarded her father as the criminal, as to make it in the highest degree irksome to be with her. She now tried to occupy herself as much as possible at home; and while she did so, the calm to which she had forced herself outwardly began to sink into her heart, and she found, almost with surprise, that former habits ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... his rose-garden amongst a wilderness of drooping blossoms, for the season of roses was gone. He had crossed the marshland seawards, only to find a little crowd of holiday-makers in possession of the golf links and the green tufted stretch of sandy shore. The day had been long, almost irksome. A fit of restlessness had driven him from his study. He seemed to have lost all power of concentration. For once his brain had failed him. The shadowy companions who stood ever between him and solitude remained ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with caches full of fish, and houses packed with trade goods after a successful season at the southern camps, they must wait until the shifting ice pack settles and the winter hunting begins. Such enforced inaction is irksome to the Eskimo, who does not partake of the stolidity of the Indian, but like a nervous child must be continually employed or amused. So this festival, which is of a purely social character, ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... distributed her pretty things among her friends, and accepted all the small trials of strict convent life—no bath, nor mirror, coarse underlinen and sheets—no fire, no lights, no privacy, the regular irksome routine of a nun's life, and is perfectly happy—never misses the intellectual companionship and the refinement and daintiness of her former life,—likes the commonplace routine of the convent—the books they read to each other ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... that three times, in the course of her first day's journey, she was seized with fainting fits. In one of her letters, which I saw when at Venice, dated, if I recollect right, from "Ca Zen, Cavanelle di Po," she tells him that the solitude of this place, which she had before found irksome, was, now that one sole idea occupied her mind, become dear and welcome to her, and promises that, as soon as she arrives at Ravenna, "she will, according to his wish, avoid all general society, and devote herself to reading, music, domestic occupations, riding on horseback,—every thing, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... can't go there with any comfort or pleasure," he answered, apologetically; "I can't go there; each year as I visit the place, their ways seem more strange and irksome to me. Whilst enjoying her company, I must of course come in familiar contact with those by whom she is surrounded. Sustaining the position that I do—passing as I am for a white man—I am obliged to be very circumspect, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... window-slit, so that it fluttered outside, and, fixing it in its place by a large stone drawn from the loose ones around him, awaited succour as best he could. To begin this course of procedure was easy, but to abide in patience till it should produce fruit was an irksome task. As nearly as he could guess—for his watch had been stopped by the fall—it was now about four o'clock, and it would be scarcely possible for evening to approach without some eye or other noticing the white signal. So Somerset waited, his eyes lingering on the little ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... total darkness made this hunting mighty unpleasant; but I knew that, bating the chance of being flung by a mole-hill, I had my gentleman safe enough. For, to begin with, he must soon find the pace irksome, with two firkin casks jolting against his ribs; and at the foot of the descent the river would surely head him off. To be sure it was frozen hard and he might have crossed it dry-footed, but the alders on the bank frighted him back, and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... too small to justify the very irksome experience. I must ask you, sir, to bring to a close a visit which never ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The somewhat irksome phraseology of Baron Swedenborg has dulled many minds to a sense of his great acumen and philosophical depth, but it maybe convenient to summarize his scientific doctrine of "Correspondences" in this place as it has an important ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... designated from army headquarters to accompany the expedition. Davies followed with the main body of his brigade including Ransom's battery. To Colonel Sawyer with the Vermont and Michigan men fell the irksome duty of bringing up the rear of the column, the chief care being to keep up the pace, not losing sight of those in front, of which for a good part of the night ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... irksome rather than perilous; for the day was certain to bring us relief from the town, where our prolonged absence, together with the storm, had no doubt excited the liveliest alarm for our safety. But the cold, the darkness, and the suspense ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... soundly sleep. Still the loud stamping doth not cease, Still they blow noses, cough, and sneeze, Still everywhere, without, within, The lamps illuminating shine; The steed benumbed still pawing stands And of the irksome harness tires, And still the coachmen round the fires(11) Abuse their masters, rub their hands: But Eugene long hath left the press To array ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... of some sunshiny, rich, leafy, valley region, at once showing at what a bleak elevation he has been roaming so long, and tantalizing him with the contrast of that far, far off, low, luring landscape, rendering more irksome than before the dead, heathery desert, interminably undulating before, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... housewife; that I can neither take pleasure in all the little cares and details which the well-being of a house really requires, nor that I have memory for these things; more especially is the daily caring for dinner irksome to me. I myself have but little appetite; and it is so unpleasing to me to go to sleep at night, and to get up in the morning with my head full of schemes for cooking. By this means, it happens that sometimes my husband's domestic comforts are not such as he has a ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... to show the strain of the pace. When twenty-two, the warning cough sobered him a bit, and in John's faithful and congenial company, he went first to Denver, then to New Mexico. Doctors' orders were irksome, whiskey and cards the only available recreation for the boys, and so they tried to follow their father's example in developing a powerful physique on Kentucky Bourbon ("best"). John suddenly quit ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... suggestions to teachers may not be considered superfluous. In the first place, I have found historical anecdotes an excellent aid in teaching English. Pupils find it far from irksome to relate the stories in their own words, and to reproduce them in compositions. Secondly, whenever a city or country is mentioned, every pupil should point out its location on the map. By such means only can any one ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... her children's honour, she fenced her three daughters around with precautions which rendered their lives irksome to themselves and troublesome to all who were about them. Maria and her younger sisters were literally shut up within the narrow limits of the apartments they occupied in the palace—happily for them it was not the Palazzo Vecchio but the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... obliged to wait on herself even for an hour. As she looked now at the gardens in front of her, and away to the woods beyond, and to the great stretches of greenhouses and conservatories to southward, she thought how irksome they were, how unnecessary, and how little ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of our highest regard, and most strenuous endeavours; as furnishing to us, a vigorous, habitual, and universal principle of action. We set up for ourselves: we are become our own masters. The sense of constant homage and continual service is irksome and galling to us; and we rejoice in being emancipated from it, as from a state of base and servile villainage. Thus the very tenure and condition, by which life and all its possessions are held, undergo a total change: ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... will, therefore, be imprisoned as a first-class misdemeanant for the space of one calendar month; and I trust that during the retirement thus enforced upon you, which to a person of your resources should not be very irksome, you will reflect on the rashness, the incaution, the impropriety, in one word, of your conduct, and that you will never be discovered again appropriating to your personal use money which has been entrusted to your care ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... few years since, having a sufficiently large family, he adopted preventive methods of intercourse. The subsequent events I narrate in his own words: "The trouble, forethought, etc., rendered necessary by preventive measures, grew more and more irksome to me as the years passed by, and finally, I laid the matter before another physician, and on his assurances, and after mature deliberation with my wife, was operated on some time since, and rendered sterile by having the vas deferens on each side exposed through ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... made so decided a break in the routine that Keith found himself thrust quite outside it. He had worked feverishly all the week, at about double speed; and in ordinary course would have gone on working feverishly at double speed for another week. Now, suddenly, the thought was irksome. He did not analyze this; but, characteristically, discovered an irrefutable reason for not going on with it. They rescued Gringo from Sam's care, and drove up to the house. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the restraints which Athens imposed upon her allies became irksome, and they began to refuse, one after another, to pay the assessment in any form. Naxos, one of the Cyclades, was the first island to secede, as it were, from the league (466 B.C.). But Athens had no idea of admitting any ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... devoted and successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of the class, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded, nor in which so many officers of the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... getting in the harvest, regular labor was distasteful to him and, accustomed as he had been to wander, for weeks, free and unchecked with his goats among the mountains, the regular life and order of the farm were irksome ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... instinct and the finer interests of life. The great mass of men and women, indeed, find the whole process so against nature, that in spite of all the miseries of poverty, all the slavery of the economic disadvantage, they cannot urge themselves to this irksome cunning game of besting the world, they remain poor. Most, in a sort of despair, make no effort; many resort to that floundering endeavour to get by accident, gambling; many achieve a precarious and unsatisfactory gathering ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... to speak as though they remembered the past—if they looked at each other with full recognition—they must take fire again. So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seat to his buggy, and it was rather irksome to be conveying two ladies around all the time. He had but little room, seated between them, and as the weather was warm, he was often very uncomfortable. He was tall, and his knees were jammed closely against the dash-board; but he ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... were anything but irksome to Sperry would have been apparent to anyone who watched his use of them. The day, like other days during office hours, had seen a line of coupes waiting outside his door. Within had assembled a score of rich patients waiting their turn while they read the illustrated papers in ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... who possesses it stands above them. It is inconceivable to the Hindus that he should care for the things of the world but he cares equally little for creeds and ceremonies. Hence, side by side with irksome codes, complicated ritual and elaborate theology, we find the conviction that all these things are but vanity and weariness, fetters to be shaken off by the free in spirit. Nor do those who hold such views correspond to the anti-clerical and radical parties of Europe. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... that during this year his literary labor, which he had never liked, and upon which he had entered unwillingly and from a feeling of necessity, was growing daily more irksome to him; and he always spoke of it as his "heavy work," his "tedious work," "that wearisome dictionary," &c., though this feeling led to no relaxation of effort. He longed, however, to find some more spiritual ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... was no more imbued with the colonizing spirit than might be expected of any honest English naval officer. Of such money as he had he wasted L15,000 at the outset in buying a site for a town in the Bay of Islands on a spot which he quickly had to abandon. Moreover, he was just what a man in his irksome and difficult position should not have been—an invalid. Within a few weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi he was stricken with paralysis. Instead of being relieved he was left to be worried slowly to death at his ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... asset, and ought to be developed. He discovered that she was more receptive and more effective under a pleasant stimulus than she was under the gray grind which she considered her salvation. She was still Methodist enough to believe that if a thing were hard and irksome, it must be good for her. And yet, whatever she did well was spontaneous. Under the least glow of excitement, as at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's, he had seen the apprehensive, frowning drudge of Bowers's studio flash into a ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... from free sweep across the spaces, To the irksome bounds of mortal law, From the all-embracing Vision, to some face's Look ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... the people, their feasts, dances, and various amusements, and, above all, the beauty of the women; for they had been captivated by the naked charms of the dancing nymphs of Xaragua. In this delightful region, emancipated from the iron rule of the Adelantado, and relieved from the necessity of irksome labor, they might lead a life of perfect freedom and indulgence, and have a world of beauty at their command. In short, Roldan drew a picture of loose sensual enjoyment, such as he knew to be irresistible with men of idle and dissolute habits. His followers acceded with joy to his proposition. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... which enlarge them and recruit them. When property becomes so fluctuating, and the love of property so restless and so ardent, I cannot but fear that men may arrive at such a state as to regard every new theory as a peril, every innovation as an irksome toil, every social improvement as a stepping-stone to revolution, and so refuse to move altogether for fear of being moved too far. I dread, and I confess it, lest they should at last so entirely give way to a cowardly love of present enjoyment, as to lose sight of the interests ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville |
