"Wear down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regulate their hours of labor, and whose condition of life it is to toil at irregular times and in an irregular manner. It is difficult, we know, for them to abstain from using themselves up prematurely. Repeated paroxysms of fever wear down the strongest frames; and many a literary man is compelled to live a life of fever, between excitement and exhaustion of the mind. We would counsel all public writers to think well of the best means of economizing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Irregular Cavalry cultivate with such painful assiduity; he sits easily and gracefully, so easily that you might fancy a rough horse would set him bobbing and slipping like a cockney astride a donkey on the sands. But with all the ease and grace, there is strength there, such as would wear down the nastiest of bad brutes. The leg that looks so lightly and gracefully posed grips like steel, and the pressure increases relentlessly the more the horse quarrels with his rider. Many a time has Baden-Powell taken in hand young horses which have defied the efforts ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... imperialists was that they were fighting in a friendly country, and they had too certain superiorities of armament which civilisation may always depend upon having at its command as against barbarians. Nevertheless, Belisarius knew that his end would be more securely won if he could wear down the barbarians, always impatient of so slow a business as a siege, from behind fortifications. He expected the barbarians, unstable in judgment and impatient of any but the simplest strategy and tactics, to swarm again and again about the City, and he was right: ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... tighten, strangle; cramp; dwarf, bedwarf^; shorten &c 201; circumscribe &c 229; restrain &c 751. [reduce in size by abrasion or paring. ] (subtraction) 38 abrade, pare, reduce, attenuate, rub down, scrape, file, file down, grind, grind down, chip, shave, shear, wear down. Adj. contracting &c v.; astringent; shrunk, contracted &c v.; strangulated, tabid^, wizened, stunted; waning &c v.; neap, compact. unexpanded &c (expand) &c 194 [Obs.]; contractile; compressible; smaller &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mercenary reasons, would shed one tear were they to die to-morrow. Of books they possess but a slender store, and were it otherwise, who can always live among his books? Their professional vocations wear down their energies, and they stand in need of relaxation. Where do they seek it? Not in the quiet and happy circle of their own families—for they have none, nor among their neighbours, who may esteem and respect, but will scarce unbend before men who are become masters of their most secret ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig |
