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Wearisome   /wˈɪrisəm/   Listen
Wearisome

adjective
1.
So lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness.  Synonyms: boring, deadening, dull, ho-hum, irksome, slow, tedious, tiresome.  "The deadening effect of some routine tasks" , "A dull play" , "His competent but dull performance" , "A ho-hum speaker who couldn't capture their attention" , "What an irksome task the writing of long letters is" , "Tedious days on the train" , "The tiresome chirping of a cricket" , "Other people's dreams are dreadfully wearisome"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wearisome" Quotes from Famous Books



... be wearisome to refer in detail to the numerous estimates of Leaves of Grass which have found print since 1870. The increasing literature about Whitman bespeaks interest, and the kindly tenor of most commentators testifies ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... where you can always look out on pleasant places, or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... handsome as ever;—a man whom neither man nor woman could help regarding as a thing beautiful to behold;—but not the less was there in his eyes and cheeks a look of haggard dissipation,—of riotous living, which had become wearisome, by its continuance, even to himself,—that told to all who saw him much of the history of his life. Most men who drink at nights, and are out till cockcrow doing deeds of darkness, become red in their faces, have pimpled cheeks and watery eyes, and are bloated and not comfortable to be seen. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... the line of woods trending away to far hills, and the unseen valleys beyond were "telling of the sound," the farther, fainter strains half drowned in ringing cheers as the men ran to range themselves behind the stacks of arms. For this call was not the wearisome "general" before which the tents go down; it was the exhilarating "assembly," which goes to the heart as wine and stirs the blood like the kisses of a beautiful woman. Who that has heard it calling to him above the grumble ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... relate their adventures with spirits, you do not require to hear any more ghost stories. To listen to any further ghost stories after that would be like sitting out two farcical comedies, or taking in two comic journals; the repetition would become wearisome. ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome

... now very different, being no longer so much admired; for at first he was made quite an idol of here. We went up-stairs together, when by degrees the guests assembled, and there was no end to talking. After dinner, Vogler sent for two pianos of his, which were tuned alike, and also his wearisome engraved sonatas. I had to play them, while he accompanied me on the other piano. At his urgent request I sent for my sonatas also. N. B.—Before dinner he had scrambled through my sonata at sight, (the Litzau ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... wearisome wait. There was a no'thwest wind coming up, and the waves were running pretty choppy on the bar. All I could think of was that gasoline. Was there enough in the pipes and the feed cup on that launch to carry her out to where ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... it with anxiety. I sought to interest her in my studies, and asked her assistance in my music. With labor she would exert herself to aid me; and at times her old enthusiasm would burst forth, but only as the gleams of an expiring taper; every thing seemed wearisome to her. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... card-playing in the mornings, noisy operatic music in the afternoons (there was no piano, only an old American organ, in the house) and coquettish scufflings, dancing, and conscious giggling tete-a-tetes in the hall every long, lamp-lit evening soon became wearisome, and Ringfield, made vaguely uneasy, took on himself ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... that, elsewhere, I have shared the feelings of Dickens toward St. Francis and St. Sebastian, as the "Mounseer Tonsons" of Catholic art. St. Sebastian I have not been so tired of, for the beauty and youth of the figure make the monotony with which the subject of his martyrdom is treated somewhat less wearisome. But St. Francis is so sad, and so ecstatic, and so brown, so entirely the monk,—and St. Clara so entirely the nun! I have been very sorry for her that he was able to draw her from the human to the heavenly life; ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... not before been used. He then goes on to say, "I ponder on the things that have taken place, and the events that have occurred throughout the land. Things have happened, and they are different from those of last year. Each year is more wearisome than the last. The whole country is disturbed and is going to destruction. Justice (or right) is thrust out, injustice (or sin) is in the council hall, the plans of the gods are upset, and their behests are set aside. The country ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... After a wearisome voyage the survivors, on being carried into some port, were sold to the highest bidder. No regard was paid to their relationship. One man bought a husband, another a wife. The child was taken to one place, the mother to ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various

... are able to obtain all the marked benefits of a truss without any of its drawbacks; and that special disadvantage, steady and wearisome pressure at one point, is wholly obviated. The whole appliance is held in place below by means of perineal tubular rubber bands that connect ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... On his last voyage as Commissioner of Lighthouses, he hailed a ship at sea and made himself clearly audible without a speaking-trumpet, ruffling the while with a proper vanity in his achievement. He had a habit of eking out his words with interrogative hems, which was puzzling and a little wearisome, suited ill with his appearance, and seemed a survival from some former stage of bodily portliness. Of yore, when he was a great pedestrian and no enemy to good claret, he may have pointed with these minute-guns his allocutions to the bench. His humour was perfectly equable, set beyond the reach ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... triangular piano—the square shapes were so inexpressibly wearisome to the initiated. Cowperwood listened fascinated. He foresaw a home which would be chaste, soothing, and delightful to look upon. If he hung pictures, gilt frames were to be the setting, large and deep; and if he wished a picture-gallery, the library could be converted into that, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... silent. Emily worked very hard at her mission of forgiveness, and hardly ceased in her efforts at conciliatory conversation. Women can work so much harder in this way than men find it possible to do! She never flagged, but continued to be fluent, conciliatory, and intolerably wearisome. On a sudden they came across two men together, who, as they all knew, were barely acquainted with each other. These were Colonel Osborne ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... corporations have some probability: they show us many clearly-developed sensual and mercenary scoundrels; they are all, very possibly, portraits from life; but they are all excessively crude in their likenesses and inexpressibly wearisome. It is a distasteful and unsavory world to which the author introduces us: if he wishes to show us consummate rascals we insist that he should wrap them in some veil of decency, if not of art, and not fill his pages with incidents ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... impatiently; "but leave me now; for to speak plainly, my good friend, you grow a little wearisome. I walk this afternoon in the Borghese grounds. Meet me there, if it ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... splendid collations and sumptuous entertainments: Mrs. Wetenhall was transported with pleasures, of which the greatest part were entirely new to her; she was greatly delighted with all, except now and then at a play, when tragedy was acted, which she confessed she thought rather wearisome: she agreed, however, that the show was very interesting, when there were many people killed upon the stage, but thought the players were very fine handsome fellows, who were ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first. But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again appeared as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep interest in the naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real importance can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... for me. Saturday was grey and lifeless, and the ride of seven miles here along a sandy road through monotonous forest and swamp, with the volcano on one side and low wooded hills on the other, was wearisome and fatiguing. I saw five large snakes all in a heap, and a number more twisting through the grass. There are no villages, but several very poor tea-houses, and on the other side of the road long sheds with troughs hollowed like canoes out ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... consequence, and pains to be coveted, that will terminate in greater pleasures. Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out, not only his time, sweat, labour, and goods, but also his life itself to obtain it; forasmuch as, without it, life is wearisome and injurious to us: pleasure, wisdom, learning, and virtue, without it, wither away and vanish; and to the most laboured and solid discourses that philosophy would imprint in us to the contrary, we need no more but oppose the image of Plato being struck with an epilepsy or apoplexy; and, in ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible.' Here I secede from the automaton theory, though maintained by friends who have all my esteem, and fall back upon the avowal which occurs with such wearisome iteration throughout the foregoing pages; namely, my own utter incapacity to grasp ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... seemed long. With the heat and dust and slow progress, it was exceedingly wearisome. Our modern nerves are not attuned to the slow crawling of a prairie-wagon. There had been growing for some time in the coach a feeling that the journey did not pay; that, in fact, no mere scenery could compensate for the fatigue of the trip. The imagination did ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... more wearisome than these? Would all Chiavari assembled on Wimbledon make up a drearier discord than a ministerial explanation? In all your experience of bad music, do you know anything to equal a Foreign Office despatch? and we are without a remedy ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... give pleasure with her service; she needs tact, that she may keep the atmosphere about her unruffled; she needs to find pleasure for herself in service, seeing always the end rather than merely the often wearisome details of work. Beyond these general qualities we must begin at once to make subdivisions, since the additional traits necessary to make a girl successful in one line of service differ often widely from those required in any other line. We must therefore take up some of the lines of work ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... painted sea below, and a deep blue painted sky above. My nymphs danced around the mound of roses, while I sat upon a real rock beside the painted sea and talked with Ulysses—to wit, my Lord of Buckingham—in gold armor. That was a strange, bright, unreal, and wearisome day, but not so strange ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... based, in its original home in the East, on a mystical notion of sympathy between the phenomena of the starry heavens and the phenomena of human life;[862] and that this notion was carefully inculcated by those who taught the "science" at Rome is shown by the long and wearisome poem on astrology written by Manilius in the succeeding age. But it is not likely that this form of mysticism had become really popular before the period of the Empire, and in any case it can hardly be called a part of Roman religious ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... sentimentalists to admit the nose among the features proper to heroes, otherwise the race will become extinct. There is already an amount of dropping of the curtain that is positively wearisome, even to extremely refined persons, in order to save him from apparent misconduct. He will have to go altogether, unless we boldly figure him as other men. Manifestly the moment his career as a fairy prince was at end, he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... when a fellow's been busy all day pouring over Coke and Blackstone, or casting up wearisome rows of figures, and seeks a young lady's society in the evening, he wants to enjoy himself, to bathe in the sunshine of her smiles, and not to be lectured about his shortcomings. I tell you, Jeanette, it comes hard ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... how matters really stood; and took the nearest way to information by asking a mighty beautiful and apparently artless young creature, not noble, how that affair was managed, for there is no harm done I am sure, said I: 'Why no,' replied she, 'no great harm to be sure: except wearisome attentions from a man one cares little about; for my own part,' continued she, 'I detest the custom, as I happen to love my husband excessively, and desire nobody's company in the world but his. We are not people ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... showed no signs of distress, Malcolm kicked his feet free from the stirrups and descended, for his journey had been a long one, the day was poisonously hot and the steppe across which he had ridden, for all its golden beauty, its wealth of blue cornflour and yellow genista, had been wearisome. Overhead the sky was an unbroken bowl of blue and at its zenith ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... fashion, are cast in the form of prophecies. The Bhagavat Purana is especially devoted to the legends of Krishna. The Hindi version of the 10th Book (skandha) is known as the 'Prem Sagar', or 'Ocean of Love', and is, perhaps, the most wearisome book in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Nannie, but as it costs me nothing, not even for paper, for this is the Chamber's, I do want to improve a wearisome moment, during which I must listen to the reading of a confused report on normal prices, to send you another little greeting; but again without the ribbon, for I am going to buy that later on. This morning I attended the cavalry manoeuvres, on a very pleasant horse of Fritz's; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... cowboy working for his daily wage, there is a great gulf fixed. After being put on the pay-roll, I couldn't do just as my fancy prompted. I had to get up at an ungodly hour, and eat breakfast in about two minutes, and saddle a horse and "ride circle" with the rest of them—which same is exceeding wearisome to man and beast. For the first time since I left school, I was under orders; and the foreman certainly tried to obey dad's mandate and treat me just as he would have treated any other stranger. I could give it up, of course—but I hope never to see the day ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... not always last on the full stretch. But why detail the fits of despondency, the listless hopeless state into which we sometimes fell? Suffice it that nature sometimes asserted her rights, while religion kept us from open despair. Many events occurred, wearisome to the reader, though interesting to ourselves. Sometimes we divided, and half lived in one house and half in the other. We then paid each other visits of ceremony, expending much labour, even if no cost, on the feasts we prepared for our company. Also we ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... was riding with a lowering, fretted face. He had come across country on horseback, because to travel by train meant wearisome stops and changes and endlessly slow journeying, annoying beyond endurance to those who have not patience to spare. His ride would have been pleasant enough but for the slow mist-like rain. Also he had taken a wrong turning, because he did not know the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... more than one of these points. It is taken from the long lament in the Septem, sung by the chorus and the two sisters, while following the funeral procession of the two princes. These laments may at times be wearisome to the modern reader, who does not see, and imperfectly imagines, the stately and pathetic spectacle; but to the ancient feeling they were as solemn and impressive as they were ceremonially indispensable. The solemnity is here heightened by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Count resolved to quit the island; and did so, making his way as best he could to Stamford, in Ireland, where he obtained a menial's place in the service of a knight, retainer to one of the earls of that Country, and so abode there a long while, doing all the irksome and wearisome drudgery of a ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... listen to you. The master's vanity must always give way to the scholars; he must be able to say, I understand, I see it, I am getting at it, I am learning something. One of the things which makes the Pantaloon in the Italian comedies so wearisome is the pains taken by him to explain to the audience the platitudes they understand only too well already. We must always be intelligible, but we need not say all there is to be said. If you talk much you will say ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... the landscape is unpleasing and monotonous, if one excepts the marvellous effects of the rising and setting sun and the beautiful moonlight. Apart from these the road is wearisome and abounding with dangers. Karghil is the principal place of the district, where the governor of the country resides. Its site is quite picturesque. Two water courses, the Souron and the Wakkha, roll their noisy and turbulent ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... indeed be a Herculean task to administer the rod of correction to all the advertizing medical gentry of the day: it could be done, and with justice to the community; but it would be wearisome. A champion, however, has recently entered the medical arena, with whom we would fain contend, not only in the hope of conquest, but in the expectation that others may take warning by his defeat. With him we will ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the many and obvious disadvantages of the 'photographic style.' Indeed, we travellers often find ourselves in a serious dilemma. If we do not draw our landscapes somewhat in pre-Raphaelite fashion, they do not impress the reader; if we do, critics tell us that they are wearisome longueurs, and that the half would be better than the whole. The latter alternative must often be risked, especially in writing about a country where many at home have friends and relatives. Of course they desire to ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... when the artichoke flowers [1327], and the chirping grass-hopper sits in a tree and pours down his shrill song continually from under his wings in the season of wearisome heat, then goats are plumpest and wine sweetest; women are most wanton, but men are feeblest, because Sirius parches head and knees and the skin is dry through heat. But at that time let me have a shady rock and wine of Biblis, a clot of curds and milk of drained goats with the flesh ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... which the children received as their only legacy. They were taught that God designs life to be a discipline, and that their wants could be supplied only by personal labor, by forethought, care, and faith. The process was laborious and wearisome, but it was wholesome, just what man needs in his fallen state, the school which God has provided for his training and development. While the youth were inured to toil and hardship, the culture of the intellect was not neglected. They ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... which is not conceived in the kindest spirit toward this country. It reviews PRESCOTT'S late work, however, at great length, and welcomes it with cordial commendation. Among other 'good words,' the reviewer observes: 'He is full and copious, without being prolix and wearisome; his narrative is flowing and spirited, sometimes very picturesque; his style is pure, sound English.' In conclusion, the reviewer says: 'We close with expressing our satisfaction that Mr. PRESCOTT has given us an opportunity at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... of "chotas," or little breakfasts, of "tiffins" or substantial lunches, or afternoon-teas and dinners at the close of the day. The social and kindly spirit of it all has turned what otherwise would have been wearisome into a succession of pleasant experiences. But there has been work, and there has been hard thinking also. Making three addresses a day, longer or shorter, for three weeks in succession, is no sinecure. I am sometimes ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... off with native reed-fencing was Gilfillan, the most perfect patient. Propping his foot against the wall to correct the foot-drop that division of the nerve of his leg had caused, he had passed many sleepless nights in his long and wearisome convalescence. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... his setting-up of one favourite and knocking-down of another; his unchristian pleasure in that awful slating of poor Jones in this week's Saturday, or the flaying alive of Robinson in the Bond Street Backbiter;—in a word, his "shop" never became wearisome to Charlotte. She listened always with a like rapture and sympathy; she worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she welcomed his friends and fellow-workers with unvarying sweetness she devised and superintended ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... never received a rebuff, but was always answered to the best of your ability, dear mamma. I think of that now when tempted to impatience with my little girl's sometimes wearisome questioning, and resolve to try to be as good a mother to her as you were to me; and still are," she added with a loving smile. "And now that she has gone back to her play and baby Ned is sleeping, I want ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley

... situation, which is what every couple must come to, and which both husband and wife must expect, no husband dares confess that the constant repetition of the same dish has become wearisome; but his appetite certainly requires the condiments of dress, the ideas excited by absence, the stimulus of an ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... the leathern seats were and however wearisome the ride, the girls forgot discomfort in Henriette's description of the sights and scenes and Louise's just as eager listening. Then at the stops the young women would get out and stretch their weary limbs whereof ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... to Aegir's gold-lit hall. Long and rough was the road I trod, and wearisome was the way. Will no one bid me welcome? Will none give me a seat at the feast? Will none offer me a drink of the precious mead? Why are you all so dumb? Why so sulky and stiff-necked, when your best friend stands before you? Give me a seat among ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... compelled to listen to many weary platitudes. Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality, their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be. I had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference between the General Government and State Governments, nor explanations of the United States Constitution; for she had the whole before her mind with a perfect clearness. Her morality upon ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... words, or several of them could have spoken similarly; and somehow, in spite of the beauty of the place and the abundance, with the sun shining constantly, England mentally seen from a distance began to appear more and more attractive, and the time was coming when the place would be wearisome. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... roof they had perhaps destroyed, and possibly whose father they might have slain. These impulses, as far apart as the poles, occurred hour after hour before Wilhelm's eyes. He was not a born soldier, and his nature was not given to fighting. But when it was necessary to endure the wearisome fulfillment of duty, to bear privation silently, and to look at menacing danger indifferently, then few were his equals, and none before him. This quiet, passive heroism was noticed by his comrades. The officers ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd the capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the unchangeable fulness of an infinite bliss, all specialties will be merged and forgotten, and I shall be one of those to whom "the wearisome disease" of remembered sorrow and anticipated joy "is an ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... brought into use. And yet they seem to be satisfied, generally, when their children obtain, by a mere skimming over its surface, but a peep into the realities and refining beauties of the science; when the favorite daughter in the use of the piano-forte, for instance, becomes only the most wearisome ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... queer little episode happened. The man with the eyebrows began talking to me across the table in his usual fashion, full of his wearisome concession on the Upper Amazons. I was trying to squash him as politely as possible, when I caught Amelia's eye. Her look amused me. She was engaged in making signals to Charles at her side to observe the little ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... satisfaction in the band when they received news that they were at last about to take the field. The long inaction had been most wearisome to them, and they knew that any fighting that would take place round Boston would be done by the regular troops. Food, too, was very scarce in town, and they were heartily weary of the regular drill and discipline. They were, then, in high spirits as they embarked on board the Thetis ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... hailing from Munich. During the past year the professor of Aesthetics in the University, whose lectures are proverbially wearisome, delivered his lectures (as usual) to a scanty audience. There were five students in all, who, week by week, melted and grew "beautifully less," until at last but one was left. This solitary individual, however, seemed to concentrate in his own ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... uninviting aspect which a serious study of architecture presents to some minds is such that it is too often avoided as both useless and wearisome. Much of this diffidence is due to a misconception of the aims which should govern the student of decorative design in making an acquaintance with its principles. The study should not be looked upon as pertaining exclusively to the functions of an architect, nor as having only an ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... sets a dog at it. And not only does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so much as a wearisome court ceremonial surrounding a king who is unable to understand or to break away from it; whilst the thunder and whirlwind, which have from time immemorial been accepted as special revelations of his awful power and majesty, suggest, if ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... motions of the little hands, the apathy of the lovely face, and the mirthless accent of the voice; but most of all the vacant fixture of the great dark eyes. Around and around she went, with an elastic step and a mechanical regularity wearisome to witness. ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott

... but it and its fellows. "The heart knows its own bitterness; and a stranger intermeddleth not with his joy;" Prov. xiv. 10. No sooner doth Satan perceive what God is doing with the soul, in a way of grace and mercy, but he endeavoureth what he may to make the renewing thereof bitter and wearisome work to the sinner. O what mists, what mountains, what clouds, what darkness, what objections, what false apprehensions of God, of Christ, of grace, of the word, and of the soul's condition, doth he now lay before it, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... came when grips had to be packed, tackle stowed away, and the campers start out over the carry to meet the train that was to take them to New York. The trip was a long and tedious one of two days' duration. Nevertheless our travelers did not find it wearisome. On the train were papers and magazines in plenty, and whenever Dr. Swift went into the smoking car Theo always found Mr. Croyden near at hand ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... eagerly than "Cobbler" Horn scanned the countenance of his young secretary, did her eyes, that morning, seek his face. She too had passed a broken night. But it had not seemed wearisome or long. Happy thoughts had rendered sleep an impertinence at first; and, when healthy youthful nature had, at length, asserted itself, the young girl had slept only in pleasant snatches, waking every now and then from some delicious dream, to assure ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... nourriture est elle bien ce qu'elle doit etre?) Removal from boats at Southend to terra firma is recommended. The eternal soup, which seems to have been the lot of prisoners in all countries, must become fearfully wearisome. The preserved fish, etc., of later days ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... exaggerated incidents in his life and peculiarities of his character; thus the harmony of the tout ensemble was lost. Ugliness and eccentricity, which amuse, succeeded beauty and truth, which are sometimes wearisome. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... mean the telling, representative facts, helpful to carry on the idea, and, at the same time, of such a nature as not to demand an elaborate creation of the atmosphere to the detriment of the action. I did not see how I could avoid becoming wearisome in the presentation of detail and in the pursuit of clearness. I saw the action plainly enough. What I had lost for the moment was the sense of the proper formula of expression, of the only formula that would suit. This, of course, weakened my confidence in the ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... later, began too vigorously and became exhausted; the professional set out with the same deliberation with which he ended. One must not run at one's spade, or hoe, or whatever it was; one must exercise a wearisome self-control ... survey the work to be done, turn slowly, spit on one's hands, and after a pause begin, remembering that the same activity must show itself, if the work was to be renewed next day, up to the moment ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... struck spiritless For shame's sake and unworthiness Of these poor forceless hands that come Empty, these lips that should be dumb, This love whose seal can but impress These weak word-offerings wearisome Whose blessings have not strength to bless Nor lightnings fire to burn up aught Nor smite with ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... all credible? And the prospect of awakening again among houses and trees, among children and dotards, among wars and rumours of wars, still fettered to one personality and one accidental past, still uncertain of the future, is not this prospect wearisome and deeply repulsive? Having passed through these things once and bequeathed them to posterity, is it not time for each soul to rest? The universe doubtless contains all sorts of experiences, better and worse than the human; but it is idle to attribute to a particular ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the man who gives the required answer does so not because the answer is self-evident, which it is not, but because he is the required sort of man. He is shocked at the idea of resembling an oyster. Yet changeless pleasure, without memory or reflection, without the wearisome intermixture of arbitrary images, is just what the mystic, the voluptuary, and perhaps the oyster find to be good. Ideas, in their origin, are probably signals of alarm; and the distress which they marked in the ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... a sleep, a heavy, oppressive sleep, which was more wearisome than refreshing; from which he was startled by the rough voice of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... up another horse, reduces rivals to silence by driving forth in a new victoria, and becomes more and more the familiar bosom friend of the bank manager. I might go on to give a score of examples showing how innocent rate-payers are fleeced by barefaced robbers, but the catalogue would be only wearisome. Let any man of probity venture to force his way into one of these dens of thieves and see how he will fare! It is a comic thing that the gangs of jobbers consider that they have a prescriptive right to plunder at large, and their air of aggrieved virtue when they are challenged by a person ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... months, to the pastor's class, they have done their whole duty. They do not so much as help and encourage the children to learn the lessons that the pastor assigns. And thus does this part of the pastor's work, which ought to be among the most delightful of all his duties, become wearisome to the flesh and vexatious to the spirit. Scarcely anywhere else in all his duties does a pastor feel so helpless and hopeless and discouraged, as when standing week after week before a class of young people who have such poor instructors ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... no purse at the top to reward our perseverance. Between the succeeding tablelands lay gumbo flats where the saturated clay hung to the feet of our horses like so much glue, or opened under hoof-pressure and swallowed them to the knees. So that our going was slow and wearisome. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... speak the language, and this woman by her daily talk, taught him a kind of Arabic, and a use of it, not to be obtained from grammars and dictionaries. He traced much of his ready command of the language to having been compelled to listen so often to the wearisome harangues of Miriam's mother. Sometimes the father would be overcome by the mother's entreaties and would take away the girl, but after awhile he would bring her back again, to the great joy of those who feared they had lost her altogether. ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... the cemetery. We were forty in number, of all sorts and conditions, nothing else really than an idle crowd. The wearisome journey lasted more than an hour. The weather became worse and worse. Halfway there Viktor got into a carriage, but Mr. Ratsch stepped gallantly on through the sloppy snow; just so must he have stepped through the snow when, after the fateful interview with ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... of action than none at all, and he drew long breaths of relief when the schooner once more left her trailing wake in the blue sea. The wind blew straight and strong for a day and night, then shifted and a long period of tacking followed. It was very wearisome, but Robert, clinging to his resolution, made the best of it. He even joined in some of the labor, helping to polish the metal work, especially the eighteen-pounder in the stern, a fine bronze gun. The men tolerated him, but when he tried to talk ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... a rule, be stated with few of the facts upon which they rest, for to give more than the plainest of these would be to far outrun the possible limits of space, and would furthermore lead into technical details which to most readers are obscure and wearisome. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... being come, they prepared to go on their way. One of the Indians got up upon a horse, and they set me up behind him, with my poor sick babe in my lap. A very wearisome and tedious day I had of it; what with my own wound, and my child's being so exceeding sick, and in a lamentable condition with her wound. It may be easily judged what a poor feeble condition we were in, there being not the least crumb of refreshing ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

... delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... depressing place. Far as the eye can reach up the glen and to the right it is one horrid waste of grey granite; here and there a streak of yellow grass or a patch of black bog; not a tree nor a shrub within the sky-line. On a hot summer's day it is wearisome enough for the lonely angler to listen to the river crawling lazily through the rocks that choke his bed, mingled with the clocking of some water-moved boulder, and the chick-chick of the stonechat, or the scream of the golden plover overhead. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... for eight days, nor to make there a penitence, but to embrace you and to make you see clearly that I cannot be happy without you, and that the chagrins which my friendship for you might give me are more agreeable than all the false peace of a wearisome absence." In spite of these little clouds, the old love is never dimmed; we are constantly bewildered with the inexhaustible riches of a heart which gives so lavishly and really asks so ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... is she gone! And I—what a relief! Now can I cast away this wearisome Hypocrisy, this show of cheerfulness, Which least of all is found within my heart. She is my better spirit. She would grieve Were she to sense my doubt. I must dissemble. Yet shall I consecrate this silent hour To contemplation of my wasted life.— This lamp,—ah, ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... despair. He had outstripped them, had left them far behind, and his words sprang to his lips with a glad sense of victory and freedom. "Must I miss you always?" he said. "Will you not come back to me, Judith? My work could never be wearisome then when I should feel that I was working for you. There would be long to wait, no doubt, and then a hard life, a poor home. What have I to offer you? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... leave in his regimentals, except on an express and urgent order. The soldier, we were saying, left the Bastille at a slow and lounging pace, like a happy mortal, in fact, who, instead of keeping sentry before a wearisome guard-house, or upon a bastion no less wearisome, has the good luck to get a little liberty in addition to a walk—the two pleasures being reckoned as part of his time on duty. He bent his steps toward the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, enjoying the fresh ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... wearisome the same clothes can grow when on the back of a human being—yet a flower can wear them for a thousand years or more and ye never go tired of them. I'm not knowing why, but—somehow—I'd like to be ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... it!" sighed the emperor. "It is very tedious here, and I hope our sojourn at Totis will not be so mournful and wearisome. Prince Lichtenstein told me there were excellent fishing-ponds there, and he added that he had caused to be built a laboratory where I might manufacture sealing-wax. I think, Hudelist, we shall be very industrious there, and manufacture ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... wearisome, for Miss Davenport, the Warden's sister, was with him, and she talked while I listened. I am sorry to say she was in a very bad temper, and it seemed that the naughty Warden had kept her waiting for two hours during the afternoon. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... to see that the consent of the Powers to this infamous scheme was only the result of the Sultan's wearisome delays, which after fourteen weeks of unprofitable haggling and bargaining have made the ambassadors anxious to get the matter settled one way or another, and be rid of the Sultan and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 44, September 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... godly men," said I, "have had their turn before now, sir. To many it seems as if they were only receiving what they gave." For the fellow had roused me to some little temper by his wearisome cursing. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... sketches by an accomplished traveller, who knows how to see and how to describe, and who can give real information without wearisome detail.—Providence Journal. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... ground that they were released from duty by the refusal of the Government to fulfill its share of the contract. The fear of such tragedies spread a cloud of solicitude over every camp of colored soldiers for more than a year, and the following series of letters will show through what wearisome labors the final triumph of justice was secured. In these labors the chief credit must be given to my admirable Adjutant, Lieutenant G. W. Dewhurst In the matter of bounty justice is not yet obtained; there is a discrimination ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... "Iza," i.e. the visits of condolence and so forth which are long and terribly wearisome ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... the wearisome walk; and reminded him that Ibycus, the beloved of the gods, was murdered while returning to the city after twilight. But the philosopher replied, "My old limbs are used to fatigue, and everybody knows that the plain robe ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... society, of the absence of all external compelling or directing of her movements—no circumscription of her liberty possible—the world before her where to choose! Not only were privations, dismal hauntings of siege and slaughter, left behind, and M. Destournelle, just now most wearisome of lovers, left behind also, but de Vallorbes himself had, for the time being, become a permissibly negligible quantity. The news of more fighting, more bloodshed, had just reached her, though the German armies were ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... later, she set out upon this wearisome quest: she had never looked for London lodgings before. Although nearly every window in the less frequented streets displayed a card announcing that apartments were to let, she soon discovered how difficult it was to ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... round, I bid you declare, All good fellows whose beards are gray, Did not the fairest of the fair Common grow and wearisome, ere Ever a month had passed away? The reddest lips that ever have kissed, The brightest eyes that ever have shone May pray and whisper and we not list Or look away and never be missed Ere yet ever a month is gone. Gillian's dead. God rest her bier! ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan

... injurious to breathe. They were especially distressed by the change from a cloudy country where there are plenty of shady retreats, to the flat burning plains of Rome in autumn, and their siege of the Capitol became wearisome, for they had now beleaguered it for seven months; so that there was much sickness in their camp, and so many died that they no longer buried the dead. Yet for all this the besieged fared no better. Hunger pressed them, and their ignorance of what Camillus was doing disheartened ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... nicknamed "The Duke." Not even he understood my real condition—a man I knew; whose hand I had shaken. I grew quiet. Locked up? Yes, I was mad; he was right. I felt madness in my blood; felt its darting pain through my brain. So that was to be the end of me! Yes, yes; and I resume my wearisome, painful walk. There was the haven in which I was to ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... draws of her (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 332), says that 'Dr. Johnson tried in vain to cure her of living in an habitual perplexity of mind and irresolution of conduct, which to herself was restlessly tormenting, and to all around her was teazingly wearisome.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... traversed the beautiful country lying between that and the Mauvaisterre. But the alternation of stately timber and lovely prairie had no charms for him: he sought not beauty or fertility, but seclusion; for his pilgrimage had become wearisome, and his step was growing heavy. Remorse was at his heart, and fear—the appealing face of his patient victim kept his crime in continual remembrance—and he knew, that like a blood-hound, his enemy was following behind. It was a weary load! No wonder that his cheeks were thin or ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... struck east along a fine grassy valley where the trees were in the full glory of early summer. I was full of hope, which I could neither explain nor justify, and though I did not know it then I had some grounds to be so. I shall not inflict upon the reader the vicissitudes of our wearisome journey of three weeks over the sharp-ridged valleys of lower Tuscany. We sometimes begged, sometimes worked for the bread we ate and the sheds in which we slept. We were tanned to the colour of walnuts, healthy as young cattle, merry as larks in the sky. We gave each other our full confidence, or ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... have formed their notions of Gipsy life upon the strength of the assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent. Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world's history the picturesque and jovial rascality which novelist and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... the 26th, on a course somewhat to the N.W., and traversed plains of the same wearisome description as those I have already described. The wheels of the drays sank up to their axle-trees, and the horses above their fetlocks at every step. The fields of polygonum spread on every side of us like a dark sea, and the only green object within range of our vision was ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... have had enough of it—it is dreary work to look on and listen. I see more clearly than I have ever done before, that a private governess has no existence, is not considered as a living rational being, except as connected with the wearisome duties she has to fulfil . . . One of the pleasantest afternoons I have spent here—indeed, the only one at all pleasant—was when Mr. —- walked out with his children, and I had orders to follow a little ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... higher wits with more acuteness and felicity, the duller, less happily, but with equal pertinacity. And now of late, by the regulation of some learned and (as things now are) excellent men (the former license having, I suppose, become wearisome), the sciences are confined to certain and prescribed authors, and thus restrained are imposed upon the old and instilled into the young; so that now (to use the sarcasm of Cicero concerning Caesar's year) the constellation of Lyra rises ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... and assent by such expressions as correspond to our "yes indeed," "true," etc., whether they are in accord with the speaker's opinions or not. These lengthy talks are, at least to an outsider, most wearisome, given, as they are, in a dreary monotone, but they explain the inordinate length of arbitrations that may last for ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... are common in neuropaths, and at the risk of being wearisome—and good advice is wearisome to people—patients must get proper aid, privately or at a dental hospital, from a registered dentist, who, like a doctor, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... moderately and avoid the foods that disagree with one. In his own words: "Little by little I began to draw myself away from my disorderly life, and, little by little, to embrace the orderly one. In this manner I gave myself up to the temperate life, which has not since been wearisome to me; although, on account of the weakness of my constitution, I was compelled to be extremely careful with regard to the quality and quantity of my food and drink. However, those persons who are blessed with strong constitutions may make use of ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... through other forms hereafter." This doctrine is universally regarded as the all-potent solvent of human ills and the process which alone can lead to ultimate rest. In transmigration the soul is supposed to pass on from body to body in its wearisome, dismal progress, towards emancipation. The bodies in which it is incarcerated will be of all grades, according to the character of the life in the previous births, from the august and divine body of a Brahman down to a tenement of inorganic, lifeless rock. From ancient times this weary process of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... why riding in a column should be so much more wearisome than riding alone, but so it undeniably is. Men who would think little of a sixty-mile ride were quite broken down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... blank-faced shanty on the lower terrace of Goat Hill. Thence to the structure that was a dwelling and is a factory the distance is not so great; it is, in fact, an agreeable walk, judging from the man's eager and cheerful look as he takes it. The return journey appears to be a trifle wearisome. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... the Western States (by the Santa Fe route) was full of interest at every point. Even the monotony of the Middle West was not wearisome, while the scenery and scenes in New Mexico and Arizona were ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... internal administration of the Norman Cross barracks, very copious particulars are to be found in the Government Record Office. Indeed, they are so copious as to be wearisome. Regulations are varied, or new ones added every year. Thus, at first, there was no parole at Norman Cross, or any of the other prisons. Officers on parole had to live at certain places in Great Britain, of which a list is given, under the eye of an agent. But this regulation must afterwards ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown

... plucked up spirit, and dried her eyes. Then she took to yawning, and said Sunday was a dull day, and life itself rather a wearisome thing. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises above epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the country, and soon after went up ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... easy victory over Frederick II if the exactions of the Papacy had not angered the countries where he sought refuge after his first failures. It was futile to declare at Lyons that the Emperor was deposed when all France was crying out upon the greed of prelates. The wearisome strife went on till the very peasants had to be guarded at their work by knights, sent out from towns to see that they were not taken captive. It was the day of the robber, and all things lay to his hand if he were bold enough to grasp them. Prisoners of war suffered horrible tortures, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... clear winter morning, and the sun's rays were vacillating upon the snow, that like a gigantic bedspread covered the landscape, and which made walking upon the hidden and uneven track a most wearisome task, the more so as neither of us had tasted a mouthful of food since the preceding day's dinner hour. While we were debating and wondering how and where we would rake up a meal amongst the few and widely scattered ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... army in existence. This little army of fifty or sixty thousand men is practically responsible for the good behavior of one-sixth of the world's population, saying nothing of affairs without. And in addition to this is the wearisome round of existence in an Indian barrack, the enervating climate and the ennui, so poisonous ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. Smooth off the trouble from thy brow, dear father! Let's trust the stream that bears us on its breast, Think not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... passionate, in contact with the world and responsive to varied interests; but not with Easter -alone with a love that had shamed him, with mountain, earth, and sky unchanged, and the vacant days marked only by a dreary round of wearisome tasks. He remembered Raines s last words-" Air ye goin' to leave the po' gal to die sorrowin' fer ye ? " What happiness would be possible for him with that lonely mountain-top and the white, ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... are sufficient to give a tolerably clear idea of what might be called "Pleasures and hardships of an explorer's life in the desert." As for the work itself, it is simple enough in the telling, although it must have been extremely wearisome and laborious in the performance. The simplest way to get at the contents of a mound, would be to remove all the earth and rubbish by carting it away,—a piece of work which our searchers might no doubt have accomplished with great facility, had they had at their disposal ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... ship. No amount of money could have purchased for us, in a strange vessel and among unfamiliar faces, the perfect satisfaction and the sense of being at home again which we experienced when we stepped on board the "Quaker City,"—our own ship—after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a something we have felt always when we returned to her, and a something we had no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Sultry and wearisome the day had been in that Tennessee valley, and after drill, we had laid around under the trees—tall, noble trees they were—and the fresh grass was green and soft under them as on the old 'Campus,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... volumes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern sense. Aside from this important fact, and viewed solely as a novel, it is sentimental, grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its success at the time was enormous, and Richardson began another series of letters (he could tell a story in no other way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years. The result was Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady, published in eight volumes in 1747-1748. This ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... she could not read her precious Bible without spectacles, as I could, and why my back was not bent too, and how if I lived I would grow so. From such instructions I derived a blurred, bewildering notion that from me to her, suffering an Aunt-Judy change, was a long, slow, wearisome process of puckering and dimming and stiffening. But when she told me how she had carried my mother in her arms, as she had carried me, and had made the proud discovery of her first tooth, as, piously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... this work was undoubtedly delightful but to the man who had to do the drudgery of mere copying of long works, it was undoubtedly a wearisome task. Every effort was made to incite these men to care and patience by magnifying the importance of their work and especially by representing it as a work of religion. It was held that the making of books, especially books of religion, was in ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... journey to Siberia was infinitely more wearisome than it is now. Poor Anna! She was conveyed so far in a litter, and so far in a sleigh, and when the prancing dogs grew tired she had perforce to walk. Heaven indeed have pity on those unfortunate women from whom the eye of an ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... is beginning to grow wearisome," drawled Randy Moore as he tipped his chair against the wall, and crossed his feet on the low railing in front of him. "Clay promised to be here half an hour ago," he went on in an injured tone, ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... noise proceeded, as we suspected, from the cupboard door, or from one of the doors having been left open in the passage adjoining our cabin. It would have been dangerous to have got up in the dark, and with a violent lurching of the vessel, to discover the real cause of this wearisome noise. I had a strong feeling of self-reproach in my own mind at having brought such a calamity on poor Papa, when it could have been avoided if I had been a little more careful before going to bed. On, therefore, the noise went, for the rest of that night, with great regularity—slam—slam—slam—defying ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... turn her ability to translate to good account in the way of earning her own support; for there was no pauper instinct in the girl's noble nature, and able and willing as her cousin was to support her, she greatly preferred to earn her own living, though at the cost of much wearisome labor of hand ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... streams and rough, arid valleys, now and then narrowing into canyons. By common consent the windows were kept closed to exclude the fine white alkaline dust, which is very irritating to the nostrils. The journey became more and more wearisome as we ascended rapidly over immense plains and wastes of gravel destitute of mountain boundaries, and with only here and there a "knob" or "butte" [6] to break the monotony. The wheel-marks of the trail to Utah often ran parallel with the track, and bones of oxen were bleaching in the sun, the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... abruptly. Anna Reinhard was her friend, one of the few people in the world for whom she felt affection; but the pedantic words of the deformed girl often irritated her, and she found that spoken wisdom of Anna's infinitely wearisome, yet she was seldom querulous to her, partly because of the real affection she bore her, partly from a certain fear of the hunchback's quick wit ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... than a week. Rob thought that it would be more prudent to rent a house for six to nine hundred than to buy outright or build, until they saw how his work for the A. and P. developed. But Bessie wanted a home,—a house of her own. So they began the wearisome search for a house. Bessie already had her views about the desirable section to live in,—outside the smoke in one of "those private estate parks,"—where the Lanes were thinking of settling. (A few months had been sufficient for Bessie to orientate herself socially in her new surroundings.) ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... of that exuberant and joyous energy with which I had returned from abroad, and which I never had before or since. I had the exultation of health restored, and home regained. While I was at Palermo and thought of the breadth of the Mediterranean, and the wearisome journey across France, I could not imagine how I was ever to get to England; but now I was amid familiar scenes and faces once more. And my health and strength came back to me with such a rebound, that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... with great events—the death of Miriam, the exclusion of Moses and Aaron from the promised land, with the death of the latter at Mount Hor, the refusal of Edom to allow a passage through his territory, the wearisome journey of the people "to compass the land of Edom," with their sins and sufferings, the conquest of Arad, Sihon, and Og, and thus the arrival of the people at the plains of Moab opposite Jericho. Chaps. 20-22:1. Then follows the history of Balaam and his prophecies, the idolatry and punishment ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... the light to knock at the door. The ladies had not retired as yet. I only hoped they would not have any visitors of their own nationality. A broken-down, retired Russian official was to be found there sometimes in the evening. He was infinitely forlorn and wearisome by his mere dismal presence. I think these ladies tolerated his frequent visits because of an ancient friendship with Mr. Haldin, the father, or something of that sort. I made up my mind that if I found him prosing away there in his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... important military appointments to feminine intrigue, and trust cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people, and the simpler patriotism of its colonial dependencies when it comes at last to the bloody and wearisome business of "muddling through." But these days of the happy-go-lucky optimist are near their end. War is being drawn into the field of the exact sciences. Every additional weapon, every new complication of the art of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... how could she stay where she was? Also, she began to feel very hungry. The exhaustion caused by her emotional grief, and her wearisome journey, made her feel hollow ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... course, to find little interest in his monotonous movement. Indeed, I have heard many who live a short distance from town complain of this swinging backwards and forwards, or, rather, going forwards and backwards over the same ground every day, as dull and wearisome; but I cannot sympathise with them. On the contrary, I find that the more constantly any particular line of road is adhered to, the more intimate an acquaintance with it is formed, and the more interesting ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... upon as much of one trunk as six years' growth of boy will cover, and pressing firmly upon two other trunks with either hand, while Mrs. Ray (that capable lady) changed francs into shillings; there was the wearisome and rolling train-journey, wherein one slept, first against the window and then against the black sleeve of an unknown gentleman; and lastly there was the realisation that pale and sunny France had withdrawn into the past to make room for ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... times, pageants and fetes with rich costume, fine architecture and vivid effects of color, are characteristic of a number of the modern Spaniards—Villegas, Pradilla, Alvarez. As a general thing their canvases are a little flashy, likely to please at first sight but grow wearisome after a time. Palmaroli has a style that resembles a mixture of Fortuny and Meissonier; and some other painters, like Luis Jiminez Aranda, Sorolla, Zuloaga, Anglada, Garcia y Remos, Vierge, Roman Ribera, and Domingo, have ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... and puritanical; with manners, cold and automatic. In the course of eighteen years, whilst Lady Glistonbury went on, like clock-work, the same round, punctual to the letter but unfeeling of the spirit of her duties, she contrived, even by the wearisome method of her minuted diary of education, to make her house odious to her husband. Some task, or master, or hour of lesson, continually, and immitigably plagued him: he went abroad for amusement, and found dissipation. Thus, by her unaccommodating temper, and the obstinacy of her manifold virtues, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... the while They have elders a-liven to love em, An' teaeke all the wearisome tweil That zome hands or others mus' do; Like the low-headed shrubs that be warm, In the lewth o' the trees up above em, A-screen'd vrom the cwold blowen storm That the timber ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... 'How wearisome those aristocrats are!' quoth my neighbour, with a slight sneer. 'Monsieur's conversation rarely extends to more than two sentences to any one. By that time his faculties are exhausted, and he needs the refreshment of silence. You and I, monsieur, are, at any rate, indebted to ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... other pens that it will be unnecessary for me to bring them anew before the public. A few jolly spirits in a regiment frequently sway the crowd, and render the hours pleasant to the boys which otherwise would prove exceedingly wearisome; and many a surgeon has remarked, that it would amply remunerate Government to hire good, wholesome amusement for the benefit of the soldiers when not on active duty. Frequently, when visiting various hospitals, have I noticed the brightening eye of the patients as I have told them ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... have considered this letter wearisome from the multiplicity of the details, Ruth craved greedily after more. What had Mr Donne said to Leonard? Had Leonard liked his new acquaintance? Were they likely to meet again? After wondering and wondering over these points, Ruth composed herself ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... they fetched the bucket, the ammunition, and their clothes. Afterwards, as there was still no sign of Meyer, they even dared to drag in the waggon tent to make a shelter for Benita, and all the wood that they had collected for firing. This proved a wearisome business, for the logs were heavy, and in his crippled state Mr. Clifford could carry no great burden. Indeed, towards the end Benita was forced to complete the task alone, while he limped beside her with his rifle, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... herself sketched, carved, sang, and played accompaniments. In the intervals between the recitations, music, and singing, they talked and argued about literature, the theatre, and painting. There were no ladies, for Olga Ivanovna considered all ladies wearisome and vulgar except actresses and her dressmaker. Not one of these entertainments passed without the hostess starting at every ring at the bell, and saying, with a triumphant expression, "It is he," meaning by "he," of course, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching—that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. In the meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correct ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... Nor were we without the hope that in the vast and varied expanse of territory which constitutes the Dominion, our learned visitors would meet with features of interest that should be some compensation for so long and wearisome a journey here in that great stretch of diversified region between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the student of almost every branch of science must find something worth learning whilst for certain sections of the Association there ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... witchcraft testimonies, quaint and curious, vulgar and commonplace, evil and pathetic, voices all of a strange superstition, understandable only as through them alone can one gain a clear perspective of the spirit of the time and place, would prove wearisome. They may well remain in the ancient records until they find publicity in detail in some accurate and complete history of the beginnings of the commonwealth—including this strange chapter in ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... island on the fifth day of May, 1570, and working their way to the north-east between the islands of Cuba and San Domingo, hit the Gulf Stream, which swept them to windward as they struggled northward against the north-east trade-wind. This proved to be the most tedious and wearisome part of their passage; for upon clearing the trades they were fortunate enough to run into a succession of strong westerly winds, before which they went foaming and rolling across the Atlantic at a merry rate, arriving in Plymouth ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... that her Mansions was one of her two best books, but she was surely far wrong in that. The Mansions, sometimes called The Interior Castle, to me at any rate, is a most shapeless, monotonous, and wearisome book. Teresa had a splendid imagination, but her imagination had not the architectonic and dramatic quality that is necessary for carrying out such a conception as that is which she has laid in the ground-plan of this book. No one who has ever read The Purgatorio ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte

... receive such recommendations; but Mr. Kennedy, having drawn out the course, seemed to expect that his wife should read the books he had named, and, worse still, that she should read them in the time he had allocated for the work. This, I think, was tyranny. Then the Sundays became very wearisome to Lady Laura. Going to church twice, she had learnt, would be a part of her duty; and though in her father's household attendance at church had never been very strict, she had made up her mind to this cheerfully. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Wearisome" :   uninteresting



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