"Livelihood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chancellor Cowper, when a barrister on circuit, wrote to his wife in 1690, that "the Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond imagination. I vow 'tis melancholy consideration that mankind will in habit such a heap of dirt for a poor livelihood. The country is a sink of about fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water that falls from two long ranges of hills on both sides of it, and not being furnished with convenient draining, is kept moist and soft by the water till the middle of a dry summer, which is only ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... because education for the business of life, and for the due cultivation of domestic virtues, is at least as important from day to day to the grown person as to the child; because real education, in the strife and contention for a livelihood, and the consequent necessity incumbent on a great number of young persons to go into the world when they are very young, is extremely difficult. It is because of these things that I look upon mechanics' institutions and athenaeums as vitally important to the well-being of society. It is because ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... work unprofitable, and were accordingly driven to devote themselves to smuggling. But from evidence in other documents it would certainly seem that Cockburn was speaking the truth and that the fishing industry was not a very good livelihood at that time. ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... me, and I do not ask you to alter the opinions you entertain of me. Yet I would not have you deceived by false and petty resemblances, for, as I have often said, there are certain strolling beggars who assume a professor's gown to win their livelihood. Not only the proconsul, but the town crier also ascends the tribunal and appears wearing the toga like his master. But the crier stands upon his feet for hours together, or strides to and fro, or bawls his ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... take a kind leave of his own wife before he closes his eyes for ever; and I dare say it would be a great relief to you to tell him that you have forgotten his desertion of you, and all the hardships it has brought upon you in searching for him, and in earning your own livelihood as ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... now. But when I know they are the thing, why should I hesitate about the name? In any proper meaning of the word there are several first-class "experts" among my friends who go fishing, sealing, whaling, hunting, trapping, "furring" or guiding for their livelihood. And I hereby most gratefully acknowledge all I have learnt during many a pleasant day with them, afloat and ashore. The other kind of experts, those who are called so by the world at large, have been quite as generous with their information and advice. In fact, they have been so very ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... comes, it is hardly energizing mentally. The real menace lies in the fact that in a self-governing industrial community the minds of the majority are in danger of becoming less capable of sound and serious thought because of lack of continuous constructive exercise in earning a livelihood." ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... Orlandos and Bassanios and Bertrams and his Hamlets and Macbeths must have been due not only to his development as a dramatic poet, but to the development of Burbage as an actor. Playwrights do not write for ideal actors when their livelihood is at stake: if they did, they would write parts for heroes with twenty arms like an Indian god. Indeed the actor often influences the author too much; for I can remember a time (I am not implying that it is yet wholly past) when the art of writing a fashionable play had become very largely ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... Three Brothers was a desert. What had once been the richest soil in the kingdom, became a shifting heap of red sand; and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the adverse skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, to seek some means of gaining a livelihood among the cities and people of the plains. All their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some curious, old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... "she was the only person here that so much as tried to read Browning. But if Cecil wants intellect, she had better take to the Duncombes, the queerest firm I ever fell in with. He makes the turf a regular profession, actually gets a livelihood out of his betting-book; and she is in the strong-minded line— woman's rights, and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all. When the comparatively small area of fertile land which could be cultivated without irrigation had been taken up, the keeping of cattle suggested itself as an easy means of livelihood. The pasture, however, was so thin that it was necessary to graze the cattle over wide stretches of ground, and the farther they went into the interior the scantier was the pasture and the larger therefore ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes—our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese—was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... efforts for meliorating the condition of poor female emigrants. What fell under her notice in connection with these luckless individuals was truly appalling. Huddled into a barrack on arrival; no trouble taken to put girls in the way of earning an honest livelihood; moral pollution all around; the government authorities and everybody else too busy to mind whether emigration was rightly or wrongly conducted—there was evidently much to be done. In January 1841, Mrs Chisholm wrote to Lady Gipps, the wife of the governor, on the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... circumstances it is quite intelligible that the people of Canada were obliged to seek in the clearing of the forest, in the cultivation of the field, in the chase, and in adventure, the means of livelihood, and hardly ever busied themselves about public matters in which they were not allowed to take even a ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... medicine, and more than once gained a scanty support by teaching. Seized with a rambling spirit, he went to the Continent, and visited Holland, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; sometimes gaining a scanty livelihood by teaching English, and sometimes wandering without money, depending upon his flute to win a supper and bed from the rustics who lived on the highway. He obtained, it is said, the degree of Doctor of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... himself, although he now owned a license to practise law, it was still a question how well he would succeed—whether his rugged mind and firm purpose could win him the livelihood he desired, or whether, after all, he would be forced to turn his strong muscles to account in earning his daily bread. Usually so hopeful, there were times when he was greatly depressed. His friend William Butler relates how, as they were riding together on horseback from Vandalia ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... single words in single sentences stamp on the brain the substance of long experiences. Witness this: Enoch lies sick, distant from home and wife and children; here is one word crowded with pathos, telling of the weary loss of livelihood, the burden slowly growing more intolerably irksome to the bold and careful worker wrestling with pain, and to the fragile mother of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... table in the room lay several papers covered with writing; all of them breathed the desire to attain renown without difficulty and without work, and expressed the utmost contempt for those who consented to gain their livelihood by the sweat of their brow. There were several quotations from Victor Hugo, and a request that their names and the manner of their death might be ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... not now the tune to give regular lessons in voice-production, he is frequently consulted, especially when abroad, during his vacations, by speakers and especially singers who are anxious to learn how they may increase their efficiency in the profession by which they earn their livelihood and make their reputation; and the reader may be gratified to learn how, in such cases, the writer applies the principles he so strongly recommends ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... surpass a neighbor in grandeur, and to this day great estates are encumbered by the debts thus incurred in vain show. The heir to such a property was reared in a pomp and luxury undreamed of by the frugal young planter of Virginia. Of working for a livelihood, in the sense in which Washington knew it, the young Englishman of great ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... daily grind was the immense disparity, the difference and contrast, from class to class, of every instant and every motion. There were times when all the wires in the country seemed to start from the little hole-and-corner where she plied for a livelihood, and where, in the shuffle of feet, the flutter of "forms," the straying of stamps and the ring of change over the counter, the people she had fallen into the habit of remembering and fitting together with others, and of having her theories and interpretations of, kept ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... world, did himself honour by patronising the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plants, the humblest and hardiest of workers of the farm. Under that hot sun, in the wide spaces of those unfenced fields, with no English hedge to shut off neighbouring crops and tillage, the air of those bent, lowly figures was of French peasantry, French nearness to the difficult livelihood of the soil. They might have gleaned for Millet; they should cease their work ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... dash of brandy into his coffee in order to counteract the fatigue caused by the last nights he had remained up and that which he anticipated from the night that was still in store for him. He had put on a look of sadness, that simulated sadness of the priest to whom death is a means of livelihood. He made the sign of the cross, and coming over to them with his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... have been a time when there was no pressing duty involved in this question, but that day has passed. Recent statistics show that there are in the United States to-day millions of women who earn a livelihood by their own individual exertions;[17] tens of thousands of these women are working for starvation wages, with the awful alternative ever before them "starve or sin." This condition will remain until women have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... was not very choice when he did speak. But he was a man of varied accomplishments; not only could he walk, but he could run, and swim, and box. Indeed he had only deserted the pugilistic for the pedestrian profession because the former was such a poor means of livelihood, closely watched as its members were by the police. Now, Saurin had long wished to learn to box, an art which was not included in the curriculum of the Weston gymnasium, and here was an opportunity. The professor's terms ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... that the matter will be quickly settled. After two or three voyages to India, Australia, or round Cape Horn, you will have obtained sufficient experience to become a mate. You will then be independent and able to gain your own livelihood." ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... heard of his painful situation and offered him a pension of a thousand thalers a year for three years. No conditions whatever were attached to the gift; he was simply to follow his inclination, free from all anxiety about a livelihood. Without hesitation he accepted the gift and thus found himself, for the first time in his life, really free to do as he chose. What he chose was to use his freedom for a grapple with Kant's philosophy. Today this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... that it matters. A chauffeur by any other name would smell as much of oil and petrol. It's actually my real name, too. Are you surprised? I was either too proud or too stubborn to change it—I'm not sure which—when I took up 'shuvving' for a livelihood." ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... remunerative pursuits, and into a destructive rather than a constructive channel. Talent does not imply industry, and where the stock in trade consists of luxuries of small money value, men make but a precarious livelihood. One of them says that he will give as a fortune to his daughter "six hundred bon mots—all pure Attic," which seems to suggest that they were to be puns. No doubt it was the demand that led to the supply, for jesters were in request at convivial meetings, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... was telling Servien, "my livelihood was assured. The landlord of an inn had entrusted his books to me, and under his roof I was devoting my attention to mathematical calculations, not, like the illustrious and ill-starred Galileo, to measure the stars, but to establish with exactitude the profits and losses of ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... lieutenant-colonel of artillery killed at Jena, possessed, as her whole means of livelihood, a meagre pension of nine hundred francs a year, and three hundred francs from property of her own, plus a son whose support and education had eaten up all her savings. She occupied, in the rue du Bercail, one of those melancholy ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sadi alludes when he says, in his charming "Gulistan," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin." Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries. In brief, he is—in stories, at least—a standing illustration of the "vanity ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... curiously combined, as in "The One and Forty Pilgrims," which is generally classed with the epic songs, however. But while the singing of the epic songs is not a profession, the singing of the religious ballads is of a professional character, and is used as a means of livelihood by the kalyeki perekhozhie, literally, wandering cripples, otherwise known as wandering psalm-singers. These stikhi, or religious ballads, are even more remarkable than the epic songs in some respects, and practically nothing concerning them is ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... schemes by which a young lady might be supposed to earn a decent livelihood—more or less convenient and feasible in imagination, but relinquished them all until advertising had been once more tried, this time taking lower ground. Cytherea was vexed at her temerity in having represented to the world that so inexperienced ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... I have begun to lead a different life—one with which I am satisfied; and if you will take the advice of one who wishes you well, you, too, will quit the old ways. You can embroider beautifully and play the piano like a master. You could earn a livelihood giving lessons in either. Do not trouble any further about me, for I can take care of myself. If only you knew how much happier I am now, you would rejoice, I know! Let me beg you to become honest and truthful, and think often of your old ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... succeed in a provincial town. He vegetated there for fifteen years, his eyes turned towards Paris, watching his opportunities. On his return home he had entered his name on the rolls, in order to be independent of his parents. After that he pleaded from time to time, earning a bare livelihood, without appearing to rise above average mediocrity. At Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... leading citizens were seized. It was enough to have means of comfortable livelihood to be denounced as an enemy of Spain. The most peaceful men were dragged from their homes, and the tears of wives and children never moved ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... city (if there are any city paupers, those who have been born here, and whose fathers and grandfathers were born here, then those fathers and grandfathers came hither for the purpose of earning their livelihood). What is the meaning of this: to earn one's livelihood in the city? In the words "to earn one's livelihood in the city," there is something strange, resembling a jest, when you reflect on their significance. How is ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... from all eternity a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be damned eternally. If this were true, the day of judgment is past; their preaching is in vain, and they had better work at some useful calling for their livelihood. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the first intimation he had ever given, that he was privy to the fact that they did something for a livelihood. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... one,—That is for the brigade; and the second,—That is to administer justice. The particulars of it is this,—that the byparees will bring their grain from all quarters, and sell for their livelihood. There is at present no war to occasion a necessity for sending for it. If none comes, whatever quantity will be necessary every month I will mention to the aumils, that they may bring it for sale: but there is no deficiency ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... games, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated and a smiling picture of the island life. And the Samoans are to-day the gayest and the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. The importance of this can scarcely be exaggerated. In a climate and upon a soil where a livelihood can be had for the stooping, entertainment is a prime necessity. It is otherwise with us, where life presents us with a daily problem, and there is a serious interest, and some of the heat of conflict, in the mere continuing to be. So, in certain atolls, where there is no great gaiety, but man must ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not have mattered especially had the poor children been left in their original condition of friendless poverty," she said. "They were then like a million other girls, content to struggle for a respectable livelihood and a doubtful position in the lower stratas of social communion. But you interfered. You came into their lives abruptly, appearing from those horrid Western wilds with an amazing accumulation of money and a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... slave. I rose early, and went to bed late, giving my youth, my health, my beauty—you will smile, perhaps, Mr. Carrington, but in those days I was accounted a handsome woman—in exchange for what? My daily bread, and the education which was to enable me to earn a livelihood hereafter. Some distant relations undertook to clothe me; and I was dressed in those days about as shabbily as I have been dressed ever since. In all my life, I never knew the innocent pleasure which every woman feels in the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... economic and political control. If land tenure was so significant in Europe, it was equally important in the development of America, where practically all the first immigrants were forced by circumstances to derive their livelihood ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... sisters, left orphans at fifteen, and had lived ever since, as those who work for their livelihood must live, by economy and privation. For the last twenty or thirty years they had worked in jewelry in the same house; they had seen ten masters succeed one another, and make their fortunes in it, without any change in their own lot. They had always lived in the same ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... trial to Annie; she scarcely knew what course to pursue; but, procuring board with an intimate friend, she entered a cotton factory with a number of her young friends, thinking that would be a respectable, and an easy way of obtaining her livelihood. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. To be sure, I might have pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but I thought it behoved that I should bear a testimony. I must have got very red in the face, but I spoke steadily, and told ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule in the ordinary affairs of every-day life. I hope the boy scouts will practise truth and square dealing, and courage and honesty, so that when as young men they begin to take a part not only in earning their own livelihood, but in governing the community, they may be able to show in practical fashion their insistence upon the great truth that the eighth and ninth commandments are directly related to every-day life, not only between ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... gives a very curious account of a goat which he came across in Arabia. This goat would perform some most surprising feats of dexterity. "We met," he says, "an Arab with a goat, which he led about the country to exhibit, in order to gain a livelihood. He had taught this animal, while he accompanied its movements with a song, to mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed successively one above another, and resembling in shape the dice belonging to a backgammon table. In this manner the goat stood, first on the top of ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... owned the whole continent, and in common justice should have the means of livelihood given to them now,' said Robert. 'It is not likely they'll trouble the white ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... which they were principally engaged, now that their wealth had been dissipated by the oft recurring wars, "My friends," replied he, "if you are men of business, change your plans and seek out some other conservative road to a livelihood, but if you can play the part of men of great culture, always ready with a lie, you are on the straight road to riches: The study of literature is held in no estimation in that city, eloquence has no niche ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... remains there to show us how firmly my theory stands—that the real scoundrel never knows himself to be a scoundrel. Had Fury settled down in a back street and employed his genius in writing stories, he could have earned a livelihood, for people would have eagerly read his experiences; but he preferred thieving—and then he turned round and blamed other people for hounding ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice; for the chance was that the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor emigre who gained a precarious livelihood as a dancing-master, cook, teacher, or barber, who was profuse of smiles, shrugs, bows, and compliments, prided himself on la belle France, played the fiddle, and took snuff. A more dignified view succeeded, when we read "Telemaque," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "were you penniless, and were your father to die, you would have no means of obtaining a livelihood. It is best as ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... (une pucelle) was a girl of humble birth, who earned her livelihood by manual work and was generally a servant. Thus the leaden pumps used in kitchens were usually called pucelles. The term was doubtless vulgar, but it had no evil meaning. In spite of Clopinel's naughty saying: "Je legue ma pucelle a mon cure," it was used to describe a respectable girl ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... on your part to meet my former wishes for a public recognition of the wife of Lord Ormont. Let me now say that these foolish wishes no longer exist. I rejoice to think that my staying or going will be alike unknown to the world. I have the means of a livelihood, in a modest way, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grave. They are all known to be in a state of helpless poverty, and quite unable to earn a subsistence for themselves. In this building they are clothed and fed; the younger provided with instruction necessary to put them in the way of earning a livelihood; the elders of the community enjoying the consolations of religion, accorded to them by the regular ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and Richardson were perhaps the only three conspicuous writers of the time, who had never known what it was to want a meal or to go without a shirt. But then none of the three depended on his pen for his livelihood. Every other man of that day whose writings have delighted and instructed the world since, had begun his career, and more than one of them continued and ended it, as a drudge and a vagabond. Fielding and Collins, Goldsmith ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... to prevent Dave from making any further inquiries as to the Count's new means of a livelihood. ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... forts were planted and Jesuit and Sulpician missions grew. The Illinois country enjoyed a "boom," as we say in America, even in those days, and became known for a time as the Garden of New France; but only for a time, for it was so easy to earn a livelihood there that it was not long before the habitants reverted, under temptation, to the preagricultural, hunting state after giving a moment's prophecy of the stirring life that was some day to make it the garden of the new world, the busiest spot in ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... for many years after, to obtain honest employment. But the world is richer, and safer, by Muller's early misfortune. For it was this experience which threw him back on his own peculiar talents for a livelihood, and drove him into the police force. Had he been able to enter any other profession, his genius might have been stunted to a mere pastime, instead of being, as now, utilised ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... Mesopotamia is a totally different proposition. The land lies low between the rivers, and, though of unparalleled fertility, yields under present conditions but a precarious livelihood to its sparse population. For nine months of the year it is a desert, for three months when its rivers are in flood, a swamp. Once, as we all know, it was the very heart of civilisation, and from its arteries flowed out the life-blood of the world. Rainfall ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... a "down-east" plucky lad ships as cabin boy to earn a livelihood. Ned is marooned on Spider Island, and while there discovers a wreck submerged in the sand, and finds a considerable amount of treasure. The capture of the treasure and the incidents of the voyage serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... into the bosom of the Church of Rome was liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side he incurred no such danger. A Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his hand; but he walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man could hold office, or even earn his livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without previously taking the oath of supremacy, but in Ireland a public functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath unless it were formally tendered to him. [149] It therefore did not exclude from employment any person whom the government ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... surely slain him. Then the Chief banished him from Baghdad; and my brother fared forth at a venture, till he came to a great town, where he thought it best to set up as a cobbler; so he opened a shop and sat there doing what he could for his livelihood. One day, as he went forth on his business, he heard the distant tramp of horses and, asking the cause, was told that the King was going out to hunt and course; so my brother stopped to look at the fine suite. It so fortuned that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... was to request that, by allowing her to have the sheets of some of his works before publication, he would enable her to prepare early translations for the French booksellers, and thus afford her the means of acquiring something towards a livelihood.] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... humorist to boot. The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gudewife was very common among the Scottish Bonifaces. There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family who condescended, in order to gain a livelihood, to become the nominal keeper of a coffee-house, one of the first places of the kind which had been opened in the Scottish metropolis. As usual, it was entirely managed by the careful and industrious ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... rode over to Oakford to see you, and learned from Mr. Bickford that you had run away from his house and joined the circus. There must be something low and depraved in your tastes, that you should thus abandon the prospect of earning a respectable livelihood, and go tramping through the country with a circus. What do you think your father would say if he could come to life, and become aware of the course you ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... spent in the stock-market for the purpose of gain. I have never in my stock operations set myself up for a philanthropist nor in any way posed as a reformer, nor pretended to be a bit better than the business I had chosen for a livelihood. From the first day until now I have endeavored to keep strictly to the principle that I would never knowingly deceive any man, woman, or child who, out of confidence in me, risked their money in speculation ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... accomplished results of real value in upbuilding domestic and foreign trade. It has gone into new fields until it is now in touch with all sections of our country and with two of the island groups that have lately come under our jurisdiction, whose people must look to agriculture as a livelihood. It is searching the world for grains, grasses, fruits, and vegetables specially fitted for introduction into localities in the several States and Territories where they may add materially to our resources. By scientific attention to soil survey and possible new ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... certain doctrines of the Christian religion as understood in England to-day with abhorrence. I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinions in these matters. I have no other effectual incentive to write plays, as I am not dependent on the theatre for my livelihood. If I were prevented from producing immoral and heretical plays, I should cease to write for the theatre, and propagate my views from the platform and through books. I mention these facts to shew that I have a special interest in the achievement by my profession of those rights of liberty ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... being feeble and infirm from age and disease, dressed in rags and tags, and presenting an appearance of great distress. But there were many more who were seemingly hearty and vigorous; and these were the lazy ones, who, not being willing to work, begged for a livelihood. ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... more grist to the mill. Such a course was imperative, since the balance of the L1000 her step-father had given her would not last indefinitely. Looking round, she felt that, all things considered, the stage offered the best prospects of earning a livelihood. Not a very novel decision. Nowadays, as an attractive young woman, with a little capital in her possession, she would have had more choice. Thus, she might have opened a hat shop, or run tea-rooms, or bred pet dogs, become a mannequin, or a dance club hostess, or even "gone on the films." ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... A majority of the population still depends on agriculture and livestock for a livelihood, even though most of the nomads and many subsistence farmers were forced into the cities by recurrent droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. Mauritania has extensive deposits of iron ore, which account for almost 50% of total exports. The decline in world ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at first they had looked upon him with a little distrust as a "gentleman tow-rist"; but when he had mixed with them freely and familiarly, making no secret of the fact that he was poor, and that he was endeavouring to earn a livelihood like all the rest of them, only in a different way, they abandoned all reserve, and treated him as one of themselves. Moreover, when it was understood that "Mis' Deane," whose reputation stood very high in the village, considered him not ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... naturally noble province is to the Netherland nation, what service it could render it in future, and what a retreat it would be for all the needy in the Netherlands, as well of high and middle, as of low degree; for it is much easier for all men of enterprise to obtain a livelihood here ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... work in any sphere. As soon as they are released from the claims of business, they rush off to be excited and amused; and the one thing they dread is solitude, in which they might have to face themselves. In certain classes of society, where work is not necessary to obtain a livelihood, this spirit is the predominant one: life is all a scene of gaiety; one amusement follows another; and the utmost care is taken to avoid any intervals where reflection ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... down and provided with fully-developed wings. The maternal instinct of the megapodius ceases with the laying of eggs, and, having supplied a safe cradle for the rising generation, she takes no further thought for her precocious progeny, capable of securing a livelihood in the unknown world from the moment of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... has always been along the shore. It is from the shore that coot-shooting used to furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat, and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the unique and picturesque mossing industry ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Profession that would suit me," he said. "I have an instinctive fondness for meals. I knew the travelling show' business was a hungry game but I never reckoned on starvation as a means of earning a livelihood." ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... this time, we will save up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois; I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago and practise law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood."(11) ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... surly looking men were on their knees on the stones; before them was a large heap of pieces of old iron, brass, and copper; they were assorting it, and stowing it away in various bags. They were Spanish contrabandistas of the lowest class, and earned a miserable livelihood by smuggling such rubbish from Portugal into Spain. Not a word proceeded from their lips, and when I addressed them in their native language, they returned no other answer than a kind of growl. They looked as dirty and rusty as ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Of poor descent, Acaetes is my name: 10 My sire was meanly born; no oxen ploughed His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures lowed. His whole estate within the waters lay; With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey. His art was all his livelihood; which he Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me: In streams, my boy, and rivers, take thy chance; There swims,' said he, 'thy whole inheritance. 'Long did I live on this poor legacy; Till tired ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... can eat better, drink more easily, live more merrily, and die, perhaps, not till the day after, why should it not do so? Is parasitism, after all, not a somewhat clever ruse? Is it not an ingenious way of securing the benefits of life while evading its responsibilities? And although this mode of livelihood is selfish, and possibly undignified, can it be said ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... no more of these riches you promised me, if you will stay quietly at home, assist me in getting an honest livelihood, and give your thoughts to God and the church. But how comes it that you are in the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... were quacks with nostrums; and these all were just as much clerics as the chaplains, who occupied pretty much the same position as our curates do now—clergymen, strictly so called, who were on the look out for employment, and who earned a very precarious livelihood—or the rectors and vicars who were the beneficed clergy, and who were the parsons of parishes occupying almost exactly the same position that they do at this moment, and who were almost exactly in the same social position as they are now. Six hundred years ago there were ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... that under stress or the need of making a livelihood women in many instances do show physical endurance equal to that of men. Women who are expert ballet dancers and those who are skilled acrobats can hardly be termed physiological weaklings. In Berlin, you may see women staggering along with ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... to be had, but fortunately the schooner 'Scotia', chartered by John King, went ashore in a gale, and four of the barkers, all Irishmen obtained a few days' work in taking out her mud ballast. But no permanent livelihood could be expected from shipwrecks, and the seven strippers resolved, if possible, to return to Melbourne. They wanted to see Paddy Walsh once more, but they had no money, and the storekeeper refused to pay their ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... solitary, penitential life in humility, penance, fasting, cold, and labor. They prayed, sung psalms, and worked. They all had their several employments: some spun, others knit, others tilled the ground, gaining their poor livelihood by the sweat of their brow. St. Boniface surpassed all the rest in fervor and mortification. He was the emperor's near relation, and so dear to him, that he never called him by any other name than, My soul! he excelled in music, and in all the liberal arts and sciences, and after having spent ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... manifest when we come to look at the social organization contemplated in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Homeric state of society is, in some respects, rude enough. Piracy, for instance, is recognized as, if not a laudable, at all events a quite ordinary method of gaining a livelihood. 'Who are you?' says Nestor to Telemachus. 'Whence do you come? Are you engaged in trade, or do you rove at adventure as sea-robbers who wander at hazard of their lives, bringing bane to strangers?' The same question is addressed ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... plot. Unluckily, one is helpless. That scoundrel Cousinho—Andreas, you know—has been coveting the brig for years. Naturally, I would never sell. She is not only my livelihood; she's my life. So he has hatched this pretty little plot with the chief of the customs. The sale, of course, will be a farce. There's no one here to bid. He will get the brig for a song—no, not even that—a line of a song. You have ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... still full of old fears, pathetically unable to grasp the joy of this tranquillity, which, like recreative sunshine, penetrated to every corner of the exhausted empire. Nor, in fretting over the absence of his son, did he remember the brave fight that he had made for a livelihood as a muleteer in the Alps just above Como, nor the manner, almost heroic, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... mother and the family in poor circumstances, and I determined to follow the plains for a livelihood for them and myself. I had no difficulty in obtaining work under my old employers, and in May, 1857, I started for Salt Lake City with a herd of beef cattle, in charge of Frank and Bill McCarthy, for General Albert Sidney Johnson's army, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... nevertheless, see that their business is done in a neat and proper manner."—"A man that understands the law is sure to have business; and in case I have no thoughts, in case, that is, that I do not aspire to hold the honourable place of a barrister, I shall feel sure of gaining a genteel livelihood at the business to ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... generally to cover all degrees of mental weakness. In speaking a little more precisely, however, we have to recognize three main degrees of congenital mental weakness: feeble-mindedness, in which with care and supervision it is possible to work and earn a livelihood; imbecility, in which the subject is barely able to look after himself, and sometimes only has enough intelligence to be mischievous (the moral imbecile); and idiocy, the lowest depth of all, in which the subject has no intelligence and no ability to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... to persevere, notwithstanding all the obstacles which attached to the suit of a man without either fortune or character, who had been exiled from his own country, and whose chief mode of livelihood ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... my only livelihood. Sometimes I am in luck, and then I lay out my money in these trinkets you see. It's property, look you, Redmond; and the only way I have found of keeping a little about me. When the luck goes against ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occasionally," said another—"he looks seedy enough." "His girls take in sewing, I have heard," said a third, who spoke with a slight air of contempt, as if there were something disgraceful attached to needle-work, when pursued as a means of livelihood. I would have called during the day, upon Wightman, but failed to ascertain ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... of character to a position which would have seemed proud success but for the difficulty with which he kept himself alive. His parents were dead. Of his brothers, two had disappeared in the abyss, and one, Andrew, earned a hard livelihood as a journeyman baker; the elder of his sisters had married poorly, and the younger was his blind pensioner. Nicholas had found a wife of better birth than his own, a young woman with country kindred in decent circumstances, though she herself served as nursemaid ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing |
