"Painstaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as Apelles. We read of his conversing with the philosopher Aristotle (died 322 B.C.), of whose mother he painted a portrait, and of his being engaged on his most famous work, a picture of a Rhodian hero, at the time of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius (304 B.C.). He was an extremely painstaking artist, inclined to excessive elaboration in his work. Apelles, who is always represented as of amiable and generous character, is reported as saying that Protogenes was his equal or superior in every point but one, the one inferiority of Protogenes being that he did not know when to stop. According ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... specialty of certain kinds of psychic investigation and while Crookes made a detailed and careful study of materialization Lodge has given equally painstaking efforts to investigations by the use of that class of sensitives known as "mediums." A medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric matter easily separates from the physical matter is a medium and can readily ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... margin when he came to print. "Sejanus" is a tragedy of genuine dramatic power in which is told with discriminating taste the story of the haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical overthrow. Our drama presents no truer nor more painstaking representation of ancient Roman life than may be found in Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline his Conspiracy," which followed in 1611. A passage in the address of the former play to the reader, in which Jonson refers to a collaboration in an earlier version, has led to the surmise that Shakespeare ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... have sworn you'd try that trick," she remarked. "It was on the cards and you couldn't resist it. Permit me to say, Mrs. Orme, that you're a rather clever woman, and I admire cleverness even when it's misdirected. But my Daddy has taught me, in his painstaking way, not to be caught napping. A good soldier provides for a retreat as well as an advance. I've been on your trail for a long time and only this morning succeeded in winning the confidence of the cabman who drove you here. Wasn't sure, of course, that you were ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... that gesture, action, intonation—everything which constitutes a living individuality were in her case not so much the outcome of the feeling proper to the character, as the manifestation of diligent painstaking art which had not yet learnt to conceal itself. The gleam of the smallest spark of genius would have been a welcome relief to the monotony of talent.... It must not be forgotten, however, that a highly artificial play like 'Ingomar' is by no means a favorable medium for the ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... long been known as one of the most candid and painstaking of scriptural commentators; but it must always be remembered that he is an Episcopalian, and the ruler of an English diocese. He would be something almost more than human, were he to hold up the scales of testimony ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... are the workings of genius understood by the "painstaking" ones. They cannot conceive the suddenness of inspiration—the almost instantaneous grasp of essentials that precedes the plodding mechanical ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... the stream and began to drive them up the bank. They went easily enough now, and ahead of them rode the Elder, his long whitey-brown holland coat fluttering behind him. In half an hour Bancroft had got the herd into the corral. The Elder counted the three hundred and sixty-two beasts with painstaking carefulness as they ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... your words and actions, they must value and respect you. Your writing is good. It is inexpedient to repeat the impertinent assertions of those who have not sufficient powers of discernment between the painstaking replies to our thousands of correspondents and what they are pleased to designate ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... dance. There was a particularly painstaking little boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones from a Fraulein in the corner, who suited her actions to her words by the uplifting ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... place with plain, ancient furniture. Beyond, is a very excellent school for girls as well as infants of the gentler sex. It is supervised by nuns, some of whom are wonderfully clever. They are "Sisters of the Holy Child;" are most painstaking, sincere, and useful; never dream about sweethearts; devote their whole time to religion and education. All of them are well educated; two or three of them are smart. The school, which has an average attendance ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... for various papers, and was a painstaking writer. He usually wrote his articles two or three times, and the account of his second mob that was written for the Herald of Freedom he re-wrote seven times. He could write best in the morning, and frequently read and ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... scene of a great battle, but more probably the cemetery of a forgotten race. The still higher Beacon Hill (853 feet) appears close at hand, as does Sidown, on the other side of Burghclere, where is perhaps an even finer view. The old church down by the railway station was "polished up" in a very painstaking way about fifty years ago, but still retains a Norman nave which seems to have resisted the sandpapering process. Highclere Park and Castle form a show-place of the first rank; the park being beyond all praise. The slopes of the Downs ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... determining as near as possible the exact sites of historical events is with him a sport. The method pursued is that of rigid and scientific inquiry. Paris especially, Marie Antoinette and The Historic Thames in a lesser degree, bear witness to this, which, in a don, we should call minute and painstaking research, but which in our subject we guess to be the gratification of ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... today, but it will be gone tomorrow. I judged that this end of the book would be hard work, and it turned out so. I have never done any work before that cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution. For I wanted the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the reader's interest would not flag—in fact I wanted the reader's interest to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view—with the result that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... window-ledges, and it was by the merest accident that Kitty found one with a broken lid, and so was taught to raise it and have a satisfying drink. Bottles, of course, were beyond her, but many a can has a misfit lid, and Kitty was very painstaking in her efforts to discover the loose-jointed ones. Finally she extended her range by exploration till she achieved the heart of the next block, and farther, till once more among the barrels and boxes of the yard ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "Good. It has taken painstaking research and a great deal of psychological statistical analysis, but we have found that one company—and one company only—benefits by these legal changes. Did you ever hear of Lasser ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... and when in 1868 he was called to occupy the Chair of Ecclesiastical History in St Mary's College, the appointment was hailed with satisfaction alike by the University and the Church. With an absorbing interest in his subject, and with the true instinct of the historian, he was most painstaking in ascertaining historical facts, never reaching his conclusions but as the result of patient and careful investigation; and those who knew him intimately can tell how little he grudged the trouble of a journey to Edinburgh ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... decision about admitting busts, statues, or bodies into the national and sacred 'musee des morts' (as the anti-clerical French might call it under the new constitution) would rest with the Home Secretary. This would be an added interest to the duties of a painstaking official, forming pleasant interludes between considering the remission of sentences on popular criminals: it would relieve the Dean and Chapter at all events from grave responsibility. The Home Secretary would always be called the Abbot of Westminster. How picturesque at the formation of ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... workmen who magnify their office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with no oversight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... a genius or not, one thing is certain, she spent hours of patient, painstaking work to make her writing measure up to the standard she had set for it. It was work that she loved better than play, however, and to-day she sighed regretfully when the hunter's horn, blowing on the upper terrace, summoned the school to its ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and arms." Our present love of outdoor life, of athletic sports, and our indifference to being sunburned, makes such painstaking vanity seem ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Supplement, "Craddock's History," the monographs by Professor Paley and Mr Poole, and the Guide of Canon Davys. If I have ventured to differ from some of these writers on various points, I must appeal, in justification, to a careful and painstaking study of the Cathedral and its history, during a residence at Peterborough of ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... in the father of what, all through life, was the pre-eminent characteristic of Eugene, the inveterate painstaking, mirth-compelling practical-joker. But in Brattleboro, Newfane, and throughout Vermont everybody says, "That's jest like his uncle Charles Kellogg. There was never such another for jest foolin'. He'd rather play a hoax on the parson ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... three years in the other corps and six years in the active reserve; he is then liable to seven years' service in the reserve army and finally passes into the opltchenie. The Bulgarian peasant makes an admirable soldier—courageous, obedient, persevering, and inured to hardship; the officers are painstaking and devoted to their duties. The active army and reserve, with the exception of the engineer regiments, are furnished with the .315" Mannlicher magazine rifle, the engineer and militia with the Berdan; the artillery in 1905 mainly consisted of 8.7- and 7.5-cm. Krupp guns (field) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of the reserves in Lloyd George that from the time he took his place among the line of Ministers on the Treasury bench he began to show signs of qualities unsuspected. Gone was his combativeness. He answered questions about his department with urbanity, replied to criticism with courtesy and painstaking detail. Out of the House he devoted himself assiduously to learning the intricacies of his department. Very soon reforms began to be manifested. The Board of Trade, an old and historic department, largely bound up with red tape, became ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... say as he shook his head: "I don't understan' it! Booker T. Washington he ain't never ben here befo', yit he knows mo' 'bout dese parts an' mo' 'bout us den what eny of us knows ourselves." This old man did not know that one of Mr. Washington's most painstaking and efficient assistants, Mr. Monroe N. Work, the editor of the Negro Year Book, devoted much of his time to keeping his chief provided with this startlingly accurate information about his people in every section of the ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... without appreciable damage. A curious writer to whom Mr. Sumner is specially indebted is Mr. H. Browne of Amesbury; whose conclusions must not be taken seriously, but who has lovingly illustrated his work with restorations and sketches: it is all the more pleasant therefore to render thanks to a painstaking but not always appreciated worker. Last of all—greatest of all—Sir Richard Colt Hoare, whose "Ancient History of South Wilts," 1812, remains to-day a classic. These grand volumes mark the dawn of the new era of the field archaeologist. The foregoing names are ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... silky ball in which they are hatched, they begin to make webs of their own; but I. have heard that these first attempts look very irregular, which shows us that although God has given them the instinct by which they set about weaving snares, they learn, as we do, by painstaking and practice, to make their work ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... sides and keel beautifully smooth in that way, Clump brought a kettle of pure grease, which was placed over a little fire of driftwood, and when the grease had become liquid, Walter, with a large fine paint-brush, anointed the entire boat's bottom in a most painstaking manner. We boys stood by, entering into the operation, which was supposed to prove wonderfully efficacious in increasing our boat's speed, with great interest, and Clump bent over the kettle, stirring the oil, and puffing at the short stern of ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... his native land with restored physical and mental vigour. In due course he was called to the Bar, and soon afterwards published a technical work on the law of descent, which attracted some notice from the profession. He soon became known as an erudite and painstaking lawyer, whose opinions were entitled to respect, and who was very expert as a special pleader. At the Bar he was less successful, owing to an almost painful fastidiousness in his choice of words, which frequently produced an ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... painstaking investigations in Turkey as well as in every other country, probably was in possession of more accurate data than any other nation, not even excepting the Turks themselves. The best neutral authorities speak of 1,125,000 as the total war-time strength of the Ottoman forces, but that estimate ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... know new people and to know them well. If I hold to one opinion, I must studiously cultivate the acquaintance of men who hold the opposite view, and investigate the hidden recesses of their minds with scientific and painstaking diligence. Above all must I be constantly sampling infinity in matters of faith. If I find that the Epistles are gaining a commanding influence upon my mind, I must at once set out to explore the prophets. If I find ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Master takes us, like little children, by the hand and leads us through all the turnings of his first symbolic lesson, lest in our inexperience we should miss our way. The Son of God not only gave himself as a sacrifice for sin; he also laboured as a patient painstaking teacher of the ignorant: he is the Apostle as well as the High Priest of our profession. His instructions have been recorded by the Spirit in the Scriptures for our use; we may still sit at his feet and listen to his ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Aristotle gave to fact as opposed to theory, to investigation as opposed to speculation, and to final cause, led men from a condition of necessity to that of freedom, and taught philosophers to substantiate their theories by reason and by fact. There is no better illustration of his painstaking investigation than his writing 250 constitutional histories as the foundation of his work on "Politics." In this masterly work will be found an exposition of political theories and practice worthy the attention of all modern political philosophers. The service given ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Wertenbaker's "Virginia under the Stuarts" (1914) is a painstaking effort to set forth the political history of the colony in the light of recent historical investigation, but the book is devoid ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... and painstaking girl will arrange the stage for a proposal, with untiring patience, months before it actually happens. When she practices assiduously all the morning, that she may execute difficult passages with apparent ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... head from the deep pit of his corruption, neither Pope's character nor his style bears any trace. But still, both as a poet and a man we must give place, and even high place, to Pope. About the poetry there can be no question. A man with his wit, and faculty of expression, and infinite painstaking, is not to be evicted from his ancient homestead in the affections and memories of his people by a rabble of critics, or even a posse of poets. As for the man, he was ever eager and interested in life. Beneath all his faults—for which he had more excuse than a whole congregation of the righteous ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... lugubriously drumming. Brett had often heard of the great man's secret vice, and now the sight of him hard at it made him, in spite of the very real trepidation under which he was laboring, feel good-natured all over—the Colossus of finance was so earnest at his music, so painstaking and interested in placing his thick, clumsy fingers, and so frankly delighted with the effect of his performance upon his own ear. It seemed to Brett homely and pleasant, the thought that one of the most important people of eighty millions should find his pleasure in an art for which he had ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... With painstaking care they searched every nook and cranny of the large single room and were about to give up in despair when Tommy happened to observe an ivory button set into the wall at the only point in the room where there were no machines or benches at hand. Experimentally he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... way," said the little French girl, nodding her head quickly several times. "I know the country well and so will give you the aid you require." She spoke with painstaking correctness. "Enter, Mam'selle!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... but never dreaming of refusing the request, though her own share of the household mending had kept her employed during the earlier part of the afternoon, while Mollie was amusing herself elsewhere. She took a darning-egg out of her basket, threaded a needle daintily, and set to work in the painstaking manner which characterised all her efforts; but she sighed as she worked, and Mollie sang, and that was the difference ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular alarm in the minds of my friends at home, unless, indeed, it was by reason of the unusual care and painstaking evinced in their chirography and the punctilious manner in which they were dated. The first one I dated for the evening on which I was writing. The next for a time several days in advance of that, and so on, performing this strange act with utter indifference ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Martin, D. D., LL. D., of Wuchang, and the Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D. D. LL. D., of Pang-chwang, for valuable counsel. These distinguished authorities on China have been so kind as to study the book with painstaking care and to give the author the benefit of their suggestions. All these suggestions have been incorporated in this edition to the great ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... in heaven, may be, but my wife would have been just the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter the Piper. How she would have set in order that huge littered empire of the one, and with indefatigable painstaking picked the peck of ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... its petals, slumbering sweetly through the summer noontide, and was no better company than a rose-bud. Clarissa tried to interest herself in her old studies; took up her Italian, and read Dante with her father, who was a good deal more painstaking in his explanations of obscure idioms and irregular verbs for the benefit of Mrs. Granger with a jointure of three thousand per annum, than he had been wont to show himself for the behoof of Miss Lovel without a sixpence. She drew a great ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... inspection is an advantage to the prostitute chiefly because it gives her patron a false sense of security. Even the most elaborate and painstaking examination—and such is not bestowed upon the prostitute—may fail to detect a woman's lurking infectiousness; the perfunctory, routine examination actually made affords but a feeble protection to the ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... the station and the society to which they have risen, however much above their own level; they acquire the habits and the tastes, seldom the feelings, of a gentleman. They act the character well; it is carefully studied, and on the whole well sustained; it is a correct and painstaking performance, and the points tell distinctly; but there is throughout that indirect appeal to the audience which marks it to be only acting. They are more studiously aristocratic than the aristocracy, and have a horror of vulgarity which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... reaction has, however, set in; and while we certainly do not love the Caesar of laboratory methods and accuracy the less, we are beginning to have a juster affection for the Rome of the rich harvest that may be gained from the careful, painstaking, detective-like exercise of our ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... in the assault which they had planned, but to find that many of their approaches were made in a false direction, and had to be abandoned. But as the authority of their names continues to sway the public at large, and is apt to mislead even painstaking students and to entail upon them repeated disappointments, it is necessary that those who know should speak out, even at the risk of being ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... much longer missive, written in my mother's neat, painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document, which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame Mauverensen had powers of directness ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... a County Court, where I had had a successful day, and humming a little tune, whom should I meet but my friend Morgan ——. He was a very pleasant man, what is called a nice man, of a quiet, religious turn of mind, and nobody was ever more painstaking to push himself along. He was a great stickler for a man's doing his duty, and was possessed with the idea that, getting on as I was, it was my duty to refuse to take a ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... dislikes to let go of any part of a thing from the beginning to end. On the one hand, their constant, almost too rhythmic resort to nature in their poetry, and on the other, their Ved[a]nta philosophy, or for that matter their Ars amatoria (K[a]mac[a]stra), the latter worked out with painstaking and undignified detail, illustrate the two points. Hence we find here a situation which is familiar enough in the Veda, but scarcely and rarely exhibited in other mythological fields. Dogs, the two ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... zoological forms,—lizards, snakes, hounds, birds, and dragons' heads,—the Irish school attained their highest artistic development. Their art is striking, not for originality, not for its beauty, which is nevertheless great, but for painstaking. Knowing but one style of making a book beautiful, they lavished much time and loving care to achieve their end. The detail is extraordinarily minute and complicated. "I have counted," writes Professor Westwood, "[with a magnifying glass] in a small space scarcely three-quarters ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... the name. He has a reputation for being at once the most reckless spendthrift and the most painstaking money saver in the world. He is ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... thoroughness in the introductory courses. Thoroughness is purely a relative condition anyway, since we cannot really master any type. It seems poor pedagogy, in an elementary class particularly, to emphasize small and difficult forms or organs because they demand more painstaking and skill on the part of the student. My own practice in the elementary course is to have a very few specially favorable forms studied with a good deal of care, and a much larger number studied partially, emphasizing those points which they ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Ashantees. Affairs began to assume a very threatening attitude; and only after the most earnest request was he permitted to proceed to the palace of the king of Ashantee. He received a hearty welcome at the court, and was entertained with the most lavish kindness. After long and painstaking consideration, a treaty was decided upon that was mutually agreeable; but the self-conceited and swaggering insolence of the British authorities on the coast put it into the waste-basket. The commander of the British squadron put himself ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... of getting seed of the exact type wanted is to do as the South Jersey growers did: go to work and breed up a stock which is uniformly of the type wanted; but this involves more painstaking care than many are willing to give, though I think not more than it would be most profitable for them to expend for the sake of getting seed just ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... patience. Her ideas of Egypt had hitherto been of the vaguest. Vast plains of barren sand, a pyramid or two, Memnon's head breathing wild music in the morning sunshine, crocodiles, copper-coloured natives, and Antony and Cleopatra. These things were about as much as Miss McCroke's painstaking tuition had implanted in her pupil's mind. And here, without a shadow of vocation, this poor ignorant girl was poring over the driest details that ever interested the scholar. The mysteries of the triple language, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... opposite the abbreviation In., by A. and C. In a similar way he proceeds to write down one word at a time, and at once ascertaining its relation to the previous word, and indicating that relation by the appropriate abbreviation. When he has analysed ten words in this painstaking manner he must recall them backward and forward from memory at least five times, and each time ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... eminently useful and meritorious even from the mechanical point of view, Mr. Carlyle deserves the warmest recognition. His genius gave him a right to mock at the ineffectiveness of Dryasdust, but his genius was also too true to prevent him from adding the always needful supplement of a painstaking industry that rivals Dryasdust's own most strenuous toil. Take out of the mind of the English reader of ordinary cultivation and the average journalist, usually a degree or two lower than this, their conceptions of the French Revolution and the English Rebellion, and their knowledge ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... the Moko artist learned his designs, he was a painstaking and conscientious craftsman in imprinting them on his subject. No black-and-white draughtsman of our time, no wood-cutter, etcher, or line-engraver, worked with slower deliberation. The outlines were first drawn with charcoal or red ochre. Thus was the accuracy of curve and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Baroness Sophie, not by way of questioning the statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of Providence, which had obviously never intended that she ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Marianne's patterns, and the backs of half their letters, were scrawled with ground-plans and elevations. But latterly this chronic disposition has been quickened into an acute form by the falling-in of some few thousands to their domestic treasury,—left as the sole residuum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it into her head to make a will in Bob's favor, leaving, among other good things, a nice little bit of land in a rural district half an hour's railroad-ride ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... number of other changes, as was his wont, for he was always painstaking and given to critical polishing. In some instances he changed an entire line or a phrase of two lines. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... retirement at Blasewitz, near Dresden. Eventually he went to London, where he was appointed professor at the Guildhall School of Music. Unfortunately, his powers have been on the wane for some years past, but though the days of his public performances are past, he is known as a most patient and painstaking teacher. The high esteem in which he has been held was quaintly expressed by an eminent musician, who referred to his decadence in these words: "Ah, if Wilhelmj had not been what he is, Joachim would never have been what he is." By ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Bell's edition of Chaucer's Poem; from Professor Craik's "Spenser and his Poetry," published twenty-five years ago by Charles Knight; and from many others. In the abridgement of the Faerie Queen, the plan may at first sight seem to be modelled on the lines of Mr Craik's painstaking condensation; but the coincidences are either inevitable or involuntary. Many of the notes, especially of those explaining classical references and those attached to the minor poems of Chaucer, have been prepared specially for this edition. The ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the appearance presented by the venerable and historic city of Ypres, after fifteen months of personal contact with the apostles of the new civilisation. Only the methodical and painstaking Boche could have reduced a town of such a size to such a state. Imagine Chester in a similar condition, and you may realise the number of shells which have fallen, and are still falling, into the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... it in his slow, painstaking way, and accomplished it. Never, if he could help it, did he depend on the mails when the case was within riding distance. He preferred to argue the matter ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... this painstaking recital of all the disagreeable and repellent facts about Siddall an effort further to humiliate her by making it apparent how desperately off she was, how she could not refuse any offer, revolting though it might be to ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... history with a fiction thread to string its episodes upon. Most of the characters are men and women who have lived and played their parts exactly as described herein. The background and chronology are as accurate as extensive and painstaking research can make them. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Frivolous, shallow, having all her life kept her mind enveloped in pink swaddling-clothes, she had at all events a dainty knack at housekeeping, and agile fingers clever at sewing, embroidering, arranging furniture, and leaving the trace of their deft, painstaking touch in every corner of a room. She alone undertook to train that wild young plant, and to awaken with care the womanly instincts in that strange creature, on whose figure cloaks and furs, all the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... rewrite your ideas until they are expressed in clear, concise terms. Pope sometimes spent a whole day in perfecting one couplet. Gibbon consumed twenty years gathering material for and rewriting the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Although you cannot devote such painstaking preparation to a speech, you should take time to eliminate useless words, crowd whole paragraphs into a sentence and choose proper illustrations. Good speeches, like plays, are not written; they are rewritten. The ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Dilworthy thought he would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them look at him. The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to the United States Senate, was already in session. Mr. Dilworthy considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to be well worth taking. The University bill was safe, now; he could leave it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Some painstaking persons, to whom—for lack of time and means—I have given and delivered many papers and relations which I possessed, have planned to write this history; and I hope that they will publish it in better shape than the fragmentary histories which we have ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... building a small float, on which they went down the river. Several Malays aspired to succeed him as taxidermist, but showed no aptitude. I then taught one of our Javanese soldiers who had expressed interest in the matter. Being painstaking and also a good shot, the new tokang burong (master of birds), the Malay designation for a taxidermist, gave satisfactory results in ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... personal experience and recollection can be thrown off the track, appears to have been ignored on its theoretical side—that is, as establishing the return of time. It has cleverly been turned to practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries, may be—and frequently are—completely effaced ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... de Spain. He looked questioningly at Nan. She herself, gazing across the dizzy depths, was searching for the danger-point. A third shot followed at a seemingly regular interval—the deliberate interval needed by a painstaking marksman working out his range and taking his time to find it. De Spain watched Nan's search anxiously. "We'd better keep moving," he said. "Come! whoever is shooting can follow us a hundred yards either way." In front of de Spain a fourth bullet struck the rock. "Nan," he ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... cometh into the world. The real infidels are they who reject the revelation which God is making us continually in the widening light of modern knowledge, and by a species of ecclesiastical lynching, condemn, before trial, the sincere, painstaking, and careful scholars and reverent disciples of Christ, who are so earnestly seeking after truth, because the results of their learned researches do not agree with the prejudices of their anathematizers. It is with no less cogency of argument than nobility of feeling ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... these marvellous events took place, we are told, and yet they have left no ripple on the current of contemporary history. There is, however, no lack of such history, and an exhaustive account of the country and age in which the hero of the story lived is given by one of his own nation—a most painstaking and laborious historian. "How shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... death. But it was not written by him. According to his own confession he had "not half the sense, memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of less than half its importance, down in writing."[11] This chronicle is the work of a painstaking clerk. One is not surprised to find a chronicler in the pay of the house of Alencon representing the differences concerning the Maid, which arose between the Sire de la Tremouille and the Duke of Alencon, in a light most unfavourable to the King. But from a scribe, supposed to be writing ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... all done work of an unusual character in a painstaking manner. I am very much pleased. There seems to be a hundred and forty dollars my due, remaining from the five ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... account of the presence of the abbey. Such matters as these have been fought out by an expert in the archaeology of Cleveland—the late Canon Atkinson, who seemed to take infinite pleasure in demolishing the elaborately constructed theories of those painstaking historians of the eighteenth century, Dr. Young ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... called Thomas, and the daughter that concerns us was called Katherine. It is highly probable, according to modern research into the records of the manor, that Morgan ap William married Katherine. But the matter is still in some doubt. There are not a few authorities, some of them painstaking, though all of them old, who will have it that the blacksmith's son, Thomas, loved Morgan ap William's sister, instead of its being the other way about. It is not easy to establish the exact relationship between two public-house ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... site of la Tour's fort at the mouth of the River St. John has been the subject of controversy, Dr. W. F. Ganong, a most conscientious and painstaking student of our early history, has argued strongly in favor of its location at Portland Point (the green mound near Rankine's wharf at the foot of Portland street); the late Joseph W. Lawrence and Dr. W. P. Dole have advocated the claims ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... see that the men under him work steadily and fast. To accomplish this he should himself be a hustler, a man of energy, ready to pitch in and infuse life into his men by working faster than they do, and this quality is rarely combined with the painstaking care, the neatness and the conservative judgment demanded as the third, fourth, and fifth requirements of ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... Upon arrival at the mine she was given over by Larry to Mr. Switzer's courteous and intelligent guidance, and with an enthusiasm that never wearied, her guide left nothing of the mine outside or in, to which with painstaking minuteness he failed to call her attention. It was with no small degree of pride that Mr. Switzer explained all that had been accomplished during the brief ten weeks during which the mine had been under his care. For although it was quite true that Mr. Steinberg ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... consequently, each resolved to call in the course of that morning to ask after her health, and take occasion, in bachelor language, to "press his point." Monsieur de Valois considered that such an occasion demanded a painstaking toilet; he therefore took a bath and groomed himself with extraordinary care. For the first and last time Cesarine observed him putting on with incredible art a suspicion of rouge. Du Bousquier, on the other hand, that coarse republican, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... Europe, have given an example of tranquillity and peace, never once seeking to profit by any momentary difficulties of our neighbors. Our commercial extension, our financial rise in the world, is far removed from any love of adventure, it is the fruit of painstaking and plodding labor. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... "that the Germans are great classical scholars. They are great students, that is all. The difference is immense. Far be it from me to deny the value of the patient and laborious researches of the Germans in the grammar and syntax of the ancient languages and in archaeology. They are painstaking to a painful degree. They gather facts as bees gather pollen, indefatigably. But when it comes to making honey they go dry. They cannot interpret, they can only instruct. They do not comprehend, they only classify. Name me one recent German book of classical interpretation to compare in sweetness ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... heroic power of concentration, the long-breathed tenacity of purpose, which in after years gave effect to his brilliant mental endowments. "I did wonder," says Mr. Wendell Phillips, "at the diligence and painstaking, the drudgery shown in his historical works. In early life he had no industry, not needing it. All he cared for in a book he caught quickly,—the spirit of it, and all his mind needed or would use. This ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the legal and mechanical merits of an invention turned down by the primary examiners. Albert appeared before this Board in his own defense with a brief prepared entirely by himself, and won his case through his thorough painstaking presentation of all the legal and technical points involved. Mr. Albert is a graduate of the Law Department of Howard University in Washington, and is connected with the United States Civil Service as an ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... to be accused, Oh Devatdar, of idleness, as your chidings seem to hint; but your excessive love for me, which gave rise to the benefits you have conferred on me [Footnote 55] is that which has also compelled me to the utmost painstaking in seeking out and diligently investigating the cause of so great and stupendous an effect. And this could not be done without time; now, in order to satisfy you fully as to the cause of so great an effect, it ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... minds of men. He knows how to tell a story, said Professor Hart, in the discussion previously referred to, in Cleveland. He has "an epic unity of plan," writes Professor Jebb. Herodotus has furnished delight to all generations, while Polybius, more accurate and painstaking, a learned historian and a practical statesman, gathers dust on the shelf or is read as a penance. Nevertheless, it may be demonstrated from the historical literature of England of our century that literary style and great ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Risler at the one on the right. From there they can see the little garden, where the darkness is gathering, and the black smoke which the chimney emits beneath the lowering clouds. Sigismond's window is the first to show a light on the ground floor; the cashier trims his lamp himself with painstaking care, and his tall shadow passes in front of the flame and bends double behind the grating. Sidonie's wrath is diverted a moment by these ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Miss Good, our very accomplished English teacher, to place you in the third class. You will have to work very hard, however, at your French, to maintain your place there. But Mdlle. Perier is kind and painstaking, and it rests with yourself to quickly acquire a conversational acquaintance with the language. You are aware that, except during recreation, you are never allowed to speak in any other tongue. Now, go back to the ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... of the business. What words can describe the brain that can forget the cruel preoccupations caused by hidden want, by the daily needs of a family and the daily drudgery of a printer's business, which requires such minute, painstaking care; and soar, with the enthusiasm and intoxication of the man of science, into the regions of the unknown in quest of a secret which daily eludes the most subtle experiment? And the inventor, alas! as will shortly ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... mind which is almost necessary for a man who is destined to move about quickly from one circle of persons to another. After a six months' trial he had given that up, but during the time, Mr. Moulder, the senior traveller of the house, had married his sister. John Kenneby was a good, honest, painstaking fellow, and was believed by his friends to have put a few pounds together in spite of the timidity of ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... three religious for each mission in the form ordered by the king can be easily observed, as there are many religious. But that presentation is mortally impossible in Philipinas because of the great scarcity of religious. For although the orders make the most painstaking efforts to get them from Espana, they succeed in this with difficulty. For lack of workers, they are often obliged to entrust the administration of many villages to one person, and sometimes to abandon districts in toto. Then how can three be presented ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... of few friends and fewer words. He lived for himself alone, devoting himself assiduously to his practice, and doing much painstaking writing at the table whereat he now sat, or else, when absent, travelling swiftly with aims that were ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a new fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist is experiment!" ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... little more closely into the suspicion and dislike which eugenics still arouses in many worthy old-fashioned people. To some extent that attitude is excused, not only by the mistakes which in a new and complex science must inevitably be made even by painstaking students, but also by the rash and extravagant proposals of irresponsible and eccentric persons claiming without warrant to speak in the name of eugenics. Two thousand years ago the wild excesses of some early Christians furnished an excuse ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... him through the leg, Wunpost had learned a new fear of the hills. Before, they had been his stamping-ground, the "high places" he was so boastful of; but now they became imbued with a malign personality, all the more fearful because it was unknown. With painstaking care he had checked up on Pisen-face Lynch, to determine if it was he who had ambushed him; but Lynch had established a perfect alibi—in fact, it was almost too good. He had been right in Blackwater during all the trouble, although now he was out in the hills; ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... due to Miss Anthony's clear foresight and painstaking habits that the materials were gathered and preserved during all the years, and it was entirely owing to her unequaled determination and persistence that the History was written. The demand for Mrs. Stanton on the platform and the cares ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... fed and strengthened by the tonic. After this she dashed ice-cold water over her face. Still there were little folds at the corners of the eyelids, and an ugly line across the brow, and these were manipulated with painstaking care, and treated with mysterious oils and fragrant astringents and finally washed in cool toilet water and lightly brushed with powder, until at the end of an hour's labour, the face of the Baroness had resumed ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... upon the trees and the neat flower-beds. Gertrude seated herself upon a small bench under the apple tree, and gazed about the garden, all illuminated by the moonbeams. She had planted it all and cared for it with her own hands. She had done this as she did everything, carefully and with great painstaking, and it was all for her son's sake. His should be the pleasure and the profit of all. Why could he not be happy in it now? Why was she so worried about him? Dietrich was walking in steep and dangerous paths; that she was sure of, but ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... most of them, impressionistic studies in pencil or pastel, with now and then a pen-and-ink bearing evidence of more painstaking after-work. They were made on bits of map paper, the backs of old letters, and not a few on leaves torn ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... stars are among the most meritorious, and need to be among the most patient and painstaking workers in sidereal astronomy. They are scarcely as numerous as could be wished. Dr. Doberck, distinguished as a computer of stellar orbits, complained in 1882[1590] that data sufficient for the purpose had not been collected for above 30 or 40 binaries out of between five and six hundred ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... seemed to have departed from contemporary Russian literature. As widely divergent as the two writers were in their choice of materials and methods of expression, they yet met on common ground in their devotion to form, their painstaking perfecting of their expressions; and this tense effort alone was often enough the very life and soul of their adventure. They were like magicians creating marvels with the flimsiest of materials; they did not complain ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... slight as to seem amply compensated by the sense of ease maintained in spite of the innumerable difficulties overcome; there are besides a score or more of Duerer's copper engravings with their imperturbable adequacy of minute painstaking, never for a moment sleepy or mechanical or lifeless. The one aim need not excommunicate the other even in the same individual; far less need this be so in different artists, with diverse temperaments, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... thoughts must have been of Juliet and their star-crossed fates, and love-devouring Death, he is able to picture for us the apothecary and his shop with a wealth of detail that says more for Shakespeare's painstaking and memory than for his insight into character. The fault, however, is not so grave as it would be if Romeo were a different kind of man; but like Hamlet he is always ready to unpack his heart with ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... if it puts under him as commissioned officers, warrant officers, and petty officers men who have worked their way up from grade to grade, year after year, and who have fitted themselves for the higher positions by the zeal and painstaking care with which they have performed their duties in the lower places; and if the landsmen, ordinary seamen, and seamen go in resolutely to do real work and learn their duties so that they can perform them as well as the regulars aboard ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... submit his plans to the approval of an inferior officer. Kosciuszko, who never sought distinction or pushed his own claims, did not permit himself to resent what was, in fact, a slight; but quietly went forward in his own thorough and painstaking manner with the business entrusted ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... kept a school of dancing in Pimlico, and incessantly trained pupils for the stage. Many of them had appeared with more or less success in the ballets at the Empire and Alhambra, and he was widely known amongst stage-struck aspirants as charging moderately and teaching in a most painstaking manner. He thus made an income which, if not large, was at least secure, and was assisted in the school by his niece, Peggy Garthorne. She was the manager of his house and looked after the money, otherwise the little professor would ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... his gratitude by painstaking attention to fagging. Lawrence became aware of faithful service: that his toast was always done to a turn, that his daily paper was warmed, as John had seen the butler at home warm the Times, that his pens were changed, his blotting-paper renewed, and so forth. In ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the solution of this problem was made two centuries ago by the patient and painstaking Dutch naturalist, Leeuwenhoek, who in the year ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... write, chiefly, it was true, from love of the art, but a little from a social motive. He had imagined that a written book and the praise of responsible journals would ensure him the respect of the county people. It was a quaint idea, and he saw the lamentable fallacies naked; in the first place, a painstaking artist in words was not respected by the respectable; secondly, books should not be written with the object of gaining the goodwill of the landed and commercial interests; thirdly and chiefly, no man should in any way ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... window, where she went on with her copying till dinner was ready. Whatever the reason was, however, her pencil did not work smoothly; her eye did not see true; and she lacked her usual steady patience. The next morning, after an hour and more's work and much painstaking, the drawing was finished. Ellen had quite forgotten her yesterday's trouble. But when John came to review her drawing, he found several faults with it; pointed out two or three places in which it had suffered from ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... our food with painstaking fairness. How we gorged on the raw red flesh and thick greasy fat! Food that would have disgusted us when we lived and worked in the Central Station, now was ambrosia to our sharpened appetites. When not the least scrap was left, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... were taken up, and plans were made for new bases in the Humber, in the Forth at Rosyth, and in the Orkneys, necessitated by the shift of front from the Channel to the North Sea. But against the technical skill, painstaking organization, and definitely aggressive purpose of Germany, even more radical measures were needed to put the tradition-ridden British ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... A painstaking adder of figures, I have audited the gentleman's accounts and found them correct to the farthing. He must pay for his terrier's sickness and have four guineas in hand against the dog's board and lodging, in case, after all, he was to stay at the Dogs' ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... intensely silent audience would do, when a terrific outburst of applause mingled with shouts of "Good! Good! He is, he is!" came to my amazed ears. As the applause died down there was almost universal good-natured laughter. Instead of the painstaking and eloquent explanation which I was prepared to offer, I had only to join ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... a very worthy woman," said Mr. Morton, clearing his throat, "and brought me some money; she has a will of her own, as most women have; but that's neither here nor there—she is a good wife as wives go; and prudent and painstaking—I don't know what I should ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... usual work of weeding, cultivating, and harvesting of their crops, the pupils should undertake some work in seed selection. This work not only results in the improvement of the plants grown from year to year, but also helps to train the pupils in painstaking observation and the discerning of minute points of excellence. The ambition to produce, by careful selection and thorough cultivation, a grain or flower better than has been, is aroused, and, as the pupil's interest increases, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Painstaking care should be given to the preservation of the coffee-makers in a state of cleanliness, as upon this depends the value of the brew. Dirt, fine grounds, and fat (which will turn rancid quickly) should not be allowed to collect on the sides, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... accurate and painstaking topography, the students of genealogical history, and, though last not least, those who like to see the writings of Shakspeare, illustrated in a congenial spirit, will read with pleasure the announcement, in our advertising columns, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various |
