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More "Tedious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend again the next day, endeavouring to support her spirits and while away the many tedious hours before the delivery of the letters; a needful exertion, for as the time of reasonable expectation drew near, Isabella became more and more desponding, and before the letter arrived, had worked herself into a state of real distress. But ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Jeremy Taylor as one of the four chief glories of English literature, or in thinking Southey's style "next door to faultless." But one listens to his obiter dicta eagerly as the sayings of one of the greatest minds that have interested themselves in the criticism of literature. There are tedious pages in Table Talk, but these are, for the most part, concerned with theology. On the whole, the speech of Coleridge was golden. Even the leaden parts are interesting because they are Coleridge's lead. One ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour. A prig is a tedious individual who, having made a discovery, is so impressed by his discovery that he is capable of being gravely displeased because the entire world is not also impressed by it. Unconsciously to become a prig is an ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... sometimes wished we had the popgun back, for it answered all the purpose of "the previous question" in a deliberative assembly. No doubt the Young Girl was capricious in setting the little engine at work, but she cut short a good many disquisitions that threatened to be tedious. I find myself often wishing for her and her small fellow-conspirator's intervention, in company where I am supposed to be enjoying myself. When my friend the politician gets too far into the personal details of the quorum ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... nature and the simple life as a refuge from the badness of civilization. His best known production is the fragment called Spring (1749), in which fine passages of personal feeling are interwoven with detailed descriptions that are sometimes a little tedious. The text follows Muncker's edition ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... been so tedious as it might have been. And when we had found Gustave's boat tied to the bank and had routed up him and his wife, and delivered Clotilde into their care (and their admiration and awe of the black lady was wonderful to see), and Caesar and I had hunted up a fairly comfortable inn and had two ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... bring any word or sign, until Stanley arrived for a cup of tea and to ask them to stroll up to the store with him at the head of the valley. Diana agreed readily, having found the hours somewhat tedious; but Meryl felt tired and headachy, and chose to remain behind. Once, as casually as she could, she asked if Carew had gone ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... finds a strong desire to invent combinations to please his fancy. Thus the study divides into three related attitudes, which may be called recognition, imitation, and invention. Recognition of color is fundamental, but it would be tedious to spend a year or two in formal and dry exercises to train recognition of color alone; for each step in recognition of color is best tested by exercise in its imitation and arrangement. When perception becomes keener, emphasis can be placed on imitation of the colors ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... to Rome. It would doubtless be tedious at this point to describe the obstacles on the road, and, when Rome has been achieved, the all-night hunt for a room in a hotel, an adventure which now commonly befalls the traveller to Rome. But it is a wonderful ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... supplemented in the Elizabethan satirists, other than Donne, by yet a third, which makes them, I confess, to me rather tedious reading, independently of their shambling metre, and their sometimes almost unconstruable syntax. This is the absurd affectation of extreme moral wrath against the corruptions of their time in which they all indulge. Marston, who is nearly the foulest, if not quite the foulest writer ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... too wet and blowy to spread the linen, and Denas felt the morning insufferably long and tedious. Her father, who had been on the sea all night, dozed in his big chair on the hearthstone. Joan was silent, and went about her duties in a tiptoeing way that was very fretful to the impatience of Denas. Denas herself was knitting a guernsey, and as she sat counting the stitches Tristram Penrose ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Lady Mistress! rise! The night hath tedious been; No sleep hath fallen into mine eyes, Nor slumbers made me sin. Is not she a saint, then, say! Thought of whom ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... Llan Avan), {18} and, without sufficient caution or reverence, had passed the night there with his hounds. Arising early in the morning, according to the custom of hunters, he found his hounds mad, and himself struck blind. After a long, dark, and tedious existence, he was conveyed to Jerusalem, happily taking care that his inward sight should not in a similar manner be extinguished; and there being accoutred, and led to the field of battle on horseback, he made a spirited attack upon the ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... meats and vegetables is so tedious and troublesome that frequently soup is omitted from the bill of fare when there is good reason for its presence. It is especially beneficial in preparing the way for the easy digestion of heavier foods. Veribest Soups are scientifically ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... sat up there and droned out the most tedious and empty tale one ever heard, and neither he nor Papa D'Arc ever gave a thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or ever suspected that that foolish tale was anything but dignified and valuable history. There was not an atom of value ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... the moonlight lane she goes, And far into the moonlight dale; And how she ran, and how she walked, And all that to herself she talked, 205 Would surely be a tedious tale. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... Tedious grew the time to me Within the Courts of Blessing; My secure felicity, For folly I forswore; Vain delusion wrought my woe Till now, in want distressing, I go begging to and fro ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... that we can describe the many adventures that befell Max and Dale while in the British Secret Service. They were numerous and exciting enough, but this tale deals primarily with the fortunes of the great Durend workshops and their influence in the war. A long, tedious period of trench fighting now began on the Western Front. There were no big territorial changes, although there were many attacks on a grand scale at Ypres, at Verdun, on the Somme, and in the plain of Flanders. But this period, tedious though it was, came to an end at last in the great German retreat. ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... aisles below. Nevertheless, she shivered, and drawing her shawl closely around her began to collect some half-burnt fragments of wood in the chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupation of her thoughts rendered this a tedious process, as she would from time to time stop in the middle of an action and fall into an attitude of rapt abstraction, with far-off eyes and rigid mouth. When she had at last succeeded in kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke, that seemed to fade and dissipate entirely ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... up to the tenth year, after which the disease is very infrequent. Not everyone who is exposed contracts the disease. It seems that whooping-cough, measles, and influenza frequently follow one another in epidemic form. This is one of the diseases much dreaded by parents. It is very tedious and endangers the life of weak and young children by exhaustion. It is a terrible thing to watch one with this disease, day in and day out. It can be known by the impetuous, continuous and frequent coughing spells, following each other rapidly until the patient ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... almost too frank; not that that is a fault. Oh yes, Miss Locke's illness has been a tedious affair: even Giles got weary of it, and used to grumble at having to go every day. Of course, seeing Giles once or twice a day, you heard all our news, so we did not expect you to toil up here: that would have been unnecessary trouble ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... how many and diverse are the subjects that turn up in parliament in the course of a single and brief session; but to enter on it satisfactorily would require a great amount of space, and might, after all, be more tedious than profitable. A glance at those actually passed may suffice. These were 106 in number: the first is, 'An Act to amend the Passengers' Act of 1849;' and the hundred and sixth, 'An Act to appoint Commissioners to inquire into the Existence of Bribery ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... prosperous day, when we shall all be assembled in some agreeable spot in the neighborhood of Hagerstown, where we shall mutually embrace each other, with joy and tenderness, and cheerfully recount the tedious hours which the distresses of our country oblige us to pass in absence, and when the dangers that are passed will serve as a subject for an evening tale." But finally, the doors of his prison-house were thrown asunder and he ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... 38, which occurs in John v. 5, "had an infirmity thirty and eight years," the circumlocution, "one man and both sides five and three." Such expressions, curious as they seem at first thought, are no more than the natural outgrowth of systems built up by the slow and tedious process which so often obtains among primitive races, where digit numerals are combined in an almost endless variety of ways, and where mere reduplication often serves in place of any independent names for higher units. To what extent this ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... where the first minds of the nation sought exercise and glory; the feuilleton almost necessitated the novelist to concentrate upon each chapter the amount of interest once diffused through a volume; criticism, from tedious analysis, became a brilliant ordeal; egotism inspired a world of new confessions, political questions a new school of popular writing, the love of effect and the passion for excitement a multitude of dramatic, narrative, and biographical books, wherein the serenity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ease upon the sea after all that had happened to me by reason of it, and having disposed of my ivory for much gold, and bought many rare and costly presents, I loaded my pack animals, and joined a caravan of merchants. Our journey was long and tedious, but I bore it patiently, reflecting that at least I had not to fear tempests, nor pirates, nor serpents, nor any of the other perils from which I had suffered before, and at length we reached Bagdad. My first care was to present ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... had arisen where was only a dismal swamp, while away over the prairie lay the iron rails of the St. Vincent and St. Paul extension line, soon to be running in connexion with the Pembina branch of the Canada Pacific at the boundary, when the tedious trip upon Red River can be avoided. The side tracks were full of loaded freight, and cars waiting to tranship at the wharf, the steamer which left Winnipeg two days before we did having only ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... more wind, but a peculiarity in the construction of the ship impeded her progress through the water. It was still very tedious and trying. Livingstone seems to have been reading books that would take his attention off ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Effie and the rest before she should grow worse. But a few words from the doctor put an end to any such plan. A little care and attention now would make her quite well again; whereas if she were to go home out of the reach of surgical skill, she might have a long and tedious season of suffering—if, indeed, she ever fully recovered. She must never think of going home now. She must not even think of waiting till she heard from her sister. That could do no possible good, and every day's delay would ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... But it would become tedious and merely a repetition, were I to depict separately the figures and characters of all the personages at this politico-comical masquerade. Their conversation was, however, more uniform, more contemptible, and more laughable, than their accoutrements and grimaces were ridiculous. To judge from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pass the resolution unanimously in the affirmative. These great wits, these subtle critics, these refined geniuses, these learned lawyers, these wise statesmen, are so fond of showing their parts and powers as to make their consultations very tedious. Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect bob-o-lincoln,—a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady, jejune, inane, and puerile." Sharp words these! This ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Thus they managed to supply Whitey with a fair quantity of wet leaves, which he ate in a perfunctory way, displaying little of his earlier enthusiasm. And the work of his purveyors might have been more tedious if it had been less damp, for a boy is seldom bored by anything that involves his staying-out in the rain without protection. The drizzle had thickened; the leaves were heavy with water, and at every jerk the branches sent ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... talkee; Wang Kum no care," he used to confide to Louise Everett, after an unusually long and tedious fray. "Wang min' Miss ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... that a Man can scarce read half a Page without sleeping; the latter is full of Latinisms, and both are often more obscure than the Original. The Notes sometimes don't express the Author's Sense; and often very obscurely: In some things they are too short, in others too long and tedious: And most of them have the slight of running very nimbly over those Places which they are afraid they shou'd stick in. School-Masters often want time, and now and then Judgment and Learning to explain things as they ought; then to leave Boys by themselves ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... A tedious voyage brought the expedition before New Amstel. The burghers and planters, "after almost three days' parley," agreed to Carr's demands, and Ffob Oothout with five others signed articles of capitulation which promised large ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... of Lane, by the too strict an adherence to Oriental forms of expression, and somewhat pedantic rendering of the spelling of proper names, is found to be tedious to a very large number of readers attracted by the rich imagination, romance, and humour of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... very glad the children are better. I thought it was bad weather for fever. There has been great sickness here, I think. Mr. Gowing and his house are as tedious as Mr. Dove and my house; we must hope that does not mean to play ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... think the Parliament will be very busy to-morrow upon the state of the war, and the Secretary, who is to treat as President, must be in the House. I fancy my talking of persons and things here must be very tedious to you, because you know nothing of them, and I talk as if you did. You know Kevin's Street, and Werburgh Street, and (what do you call the street where Mrs. Walls lives?) and Ingoldsby,(8) and Higgins,(9) and Lord ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... reached your island after trailing you to Singapore. It was a long and tedious hunt and we followed many blind leads, but at last we came off an island upon which natives had told us such a party as yours was living. Five of us put off in a boat to explore—that is the last that I can recall. Sing says he found me alone in a row boat, ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... They'll never bring me there, by horse, under two hours, they are so cursed tedious. Why have not you a spare engine at a place like this? Shillingsworth! Nice management! Are you certain? ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Greek in this respect has been always acknowledged. "The joints of her compounded words", says Fuller, "are so naturally oiled, that they run nimbly on the tongue, which makes them though long, never tedious, because significant"{77}. Sir Philip Sidney boasts of the capability of our English language in this respect—that "it is particularly happy in the composition of two or three words together, near equal to the Greek". No one has done more than Milton to justify this praise, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... with perhaps a tedious hand, the rise and fall of two political Orders, ranking among the most powerful instruments of crime and public wrong of their day, the writer bids their unmourned remains farewell, to pass to the consideration in the succeeding chapter, of the desperate career and final explosion of the Order ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... prospered progressively, and to have had no reason to regret, even in a wordly sense, his choice of a profession. But towards the end of 1834 a disaster overtook him; and thenceforth, to the end of his days, he had nothing but tedious struggling and uphill work. To a man of his buoyant temperament, and happy in his home, this might have been of no extreme consequence, if only sound health had blessed him: unfortunately, the very reverse was the case. Sickly hitherto, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... prompted them. Such a list I am not minded to prepare. The publishers' catalogues exist, and as for the various fetes, one was very much like another; and those folk who do not find accounts of them insufferably tedious can find out about them in one of the ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... concierge, he found that the Pizzofalcone barracks were just behind the hotel but several hundred feet above it; so he turned up the Strada St. Lucia and soon came upon the narrow lane that wound upward to the fortifications. It was a long and tedious climb in the semi-darkness caused by the steady fall of ashes, and at intervals the detonations from Vesuvius shook the huge rock and made its massive bulk seem insecure. But the little man persevered, and finally with sweating ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... How do you account for it? It defies your laws. Most of your elements are evolved through tedious process. This is picked ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... and the Indian started out, Roy loosened the axe and drew the sled back into the pine scrub to look for fallen timber. This was a tedious process and it was even more of a task to load the ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... would, however "getting across" was a tedious business. It took nearly an hour's hustling and urging and galloping before the horses could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then only after old Roper had been partly dragged and partly hauled through the back-wash by the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... increased motion; and her sharp, gray eyes, as before, peer anxiously through her great-eyed spectacles. And, generous reader, that you may not mistake her, she has brought her inseparable Milton, which she holds firmly grasped in her right hand. "You have had a tedious time of it, Madam," says a corpulent lady, who is extensively dressed and jewelled, and accosts her with a familiar air. Lady Swiggs says not so tedious as it might have been, and gives her head two or ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... he; 'I wish to be fair. I cannot express my idea of the meaning of transcendentalism without tedious circumlocution, and I begin to despair of proving my position by quotations. It is not on any particular passage that I rest my case. You have read this work, and will understand me when I say that it is to its general intent and spirit that I object, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... promise which he had given to that nobleman, not to break his parole, and to return to England, seems to have been the only check to a long-cherished project on the part of Lord Lovat to escape to London, and to risk all that law might there inflict. It is uncertain in what manner, during the tedious interval between intrigues and intrigues, he solaced his leisure. It has been stated by one of his biographers that he actually joined a society of Jesuits,—by another, that he took priest's orders, and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... in Fuhkien. This route is described by Fortune in an opposite direction, in his Wanderings in China, vol. ii. p. 139. I am inclined to think that Polo followed this route, as the one given by Yule, by way of Shao-hing and Kin-hua by land, would be unnecessarily tedious for the ladies Polo was escorting, and there was no necessity to take it; more especially as there was a direct water route to the point for which they were making. I further incline to this route, as I can find no city ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... impressive. Hence the adoption by Hughes of a ghostly introduction and conclusion. His conversations, therefore, must reflect the same idea. He saw, indeed, that long speeches, except at rare intervals, were tedious, and reduced his to reasonable proportions, even making extensive use—as, we shall see, the author of Damon and Pythias did before him—of the Greek device of stichomythia. He was most anxious, also, to provide stirring topics for his characters to speak on, the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the law than Wright, and who, as a Roman Catholic, was incapable of holding office, was appointed a puisne judge of the King's Bench. Sir Bartholomew Shower, equally notorious as a servile Tory and a tedious orator, became Recorder of London. When these changes had been made, several deserters were brought to trial. They were convicted in the face of the letter and of the spirit of the law. Some received sentence of death at the bar of the King's Bench, some at the Old Bailey. They were hanged ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of humor carried him through many a tedious interruption. He generously overlooked the fact of the subterfuges to which men and women resorted in order to get an interview, and to help them out made as much of their excuses as possible. Speaking one day of the persons who came to see him at Nahant, he said: "One man, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... resident of Durban, the port of Natal, and he gave us a cordial invitation to visit his place. 'You will find Durban a very interesting spot,' said he, 'and the only bad thing about it is getting ashore. There is a nasty sea breaking there most of the time, and it is tedious work getting from a ship into a small boat and then getting safe to land. You must come prepared to be soused with salt water two or three times before you get your feet fairly planted on ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors, Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores All saints to give him sight of Madeline, But for one moment in the tedious hours, That he might gaze and worship all unseen; 80 Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss—in sooth such ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... duties, my mates and I had nothing to do, and soon began to find the time tedious. For his part, the man with the Cossack physiognomy scaled the mountain side; whence he could be heard whistling and snapping twigs with his heavy feet, while the ex-soldier selected a space between two rocks for a shelter of ace-rose boughs, and, stretching himself ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... dinner sorrowful and anxious, made my presence known and prepared myself to wait in patience the tedious minute or two which the portier usually allowed himself to keep me tarrying—as a punishment. But this time there was no stage-wait; the door was instantly unlocked, unbolted, unchained and flung wide; and in it appeared the strange ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... am on an expedition of duty. My mother lives a little way out of town; and the roads being in a beastly condition, and our house tedious enough, I remained here tonight instead of going on. I have not been in town half-a-dozen hours, and those I have been dozing and grumbling ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... addition of accurate Method and speculative Notions to procure Acceptance for the Treatise that contains them: For it hath been represented, That in most of them, as the Novelty will make them surprizing, and the Quickness of performance, keep them from being tedious; so the sensible changes, that are effected by them, are so manifest, so great, and so sudden, that scarce any will be displeased to see them, and those that are any thing Curious will scarce be able to see ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... MacNeil was now O.C. of "C" Co., and one night we got the order to move up to the reserve trenches. All this time the troops who were occupying the trenches were steadily advancing. We had taken quite a lot of their strongpoints, including —— and other villages. After a long tedious march we arrived at our reserve trenches and made ourselves as comfortable as possible, such as digging a hole in the side of a trench and perhaps a couple of sheets of corrugated iron, and finally we got settled away and went to sleep. It was very comfortable when you ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... needful to say that during this long and tedious period of my convalescence I had enjoyed many a long and confidential chat both with Lotta and with Mammy, and sometimes with both together; thus, by the time that even Lotta was fain to pronounce me once more quite well, and in no further need of nursing, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... brought me some discomfiture was about Balaam and his ass. Now, when I decided to tell the story of Balaam, I knew from experience that if I mentioned an "ass," that animal would require all kinds of tedious explanation, which would probably result in needless mystification and consequent suspicion; so I boldly plunged into the story of Balaam and his KANGAROO! But what staggered the blacks altogether ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off a unicorn's horn—a mere curiosity—which would not pass through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two —a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor. He continued to store up his treasures at home until his occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous; then he ceased from it, contented. Well he might be; for his collection, raised to modern values, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of such amiable sisters? Oh! my Nessy, it grieves me to think I must be under the necessity, however heart-breaking to myself, of desiring you will relinquish your most affectionate design of coming to see me; it is too long and tedious a journey, and even on your arrival, you would not be allowed the wished-for happiness, both to you and myself, of seeing, much less conversing with, your unfortunate brother: the rules of the service are so strict, that prisoners are not permitted to have any communication with female ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... live? And then what men of praetorian rank were there with us! the chief of whom was Marcus Cato, being indeed the chief man of any nation in the world for virtue. Why need I speak of the other most illustrious men? you know them all. I am more afraid lest you should think me tedious for enumerating so many, than ungrateful for passing over any one. And what men of aedilitian rank! and of tribunitian rank! and of quaestorian rank! Why need I make a long story of it, so great was ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected. Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I should have thrown up the case in ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... Hanne, and she laid her hand invitingly on his shoulder. "And then you shall be my young man. It's so tedious going to the woods with the old lady; and then I want to be able to do as I like." She made a challenging movement ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... herself in such glowing colours was really most simple and commonplace. There was something strange in it as well. What was it? That she could not define. At any rate, from her brother's account, it seemed to her very simple, tedious and boring. Apparently he had lived just anywhere, and had done just anything; at work one day, and idle the next; it was also plain that he liked drinking, and knew a good deal about women. But life such as ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... whom she was now become both companion and friend. The girls were hardly strangers to her, some of them being younger sisters of those who had been her own playmates. Though the duties of the day might be tedious and monotonous, there were always two or three happy hours to look forward to in the evening, when she and Miss W—- sat together—sometimes late into the night—and had quiet pleasant conversations, or pauses ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... did the thistle become the emblem of Scotland? Well, there are as many traditions on the subject as there are opinions as to which variety of the plant is the true Scottish thistle. It would be tedious here to refer to all, so let us just note that although the Carduus Marianus, or the Blessed or Lady's Thistle—the origin of whose name we have given—is very commonly accepted, so competent an authority on Scottish lore as the author ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... is tedious and spun out; but the idea is poetic. We find it in the classics: for instance, in Theocritus, when he praises Nais, whose beauty draws even Nature under her sway, and whose coming makes ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... topmost log is rolled into place and the artistic work commences,—the "riving" of slabs. Short logs of oak are to be split into huge shingles for the roof, and tough and tedious work it is. But it is done; the roof is covered in, and the house is far enough advanced ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... her lover's face: even the countenance of Victor swam into her ken as if blurred by veils of mist, its dour, forbidding look had no significance to her intelligence. Victor himself, for that matter, was a figure without real consequence other than as a symbol of the old order, the tedious old ways of the world from which she ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... recently christened Petrograd—in order to have, as he expressed it, a window through which he might look into Europe. He looked into Europe with very good results, and his successors have done likewise; but the demolition of the barrier proved a very tedious undertaking, and it was not ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... of many voyagers, and I was invariably struck with the fact, that with rare exceptions, the innumerable islands scattered throughout the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, were composed either of volcanic, or of modern coral-rocks. It would be tedious to give a long catalogue of all the volcanic islands; but the exceptions which I have found are easily enumerated: in the Atlantic, we have St. Paul's Rock, described in this volume, and the Falkland Islands, composed of ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... of water was found in the hold. When search was made, a shot-hole was discovered forward, between wind and water. This was speedily plugged. Just as she came in sight of the convoy, after her long and tedious voyage, she got on shore, and there remained for some days before she ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Having travelled through a tedious Night, thick-set with Horrors of various Hues! and thus come to the End of a painful Journey; give me Leave, kind Reader, to indulge awhile with admiring the beautiful Variety of Objects, which now surround me, to the serene Delight of the Mind, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... MAILLEBOIS as director of the Depot de la guerre, conceived, and executed a plan, destined to render still more familiar and secure the numerous documents collected in this establishment. He first retrenched from the Military Correspondences and Memoirs all tedious repetitions and unnecessary details; he then classed the remainder under the head of a different army or operation, without subjecting himself to any other order than a simple chronology; but he caused each volume to be preceded by a very succinct, historical summary, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... out with his two Slaves and his Camels, for Arabia Deserta. His Tribe liv'd near the Desert of Horeb. The Way was long and tedious. Setoc, during the Journey, paid a much greater Regard to Zadig's Valet, than to himself; because the former was the most able to load the Camels; and therefore what little Distinctions were made, they were in his Favour. It so happen'd that ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second part of her journey. But at last she found herself aboard the California Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her. The glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her. Propped up on her pillows, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... on his back without once being turned over; and he lay neglected and alone, save for the occasional visits of the unremunerated and over-worked physician. He had no toys, nothing with which to beguile the long and tedious hours. No kind word was spoken to him, no soothing hand laid upon his brow, no single touch or act of loving tenderness—naught but the reproaches and harshness of Ann Bartell, and the continually reiterated information that he was not wanted. And it can well be understood, ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... able to work went over to the Block House besides what wos upon guard and they were divided into 4 parties and they that got don first was to have the Best fat sheep 1 sheep to each party I was upon the grass Guard & at night I found it very tedious Lying out for it ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... Christina.—It was too tedious a work for the vivacity of my temper to polish bears into men. I should have died of the spleen before I had made any proficiency in it. My desire was to shine among those who were qualified to judge of my talents. At Paris, at Rome I ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... [1632] about sixty men, women, and children, with their horses, cattle, and swine, commenced their journey from Massachusetts, through the wilderness, to Connecticut River. After a tedious and difficult journey through swamps and rivers, over mountains and rough grounds, which were passed with great difficulty and fatigue, they arrived safely at their respective destinations. They were so long on their ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... birth, nor personal popularity could shield them from his resentment; and while Louis XIII hunted at Fontainebleau, feasted at the Louvre, and attended with as much patience as he could assume at the constant performances of the vapid and tedious dramas with which the Cardinal-Duke, who aspired to be esteemed a poet, incessantly taxed the forbearance of the monarch and his Court, the active and versatile pen of the minister was at the same time spreading desolation and death on ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... much. She had an intellect, and it was one which sought for constant expression; consequently she was never dull. If she was dull, she was ill. She had none of that horrible mental constriction which makes some English women so insupportably tedious. The last thing she read, the last thing she thought, came out with vivacity and force, and she did not need the stimulus of a great excitement to reveal what was in her. Living as she did at work side by side with her father all day, she knew all his thoughts and read all his ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... these days Jeff was returning through the woods from marketing at the Forks, which, since the sale of Rabbit, had became a foot-sore and tedious business. He had reached the edge of the forest, and through the wider-spaced trees, the bleak sunlit plateau of his house was beginning to open out, when he stopped instantly. I know not what Jeff had been thinking of, as he trudged along, but here, all at once, he was thrilled and possessed ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... two huge quarto volumes; I fancy it was the large clear type and numerous plates which illustrated it that determined my choice. Rollin, the good old priest, opened a new wonderful world to me, and instead of the tedious task I had feared the reading would prove, it was as delightful as it had formerly been to listen to my brother's endless histories of imaginary heroes ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... an unknown substance would have to make an elementary analysis and some tedious tests to determine whether it contained methyl or ethyl groups, whether it was an aldehyde or an ester, whether the carbon atoms were singly or doubly linked and whether it was an open chain or closed. But let him get a whiff of it and he can give instantly a pretty ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... division has been established. And here I find myself in a difficulty. We have been but too learned already, and now we run the risk of becoming still more so, if we commence an attack on the three primary divisions which follow the vertebrates. We shall have to encounter terrible names and tedious details, besides having to take into account a thousand things of which we have not yet spoken. We are going on quietly with the history of the feeding machine which occupies the middle of the body, and learned men never looked in that ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... saved from its continuance. I suppose now that the almost injured person was, if not drunk, at that stage of tipsiness when the sensibilities are keenest and self-respect is most alert. An American could not, at least, have been so tedious in his sober senses, and I will not believe ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... was unable to pass the tedious time in the train with a tune on my vielle, and entertain my fellow travellers, I began to practise on it in my room at night. Then the fellow inmates complained: they sent their compliments and desired to know whether there were ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... having been delayed in the post. But all this would have mattered little if Miss HUNT had chosen her aristocrats from persons in whom it was possible to take more interest. But the plain fact is that you never met so tedious a set. They are not witty; they are not even wicked to any significant extent. They simply produce (at least in my case) no effect whatever. Perhaps this may all be of intention; the author may have meant to harrow us with the spectacle of our old nobility expiring as nonentities. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... of one's pleasures, if one is delicate; but it is possible to do a great deal of equinoctial grubbing with safety and even benefit, if one is very warmly protected, especially about the feet and legs. These details are very tedious for young people, but not so tedious as being kept indoors ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... right," said Belleville, gayly; "such a grandiose and warlike conspiracy would amount to nothing. We must revenge ourselves in another way for the tedious ennui we are made to endure here, and my friends and myself are resolved to do so. We will no longer submit to the shackles of etiquette, which are laid upon us; we will be free from the wearisome constraint which hems us in on every side. These proud ladies wish us to believe ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... sitting near him[1319]. The conversation for some time was chiefly between Dr. Johnson and the Provost of Eton, while the others contributed occasionally their remarks. Without attempting to detail the particulars of the conversation, which perhaps if I did, I should spin my account out to a tedious length, I thought, my dear Sir, this general account of the respect with which our valued friend was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... already been made to the subtleties entertained by the priesthood, in connexion with the doctrine of the metempsychosis, as developed in their sacred books; but the exposition would be tedious to show the distinctions between their theories, and the opinions of transmigration entertained by the mass of the Singhalese Buddhists. The rewards of virtue and the punishment of vice are supposed to be equally attainable in this world; and according to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Sleep,' and here it is that he brings Lippa to pass the first days of their married life, days of almost perfect happiness. But, in course of time, as they are going to live together for the rest of their lives they come to the wise conclusion that an overdose of solitude to begin with, would be tedious, to say the ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... would toil at a single manuscript day after day, month after month; sometimes year after year. It must have been a sleepy, tiresome business to write out even a short manuscript so carefully, to say nothing of a long one like the Bible. What wonder that the patient workers were so glad when their tedious task was done that they inscribed at the end of it a little song of thanksgiving. I remember seeing one old book in a European museum at the end of which ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... much,—and he was seeking to popularize even classical works by abbreviating them, after the fashion adopted by Mr. Spence in regard to conversation. In this manner formidable pieces, like oratorios and symphonies, could be made congenial and instructive to those who usually found them tedious. In music as in literature the idea was the main consideration, and in Mr. Fleisch's opinion the vehicle by which it was conveyed should be as little cumbersome as possible. Acting on this principle, he had in one instance ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the essence of Shakespeare's achievement in this marvellous passage? What is it that he has done? He has thrown his audience, just as Othello has thrown his captors, off their guard, and substituted a sudden shock of surprise for a tedious fulfilment of expectation. In other words, he has handled the incident crisply instead of flaccidly, and so given it what we may call the specific accent ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... There were many tedious and difficult steps to take before even our present knowledge, incomplete as it is, could be reached. However, Becquerel's fortunate accident of the plate developing was the beginning of the long series of experiments which led to the discovery of radium which already has ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... having plunged into the welter, fear vanished, and a great exhilaration took its place. They shouted madly to each other—even stolid Mary, and were sorry when they came to the bottom. Between rapids the smooth stretches seemed insufferably tedious to pass. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... were alike so relieved to see her happiness that they were prepared to welcome Arthur Newcome with open arms, and to acknowledge that their prejudices were unfounded. They listened with smiling faces to his tedious description of his journey north, of previous journeys, or journeys still to come; they tried to show an interest in the items of stale information which he offered in words of studied length and elegance, and with ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wish," replied Barney, "but I shall never forgive myself for having caused you the long and tedious journey that lies before us. It would be perfectly safe to go to the nearest town and secure ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "It became tedious," said Abelard, "to go to my lessons. I gave my lectures with negligence. I spoke only from habit and memory. I was only a reciter of ancient inventions; and if I chanced to compose verses, they were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... tedious and dangerous side of rocky hill the fugitives lost so much time that Shefford grew exceedingly alarmed. Still, they accomplished it without accident, and their pursuers did not heave in sight. Perhaps they were having trouble ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... still trained in the art of arranging flowers, and in the etiquette of the dainty, though somewhat tedious, cha-no-yu. Buddhist priests have long enjoyed a reputation as teachers of the latter. When the pupil has reached a certain degree of proficiency, she is given a diploma or certificate. The tea used in these ceremonies is a powdered tea of remarkable fragrance,— ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... I have intelligence regarding myself, that will be by no means unsavory to you all. Father Finnerty and I had, about an hour before dinner this day, a long and tedious conversation, the substance of which was my future celebrity in the church. He has a claim on the Bishop, which he stated to me will be exercised in my favor, although there are several candidates for it in this ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... satisfactory than mystic symbolism; so also was Emerson. "Mysticism" (he writes) "consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. . . . The mystic must be steadily told, 'All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it.'" Emerson's uneasiness is manifest. He is rebelling, but is not quite sure of his ground. At one time he inclines to think the mystic in fault because he "nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... contest with the authorities is long and tedious, and it would not serve the purpose of this article to relate it fully, but we can see in the brief statement above that, whether the minister and his people were right or wrong, they had in them that energy, pluck, and persistency which men who would establish ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... those "happy times" may be well described in the words of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler for the year 1058. "This year Alfgar the earl was banished; but he came in again with violence, through aid of Griffin (the king of North Wales, his brother-in-law). And this year came a fleet from Norway. It is tedious to tell how these matters went." These were the normal phenomena of a reign which seemed, to the eyes of monks, a holy and a happy one; because the king refused, whether from spite or superstition, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... reach came tearing across the country, and came to the fire; but they were of no avail. There was no supply of water, save from the ornamental ponds. These they could only get at by means that were tedious and unsatisfactory, considering the emergency ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a tedious and very fatiguing passage down the creek. Several times we had like to have been staved against rocks; and many times were obliged all hands to get out and remain in the water half an hour or more, getting over the shoals. At one place, the ice had lodged, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... knew Irma, a dream had haunted me. In days long past it had come, when I was only an awkward laddie gazing after her on the Eden Valley meadows. Often it had returned to me during the tedious silences of three years—when, quite against the proverb, love had grown by feeding ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... far away from home. I do not doubt, however, but that if I had seen more of the Welsh, I should have liked them heartily, for they are said to be very kindly, honest, and hospitable. They are naturally brave and sturdy lovers of liberty. In old times the English had a hard and tedious struggle with them, before they could subdue them. Often, when they thought they had the whole rude nation under their hands, or rather under their feet, the rebellious spirit would break out again in a new spot, fiercer and hotter than ever, and all the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... [has [3]] imitated; but as I do not look upon Tasso to be a sufficient Voucher, I would not perplex my Reader with such Quotations, as might do more Honour to the Italian than the English Poet. In short, I have endeavoured to particularize those innumerable kinds of Beauty, which it would be tedious to recapitulate, but which are essential to Poetry, and which may be met with in the Works of this great Author. Had I thought, at my first engaging in this design, that it would have led me to so ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... back to the side of her imperilled mistress. With unfaltering fondness and resolution she clung to her through the sack which filled the palace with ruins and blood; through the tedious and brutal examinations in the Assembly; and through the fearful imprisonment in the Temple, until the jailers violently tore her from the arms of her sobbing friend. In vain the ferocious wretches in power strove ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... People.] After the Rebellion, when the People that lived at a further distance, saw that the King intended to settle himself near the Mountain to which he fled, Viz. Digligy, and not to come into the old City again, it being very troublesom and tedious to bring their Rents and Taxes thither, they all jointly met together, being a great number, and sent an Address to intimate their Desires to him; which was with great Submission, That His Majesty would not leave them destitute of his Presence, which ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... to look at the will. He read it through; a tedious business; for Sir Robert had been a wealthy man and the possessions bequeathed—conditionally bequeathed—to his daughter were many and various. Two or three thousand acres of land in one of the southern counties, bordering on the New Forest; certain ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the first tissue to be used for grafting purposes, and it is still employed with greater frequency than any other, as lesions causing defects of skin are extremely common and without the aid of grafts are tedious ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... on country rivers, was leaky, and she had to work until tired, bailing it out, before she was ready for another long effort. The old tin measure, which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the boat, and her task was a tedious one. At last she got it in good trim, and sat down to her oars with the determination to pull steadily as long as ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... having no background of mythological fiction. For him there was no Olympus with its half-human denizens, no nymph-haunted fountain, no deified heroes, no lore of sacred bard to raise his thoughts into the realm of the ideal. His religion was cold and formal. Consisting partly of minute and tedious ceremonies, partly of transparent allegories whereby the abstractions of daily life were clothed with the names of gods, it possessed no power over his inner being. Conceptions such as Sowing (Saturnus), War (Bellona), Boundary (Terminus), ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... idea of going. Until recently she had been a poor seamstress, earning scarcely enough to subsist upon, much less to pay for amusements. Sometimes in the early evening she had passed the portals of places of amusement, and wished that she were able to break the tedious monotony of her daily life by entering; but it was quite out of the question, and with a sigh she would pass on. Now she was very differently situated, and her life was ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... shaven, and wears his hair cropped short. He came here about three years ago, with a stallion worth about $1000, in which he owns a half interest. The man who owns the other half still lives in the States, and by means of tedious litigation has been trying to get his share. This man at present lives with the Jennes, at their hotel at Abercorn. He is one of the principal figures in the case, because he, it is said, was the man to whom the entire management of the ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... in the present age that man has begun to reap the fruits of his tedious education, and has proven how much 'knowledge is power.' He has now acquired a dominion over the material world, and a consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to the annihilation of every wonderful ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... their present servitude: no man can tell how he cheated the poor Olynthians, giving them first Potidaea and many other places: now he is luring the Thebans, having delivered up Boeotia to them, and freed them from a tedious and harassing war. Of these people, who each got a certain advantage, some have suffered what is notorious to all, others have yet to suffer what may befall them. As to yourselves; the amount of your losses I do not mention: but in the very making of the peace how have you been deceived! ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... the night began to be far advanced; but after two or three hours of most tedious and weary wandering I again came to a rising ground, by the help of which with great efforts I once more contrived to mount. I was no sooner in the saddle than I thought I saw a light at a distance, which sometimes seemed to glimmer ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... loue; where scorne is bought with grones: Coy looks, with hart-sore sighes: one fading moments mirth, With twenty watchfull, weary, tedious nights; If hap'ly won, perhaps a haplesse gaine; If lost, why then a grieuous labour won; How euer: but a folly bought with wit, Or else a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... story, proceeds to inform us at length of a commission which the wife of Mr. Leckie receives from the ghost to deliver to Atherton, Bishop of Waterford, a guilty and unfortunate man, who afterwards died by the hands of the executioner; but that part of the subject is too disagreeable and tedious to enter upon. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... didactic or defensive, occupies almost all his prose, except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons; but none of his prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modeled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... make itself into some sort of sense, but the process by which this is at length attained is lengthy, tedious, and full of pitfalls to the reader who is unfamiliar with some dozen modern Russian writers and is innocent ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... were purchased and repurchased frequently; consequently, repeated additions were made to their original price; and these additions were made, in almost every instance, by persons who had the monopoly of them. Their conveyance to Europe was long, tedious, and mostly by land carriage, and consequently very expensive. There are no data by which it can be ascertained in what proportion the Portuguese lowered the price of Indian commodities; but Dr. Robertson's supposition appears well founded,—that ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... gentlemen; to tell you true, I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground ciarlatani, that ... come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccaccio, like stale Tabarine, the fabulist; some of them discoursing their travels; and of their tedious captivity [31] in the Turks' galleys, when, indeed, were the truth known, they were the Christians' gallies, where very temperately they eat bread and drunk water, as a wholesome penance, [32] enjoined them by their confessors for ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... is considered to be sagacious and reserved. Now I fear that I may be charged with spinning a long discourse out of slender materials. For drinking cannot be rightly ordered without correct principles of music, and music runs up into education generally, and to discuss all these matters may be tedious; if you like, therefore, we will pass on to another part of our subject. 'Are you aware, Athenian, that our family is your proxenus at Sparta, and that from my boyhood I have regarded Athens as a second country, and having often fought your battles in my youth, I have become attached to ...
— Laws • Plato
... pump, the rooms, and the coffeehouses; where he picks up continual food for ridicule and satire. If I can glean any thing for your amusement, either from his observation or my own, you shall have it freely, though I am afraid it will poorly compensate the trouble of reading these tedious insipid letters of, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... a cup of coffee, and then hurried out and wandered about the streets for the remainder of his hour. It was a long hour—a tedious hour. Most of the time he spent in the hope that, by some lucky chance, he might meet her. He did not hunt for her. He avoided her usual course. If he met her, it must be honestly by chance. But he never met her. ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X—— I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself—the work of copying and translating business-letters—was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... her mind, like those of so many unoccupied, and consequently self-occupied persons, was addicted to speculation of a minor and vacuous sort. She was also liable —as such persons often are—to mistake cavilling for spirit and wit—a most tedious error! ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... fingers are classified as they appear on the other hand. If a search fails to locate the person, then the missing fingers are classified first as whorls and then as loops, search being made after each classification. In this manner the search may be a little more tedious than it would be if all the fingers were there, but in time ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... a rule, to his clear intellect, trained to almost instinctive rejection of all but the essential, to selection of what was legally vital out of the mass of confused tactical and human detail presented to his scrutiny; yet sometimes tedious and wearing. As for instance to-day, when he had suspected his client of perjury, and was almost convinced that he must throw up his brief. He had disliked the weak-looking, white-faced fellow from the first, and his nervous, shifty answers, his prominent startled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... saw of him, indeed, the more did we congratulate ourselves on our proceeding. His torments were acute and tedious; but, in the midst even of delirium, his heart seemed to overflow with gratitude, and to be actuated by no wish but to alleviate our toil and our danger. He made prodigious exertions to perform necessary ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... forever—but we dream in vain. A surer force than the subtlest fascination of fancy is in operation; the purse-strings tie us to our kind. Our travel coin runs low, and we must return, away from Tadmor and Baalbec, back to our steady, tedious industry and dull work, to "la vieille Europe" (as Napoleon said), "qui m'ennuie." It is the same in thought: in vain we seclude ourselves in elegant chambers, in fascinating fancies, in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a day with an ox-team was fairly good travelling; and it was one hundred and fifty miles from the Republican to the Missouri, as the young emigrants travelled the road. A whole week had been consumed by the tedious trip when they drove into the busy and bustling town of Leavenworth, one bright autumnal morning. All along the way they had picked up much information about the movement of steamers, and they were delighted to find that the steamboat "New Lucy" was lying at the levee, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... form in battle-array. A fine, cold rain was falling, and added to the interest of the occasion, while a huge fire was crackling on the hearth inside. Marie would have liked to abridge the inevitable tedious length of this formal siege; she did not like to see her lover catching cold, but she had no voice in the council under the circumstances, and, indeed, she was expected to join, ostensibly, in the mischievous cruelty ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... more. He returned after a long absence, a tedious navigation, and vicissitudes of hardships. He flew to the bosom of his love; of his wife. She was gone; lost to him, and to virtue. In a fit of desperation, he retired to his chamber and despatched himself. This is the instrument with which the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... leave to conclude my tedious letter with requesting that you will be kind enough to send the enclosed communication to my friend in Russia. I hope you will pardon the trouble I am giving you, but I have no other resource, as there is no direct mode of communication between ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, whence he made a bolder crossing to Syria.[206] On his way he conceived a desire to visit the temple of Venus at Paphos,[207] which is famous among all the inhabitants and visitors. It may not be tedious to give here a short account of the origin of this worship, the ritual of the cult, and the shape—unparalleled elsewhere—in ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... common—while they live they grow. Natural growth is a slow process, to describe it day by day a slower. For the next four months matters glided so quietly on the slopes I have just indicated that an intelligent calculation by the reader may very well take the place of a tedious chronicle by the writer. Moreover, the same monotony did not hang over every part of our story. These very four months were eventful enough to one of our characters; and through him, by subtle and positive links, to every man and every woman who fills any considerable position ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... allowed, after seventy years, to overhear what was not primarily meant for our ears at all. This will account for a fulness and minuteness of detail which to unsympathetic persons may perhaps appear tedious. But the writer was telling her story, not for unsympathetic persons, not for 'general readers,' much less for literary critics, but for 'the household hearts that were her own,' on whose sympathy she could reckon, even down to the minutest circumstances ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... me so full of eloquence and tenderness, that my whole soul received the soft impression. In a short time he repeated his visit; and as a recital of the particular steps he pursued to ruin me would be tedious and impertinent, let it suffice to say, he made it his business to insinuate himself into my esteem, by convincing me of his own good sense, and at the same time flattering my understanding. This task ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... not pass over the wooing so cavalierly. It has been told, with perhaps tedious accuracy, how Eleanor disposed of two of her lovers at Ullathorne; and it must also be told with equal accuracy, and if possible with less tedium, how she encountered ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Glenora and unloaded in the crisp, cool dusk. As we came off the boat with our horses we were met by a crowd of cynical loafers who called to us out of the dark, "What in hell you fellows think you're doing?" We were regarded as wildly insane for having come over so long and tedious a route. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... to this will ensure cutting with the true edge, and, in the first instance, all the cuts should be made slowly and deliberately, so that errors may be instantly corrected. This may be somewhat tedious to the impetuous learner, but it really saves time in ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure," Vronsky answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and tedious evoked ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... you, my dear sir, for your present: it is a book of the utmost importance to me. I have yesterday begun my anecdotes, etc., for your work. I intend drawing it up in the form of a letter to you, which will save me from the tedious dull business of systematic arrangement. Indeed, as all I have to say consists of unconnected remarks, anecdotes, scraps of old songs, etc., it would be impossible to give the work a beginning, a middle, and an end; which the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Church meet and blend in the Byzantine Empire, the later history of which appeared to Gibbon 'a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery'. Its services to civilization and the greatness of many of its rulers were revealed to the world by Finlay, whose narrative was acclaimed by Freeman as the most considerable work ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... clearness of his style, which, however, is artificial and laboured. Many of the incidents of the romance are highly improbable, and the characters, except the heroine, fail to enlist sympathy. The descriptive passages and digressions, although tedious and introduced without adequate reasons, are the best part of the work. The large number of existing MSS. attests its popularity. (Editio princeps, 1601; first important critical edition by (Jacobs, 1821; litter editions by Hirschig, 1856; Hercher, 1858. There are translations ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... trivial and tedious. Rospo said, very truly, that the procession in Blue Beard was much better got up. All these processions sound very fine in mere description, but in the reality there is always something to disappoint or disgust; something which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... said with a slight laugh, 'to be frank, people never bore me. The moment they become tedious they are of interest to me as a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... "Lady Dacre! Yes, I have found the air here delightful. My tedious headache is wearing away already. And here comes her ladyship to make us appreciate our blessings still more. Say, Bul," he added in a quick undertone as he was about moving forward to meet the new-comer, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... moon and all the atmospheric effects were the same, the emotions were different. They rode in absolute silence, and slowly after they had cleared the outskirts of Winchester. Both of them were now nearly tired out,—the level was tedious, and even a little hill a burden; and so it came about that in the hamlet of Wallenstock they were beguiled to stop and ask for accommodation in an exceptionally prosperous-looking village inn. A plausible landlady rose to ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... he would live several months. He was still adding little perfecting details to his book, and preface, among other things. He was entirely through a few days later. Since then the lack of any strong interest to employ his mind has enabled the tedious weariness to kill him. I think his book kept him alive several months. He was a very great man and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Lady said, "Oh, dear! Out in the cold we've been These seven tedious years, and have No chance of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various
... branches, as it were, of some huge tree, of which the vessel's funnel was the stem, were spread overhead, giving the gleaming ice a peculiarly weird look. For the engineer and his two assistants were hard at work trying to get up steam—a long and tedious task under ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... requires much more care in printing than the former method, in order to hit the right tint; so much so, that I have usually printed the stork faintly so as not to show the "tint" at all. The frontispiece is from a paper negative, a method much more troublesome and tedious than either of the others, both in preparation of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... day before yesterday in getting thirteen of the young men on this plantation to come up and drill, but they did not come again yesterday. I don't believe there is sufficient zeal among them to enable them to go through the tedious routine of drill with any regularity, unless held together by some stronger motive than now exists. I find them rather stupid. About half didn't know which their right foot was, and kept facing to the left when I told them to face to the right. They ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... I've sat in the shop watching him try for several beautiful afternoons, while outside the windows all Nature was fragrant with spring and smoke. He hums ragtime to himself as he tries, and I think his mind is wandering to something else less tedious—to some new invention in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... call luck used to be with me all the time. Of course, since I humbly—but, I trust, helpfully—took to being a worker in the vineyard, I have not touched those devil's picture-books; nor should I have touched them to-night but for my hope that a little game would help to while away your time of tedious waiting. As for playing for money, that would have been quite impossible had it not been for my niece's suggestion that my winnings—in case such came to me—should be added to our meagre parish fund. I trust that I have not done wrong in yielding to my impulse. ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... announced, and I was obliged to break off my account of Terni and resume it here, where I arrived after a tedious journey ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... into tedious matters of theology, and repeated many long prayers and sermons in Irish that he had heard ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... to make the people of India better understood by those of my own countrymen whose destinies are cast among them, and inspire more kindly feelings towards them. Those parts which, to the general reader, will seem dry and tedious, may be considered, by the Indian statesman, as the most useful ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... distant; and they consequently had no alternative but to swim to it; which they accordingly attempted, being extremely apprehensive that the Spaniards would return. The passage across the straits was long and tedious; and their hopes of ultimate success for a long time doubtful. When about half way across, one of their number declared that he was too much exhausted to go any farther, and after a few words of encouragement from his companions, suddenly exclaimed, "good bye," and sunk ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Ex-Brigadier-Attorney-General, but, while we allow it the merit of novelty, we think there are some grave objections to its universal adoption. It would be a great check on hospitality; for, by parity of reason, the invitation should be as tedious as the reply, and a treaty of dinner would take nearly as much time as a treaty of peace. This would be a great damage to the butchers, whose interests (to borrow a bit of political economy from Mr. Cushing's letter) are complementary to those of the dinner-giver and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... lunacy; it produced simple distraction; an uneasy fumbling with the idea; like that of an old superannuated dog who longs to worry, but cannot for want of teeth. In this condition you will judge that he was rather tedious. And in this condition Coleridge took him up. Andrew's other idea, because he had two, related to education. Perhaps six-sevenths of that also came from Madras. No matter, Coleridge took that up; Southey ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... not lived," and ordered something else that could easily be got to be prepared for him. Cato was his friend and connection, but, nevertheless, so hated his life and habits, that when a young man in the senate made a long and tedious speech in praise of frugality and temperance, Cato got up and said, "How long do you mean to go making money like Crassus, living like Lucullus, and ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in view could be achieved without saddling the war department with any unremunerative or excessive burden. He admitted that the process of raising fruit trees to the stage when they would afford adequate cover would be tedious and somewhat prolonged, but argued that the military advantages, such as enabling troops to move below the welcome shelter with absolute freedom and without physical fatigue, would be ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... which my weary steps I guide In this delightful land of Faery Are so exceeding spacious and wyde, And sprinckled with such sweet variety Of all that pleasant is to eare or eye, That I, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts' delight, My tedious travele doe forget thereby; And when I gin to feele decay of might, It strength to me supplies, and chears my ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... again retired, and one of the men of the submarine, who seemed to be in command, and wore a mask, coolly weighed the glittering metal on the deck, returning each package, after weighing and inspection, to its coffer. The process was long and tedious; at length it ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... therefore tedious business; and things looked worse the further they were searched into. Unable to varnish the facts to the experience of a professional eye, Mr. Turnbull wrote Mary a letter almost cringing in its tone, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the peace and strength of the United Kingdom, to the stability of the Protestant establishment, and to the general satisfaction and concord of all classes of his majesty's subjects." The debate lasted two nights; but as the speeches were merely repetitions of former arguments, it would be tedious and useless to give even a sketch, of them. The principal speakers in favour of the motion were Messrs. Brougham, Fitzgerald, North, Grant, and Huskisson, and Sirs J. Newport and J. Mackintosh. It was opposed by the attorney-general, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... did see such tedious bad stuff in all my life." Mr. Parish might here be supplemented by the remark that his definition explains the use of the word by old Walker, as related by Nyren, when bowling to Lord Frederick Beauclerk, "Oh," he said, "that was tedious near you, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... an Austrian Lloyd steamer stopped at this little old-fashioned seaport on its way to Alexandria, I secured a berth and went on board. The voyage was not long, neither was it very tedious; at night, especially, it was glorious. To sit on deck and gaze at the smooth sea, which reflected in its deep waters the bright starry heavens, while the splash of the waters made music on the vessel's side, was to experience something ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... to study this effusion of the Jacobite muse, while the Justice was engaged in the somewhat tedious ceremony of taking leave. That of Mr. Faggot was less ceremonious; but I suspect something besides empty compliment passed betwixt him and Mr. Herries; for I remarked that the latter slipped a piece of paper into the hand of the former, which might perhaps be a little ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... show him how his wonderful dictionary should be used, but he pushed them on one side, neither then nor at any future time would he consent to be taught—the process was too tedious for him, his mind worked more fluently, rapidly, and comprehensively than the mind of the most gifted teacher that could have ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... till death." There was something, remarks Mrs Chisholm, in the character of this honest bushman, during his colonial residence, to admire; he had gained his freedom, sent home money to his parents, and, during a long and tedious illness of twenty months, had attended his sick wife with patient care. Who would not get up an hour earlier to serve such a man?—I did, for I knew that early in the morning is the best time to choose a wife. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... But this fault, if it be a fault, has been caused by an earnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's own words as possible: and if the "He said" and "She said," the question and the reply, should sometimes seem tedious to their young ears, they must pardon it, because it was the only way in which could be given to them a few hints and little foretastes of the great pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which these small and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... fall out, for ev'ry flaw, They run horn mad to go to law, A hedge awry, a wrong plac'd gate, Will serve to spend a whole estate. Your case the lawyer says is good, And justice cannot he withstood; By tedious process from above, From office they to office move, Thro' pleas, demurrers, the dev'l and all, At length they bring it to the Hall; The dreadful hall by Rufus rais'd, For ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... voices (a tenor and soprano) were clear and sweet, and every one of the company sat up to listen with a look of mingled admiration and relief. Here was something, after all, to make a long journey less tedious. They sang all the four verses and paused. There was no clapping of hands, for a reverential hush had been cast over the audience by the sacred music. Instead of the inevitable applause that follows mere entertainment, a gentle but eager request for ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... country. Gentlemen, I acknowledge myself much their debtor. While yet a youth, unknown, and with little expectation of becoming known beyond a very limited circle, I have passed days and nights, not of tedious, but of happy and gratified labor, in the study of the judicature of the State of New York. I am most happy to have this public opportunity of acknowledging the obligation, and of repaying it, as far as it can be repaid, by the poor tribute of my profound regard, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... The Starry Flag followed the Caribbee; but the voyage would be as tedious to the reader as it was to Bessie Watson. From the summer time, the yacht went into the heat of the torrid zone, and from that to the spring time of the south temperate. A week out from New York she encountered a heavy gale, and lost sight of the chase; but Levi, true to his ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... her home for her long and tedious journey without considerable parade. Her best new black silk dress was packed up in order that due honour might be done to Lord Stapledean's hospitality, and so large a box was needed that Dumpling and the four-wheeled carriage were hardly able to take her to the railway-station. Then there arose ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... gloriously; nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian Canon, through which I climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the high cliffs on either side, rendering the ascent difficult; but inspired by the roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I gained the top of a ridge above the valley, 8000 feet high. And there in bold relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Innumerable peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in solid white, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... land, while vast numbers of our working men and women possess nothing but the labour of their hands. The designation of labour as "property" by our courts only served to tighten the bonds, by obstructing for a time the movement to decrease the tedious and debilitating hours of contact of the human organism with the machine,—a menace to the future of the race, especially in the case of women and children. If labour is "property," wretches driven by economic necessity have indeed only the choice of a change of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... how differently the case stood with her. The last month had been the longest she had ever known,—tedious as to the state captive, serving his noviciate to prison life. She would have been thankful to say that she could give no account of the past month. She inquired how the accident happened; for this was still a mystery to everybody. Mr Hope could not clear up the matter: he remembered ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... burgesses were far from being sufficiently strong to wrest the power out of the hands of the former at one blow. Compromises of this sort are necessarily limited to the smallest measure of mutual concessions obtained by tedious bargaining; and they leave the future to decide which of the constituent elements shall eventually preponderate, and whether they will work harmoniously together or counteract one another. To look therefore merely to the direct innovations, possibly to the mere change in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and supporting the parts by pressure made with a flannel roller, or laced stocking when the ankle is involved, will be useful to restore tone; or strips of adhesive plaster properly applied will be useful for the same purpose. Recovery from severe sprains is always tedious. It is an old saying "that a bad sprain is ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... up to this standard, and I shall be most happy, my dear. My summer may grow somewhat tedious toward the end; I shall count a great deal on good meals to keep ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... more in silent contemplation of the wondrous spectacle, we rose and went down towards the bank on our way to the grotto, which I was not sorry to gain. After a slight repast, I sought refuge in slumber, and at length, after many and tedious struggles, sleep came over my ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... he strikingly resembles in his iron will, his herculean energies, and his enlightened mind. He could not convert his subjects from cattle into men, even had he wished, for civilization is a long and tedious process; but he made them the subjects of a great empire, destined to spread from sea to sea. Certainly he was in advance of his people; he broke away from the ideas which enslaved them. He may have been despotic, and inexorable, and hard-hearted; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... bore ample witness to the truth of his statement; a meal with long intervals of conversation. To Hartley, who usually breakfasted in a quarter of an hour, and was anxious to start for the office, it became tedious in the extreme, and his eyes repeatedly sought the clock. He almost sighed with relief as the visitor took the last piece of toast in the rack, only to be plunged again into depression as his daughter rang the bell ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... many women in manipulating the spinning wheel, and there seems to have been some competitive contests for notoriety among country women, who found a pleasing though perhaps at times tedious occupation in spinning the wool for the local weaver who wove the home-made cloth. It is recorded that in 1745 a woman at East Dereham spun a single pound of wool into a thread of 84,000 yards. She was far outdistanced, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... you wish," replied Barney, "but I shall never forgive myself for having caused you the long and tedious journey that lies before us. It would be perfectly safe to go to the nearest town and ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... certain letters to represent numbers, and we still employ the Roman numeral characters as the most elegant way of expressing a date in typography or sculpture; but every one must see what a tedious business the calculation of large sums would be according to this cumbrous system of notation: nor is it easy to say whereabouts our commercial status, to say nothing of science, would have been to-day, had it never been superseded. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... situations—such as the death of L'Aiglon or the business of the sentry—are treated at great leisure, it is assumed that all historical allusions, however necessary to an understanding of the situation, will be as tedious to the audience as to the players, and they are rushed through—as in the mirror scene—-at a pace that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... chemists. It has been too much the fashion for writers on scientific subjects to give definitions which can be rendered intelligible only by an intimate acquaintance with the very matters defined. It would be tedious to enumerate the countless absurd explanations given in elementary text-books of the phenomena of interference, polarization, and double refraction,—explanations as enigmatical as the inscriptions ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... role of a working member until committees fought for him. It surprised his colleagues to see this elegant young man, with such fine abilities, so modest and so laborious—to see him ready on the dryest subjects and with the most tedious reports. Ponderous laws of local interest neither frightened nor mystified him. He seldom spoke in the public debates, except as a reporter; but in the committee he spoke often, and there his manner was noted for its grave precision, tinged with irony. No one doubted that he was one of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... prepared for that fight which was to determine the fate of Syria. The particulars are too tedious to be related, for they continued fighting for several days. Abu Obeidah resigned the whole command of the army to Kaled, standing himself in the rear, under the yellow flag which Abu-Bekr had given ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... and hours without end tacking to and fro, now going up the river two or three miles, then dropping down with the tide, and always zig-zagging so as to cover as much ground as possible. The night lengthened as if it would never end; but, like all tedious times of the kind, it dragged its weary course by, till, to my utter astonishment, when it did come, a faint light dawned away over the sea beyond the mouth of the river, just when we were about ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... imagines that a doctor must have an easy, ideal life, and wonders that he himself should have embarked in an occupation so full of disagreeable drudgery and hardships. He does not know of the years of dry, tedious study which the physician has consumed, the months and perhaps years of waiting for patients, the dry detail of anatomy, the endless names of drugs and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of Hendrik; for it had been agreed on all sides that "the poor dear thing would take on dreadfully, or else fret herself into fits, or perhaps fall into one of them clay-cold, corpsy swoons, like old Miss Dunks has regular every 'revival.'" But when they came, with all their tedious commonplaces of a stupid condolence not wholly innocent of curiosity, Sally thanked them with dry eyes and prudent lips and quiet nerves, and only said she thought she should do very well after she had set the house to rights and slept awhile. The sewing-circle of that week was a coroner's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... this would, however, never have been laid at the door of the managers, however it might invalidate the test; but when the utterly absurd decision announced in the papers, after a tedious delay had led the public to expect an exhaustive statement, gave rise to general disappointment and excited the utmost dissatisfaction, it became manifest that a manly, straightforward course on their part was not to be hoped for, and that any protest against the consummation ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... I fear has been somewhat tedious, it will be seen that I have been guided throughout not by any systematic principles, but by a multitude of minor considerations, some operating more strongly in one case, and some in another. I trust, however, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... money could make it. She had been seen off by many affectionate friends, and, since leaving America, the literature, the flowers and the fruit with which they had provided her had helped to pass the hours, tedious at best on ship-board. Two other friends, not so near, but very pleasant—they were New York people—were also making the voyage, but as they were all very sea-sick, intercourse with them consisted mainly ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... steady purpose, and regular application, superinduced upon the mind; everything was left to chance and impulse, and native luxuriance, and everything of course ran to waste and wild entanglement. Excuse me if I am tedious on this point, for I feel solicitous to impress it upon you, being an error extremely prevalent in our country and one into which too many of our youth have fallen. I am happy, however, to observe the zeal which still appears to actuate you for the acquisition ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... far to relieve the tedious record of ineffective blockades and bombardments during the war. Two exploits left an imperishable memory in the minds of contemporaries—Lieutenant Stephen Decatur's destruction of the captured frigate Philadelphia, under the guns of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... doled out creme de menthe. There was no conversation—only tedious words. The little party was just commonplace and dull—boring. Yet Sir William, the self-made man, was a study. And the young, Oxford-like Major, with his English diffidence and his one dark, pensive, baffled eye was only waiting to ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... time before starting on this trip and was therefore deprived of blowing a cloud with which to drive dull care away during the tedious days that followed. Like the rest of the party, too, once started I was impatient to reach home again, and for that reason the slow progress that we made the first few days was not greatly to my liking. The weather moderated at the end of forty-eight ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... begins to feel the effects of so-called "female weakness" she is conscious of not feeling "fit." She wonders what the matter is. She may not have actual pain at this time, simply the consciousness that "she is not what she used to be." Her work seems harder and more tedious, she worries without cause, she begins the day with less energy and ambition than she used to, her disposition is more uneven, more irritable and she tires easier and is more willing to retire earlier than formerly. After a time she has more or less undefined pains. It may be an occasional ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... neither good nor useful. The excellent books he has poisoned as though by opiates! The dull books he has made duller! No one has cause to love him unless it be the authors of weak books, who thank their dull critics for exposing them in reviews so tedious that no one discovers what the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... summer of 1635 was preliminary to a much larger exodus in the fall. In October a company of about sixty men, women, and children, driving before them their cows, horses, and swine, set out by land and reached the Connecticut "after a tedious and difficult journey";[49] but the winter set in very early, and the vessels which were to bring their provisions by water not appearing, they were forced to leave their settlement for fear of famine. ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... that I am deceiv'd, But that I should believe thee, after all thy Treachery. But prithee tell me why thou treat'st me thus? Why didst thou with the sacred Vows of Marriage, After a long and tedious Courtship to me, Ravish me from my Parents and my Husband? For so the brave Alonzo ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... or three days before the shooting season begins are invariably very tedious in the country, and I passed my morning chiefly in roaming through the park and pleasure grounds, and I hardly need say that, during those rambles, my thoughts were chiefly occupied with the intimacy which had taken place between my mother and Lord de Versely. On the third morning after my arrival ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... intelligent Iban of the Undup district: Once a year they make a big feast for Singalang Burong and sing for about twelve hours, calling him and Klieng and all the Petara to the feast. (This is the ceremony known as BURONG GAWAI. It is a most tedious and monotonous performance after the first few hours.) In olden days Singalang Burong used to come to these feasts in person as a man just like an Iban in appearance and behaviour. At the end of the feast he would go out, take off his coat, and fly away in the form of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:—firstly, the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... my van. Night had fallen, and it must have been about nine o'clock. The guns had suddenly ceased firing. Our lantern had burnt itself out, and the rest of our wait was made more tedious by darkness. An empty train passed us, and then silence fell once more upon the spot where we waited anxiously to be allowed to go forward towards our brothers-in-arms. Oh! how I longed to join them, even if it were only in the middle of a bloody ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... brought the depressing intelligence that, after tedious delays, the Elector had decided that he could not see his way to offering Mozart the engagement which he sought. Nothing remained to be done, therefore, but to relinquish the idea of wintering in Mannheim. But coupled with this announcement of failure, Wolfgang had let ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... it belongs to the same school of fiction as Treasure Island. There may be theological contentions here and there that interrupt the action of the story as they interrupt the interest of Grace Abounding. But the tedious passages are extraordinarily few, considering that the author had the passions of a preacher. No doubt the fact that, when he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, he was not definitely thinking of the edification of his neighbours, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... what the result may be, though we may hope for the best. He has sent in a thoroughly trustworthy trained nurse, but he agrees with me that it would be a good thing if one of your daughters could come to take charge of the household, for even if all goes as well as possible it will be a long and tedious recovery, and the invalid must be kept perfectly quiet and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... under-foremen whom he liked best were on the day shift. The night's work with none of those pleasant little momentary interruptions that used to occur in the daytime was mere unrelieved drudgery, but the afternoons, when he had given up trying to sleep any longer, were tedious enough to make him long ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... me. The Admiralty readily complied with a request that promised such advantage to the republic of letters. They accordingly embarked with me, and participated in all the dangers and sufferings of our tedious and fatiguing navigation. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... outraged her. That fellow possesses the sense of love. Love is a simple and primitive act. It's a struggle, it's hatred. Violence is necessary to it. Love by mutual consent is merely a tedious obligation." ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... The waiting was tedious. But at last, about three in the afternoon, word was received that four tramps, heavily armed, had been captured about ten miles ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... the protection afforded by your brand-new silk umbrella. By-and-by the dull paper gets finished, and somebody who lives in an adjoining house volunteers to provide you with luncheon. Then you adjourn to the parish church, where an old gentleman of feeble eyesight reads a long and tedious account of all the persons whose monuments are or are not to be found upon the walls of that poky little building. Nobody listens to him; but everybody carries away a vague impression that some one or other, temp. Henry the Second, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the hereditary estate of her husband the lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on the nearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... hours of tedious travelling—in the flaming glow of day, or in the still, cool watches of the night, he had with him a recollection—Lilith Ormskirk's face haunted him. Those eyes seemed to follow him—sweet, serious; or again mirthful, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... give even a short account of the whole family, would be tedious. I shall, therefore, only slightly notice that branch of it from which he was descended. Why, or whence, the first of the Sulpicii who had the cognomen of Galba, was so called, is uncertain. Some are of opinion, that it was because he set fire to a city in Spain, after ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... shown the reader sufficiently, or at least to the best of our knowledge, and perhaps at tedious length, what was the present position of Grandsir Dolliver, we may let our story pass onward, though at such a pace as suits the feeble ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the weary hours as of things that must be just lived through, and endured, and beguiled, if possible, until the fire again fall. But life is a larger and a nobler business than that; and one learns the lesson sooner, if one takes the suffering home to one's soul, not as a tedious interlude, but as the very melody and march of life itself, even though it crash into discords, or falter in ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... professional matters, and how well she turned the conversation! By the way, she talked about professional matters herself; but then with what fun and humour she told the story of her comrade, Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humour like Irish humour. Her father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how fine of him, giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the pet of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue my fencing, or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... process, and consumed considerable time. This, together with the making of the percussion caps, was the tedious part of all the preparations. Every energy was put forth to get the different things required. Harry and Tom had made up the fort, and John suggested the idea of having a drill exercise in setting it up, so that the work ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... dragoons, to march by the way of Brechin; giving orders to the one as well as the other to summon the country people to remove the snow on the roads, which, being then very deep, made their march very heavy and tedious. His Grace having divided the rest of his army into two bodies, for marching with the greater expedition; and the rebel army having marched in two columns, on the 5th, in the morning, General Cadogan with the infantry marched towards Aberbrothick, and at the same time the ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... justice of their cause, we shall examine the principle, on which it subsisted among the ancients. But as this principle was the same among all nations, and as a citation from many of their histories would not be less tedious than unnecessary, we shall select the example of the Romans for ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... that all statistical statements are tedious, and I believe that but few readers believe them. I will, however, venture to give the populations of these States in the order I have named them, seeing that power in America depends almost entirely on population. The census of 1860 ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... conversation from the great novelist. The farmer was employed to drive them two or three times a week. They occasionally visited Tennyson, whose home is only three miles distant, though a rather tedious drive, since it is up hill nearly all the way. George Eliot did not enjoy the ride much, for the farmer told us that, 'withal her being such a mighty clever body,—she were very nervous in a carriage—allays ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... was a very tedious affair to one guest at least. Major Morrell and the officers told good stories and sung doubtful songs, and passed the wine and grew hilarious; but Sir Everard Kingsland chafed horribly under it all, and longed for ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... going to church; they went to please Lull. The service was long and dull, and though each one of them had a private plan to while away the time they found it very tedious. ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... /n./ Imaginary sound that a computer program makes as it labors with a tedious or difficult task. Compare {cruncha cruncha cruncha}, {grind} ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... inanimate objects. When objects apparently quite untouched become volatile, the mystery is deeper. This apparent animation and frolicsome behaviour of inanimate objects is reported all through history, and attested by immense quantities of evidence of every degree. It would be tedious to give a full account of the antiquity and diffusion of reports about such occurrences. We find them among Neo-Platonists, in the English and Continental Middle Ages, among Eskimo, Hurons, Algonkins, Tartars, Zulus, Malays, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... not always—the very heart of the dramatic; how pantomime may be skillfully used to condense salient parts of the playlet story and illumine character; how business may be employed to break up a clumsy but necessarily long speech—thus sometimes saving a playlet from the failure of the tedious;—and why business is more productive of comedy than is dialogue. We have concluded that the playlet writer must not ape what has already been done, but can win success only in the measure he succeeds in bringing to his playlet new business which makes his ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Camb., and entered the Church, becoming Rector of Hilgay, Norfolk. He wrote The Purple Island (1633), a poem in 10 books, giving an elaborate allegorical description of the body and mind of man, which, though tedious and fanciful, contains some fine passages, recalling the harmonious sweetness of Spenser, whose disciple the poet was. He was also the author of Piscatory Dialogues. GILES, the younger, was also ed. at Camb., and, like his brother, became a country parson, being ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... thoughts skipped before him like dancing children. The life he was leading was not the noblest; he had no illusions on that score; but he was no longer a loafer waiting in luxurious ease for the curtain to fall upon a dull first act in a tedious drama, but a man of action, quite capable of holding ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... shall not feel perfectly easy till those two provinces are annexed to the United States as Nature seems to have designd, and the unmolested Right to the Fishery is secured to us. I believe my letter is become tedious to you. I will conclude with mentioning that several Persons have hinted to me the Necessity of establishing an American Consul in France. If it should be thought expedient to propose it to Congress & they should judge it proper, Mr Perez Moulton2 (whom you know) desires me to inform the ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... plumpness, would instantly scent the irony (while my companion, I fancy, might even plume himself), "and to beget your wisdom is chiefly why the world was made. You are so good as to propose an acceleration of that tedious multitudinous evolution upon which I am engaged. I gather, a universal tongue would serve you there. While I sit here among these mountains—I have been filing away at them for this last aeon or so, just to attract your hotels, you know—will ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... low feverish affection,' Dr. Maryland hastened to say. 'May be tedious, perhaps, for a while, but shews no dangerous symptoms at present. We must not anticipate evil, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... power, would prevent him from abusing it; but was it to be expected that he, who, while yet an inferior, never spoke, even to his superiors, but in the language of command, now that he was the conqueror and master of them all, could submit to tedious and minute details of ceremony? He, however, displayed moderation, and even tried to make himself agreeable; but it was obviously an effort, and not without allowing the fatigue it gave him to be perceived. Among these princes, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... buildings became perceptible, though only darkly and indistinctly, in the gorge, and after some hesitation, Plattner began to clamber down the precipitous descent towards them. The descent was long and exceedingly tedious, being so not only by the extraordinary steepness, but also by reason of the looseness of the boulders with which the whole face of the hill was strewn. The noise of his descent—now and then his heels struck fire from the rocks—seemed now the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
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