"Plod" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been his strange fate to flash all at once into notoriety, which lasted precisely two years, to fill the court and town during that time with continuous laughter, intermingled with inquiries who and what he was, and then for seventeen long years to plod on unknown and unregarded, still hearing his Hudibras quoted, and still preparing more of it, or matter similar, with no result. He died, in almost absolute destitution, in 1680, and was buried at a friend's expense, in the church-yard ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... very singular to contemplate. They wend; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim peril; they not doubtful: Fate and Feudal Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without: they, having also decided, do march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they plod onwards; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtaean Colonel, Rouget de Lille whom the Earth still holds, (A.D. 1836.) has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was plod-plod-plod, one day very much like another, cold with coldness of the sub-Arctic, the river a white band through heavy woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome sprinkled with flickering ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... go from one place to another in a slow, sober walk. He always moved by leaps, as if he felt too gay to plod along like Daddy Longlegs, for instance. Chirpy himself often remarked that he hadn't time to move slowly. And almost before he had finished speaking, as likely as not he would jump into the air and alight some distance away. It was all done so quickly that a person could scarcely see how it happened. ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... been indefatigable in my service, and writes with such zeal for my interests, and such warmth of sorrow for my sufferings, as if he wrote with fire and tears. God bless him! I wish above all things to realize a school. I could be well content to plod from morning to night, if only I could secure a secure competence; but to toil incessantly for uncertain bread weighs ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... grovel for the shoddy goods And plod and plot and plan, And if you win the paltry prize Go prize it—if you can, But I would hurl it in your face To ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... bonhomie and roguishness there was much shyness. The two would plod along the road together in a sort of blissful agony of embarrassment. The neighbors were right in their surmise that there was no definite understanding between them. But the thing was settled in the minds of both. Once Ben had said: "Pop says I can have the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... submit. Submission would come easier if you took up some of those neglected duties, and you would be stronger for patience, if you used more of your strength for service. You do well if you do not sink under your burden, but you would do better if, with it on your shoulders, you would plod steadily along the road; and if you did, you would feel the weight less. It seems heaviest when you stand still doing nothing. Do not cease to toil because you suffer. You will feel your pain more if you do. Take the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... promised no enjoyment within my vocation, at least it offered no allurements out of it; and henceforth I would put my shoulder to the wheel and toil away, like any poor drudge of a cart-horse that was fairly broken in to its labour, and plod through life, not wholly useless if not agreeable, and uncomplaining if not ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... plod along, that's my advice. If she's meant fer you, ye'll win her all right. I'm a great believer in the idea that our own'll come to us some day, an' often in ways we least expect. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... bear you these letters tightly; Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores. Rogues, hence, avaunt! vanish like hailstones, go; 75 Trudge, plod away o' the hoof; seek shelter, pack! Falstaff will learn the humour of the age, French thrift, you rogues; ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... which was not his own back to the spot whence he had started. His transgression was now to be traced from the moment—day or night, or sunrise or sunset; what mattered the moment?—when the thought passed through his brain, "Why should I plod on ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... them. I gathered from them a strong idea of what commercial failure means to English merchants—utter ruin, present and prospective, and obliterating all the successful past; how little chance they have of ever getting up again; how they feel that they must plod heavily onward under a burden of disgrace—poor men and hopeless men and men forever ashamed. I doubt whether any future prosperity (which is unlikely enough to come to them) could ever compensate them for this misfortune, or make them, to their own consciousness, the men ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... truant. Unhappily, as he turned into the lane from the drive gates, a rabbit dashed across the road right in front of him, and frisked into the hedge in a most tantalising manner, as if to show his contempt for stupid human beings who plod along the beaten track. That killed all Tom's scruples, and he was soon scurrying through the fields, scrambling over hedges, leaping ditches, and getting his clothes into as pretty a pickle as could ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the two continued their leisurely way toward Kansas City. Once they rode a few miles on a freight train, but for the most part they were content to plod joyously along the dusty highways. Billy continued to "rustle grub," while Bridge relieved the monotony by ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ever so quiet under the snow, but the rounded hillock betrays his hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before. If there is no track in the snow a man goes in ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... are given to hospitality," he said; "we're always looking for the angel we are going to entertain unawares. Come along home with us, Lewis." And Lewis would plod up the hill and take his turn at the tin washbasin, and then file down the men's side of the stairs to the dining-room, where he and the three old brothers sat at one table, and Athalia and the eight sisters sat at the other table. After supper he had the chance to ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few rivals in this laborious and unattractive pursuit, he soon began to be regarded as an oracle on questions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Tyndall in the 'Nineteenth Century,' for last November, "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and they are sometimes intolerant of those that can. They are formed to plod meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realize the mental act—the act of inspiration it might well be called—by which a man of genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... which once went before without force. They are all trimmed as much as possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad plaint. It is a day on which to thank God for the unknown tongue. The drover and his lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and blind to all but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook, instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, but armed with a heavy stick and mechanically dealing ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... them to the donkey or the horse standing patiently in the neighbour's paddock, and when she hasn't animals to play with she will put a horseshoe on each hand and each foot, and then you will hear from above the plod-plod-plod of a horse going its daily round. But while she has a comprehensive affection for all four-legged things, her most fervent love is reserved for the halt and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... set out, plod, plod, plodding through the woods. But Lox turned himself into a coon again, and scampered from tree to tree, and got first to the village. When he told the people the plague was coming, and they asked how they could avoid it, he said: "When I have spoken my charm, all the girls must set upon ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... whose busy fingers, beaming smiles and gentle accents are the rest and refuge of many a toil-worn weaver at life's heavy loom. To lay aside the world's distressing cares at sunset, to wipe his moistened brow, and "homeward plod his weary way" to his cabin small and lowly, where glows this cheerful love in one dear breast, in one sweet face, is to the uncouth "ploughman" a joy, a comfort, which many ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... and crestfallen, Donald returned to Kildun and urged the Prince to instant flight. But not even the fear of immediate capture could induce the three wearied men to set out again in the wet and darkness to plod over rocks and morasses with no certain goal. So Donald had to control his fears and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... away from Dunroe, and certainly increasing the distance, but in a weary, devious way, till he seemed to wake up all at once to the fact that it was growing dark, and that a thick mist was gradually creeping round him, and he was growing wet, as well as so faint and weary that he could hardly plod along. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... softened, and his face set in impenetrable gravity. "Had I the power I would keep Viola Lambert forever young and forever virgin." Then, with a quick return to his familiar drawl: "But I am going away without even killing Clarke, to plod my little round in Colorow and wait news from you. If I do not see you again, Mrs. Rice, keep me in mind. I make the same promise your husband made—I will 'manifest' to you ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... gradual falling away of our members makes evident to me how unlikely it is that any official commission will ever settle the claims of spiritualism. As Maxwell has said: 'It is a slow process, and he who cannot bring himself to plod patiently and to wait uncomplainingly for hours at a time will not go far.' I confess that the half-heartedness of our members has disappointed me. I told them at the outset not to expect entertainment, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... was the Ohio River; for to drift down stream in a scow was easier and quicker, and no more dangerous, than to plod through thick mountain forests. Moreover, it was much easier for the settler who went by water to carry with him his household goods and implements of husbandry; and even such cumbrous articles as wagons, or, if he was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... "rig" was that while it was a tongued wagon with whiffletrees for two horses, there was only one horse. The driver, a bearded farmer, was urging the patient animal on, although it was impossible for it to do more than plod in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... would be impossible to castigate him as thoroughly as they are castigated. It is true they praise me so much, that had I Paradise in my bosom, less of praise would suffice. I perceive that you suppose me to be just what God wishes that I were. I am a poor man and of little merit, who plod along in the art which God gave me, to lengthen out my life as far as possible. Such as I am, I remain your servant and that of all the house of Martelli. I thank you for your letter and the poems, but not as much as duty bids, for I cannot soar ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... thy broad shoulders, John Alden, thou wilt do well to make them of use. There is Mistress Allerton struggling with a hamper beyond her strength, and there are bales of clothes that must not be wet. Load thyself, good mule, and plod shoreward." ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the play of life plod from one to another scene, nor once rise to a height whence a glance might survey past and future. Memory and prophecy are twin sisters,—nay, they are essentially one muse, whom mankind worships on this side ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to draw any explicit moral. The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without hyperbole of the 'fairy tales of science.' To us, who have to plod through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not science, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... occasion, and I am sure by this time that "want of cavalry" must be written on poor Methuen's. So you must figure to yourself a small army, an army almost all infantry, and an army tied to the railway on this march; and if we bring off no brilliant strategy, but simply plod on and take hard knocks, well, what else, I ask, under the circumstances ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it is ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... man's fugitive castaway soul upon a doomed and derelict planet. The minds of all men plod the same rough roads of sense; and in spite of much knavery, all win at times "an ampler ether, a diviner air." The great poets, our masters, speak out of that clean freshness of perception. We ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... unraimented with rhyme, Her hair unfilleted, her feet unshod, Naked and not ashamed demands of God No covering for her beauty's youth or prime. Clad but with thought, as space is clad with time, Or both with worlds where man and angels plod, She runs in joy, magnificently odd, Ruggedly wreathed with flowers of every clime. And you to whom her breath is sweeter far Than choicest attar of the martyred rose More deeply feel mortality's unrest Than poets born beneath a happier ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... sound, except to reply cheerfully whenever I addressed her. The exceeding roughness of the passage made our progress slow, and quite frequently we were all obliged to dismount, generally glad enough of the change, and plod forward for some distance on foot. I possessed no knowledge then as to where we were, the map having deceived me so often I had long since lost all confidence in it as a guide, but now, in this later day, I can trace our progress with some degree of accuracy, and know that we passed ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... occupation, not only for little children, but for older ones as well, affording admirable opportunities for the development of head, hand, and heart. It trains both hands in deftness and proves a delight to the left-handed child, who for the joy of using his left hand again, will plod patiently across with the right. The fat little hands soon learn to grasp the large needle, and the nerves and muscles of both hand and arm are strengthened by daily use. Both hand and eye are trained ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... in the game, anyway. Land of love! if man and woman was all, then when they came face to face with life they would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child; after that all lives is pretty ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of ill-concealed drollery on their faces. Fresnoy alone talked, speaking volubly of the accident, pouring out expressions of sympathy and cursing the road, the horse, and the wintry light until the water came; when, much refreshed by the draught, I managed to climb to the Cid's saddle and plod slowly onwards with them. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... feed might be procured for his charge, and good liquor for Watch and himself; Watch, like other sheep dogs, being accustomed to live chiefly on bread and beer. His master, though not averse to a pot of good double X, preferred gin; and they who plod slowly along, through wet and weary ways, in frost and in fog, have undoubtedly a stronger temptation to indulge in that cordial and reviving stimulus, than we water-drinkers, sitting in warm and comfortable rooms, can readily imagine. For certain, our drover could never resist the gentle seduction ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... began again to plod up the treadmill it had labored on for so many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own mind, forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as if he had been speaking aloud. "Now, now here I am. What must I do? What ought I to do? There must be some answer if I can ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... remember, please, Miss Charlotte, if you are to do justice to yourself and to your family, you must not plod all the time. Plan to get away every day for an hour or two. Go to see your friends—anything—but don't ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... their honest chat: Said one: "To-morrow we shall be Plod plod along the featureless sands, And coasting miles and miles of sea." Said one: "Before the turn of tide We will achieve the eyrie-seat." Said one: "To-morrow shall be like To-day, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... sir. Science knows no party lines. Your chosen subject rises above the valley of partisanry where we old wheel-horses plod—stinging each other in the dust, as the poet finely says. Mr. West has told me of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the slender stem of a wild sunflower, warbles a sweet assurance of this as I pass near by. Breaking off the clear crystal song, he turns his wee head from side to side eyeing me wisely as slowly I plod with moccasined feet. Then again he yields himself to his song of joy. Flit, flit hither and yon, he fills the summer sky with his swift, sweet melody. And truly does it seem his vigorous freedom lies more in his little spirit than ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... is clear. Her friends were furious, her lovers nettled; 'Twas much as though the Lady Vere de Vere On some hedge-schoolmaster her heart had settled. Unheard! Intolerable!—a lumbering steer To plod the upland with a mare high-mettled!— They would, no doubt, with far more pleasure hand her To curled Euphorion ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... excellence, of such as have in them the makings of striking and eloquent preachers. Dull and stupid fellows never deviate into the extravagance and absurdity which I specially understand by Veal. They plod along in a humdrum manner; there is no poetry in their soul,—none of those ambitious stirrings which lead the man who has in him the true spark of genius to try for grand things and incur severe and ignominious tumbles. A heavy dray-horse, walking along the road, may possibly advance at a very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... cancer-eaten, and at the bottom of the wine there is a bitter dreg called satiety; but Virtue does not much heed that; like the woman she is, she only notes that Sin drives a pair of ponies in the sunshine, while she herself is often left to plod wearily through the everlasting falling rain. So she dubs us "cynics" and leaves us—who can wonder if we won't follow her through the rain? Sin smiles so merrily if she makes us pay toll at the end; whereas Virtue—ah me, Virtue will find ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... influence there had been a change of the olden customs, and instead of the long chapter, through which Uncle Ephraim used to plod so wearily, there was now read the Evening Psalms, Aunt Betsy herself joining in the reading, which she mentally classed with the "quirks," but confessed to herself that it "was most ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... brown, handsome face, found it tranquil and sober, an earnest absorption in his gray eyes and a gently whimsical smile about his mouth. She knew of whom he was thinking, and smiled tenderly herself as she watched his big hand plod systematically and doggedly across the unfamiliar way. Bedtime found Ken elated and exhibiting to his sister several neatly ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... prodigious force upon so emotional a nature as that of Reuben. Yet we dare say there were gray-haired men in the church, and sallow-faced young men, who nodded their heads wisely and coolly, as they went out, and said, "An eloquent sermon, quite; but not much argument in it." As if all men were to plod to heaven on the vertebrae of an inexorable logic, and not—God willing—to be rapt away thitherward by the clinging force of a glowing and confiding heart! Alas, how the intellect droops in its attempt to measure or comprehend the infinite! How the heart leaps and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... member of the staff of Peaceful Moments to arrive at the office on the following morning was Master Maloney. This sounds like the beginning of a "Plod and Punctuality," or "How Great Fortunes have been Made" story, but, as a matter of fact, Master Maloney, like Mr. Bat Jarvis, was no early bird. Larks who rose in his neighborhood, rose alone. He did not ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... phenomena have been in progress all over the world from periods beyond historic record, but colleges have not yet learned of their existence. They are now becoming familiar to millions, from the emperor to the beggar, and still the colleges plod on in sanctified ignorance where the priest rules, or in insolent dogmatism where the medical professor rules. Is there anything in the way of demonstration that can overcome this pachydermic stupidity?—doubtful! Clairvoyants have described diseases, described distant places, described things ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Plod, plod, plod away, Step by step in mouldering moss; Thick branches bar the day Over languid streams that cross Softly, slowly, with a sound Like a smothered weeping, In their aimless creeping ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... much risk to a man who, like myself, must use his wits as a sword to carve his fortunes. I've fought my way up alone so far, and may as well remain a free lance. The wealthy, and those who are content to plod, can go through life with a woman hanging on their arm. Rich I shall never be, and I'll die before I'll plod. My place is in the midst of the world's arena, where the forces that shall make the future are contending, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... are some, who 'twixt me and the youth Have heard this discourse, whose sole aim is the truth, Will see and acknowledge, as homeward they plod, Each thing is arrang'd by the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... father's exequies. But is that wicked Gaveston return'd? K. Edw. Ay, priest, and lives to be reveng'd on thee, That wert the only cause of his exile. Gav. 'Tis true; and, but for reverence of these robes, Thou shouldst not plod one foot beyond this place. Bish. of Cov. I did no more than I was bound to do: And, Gaveston, unless thou be reclaim'd, As then I did incense the parliament, So will I now, and thou shalt back to France. Gav. Saving ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... little life? More often, indeed, in the moods of his bitter envy, he would lay the fault upon the world. How great he could have been, if he had been rich and high-born! Oh, he was made to spend, not to save,—to command, not to fawn! He was not formed to plod through the dull mediocrities of fortune; he must toss up for the All or the Nothing! It was no control over himself that made Varney now turn his thoughts from certain grave designs on Percival St. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... breath for the work in hand. Once or twice he had turned to the Midget who toiled manfully on at his side and asked him if he felt tired. Satisfied with the boy's ready answer that he was "all right," he would plod on again. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... Claus burst into tears, Then calmed again: "My reindeer fleet, I gave them up: on foot, my dears, I now must plod ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... evening, when a lady asked to be taken up. The stage was full; the law forbids the taking of more than twelve passengers inside; a remonstrance was instantly raised by one or more of the passengers against taking her; and she was left to plod her weary way as she could. I think that could not have happened in New-York. In another instance, a stage-full of passengers started eastward from Hyde Park, one of the women having a basket of unwashed clothes on her knee. It was certainly inconvenient, and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to please their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as, together, they plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer. Two or three hours you shall have to yourselves, slaves, to think and love and play, if you be not too tired to think, or love, or play. Then to your litter, that you may be ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... slow progress. It was almost nowhere possible to trot, and we had to plod on, step by step. This made it ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... great temples to their John-a-nod, And fume and plod To deck themselves with gold, And paint themselves like chattels to be sold, Then turn ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... they know. Let me know the outcome of this act; its philosophy, its reasonableness, its result, then I will obey. But the Spirit answers, "It is enough for thee, O child of man, to know Me. Canst thou not trust? Wilt thou not obey? And as thou obeyest thou shalt know. Take this path, plod along its difficult way, climb where it climbs, so shalt thou ascend the steep of obedience, and at each step a further horizon of the truth will open outspread ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... laid them down In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men, The youth in life's ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... "One doesn't plod through studies or work, for mere reward. Polly says she wants to study for the love of it, and Eleanor wants to go into business for the love of that! It is the only way one can succeed," ventured Mrs. Brewster, ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... miserably with the bitter experiences of life that most of us have made. Habit comes, and takes the edge off everything. We drag remembrance, like a lengthening chain, through all our life; and with remembrance come remorse and regret. 'The vision splendid' no more attends men, as they plod on their way through the weariness of middle life, or pass down into the deepening shadows of advancing and solitary old age. The best comes first, for the men who have no good but this world's. And some of you have got nothing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... of the French in philosophy, the arts, and sciences, is not so much the result of patient investigation and laborious and continued study, as a kind of intuition which amounts to genius. The French mind is quick, and does not plod slowly toward eminence; it leaps to it. Certainly, in brilliancy of talents the French surpass every other nation. I will not do them the injustice to speak of them as they are at this moment—crushed under the despotism of Louis Napoleon—but ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... of language doesn't seem to be sufficient, for so far the team looks on me with mild scorn." Jim grinned. "It's nervous work for Joe, too. I got him with the tail of the whip yesterday, when I'd every intention of correcting old Ranger! However, I plod on, and Joe keeps well out of the way now. He yells instructions at me from some way back in ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... seen the last few days, now forsook me altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many traveling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet—complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more remote ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... went out again—to plod once more down the narrows to the base of Blow-me-Down Dick and search the vague light of the coast for the first sight of Doctor Rolfe. It was not time; he knew that. There would be hours of waiting. It would be dawn before a ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... 1786, drifted with his flatboat from Ohio down to New Orleans, thus entering the confines of Spanish territory, he was seized and imprisoned, his goods were taken from him, and at last he was turned loose, penniless, to plod on foot the long way back to his home, telling the story of his hardships as he went along. The name of that man was Thomas Amis, and after his case became known in the great valley, it ceased to be a matter of doubt that the Americans would control the Mississippi. He was in ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... humble feet did plod, My bosom beating with the glow of song; And high-born fancy walk'd with me along, Treading the earth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... sublime uprears; Plac'd on his chair of state, he seems a God, While Sophs and Freshmen, tremble at his nod. Whilst all around sit wrapt in speechless gloom, His voice in thunder shakes the sounding dome; Denouncing dire reproach, to luckless fools, Unskill'd to plod in mathematic rules. ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... richer, more impassioned, more desirable than he had ever supposed. In youth, emotion and feeling had seemed to him like oases in a desert, oases which one had to quit, when one crossed the threshold of life, to plod wearily among endless sands. But now he had found that the desert had a life, an emotion, a beauty of its own, and the oases of youthful fancy seemed to be tame and limited by comparison. Hugh still thought with ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... everything to make them happy, plod their discontented and melancholy way through life, less grateful than the dog that licks ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... their way, the lads managed to plod on through the dense crowd at a snail's pace. Ahead of them, however, Hal could see that the fugitive was making about the same progress. His hopes rose, and he called over ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... thick forest, and the track was much narrower, so that it had become worn into a hollow, as if it were the dry bed of a torrent. The horses and the carters were weary, yet they were obliged to plod on, as the arms had to be delivered before the morrow. They spoke little, except to urge the animals. Felix soon dropped into a reclining posture (uneasy as it was, it was a relief), and looking up, saw ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... I plod through the dull routine of an agent's work, or interest myself in the thatch of this tenant's bothy or the sails of that one's boat, when my mind was taken up by the chain of events which I have described, and was still busy seeking an ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... occasionally admit that I am your cousin. Well, then, be it remembered that I am your cousin. Our fathers were brothers, and our grandfather was one and the same person. It is well known to you that our respected grand-sire was an individual who had to plod his way along through the very steeps of poverty, and procure a little bread for his family by humble employments. In poverty he lived, and in deep poverty he would have died, had it not been for the grateful regard of one of his sons; of the other, I have nothing to say at ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... and a hundred and fifty paces down it her grey figure tripping on between the green hedges. I stood and took breath, and cursed the wood and the heat and Madame's wariness. We must have come a league, or two-thirds of a league, at least. How far did the man expect her to plod to meet him? I began to grow angry. There is moderation even in the cooking of eggs, and this wood might stretch into ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... to be done, however, but to plod along in the familiar rut. He must stomach aspersions and injuries, behave as if nothing had happened. His first hot intention of turning his back on Schwarz soon yielded to more worldly-wise thoughts. Every practical consideration was against it. He might ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... laughing; while now and then a pair of invisible experts would pass, playing mandolin and guitar as if handle-bars were of no account in the world—their music would come swiftly, and then too swiftly die away. Surreys rumbled lightly by, with the plod-plod of honest old horses, and frequently there was the glitter of whizzing spokes from a runabout or a sporting buggy, and the sharp, decisive hoof-beats of a trotter. Then, like a cowboy shooting up a peaceful ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... earth into towers, domes, and pinnacles of gleaming metal,—and weaves for every distant summit a robe of variegated light, such as the "Delectable Mountains" must have worn for the rapt gaze of weary "Christian;"—and another to plod over the same forty miles, drenched to the skin, seeing nothing but the dim, grey roots of hills, that rise you know not how, and you care not where,—with no better employment than to look at your watch, and wonder when you shall reach your journey's end. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... an exercise healthful and good, For tuning the nerves and digesting the food— Graceful gymnastics for stirring the blood Without the gross purpose of use Ant, let me tell you 'tis not a la mode To plod like a pilgrim, and carry a load, Perverting the limbs that for grace were bestowed, By such ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... condition, low debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, butcher's meat, sugar, milk, and coal. "Set me some great task, ye gods! and I will show my spirit." "Not so," says the good Heaven; "plod and plough, vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; great affairs and the best wine by and by." Well, 'tis all phantasm; and if we weave a yard of tape in all humility and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... rainin'. Weet's the gairden sod, Weet the lang roads whaur gangrels plod— A maist unceevil thing o' God In mid July— If ye'll just curse the sneckdraw, dod! An' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the first hour and the last room, he would come upon the painting that gave him the peg for his eloquence, make an elaborate study of it, tell us his task was finished, and hurry off exultant. But envy him as I might, I couldn't borrow his briskness. I had to plod on all morning and again all afternoon until the Academy closed, to look at every picture before I could be sure which was the right peg or whether there might not be a dozen pegs and more. And I had to collect elaborate ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... advantages, for it makes us throw off all ideas of soft ease we may have harboured in Kashmir, and reminds us that we have to prepare ourselves to face beauties of a far sterner kind. So we insensibly alter our whole attitude of mind, and as we plod our way through the mountains we summon up from within ourselves all the austerer stuff ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... expended to educate them? Their fathers did as well as, if not better, than they without it, and cannot this man, with the advantage of education, "turn up something"? There is something radically wrong with the plan of education. The old man could plod over the farm in his antiquated way, and earn money enough to keep things going, and educate his son, but when that son's education has been completed, he has not the ability, or business tact, with modern improvements, to build upon the foundation laid ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... into view something just a little better. At the top of one of the deep cuts on the bank two bullocks plod slowly round and round in a circle as if they were threshing corn; they work a wheel, which revolves horizontally and is fitted into another which turns vertically, deep down into the hole it reaches, low enough to touch the water at the bottom. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... I grind and plod here," he said, "while every one else is enjoying himself? If young Charlie were here, I'm pretty sure he'd be in for some of their sprees, and laugh at me for wearing my ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... I continued with a weary monotony to plod, down to the very last line, and then da capo, and so on, in my uncomfortable half-sleep, for how long, I can't conjecture. I found myself at last, however, muttering, 'dead as a door-nail, so there was an ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... There was something to come yet. The officers-of-the-day had gone—Curbit to shed furs and sabre at his quarters and say "Thank God!" Snaffle, his junior in rank but senior in years, a veteran of the old dragoons, to plod wearily back towards the guard-house for a conference with Lieutenant ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... to a stupid Groue, Now your companions; and that you the while (As you are cruell) will sit by and smile, To make me write to these, while Passers by, Sleightly looke in your louely face, where I See Beauties heauen, whilst silly blockheads, they Like laden Asses, plod vpon their way, 80 And wonder not, as you should point a Clowne Vp to the Guards, or Ariadnes Crowne; Of Constellations, and his dulnesse tell. Hee'd thinke your words were certainly a Spell; Or him ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... tours, and once (in 1860) he accompanied me in an ascent of the Jungfrau with a couple of guides. He was fresh from London; we had passed a night in a comfortless cave; the day was hot, and his weight made a plod through deep snow necessarily fatiguing. We reached the summit with considerable difficulty. On the descent he slipped above a certain famous bergschrund; the fall of so ponderous a body jerked me out of the icy steps, and our combined weight dragged down the guides. Happily ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... lights the hills, Where free children sing most cheerily, My young breast with sorrow fills, While here I plod my way so wearily: Sad my face, more sad my heart, From home, from all I had to part, A loving mother, my sister, my brother, For chains and lash in hopeless misery, Children try it, could you try it; But one day to live in slavery, Children try it, try it, try it; Come, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... five years (one of them in traveling), to come back without having acquired a profession and settle down into a mere walking ledger! To have princely advantages at his command, and yet throw them madly to the winds and be content to plod along the road of mercantile life, without one spark of ambition, when his mental endowments would justify his aspiring to the most exalted political stations in ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... when thou dost plod, Alone, upon these wintry days, Along the old familiar ways Wherein his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... summit. We have not been discouraged for behind us lay fifty years of marvelous achievement. We have known that we should reach that goal but we have also known that there was no way to do it but to plod on patiently, step by step. Yet suddenly, almost without warning, we see upon that summit another army. How came it there? It has neither descended from heaven nor made the long, hard journey, yet there above us all the women of Finland stand today. Each wears the royal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Pentonville, are fast pouring into the city, or directing their steps towards Chancery-lane and the Inns of Court. Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no means increased in the same proportion as their families, plod steadily along, apparently with no object in view but the counting-house; knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or overtake, for they have seen them every morning (Sunday excepted) during the last twenty years, but speaking to no one. If they do ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the sowars is despatched ahead to fill his bottle with water at a well known to be some five miles farther ahead, and to meet us with it on the way. On through the sand and heat we plod wearily, myself almost sick with thirst, fatigue, and disgust. Mohammed Ahzim Khan, observing my wretched condition, insists upon me letting one of the sowars try his hand at trundling the wheel, while I rest myself by riding his horse. Both the sowars bravely try their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... phantoms surely, those meaningless faces that met her in the street, not living men and women, and yet she had a distinct perception of an apple-woman's stall, of some sham jewelry she saw in a shop-window. She was near turning back then, but it didn't seem worth while, and it was less trouble to plod stupidly on, always westward, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... itself in a bitter cry. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The "shades of the prison-house" closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly watch the streak ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... been the history of trade and agriculture for generations. Nothing will ever convince me that it was intended for English agriculturists to go on using wooden ploughs, to wear smock-frocks, and plod round and round in the same old track for ever. In no other way but by science, by steam, by machinery, by artificial manure, and, in one word, by the exercise of intelligence, can we compete with the world. It is ridiculous to suppose ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it—I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... applications from fifty such in a single year. It is often pitiful to hear their appeals to be admitted to school, when denial is forced upon them, since there is neither room nor money. Still, there are many who secure books, seek help, and blindly plod on. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various
... to trust too much to your brightness, remember the animals who made fun of the inch-worm. If you are dull, remember the inch-worm, take courage, and plod away. You will ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... piano is only a barrier—a wall between them and music. Their thoughts never seem to penetrate farther than the keys. They plod along for years apparently striving to make piano-playing machines of themselves, and in the end result in ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... without daring to strike out any thing new, so that their prejudices are, in fact, the principles by which they are governed, and which sometimes serves them for their excuse; since they know better, but do not care to give themselves the trouble of acting up to their knowledge. Thus they plod in the safe, and broad road of mediocrity, but without any reputation or name. They are neither ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... certain inconvenience coupled with being called upon to pose as a genius at the comparatively early age of twenty-six. Popular theory to the contrary, notwithstanding, it is easier to plod slowly along on the path to fame. Greatness does not repeat itself, every day in the week. But fate had overtaken Gifford Barrett, and had hung a wreath of tender young laurels about his boyish brow. He deserved the wreath, if ever a boy did. Two years before, fresh from the inspiration of his ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... you could meet Crews and Jordan and Saxon. They're very dissimilar, but they've got something like the unifying motive of a monastery, and they're willing to serve and to plod and to be patient. I fight with Saxon because he's a pacifist, but like all pacifists he's a very pugnacious person, and he can get frightfully angry, but it's pitiful to see him when he's been angry, because he's so sorry afterwards. I'm not a pacifist, but I haven't a tenth of his pluck. He'd ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... order until Bidwell's trail became a plain line leading up the hillside; then the stampede began. With wild halloos and resounding thwacking of mules they scattered out, raced over the hilltop, and disappeared, leaving Bidwell to plod ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds of the Northwest, 1874, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... If they can make up their minds to wait tranquilly, and put some confidence in my goodwill, if not my power, to get on as well as may be, I shall not repine; but I verily believe that the "nobler sex" find it more difficult to wait, to plod, to work out their destiny inch by inch, than their sisters do. They are always for walking so fast and taking such long steps, one cannot keep up with them. One should never tell a gentleman that one has commenced a task till ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... not visible anywhere; neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving, consequently he was doing the same. This argued that he had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it with some peasant. There was nothing for us to do but plod along—and this we did. At the end of three hours we were still plodding. This was not only mysterious, but exasperating. And very fatiguing, too; for we had tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide, but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thee true, my noble neophyte; my little gram maticaster, he does: it shall never put thee to thy mathematics, metaphysics, philosophy, and I know not what supposed Suficiencies; if thou canst but have the patience to plod enough, talk, and make a noise enough, be impudent ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... step throughout, but with a difference. It is more of a plod, with less of stamping and much less lifting of the feet. Morris Off, danced in the traditional manner, gives one the impression of a company agreeably tired, but pleased and comfortable, having rollicked ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... swung into line with Armstrong, have you? You mean to plod along in some professional rut too. What has got into ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... under the trees, and chat, and perhaps smoke until evening. When the hot sun has gone down in the west, they make their damp and dry clothes up into huge bundles, lift them to their heads, and plod homeward. ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... became too oppressive. Oftentimes I felt, as it were, unable to proceed a step further; but my proud spirit with a stern determination of will, exerted every possible energy, and I continued day after day to plod along with my foot-sore and way-worn companions. Our fatigues were however occasionally relieved by a general rest for a few days. But before one third of the journey had been completed I was seized one night with ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... chance of birth ne'er gave To them a right to carve another's fate; Nor yet to make the humbler born a slave, Whose heart with goodness may be doubly great. Tell the hard-handed poor, yet honest man, That though through roughest ways of life he plod, Nature hath placed upon his birth no ban,— All men are equal in the sight ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... contributing his or her part, great or small, for that national economy which alone can hope to sustain the terrific pace that victory demands. Finally, out in the great open spaces, faithful and unassuming and backing his country to the limit, must plod the Man Behind The Plow, working silently and steadily from dawn till dark to enlist and re-enlist the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... whistling and humming to shout the last line. A shell falls near them—then another, then another. They crouch for a minute against the sticky walls to escape the flying spray of death. Then they plod onward again through the mud whistling and humming, "But for Gawd's sake don't send me." They're probably a carrying party, taking up the rations to their pals. It's quite likely they'll have a bad time to-night—there's the smell of gas in the air. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... admonishes: Hast thou ploughed, Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills, Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud. Steadily eyeing, before that wail Animal-infant, thy mind began, Momently nearer me: should sight fail, Plod in the track of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wishes you all happinesse, that remaines loyall to his Vow, and your encreasing in Loue. Leonatus Posthumus. Oh for a Horse with wings: Hear'st thou Pisanio? He is at Milford-Hauen: Read, and tell me How farre 'tis thither. If one of meane affaires May plod it in a weeke, why may not I Glide thither in a day? Then true Pisanio, Who long'st like me, to see thy Lord; who long'st (Oh let me bate) but not like me: yet long'st But in a fainter kinde. Oh not ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... machines. They are put in a go-cart of business, and are harnessed to a profession—yoked to Fortune's wheels. They plod on, and succeed. Their affairs conduct them, not they their affairs. All they have to do is to let things take their course, and not go out of the beaten road. A man may carry on the business of farming on the same spot and principle that his ancestors have ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... easier to resist because it is unusual. When a young girl, with hot impatience, feels she is not advancing as rapidly as she should, the wealthy "patron of Art" declares it is folly for her to plod along so slowly, that he will free her from all trammels, he will provide play, wardrobe, company, and show the world that she is already an artist. To her trembling objection that she could only ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... It is full of improbable combinations. Persons and scenes are brought into juxtaposition, in a manner to violate every principle of vraisemblance. The effect is so to blunt the interest of the story, that we can hardly plod on to the winding-up. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... and the late Mr. George Wyndham were the only pupils of Chittenden's who made names for themselves. The rest of us were content to plod along in the rut, though we had been taught to concentrate, to remember, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... cov'nant comes out When every man gathers his fee; Then I'll take my blue blade all in my hand, And plod ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and washing up its own tin dinner service, while one man in each division stood guard. Special duties were assigned to the "extras," and Will's was to ride up and down the train delivering orders. This suited his fancy to a dot, for the oxen were snail-gaited, and to plod at their heels was dull work. Kipling tells us it is quite impossible to "hustle the East"; it were as easy, as Will discovered, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... that's all he is good for: he can plod through the service well enough; but he has not a single ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... said Sibyl Dacy, "what a kindness of Providence, that life is made so uncertain; that death is thrown in among the possibilities of our being; that these awful mysteries are thrown around us, into which we may vanish! For, without it, how would it be possible to be heroic, how should we plod along in commonplaces forever, never dreaming high things, never risking anything? For my part, I think man is more favored than the angels, and made capable of higher heroism, greater virtue, and of a more excellent spirit than they, because we have such ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself—he wished to do so—that the obscure power that moved him had an exact meaning, and that its meaning was in accordance with his will. His free instinct, risen from the unconscious depths, was willy-nilly forced to plod on under the yoke of reason with perfectly clear ideas which had nothing at all in common with it. And work so produced was no more than a lying juxtaposition of one of those great subjects that Christophe's mind had marked out for itself, and those wild forces which had an ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... As your horses plod up and up the almost perpendicular trail that leads out of the Nicola Valley to the summit, a paradise of beauty outspreads at your feet; the color is indescribable in words, the atmosphere thrills you. Youth and the pulse of rioting ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... strange how we humans are always so overdetermined. One ought to know by the time he is grown that he is a puppet in the hands of circumstance. Now I go on hoping that you can carry me out to life and my husband, and you plod determinedly on as if you were really able to do it. Of course, you may, but it is ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... monster dragging me down. My friends misinterpret me and wonder what I mean by doing so when all the time I want to do what is for the best and cannot for this tyrant who is ever present with me. I will plod for hours and hours at a time, and at every turn I am handicapped. I am intelligent naturally and ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... pleneco. Plenteous suficxega. Plenty suficxa, suficxega. [Error in book: suficxelga] Pleonasm pleonasmo. Pliable fleksebla. Pliant fleksebla. Pliantness fleksebleco. Pliers prenilo—eto. Plod on diligentigxi. Plot konspiri, intrigi. Plot (league) intrigo, konspiro. Plot (of land) terpeco. Plough plugi. Plough plugilo. Ploughshare plugfero. Pluck (fowl) plumtiregi, senplumigi. Pluck ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... understood him aright, would no more have consented to stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts, and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round feet had left their print ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... Winston Churchill," says The Daily Express, "has to plod through life without a middle name." We all have our little cross to bear. Even the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS has to plod through life with the knowledge that there is another Winston ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod— Yea, sodden laborers dumb; To brains overplied, to feet that plod, In solace of the Truce of God ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... reading I fortune to meet with any difficult points, I fret not my selfe about them, but after I have given them a charge or two, I leave them as I found them. Should I earnestly plod upon them, I should loose both time and my selfe, for I have a skipping wit. What I see not at the first view, I shall lesse see it if I opinionate my selfe upon it. I doe nothing without blithnesse; ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Bay, some tea and talk, them home by King. The horses have an antiquated plod; The team is old, but not too old to balk If driven ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... be. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know a thing that write about it. Those who know it thoroughly don't take the trouble. All I know about women, or men either, is a mass of generalities. I plod along, and occasionally lift my eyes and skim the weltering surface of mankind lying between me and the horizon, as a crow might; ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... too, who used to come up our street with a little coal cart; he wore a coal-heaver's hat, and looked rough and black. He and his old horse used to plod together along the street, like two good partners who understood each other; the horse would stop of his own accord at the doors where they took coal of him; he used to keep one ear bent toward ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... plod, plod, till the loose drift was passed as if in a nightmare, and he felt as if his legs were moving mechanically. How long this had been going on he could not tell, for at last the horror of the pursuit had numbed his brain, and he could not think of anything ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Pilgrim, thither gone: Ambitious loue hath so in me offended, That bare-foot plod I the cold ground vpon With sainted vow my faults to haue amended Write, write, that from the bloodie course of warre, My deerest Master your deare sonne, may hie, Blesse him at home in peace. Whilst I from farre, His ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... as the footprints he had trodden, vengeance should demand them all. In a tempest of murderous hate he followed on in haste, for the track was plain enough, starting with such a burst of speed as could not be maintained, but brought him back soon to a plod for the spent, sobbing breath to be regulated. He cursed Christian aloud and called White Fell's name on high in a frenzied expense of passion. His grief itself was a rage, being such an intolerable anguish ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... this would probably prove to be the fact, so he did not waste time in an endeavour to locate the Russian's trail, but, instead, set out briskly for the village of M'ganwazam, leaving Tambudza to plod slowly ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
