|
|
|
More "Thankless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enemies who hungered for her life as being the only puissance able to stand between English triumph and French degradation. Sold to a French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the French nation standing thankless by and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hand and kissed her cheek, but she never shed a tear; she had been wont to weep like a watering pot when I went back to school or college after a visit, and I had always left her, loaded with biscuits and blessings, thankless prodigal that I was! and disposed to laugh at her display of maternal sorrow. How grateful to my wounded and sorrowful spirit, my outraged heart, would such a demonstration of love now have been! but all were alike heartless and cold to-day, and she smiled serenely under ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... world, they have to be fortified by a draught of fresh blood. The subject is summed up by Achilles, when Odysseus felicitates him on the honour which he enjoys, even in Hades: "Tell me not of comfort in death," he says: "I had rather be the thrall of the poorest wight that ever tilled a thankless soil for bread, than rule as king over all ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... with others of the rankest and most intolerable odour: but a diet of alternate sweetmeats and emetics is for the average of eaters and drinkers no less unpalatable than unwholesome. It is useless and thankless to enlarge on such faults or such defects, as it would be useless and senseless to ignore. But how to enlarge, to expatiate, to insist on the charm of Herrick at his best—a charm so incomparable and so ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... of use in time—in time, and here were hives of children growing up in heathenism. Suddenly an idea struck her— Richard, when at home, was a very diligent teacher in the Sunday- school at Stoneborough, though it was a thankless task, and he was the only gentleman so engaged, except the two clergymen—the other male teachers being a formal, grave, little baker, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... his reading-lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which is the expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God) were shut out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night, he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and went to sleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his old companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that was doomed ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mouth the words nigh flew - The past, the future, I forgat 'em: "Oh! if you'd kiss me as you do That thankless atom!" ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the south provided inadequate compensation. The part assigned to the British contingents under General Milne, which had taken over the front from the Vardar eastwards past Doiran and down the Struma to the sea, was the somewhat thankless one of pinning the Bulgars to that sector and preventing them from reinforcing the threatened line in the west. The various British attacks on villages east of the Struma, such as Nevolien, Jenikoi, Prosenik, and Barakli-Djuma, were thus merely raids, and the ground gained was soon ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... when bullets are often thicker than prayers, we are not quite thankless for the prayers of others: in those days they were what "closing quotations" are on the Stock Exchange, ink in Fleet Street, machinery in the Midlands; common but valued; and Rodriguez' thanks ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... which Men have done their Masters in the Extremity of their Fortunes; and shewn to their undone Patrons, that Fortune was all the Difference between them; but as I design this my Speculation only [as a [1]] gentle Admonition to thankless Masters, I shall not go out of the Occurrences of Common Life, but assert it as a general Observation, that I never saw, but in Sir ROGER'S Family, and one or two more, good Servants treated as they ought to be. Sir ROGER'S ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... man and I talked it over. We decided that it would be a thankless task for him to spend the summers in ardent endeavour to educate the countryside by browning his back in public. That did not appeal to us as a fitting life-task; moreover, his project would frequently be interrupted by the town marshal. As a matter ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... Brian lay, meanwhile, in all the dignity and solemnity of funeral state, awaiting burial. As Sir Bryan toiled at his thankless task he found himself becoming strangely impressed. There seemed to be a weird and awesome significance in the scene. He did not know why it was, but the beetling crags above him, the consciousness of the marvellous plains below, the rhythmic murmur of the wind in the pine trees near at hand, the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... not done with the theme yet. On returning from the equator, I saw Campbell's funeral. Westminster Abbey was a mob of dukes, statesmen, privy-councillors, and men of countless acres. Poor Tom's whole life had been thankless toil; wasting in meagre industry the powers which ought to have been cherished by his country for purposes of national honour. Such is always the course of things. The very stones of Burns' pillars would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... nights that the lawless blood of the Lorrigans ran swiftly through the veins of Tom, who had set himself to win a million honestly. It was then that he remembered his quiet, law-abiding years regretfully, as time wasted; a thankless struggle toward the regard of his fellow men. Of what avail to plod along the path of uprightness when no man would point to him and say, "There ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... days and oh! wicked the weather— Endless and thankless the round— Grinding God's Grit into rookies together; I was the upper stone, he was the nether, And Gad, sir, they groaned as we ground! Bitter the blame (but he helped me to bear it), Grim the despair that we ate! But hell's loose! The dam's down, and none can ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... moment. It was thirty feet, sheer, to the rocks below. And it would have been poor Dick on top of his foolish mistress. Kate really expected nothing better until with a terrific snort the pony scrambled to safety. What a horse will do for thankless man! ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... venom'd tooth; [xvii] 390 Say, if Remembrance days like these endears, Beyond the rapture of succeeding years? Say, can Ambition's fever'd dream bestow So sweet a balm to soothe your hours of woe? Can Treasures hoarded for some thankless Son, Can Royal Smiles, or Wreaths by slaughter won, Can Stars or Ermine, Man's maturer Toys, (For glittering baubles are not left to Boys,) Recall one scene so much belov'd to view, As those where Youth her garland ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the trials of the commander, his troops, hastily got together, were most of them impatient of restraint or discipline, and with no knowledge of warfare, while the governor and the House of Burgesses demanded that he undertake impossibilities. It was a dreary, trying, thankless task. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the main object the Khedive and his advisers had in view when they invited Gordon to accept the post of Governor of the Equatorial Provinces in succession to Sir Samuel Baker, who resigned what he found after many years' experience was a hopeless and thankless task. The post was in one sense peculiar. It was quite distinct from that of the Egyptian Governor-General at Khartoum, who retained his separate and really superior position in the administration of the Upper Nile region. Moreover, the finances of the Equatorial districts were ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... themselves. Forster was filled with indignation and contempt by the confused utterances of the Ministry, and by Mr. Gladstone's elaborate attempts to prove that though General Gordon was "hemmed in" he was not surrounded. Poor Mr. Gladstone! It was sad indeed that he should have to undertake this thankless task, and should be compelled to make out a case for a Cabinet which had practically got out of hand. It was in connection with one of his apologies for the Ministry that Mr. Forster charged him with being able to persuade most people of almost anything, and himself of everything. This chance ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... control of the New York delegation remained unbroken. The minority tried new arguments, planned new combinations, and racked their brains for new devices, but when Richmond finally gave up the hopeless and thankless task of harmonising the Douglasites and seceders, a vote of 27 to 43 forced the minority of the delegation into submission by the screw of the Syracuse unit rule, and New York finally sustained ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... question the peasants, our neighbours, they tell me that the effect of the egg-shell is as simple as can be: the Butterflies, attracted by the whiteness, come and lay their eggs upon it. Broiled by the sun and lacking all nourishment on that thankless support, the little caterpillars die; and that makes so ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... grievance which Fricka remembers, and does not let her spouse forget, when the evil consequences of his act are upon them. Fricka constitutes something of a living reproach to her husband, though a certain tender regard still exists between them through the introductory Opera. A thankless part is Fricka's, like that of Reason in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the year seasons return, but not to me." It would, however, be most ungrateful to complain. To live at all is a great favor—an undeserved and unspeakable favor; and though it be a life of pain and weariness, and even grief, may it never become a life of thankless ingratitude! We who have tried our heavenly Father's patience so long, dare we complain ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that she might never have a child, or, if she had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her which she had shown to him; that she might feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear him out, but in a rage ordered his horses to be saddled and set out with his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was not in vain that these women toiled every weary day until exhaustion compelled them to case. It was not in vain that they passed their cheerless lives bending with aching shoulders over the thankless work that barely brought them bread. It was not in vain that they and their children went famished and in rags, for after all, the principal object of their labour was accomplished: the Good Cause was advanced. Mr Sweater waxed rich and increased ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... said Hackee the Second, feeling Phil's nose anxiously. "I thought I might have bitten it off just now when you got in my way," he said to Phil with much relief, finding it was still there. "Never come between fighting creatures, boy—it's a thankless task." ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... who are little, frank, honest-hearted creatures, and say out what they think, as such plebeian people will, used to tell her roundly she was thankless for the supreme excellence ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,—but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation; veritas odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be busie with voe vobis, let him looke shortly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... beginning to understand, now, something of what you meant when you used to talk so enthusiastically about your confining, and, as it seemed to me, often thankless work. I never knew what real satisfaction was until I began to get mixed up with this volunteer Red Cross work. Coming from the source that it does, you will probably be surprised and amused at the statement that, when I look back on the old, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... born orator: an unambitious man in a country where ambition is an endemic disease. To find a parallel to his position, one must go back to the days when nations, in need of wise guidance, implored reluctant sages to undertake the task of guiding them. This thankless task M. Zaimis performed several times to everybody's temporary satisfaction. On the present, as on other occasions, he enjoyed the confidence of the Entente Powers, {68} as well as the confidence of the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... and instructing upon American topics, but to what has already been said concerning his services and opinions abroad, there is nothing of importance to be added occurring within two or three years after the repeal. While, however, he played the often thankless part of instructor to the English, he had the courage to assume the even less popular role of a moderator towards the colonists. He made it his task to soothe passion and to preach reason. He did not do this as a trimmer; never was one word of compromise uttered by him throughout all these ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... something very difficult," said the other, after a silence. "I have tried to talk to you frankly. It is the most thankless task in the world to tell ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... easy one and it grew harder as the season progressed and the second team, especially as to its linemen, failed to develop the ability Mr. Boutelle looked for. Don more than once was on the point of resigning his somewhat thankless task, but Tim refused to sanction it, and what Tim said had a good deal of influence ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... for sin? Could I offend, if I had never been, But still increas'd the senseless happy mass, Flow'd in the stream, or shiver'd in the grass? "Father of mercies! why from silent earth Didst thou awake, and curse me into birth? Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, And make a thankless present of thy light? Push into being a reverse of thee, And animate a clod with misery? "The beasts are happy; they come forth, and keep Short watch on earth, and then lie down to sleep. Pain is for man; and oh! how vast a pain For crimes, which made the Godhead bleed in vain! ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... some bargain to arrange, and his old parents are put down last in the accounts, after the customers and the joiner's work. Ah! if I could have guessed how it would have turned out! Fool! to have sacrificed my likings and my money, for nearly twenty years, to the education of a thankless son! Was it for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my friends, to become an example to the neighborhood? The jovial good fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... been sought with importunity, is received with coldness, or enjoyed with ingratitude. No sooner is the blessing bestowed, no sooner is the tear of agony dried up, than every pledge is forgotten, and the mind relapses into thankless indifference. The sun shines, and our impressions pass away with the storm. But Hannah adopted a measure well calculated to excite every member of the family, and his mother in particular, to a perpetual recurrence to the goodness of Providence. She was resolved upon an expedient, by which the flame ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... me not to take much amiss what Mr Milton had said touching that thankless court, which had indeed but poorly requited his own good service. He only said, therefore, "Another rebellion! Alas! alas! Mr Milton! If there be no choice but between despotism and anarchy, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fire may come, and it may be Bury'd, my friend, as far from thee. Thy vessel that yon ocean stems, Loaded with golden dust and gems, Purchased with so much pains and cost, Yet in a tempest may be lost. Pimps, and a lot of others,—a thankless crew, Priests, pickpockets, and lawyers too, All help by several ways to drain, Thanking themselves for what they gain. The liberal are secure alone, For what we frankly give, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... partly, he desired to leave the administration free from his overpowering presence, that it might learn to go alone; partly and chiefly, he wished to spend such time as might remain to him where he could do most service to his country. But he was growing weary of the thankless burden. He was heard often to say that he had lived long enough. Men of high nature do not find the task of governing their ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... she could not help it. She was overflowing with the milk of human kindness, and, rather than let any of that valuable liquid go to waste, she poured some of it, not inappropriately, on the thankless cat. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... chances, you will be a failure; but you will be trusted and loved by children and simple people; they will depend upon you, and you will make the atmosphere in which you live one of peace and joy. You will have selfish employers, tyrannical masters, thankless children perhaps, for whom you will slave lovingly. They will slight you and even despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and yours will be the face that they will remember when they come to die, as that of the ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... prefers, each one makes a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able; for no one is compelled, but gives voluntarily. These gifts are, as it were, piety's deposit fund. For they are taken thence and spent, not on feasts and drinking-bouts, and thankless eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined to the house, likewise the shipwrecked, and if there happen ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... and perhaps of outlawed thief or murderer, the privations and hardships of the way; and the heavy fines which occur in the king's rolls for non-attendance show how anxiously great numbers of the suitors avoided joining in the troublesome and thankless business of the court. When they reached the place of trial a strange medley of business awaited them as questions arose of criminal jurisdiction, of feudal tenure, of English "sac and soc," of Norman franchises and Saxon liberties, with procedure ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... what I have made thee. Bethink thee of all the bounty these hands have lavished on thee. Thou art my own lieutenant, and mayest one day be more. In Algiers there is none above thee save myself. Art, then, so thankless as to deny me the first thing I ask of thee? Truly is it ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... difficult affairs of State. He did, however, actually nominate in April his bastard brother, Don John of Austria, the famous victor of Lepanto, as Requesens' successor. But Don John, who was then in Italy, had other ambitions, and looked with suspicion upon Philip's motives in assigning him the thankless task of dealing with the troubles in the Low Countries. Instead of hurrying northwards, he first betook himself to Madrid where he met with a cold reception. Delay, however, so far from troubling Philip, was thoroughly in accordance ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... francaise en 1890" (by an anonymous ecclesiastic), p. 72. (On the smaller parishes.) "The task of the cure here is thankless if he is zealous, too easy if he has no zeal. In any event, he is an isolated man, with no resources whatever, tempted by all the demons of solitude and inactivity."—Ibid.,,92. "Our authority among the common classes as well ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... comfort and soothing to her; while, as they reached the door, the boy rushed forward, and, clasping Ursula's robe, sobbed out—"Dear dame, not one farewell for your little Angelo! Forgive him all he has cost you! Now, for the first time, I feel how wayward and thankless ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... out retrenchment is ever an unpleasant and thankless job, and the first six months of our new regime was no exception to the rule. If you remember, the military forces of the colony comprised no less than four separate systems—the Regulars or Permanent Artillery, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... his lecture on sledging diets. He has shown great courage in undertaking the task, great perseverance in unearthing facts from books, and a considerable practical skill in stringing these together. It is a thankless task to search polar literature for dietary facts and still more difficult to attach due weight to varying statements. Some authors omit discussion of this important item altogether, others fail to note alterations made in practice or additions afforded by circumstances, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Full many a thankless child has been, But never one like mine; Her meat was served on plates of gold, Her drink was rosy wine; But now she 'll share the robin's food, And sup the common rill, Before her feet will turn again To meet ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... what with waiting on the invalids—for Faith was far from well—and with answering the incessant calls at the door of curious people flocking to inquire, Glory McWhirk was kept busy and tired. But not with a thankless duty, as in the days gone by, that she remembered; it was heart work now, and brought heart love as its reward. It was one of ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... lady who had presented them to him. "I began by sending two of them to people to whom I am indifferent. That made me think of the difference there is between a present and a testimony of friendship. The first will never find in me anything but a thankless heart; the second.... Ah, if you had only given me news of yourself without sending me anything else, how rich and how grateful you would have made me; instead of that the pullets are eaten, and the best thing I can do is to forget all about ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... opportunity of annoying him. Leagued with the arch-enemy were two subordinate clerks, Gyanendra and Lakshminarain by name, who belonged to Debnath Babu's gusti (family). This trio so managed matters that all the hardest and most thankless work fell to Pulin's lot. He bore their pin-pricks with equanimity, secure in the ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... his fingers cold. "Why fear?" I thought. "Let me be bold "No Polyphemus he; what harm "In such a child?—Then I'll be calm!" The playful boy drew out a dart, Shook his fair locks, and to my heart His shaft he launch'd.—"Love is my name," He thankless cried, "I hither came "To tame thee. In thine ardent pain "Of Cupid think and young Climene."— "Ah! now I know thee, little scamp, "Ungrateful, cruel boy! Decamp!" Cupid a saucy caper cut, Skipped through the door, and as it shut, "My bow," he taunting ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... questions also showed the sort of work to be done in this thankless protection of the metropolis. During one of the sessions there had appeared in the lobby an excellent man, Dr. Levi Silliman Ives, formerly Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, who, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... what seemed a necessity of petty literary patriotism,—I know not what else to call it,—and took charge of our thankless little Dial, here, without subscribers enough to pay even a publisher, much less any laborer; it has no penny for editor or contributor, nothing but abuse in the newspapers, or, at best, silence; but it serves as a sort of portfolio, to carry about a few poems or sentences which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... Babhru stood gazing at her, like one struck by a thunderbolt, Chamu said again: Thou owest me not abuse, but gratitude, O woodman: for see, I have brought her back to thee, all across the sand, where many in my place would have left her in the middle of the way, for it was a thankless task, and she was a cross-grained burden, that was very loath to come at all. So as thou seest, thou wert very wrong, to call even Atirupa robber: for here she is again. And the women are silly creatures, who only ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... moment of strong temptation to everybody, but especially to Mrs. Kilfoyle, who had in her mind that vivid picture of her precious cloak receding from her along the wet road, recklessly wisped up in the grasp of as thankless a thievin' black-hearted slieveen as ever stepped, and not yet, perhaps, utterly out of reach, though every fleeting instant carried it nearer to that hopeless point. However, she and her neighbours stood ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... calling, thankless friend, Balls you may not, but church you shall, attend. Some recognition cannot be denied To the great mercy that has turned aside The sword of death from us and let it fall Upon the people's necks in Montreal; That ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... A thankless creature was Barbro this evening. A new silver ring—she might at least have thanked him nicely for it. It must be that clerk with the town ways that had turned her head. Axel could not help saying: "I'd like to know what that fellow ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... forgotten;—a harder lot in part; for thou hadst, at least, in thy stirring and magnificent career, continued excitement and perpetual triumph. But I, a woman, shut out by my sex from contest, from victory, am left only the thankless task to devise the rewards which others are to enjoy; the petty plot, the poor intrigue, the toil without the honour, the humiliation without the revenge;—yet have I worked in thy cause, my father, and thou—thou, couldst thou see my heart, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visible ruler of the Shore of Refuge. Belarab still lingered at his father's tomb. Whether that man of the embittered and pacific heart had withdrawn there to meditate upon the unruliness of mankind and the thankless nature of his task; or whether he had gone there simply to bathe in a particularly clear pool which was a feature of the place, give himself up to the enjoyment of a certain fruit which grew in profusion there and indulge for a time in ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... sight and hearing even of three or four enlisted men, orderlies, horse-holders, etc., had the post commander spoken words that meant nothing short of discredit, if not disgrace, to the subaltern who was at that very instant riding away on a perilous as well as thankless mission. Deep, embarrassed silence fell on one and all of the major's hearers for a single instant. Cranston reddened with indignation, little Sanders with wrath. Truman looked quickly and curiously about him. All three were eager and ready to speak, yet by common consent the duty devolved ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Dialogues of Plato, was another martyr; from whose ashes arose the Royal Literary Fund, which has prevented many struggling authors from sharing his fate. Seventeen long years of labour, besides a handsome fortune, did Edmund Castell spend on his Lexicon Heptaglotton; but a thankless and ungrateful public refused to relieve him of the copies of this learned work, which ruined his health while it dissipated his fortune. These are only a few names which might be mentioned out of the many. What a noble army of martyrs Literature ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... made known. The rupture was made, Gordon had decided to serve the Khedive no longer, and at the beginning of the year 1880 he returned home for the rest that he required, mentally and physically, after six years' incessant hard work in the thankless task of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... own sandals. Silvestro, bathed in sweat, his fair skin burnt and blistered, his delicate hands and smooth legs scratched by brambles, his slender neck bowed beneath the weights he carried on shoulders stretched to cracking point—Silvestro worked from dawn to dusk, rejoicing in the thankless office. Thankless it was, since Master Pilade took no sort of notice; yet Silvestro gave thanks. Pilade allowed the other to stoop to his shoe-ties, to wind the swathes about his sturdy calves, to carry his very cloak and staff, while he slouched along with hands deep in breeches pockets, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... imagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne—a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame Sand. I passed a couple ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... fortified? These are mysteries into which I shall not attempt to enter, speculations with which I have no concern; it is sufficient for us to know that all human effort had never seemed to her so barren and thankless as on that fatal afternoon. Her eyes rested on the boats she saw in the distance, and she wondered if in one of them Verena were floating to her fate; but so far from straining forward to beckon her home she almost wished that she might glide away for ever, that she might ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Pelerinage," together with the manuscript of Seroff's arrangement for two pianofortes of Beethoven's C-sharp minor Quartet. Will you be so good as to get Schott to let me know the fate of the C-sharp minor Quartet? Although two-piano arrangements are somewhat thankless articles of sale, yet perhaps Schott may manage to bring out this Quartet, of which I should ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... get it. There were the diseased, the educated, the ignorant, the deformed, the blind, the evil, the honest, the mad, and the sane. Some in real professional beggars' style called down blessings on me; others were morose and glum, while some were impudent and thankless, and said to supply them with food was just what I should do, for the swagmen kept the squatters—as, had the squatters not monopolized the land, the swagmen would have had plenty. A moiety of the last-mentioned—dirty, besotted, ragged creatures—had a glare in their ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... assumed the duty of replying to that very explicit statement. "There is none here," he said, "that is not grateful for the benevolence he has received at the hands of the Tokugawa. If there be such a thankless and disloyal person, and if he conceive treacherous designs, I, Masamune, will be the first to attack him and strike him down. The shogun need not move so much as one soldier." With this spirited reply all the assembled daimyo expressed their concurrence, and Iemitsu proceeded to distribute ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... life (see on Beyle, sup. p. 149) of French peace time, and, in the way of active service, only what all soldiers hate, the thankless and inglorious police-work which comes on them through civil disturbance. Whether he was exactly the kind of man to have enjoyed the livelier side of martialism may be the subject of considerable doubt. But at any rate he had no chance of it, and his framework ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... saleswomen less dangerously affected than herself. Some, of feeble organization, quickly broke down, under this unnatural discipline, and abandoned the shop, sometimes rendered temporary invalids, sometimes permanently disabled, while but few returned to fill their thankless places. Reading, while in the shop, whether employed or not, was out of the question, as that also was strictly prohibited. There was therefore no recreation either of body or mind, even when it might have been harmlessly permitted. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... of the same academic sagacity or lucidity of appreciation which found utterance in other contemporary protests of the universities against the universe. In that abyss of dulness "The Return from Parnassus," a reader or a diver who persists in his thankless toil will discover this pearl of a fact—that men of culture had no more hesitation in preferring Watson to Shakespeare than they have in preferring Byron to Shelley. The author of the one deserves ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... change the doom, his justice had decreed, And save the guilty from perdition's storm; Celestial victim in a human form! Whose mediation, soft'ning wrath supreme, Taught nature to revive, in mercy's beam. Gracious Restorer of a race condemn'd, Tho' by the thankless tribes revil'd, contemn'd. Yet gratitude, and truth, who round Thee fly, With all thy menial angels of the sky, Viewing thy gifts with rapturous amaze, Hail thy beneficence with heavenly praise: All bear eternal witness, ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... Ashestiel had been exchanged for Abbotsford; the new house was being planned and carried out so as to become, if not exactly a palace, something much more than the cottage which had been first talked of; and the owner's passion for buying, at extravagant prices, every neighbouring patch of mostly thankless soil that he could get hold of was growing by indulgence. He himself, in 1811 and the following years, was extremely happy and extremely busy, planting trees, planning rooms, working away at Rokeby and Triermain in the general sitting-room of the makeshift house, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... It is a thankless task to labor for the elevation of the degraded, and oftentimes we are stung with the ingratitude of those whom we have desired to aid. But God, who has enjoined this unpleasant duty upon us, has borne our daily ingratitude without casting us off, and ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... opened it herself with the inevitably thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs. Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... repay; So they danced for joy, when at last he rose And silently flew away. Then little Clover bowed her head, While her soft tears fell like dew; For her gentle heart was grieved, to find That her sisters' words were true, And the insect she had watched so long When helpless, poor, and lone, Thankless for all her faithful care, On his golden wings had flown. But as she drooped, in silent grief, She heard little Daisy cry, "O sisters, look! I see him now, Afar in the sunny sky; He is floating back from Cloud-Land now, Borne by the fragrant air. Spread wide your leaves, that he ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... in no sense your business to dictate to others as to what they may or may not, should or should not, read, and if you attempt to assume such responsibility you will make unnumbered enemies, and take upon yourself a thankless and ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... on my present errand, I should have supposed him insane. I enjoyed the mountains, as I rode along. The views are magnificent—the valleys so beautiful, the scenery so peaceful. What a glorious world Almighty God has given us. How thankless and ungrateful we are, and how we labour to mar his gifts. I hope you received my letters from Richmond. Give love to daughter and Mildred. I did not see Rob as I passed through Charlottesville. He was at the University and I could ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... as if the fair promise of eloquence and statesmanship had been shown to public life only to be withdrawn from it; but a path was about to be opened, leading to a new field of action, distant, indeed, and often thankless, but giving scope for the exercise of gifts, both of mind and character, which can rarely be exhibited in a Parliamentary career. In March 1842, at the early age of thirty, he was selected by Lord Stanley, who was then Secretary for the Colonies, for ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of the time I want to lie down and cry. Everything seems to me so impossible. I do not make things go very well, and I feel that my life is an absolute and irretrievable failure. Perhaps I am thankless, but I so often feel that I should like to give it up and die. However, I presume that if I could have the opportunity I should at once desire ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... understanding was especially difficult for him without previous acquaintance even with all the details that were known and apprehended by his friends, he yet saw enough to lead him to the belief that the work they wished him to do in Greece would be harder and more thankless than they supposed. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... the thankless task before you, subject to ribald jest, to the cold, heartless sneer, to obloquy and abuse of all sorts from our and even your sex, who are most immediately to be benefited by your labors, will have this great truth to console and stimulate you, that in every step of this grand procession in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the latitude of Naples, the word grazie (thank you) vanishes from the vocabulary of all save the most cultured. But to conclude therefrom that one is among a thankless race is not altogether the right inference. They have a wholly different conception of the affair. Our septentrional "thanks" is a complicated product in which gratefulness for things received and for things to come are unconsciously balanced; while their point ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days, But the ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... remnant which may be to come I am content; and for the past I feel Not thankless,—for within the crowded sum Of struggles, happiness at times would steal, And for the present, I would not benumb My feelings farther.—Nor shall I conceal That with all this I still can look around And worship Nature with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "A thankless office, my dear. If you could make all the world wise, it would do, but fools are always angry with you for ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... by the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise —That last infirmity of noble mind— To scorn delights, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... slay me is to slay one who should rather be selected for commendation a kindred spirit, a well-wisher, a man after your own heart, a promoter, if I may be bold to say it, of your pursuits. See to it that you catch not the tone of our latter-day philosophers, and be thankless, petulant, and hard of heart, to him that ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... working upon land which his father had given him, in the hope that he would marry and settle down. He had become restless. The village was beginning to look small, and he asked himself with wonderment how he had been content in it so long. The work was hard and thankless. Was this life? Was there nothing beyond this? Was there not not a great world outside the forest? What was this? Was it not stagnation? The woods—yes, the woods were beautiful, but why was it they made him sad? Why was ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... in this thankless world the giver Is envied even by the receiver; 'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion Rather to hide than own the obligation: Nay, 'tis much worse than so; It now an artifice does grow Wrongs and injuries to do, Lest men should think ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Thou art not bigger Than is the diamond in my ring; Yet, every black, star-gazing nigger Looks at thee, as at some great thing! Yes, gazes at thee, till the lazy And thankless ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... White Man's burden— Have done with childish days— The lightly proffered laurel The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... little shavers, your mothers did for you more than any one else in the world would do. They did things that a father would do about once. Then he would be ready to give up his job. But your mothers went right on day after day, year after year, doing hard, thankless, disagreeable things. I bet you get this preached to you a lot, boys, but I want to say it to you, too. If you are away from them, write a letter, a real letter once each week. It is not much to do. Do it, boys! And don't forget the kisses. If you kiss your mother every ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... Oh, thankless Crimean land! in ruin laid Are now the castles that were once your pride! Here serpents and the owls from daylight hide, And robbers arm them for the nightly raid. Upon the lettered marble boasts are made, Brave words on battered arms in gold descried, And broken splendor years have scattered ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... it soon required more room. Men have been taken into membership since the object for which the society was formed seemed to be feasible, and, as a natural result, whatever of financial and honorary reward may be accorded the self-sacrificing women who performed the arduous and thankless labor of founding the institution, will be shared with the men who now come into ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the Samaritans are Simonians. The accounts of Simon's death again are contradictory; if Simon perished so miserably at Rome, it is the reverse of probable that the Romans would have set up a statue in his honour. But, indeed, it is a somewhat thankless task to criticize such manifest inventions; we know the source of their inspiration, and we know the fertility of the religious imagination, especially in matters of controversy, and this is a sufficient sieve wherewith to sift ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... the basilicas of the apostles received, in the devastation of the city, not their own people only, but every fugitive; and the fury and greed of the invaders were quenched at these holy thresholds. Yet with thankless arrogance and impious frenzy these men, who took refuge under that Name in order that they might enjoy the light of fugitive years, perversely oppose it now, that they may languish in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... for the stage in his day was a thankless and almost degrading occupation. "Avowedly I will never write for the stage; if I do, 'call me horse.'" he said in a letter to Terry.[125] Again in a letter to Southey: "I do not think the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them.... ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... he said, "this is one of those rare occasions in a thankless world where goodness is amply ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... "bid him bear no grudge against the Athenians." Then Nicocles, the dearest and most faithful of his friends, begged to be allowed to drink the poison first. "My friend," said he, "you ask what I am loath and sorrowful to give, but as I never yet in all my life was so thankless as to refuse you, I must gratify you in this also." After they had all drunk of it, the poison ran short; and the executioner refused to prepare more, except they would pay him twelve drachmas, to defray the cost of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... "ladies." One of my good policemen was there as usual, and saluted me profoundly. He had carried the last baby over the crossing, and guided all the venturesome small boys through the maze of trucks and horse-cars,—a difficult and thankless task, as they absolutely courted decapitation,—it being an unwritten law of conduct that each boy should weave his way through the horses' legs if practicable, and if not, should see how near he could come to grazing the wheels. Exactly at twelve o'clock, and ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... easily heard by all, and also that by this wondrous word He might shake off from our souls the sleep of sloth, and cause them to wonder and marvel at the immeasurable goodness of God to us. Therefore He saith, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" For the sake of vile sinners, for evil and thankless servants, for sinful and disobedient deceivers, Thou hast forsaken Thy beloved Son and most obedient Child. That Thy enemies, who are vessels of wrath, might be changed into children of adoption, Thou hast slain Thine own Son, and given Him over to death like one guilty. "O my God, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... It may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray that "even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best observation that ever was made upon it;" but there are surely few tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo), and either labouring to point out to us why it has triumphed, or still more unprofitably contending that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... embodied here, and this turns out to be, as usual, the clearest scientific negative that could be invented. But in the design, and in all the labour of this piece,—in the steadfast purpose that is always working out that definition, with its so exquisite, but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving it and pointing it with its pen of diamond in the rock for ever, approving itself 'to the Workmaster' only,—in this incessant design,—in this veiled, mysterious authorship,—an historical approximation ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... pre-eminent advantages for the culture of that spiritual union with God required of the Christian? And in sustaining the ordinary trials of our lot, as social beings; in cherishing forbearance toward the unjust, kindness to the thankless, and love toward those who inflict personal injuries, woman is endowed by her ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... control. Fire he utilized only for purposes of cooking food, but not for the development of machinery of warfare. He has no vessel upon all the seven seas. To seize and master and utilize these energies appeared a thankless job, albeit a necessary one. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... thankless, and uninspiring. They were camped on a hill. Day after day they marched down through the streets of the town to the railway station or the quay. They carried the wounded on stretchers from the hospital trains to the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... to give it utterance that moment is the only natural, courteous, and truthful course. Ten days hence, the reply, which now comes of its own accord, cannot be found; what might have been a source of pleasure to two persons will have become a piece of thankless drudgery. In vain the conscientious correspondent, at the appointed time, takes the letter which she would answer out of the compartment of her portfolio, whereon stationers, cunningly humoring a popular weakness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Up to the present I have never had cause to regret my choice, but at the same time I cannot too strongly advise any one who thinks of following my example to hesitate before engaging himself in tasks that entail time, expense, thankless labour, often ridicule, and not seldom great personal danger. To explain, by the application of science, phenomena attributed to spiritual agencies has been the work of my life. I have, naturally, gone through strange difficulties in ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... while the short 'large hours' toward the longer 'small hours' trend, With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat, Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street — Sinking down, sinking down, Battered wreck by tempests beat — A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... which Congress authorized must have failed but for the timely aid of three men whom Quincy would have contemptuously termed foreigners, for all like Gallatin were foreign-born—Astor, Girard, and Parish. Utterly weary of his thankless job, Gallatin seized upon the opportunity afforded by the Russian offer of mediation to leave the Cabinet and perhaps to end the war by a diplomatic stroke. He asked and received an appointment as one of ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... lessening of strain and friction in regard to the countless details of an Indian household was, in itself, an unspeakable relief. During the first few months of his marriage he had persevered steadily in the thankless task of instructing his cheerfully incompetent bride in the language and household mysteries of her adopted country. But the more patiently he helped her the more she leaned upon his help; till the futility of his task had threatened to wear his temper threadbare, and to put a severe strain on a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... taverns and digesting his drink in the sunshine. Then, when he had fasted a whole day, he would once more take up his osier with a low growl and revile the wealthy who lived in idleness. The trade of a basket-maker, when followed in such a manner, is a thankless one. Antoine's work would not have sufficed to pay for his drinking bouts if he had not contrived a means of procuring his osier at low cost. He never bought any at Plassans, but used to say that ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... inclined, and left them undone when she was idle; and she had managed to make life in the schoolroom such a purgatory that it had been difficult to persuade any teacher to stay long at the Castle, and cope with so thankless ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... about the princess, but she showed such continual curiosity about his love affairs, that he would keep her waiting while he made an entry in his diary, or other book of written notes, and then declare solemnly that the only girl he had ever loved was named Patsy, and was a thankless brat, unworthy of the care and affection of the best ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... brain about it. There were other boys who could figure out the demonstrations in advance without looking at the book. Keith tried it once or twice, but failed miserably and gave it up as a worthless and thankless job. Apparently his brain did not work in that way. It had to touch real life to be at its best. History and geography were his favourite subjects, and in those he led the class. This was openly ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... of Titusville is probably the most forlorn and dreary looking place in these United States. To describe the irregular rows of shanties bordering on impassable sloughs of mud, the scenery, the pigs, and the people, were a thankless task, as the most eloquent words would fall short of the reality. In one of the principal streets the blackened stumps still stand so thickly that the laden wagons meander among them as sinuously as the path which foxes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... beneficence— An angel deem'd, her only care To comfort and to please! Whose smiling, whose unconscious air, Bespoke a heart at ease— By her—on whom sweet hopes were built, His cup when fill'd thus rashly spilt! The treasures he had heap'd in vain, Thrown thankless on his hands again! While—father to this being blest, He saw a dagger pierce her breast, In knowledge of his former guilt! And of his projects thus bereft, What had the wretched parent left? Oh! from the wreck of all, he bore A richer, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... Copper said as she looked up from the pile of cards she was sorting. He had given her the thankless task of reorganizing the files, and she was barely half through ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... by any further delay only a dangerous, thankless, and opulent isolation. The Lusitania is the turning point in our history. The ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... at her sharply, but with some signs of sympathy on his grave face. 'My woman,' he said 'a could ha' wished as you'd niver seen t' watch. It's poor, thankless work thinking too much on one o' God's creatures. But a'll do thy bidding,' he continued, in a lighter and different tone. 'A'm a 'cute old badger when need be. Come for thy watch in a couple o' days, and a'll tell yo' all ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... spreading wasteful mud upon the scanty cornfields. The people call this soil creta; but it seems to be less like a chalk than a marl, or marna. It is always washing away into ravines and gullies, exposing the roots of trees, and rendering the tillage of the land a thankless labour. One marvels how any vegetation has the faith to settle on its dreary waste, or how men have the patience, generation after generation, to renew the industry, still beginning, never ending, which ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... had the sage, the first who dared to brave The unknown dangers of the western wave; Who taught mankind where future empires lay In these confines of descending day; With cares o'erwhelmed, in life's distressing gloom, Wish'd from a thankless world a peaceful tomb, While kings and nations, envious of his name, Enjoyed his toils and triumphed o'er his fame, And gave the chief, from promised empire hurl'd, Chains for a crown, a ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... their sad level by compassion led, One with the low and vile herself she made, While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed, And laughed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... or three hours, and for a short time in the afternoon in leisure days. A general servant's duties are so multifarious, that unless she be quick and active, she will not be able to accomplish this. To discharge these various duties properly is a difficult task, and sometimes a thankless office; but it must be remembered that a good maid-of-all-work will make a good servant in any capacity, and may be safely taken not only without fear of failure, but with every probability of giving ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... for, when Nebar found A helpless man in sorrow on the ground, He took him up, and on the noble steed Gave him a place; but what a thankless deed! For Daher shouted, laughed, and, giving rein, Said, "You will never ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... failure; but you will be trusted and loved by children and simple people; they will depend upon you, and you will make the atmosphere in which you live one of peace and joy. You will have selfish employers, tyrannical masters, thankless children perhaps, for whom you will slave lovingly. They will slight you and even despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and yours will be the face that they will remember when ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her sharply, but with some signs of sympathy on his grave face. 'My woman,' he said 'a could ha' wished as you'd niver seen t' watch. It's poor, thankless work thinking too much on one o' God's creatures. But a'll do thy bidding,' he continued, in a lighter and different tone. 'A'm a 'cute old badger when need be. Come for thy watch in a couple o' days, and a'll tell yo' all ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... things or a multitude of little ones. Do the people who keep the world turning around ever get due recognition? I was thinking in much the same resentful vein myself to-day, in my own small way, how thankless the job of an executive officer is; how you never reach any big end, or even feel that you have made progress, but just keep on the job, watching and inspecting and fussing to keep the whole personnel-materiel machine running smoothly, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... takin' the paper an' puttin' on his specks, an' at the same time as thankless after his nose-paint as if he'd been refoosed the beverage; 'no, it don't put me in mind of nothin' nor nobody. One thing shore, an' you-all hold-ups can rope onto that for a fact, it don't remind me none ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... with mankind, and far I have wander'd, Have shared all the joys youth so madly pursues; I have been where the bounties of Nature were squander'd Till man became thankless and learn'd to refuse! Yet there I still found that man's innocence perish'd, As the senses might sway or the passions command; That the scenes where alone the soul's treasures were cherish'd, Were the peaceful abodes of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... they had pretended to be fed and fortified? These are mysteries into which I shall not attempt to enter, speculations with which I have no concern; it is sufficient for us to know that all human effort had never seemed to her so barren and thankless as on that fatal afternoon. Her eyes rested on the boats she saw in the distance, and she wondered if in one of them Verena were floating to her fate; but so far from straining forward to beckon ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... in the extremity of their fortunes; and shown, to their undone[49] patrons, that fortune was all the difference[50] between them; but as I design this my speculation only as a gentle admonition to thankless masters, I shall not go out of the occurrences of common life, but assert it as a general observation, that I never saw but in Sir Roger's family, and one or two more, good servants treated as they ought to be. Sir Roger's kindness extends to their ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... length thy labour ends, And thou shalt live; for Buckingham commends. Let crowds of critics now my verse assail, Let Dennis write, and nameless numbers rail. This more than pays whole years of thankless pain, Time, health, and fortune, are not lost in vain. Sheffield approves: conferring Phoebus bends; And I, and malice, from this hour ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Full many a thankless child has been, But never one like mine; Her meat was served on plates of gold, Her drink was rosy wine; But now she'll share the robin's food, And sup the common rill, Before her feet will turn again To meet her ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... she said, simply. "I thought it was greasy, thankless work, and felt very sorry for those who ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... last,' said he, 'the value of those limbs, the power of using which you look upon with such thankless indifference. As it is with this youth to-day, so may it be with you to-morrow, if the decree goes forth from on high. Bid me not again return to your father to tell him you are weary of a blessing, the loss of which would overwhelm ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... combination. Compared with Laval and Frontenac, Duchesneau was not a strong character, but he possessed qualifications which might have enabled him in less stormy times to fill the office of intendant with tolerable credit. It was his misfortune that circumstances forced him into the thankless position of being a henchman to the bishop and a ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Soul, the body's guest, Upon a thankless errand, Fear not to touch the best, The truth shall be thy warrant; Go, since I needs must die, And give the world ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Starling wanted to get out and so do his monkeys, and Pankraz's only questions are: "What did Yorick do?" "What would he do?" He resolves to do more than is recorded of Yorick, release the prisoners at all costs. Yorick's monolog occurs to him and he parodies it. The animals greet their release in the thankless way natural to them,—apoint already enforced in the conduct of Frau ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... all the ardor of inexperience, bent herself to the task of reformation and improvement, and teaching Katty Maloney—who was old enough to be her mother—a great many desirable things which she herself did not very well understand. It was thankless work and resulted as such experiments usually do. Katty gave warning at the end of a week, affirming that she wasn't going to be hectored and driven round by a bit of a miss, who didn't well know what she wanted; and ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... not the tenure, but the manner of making all appointments. There is no duty which so much embarrasses the Executive and heads of Departments as that of appointments, nor is there any such arduous and thankless labor imposed on Senators and Representatives as that of finding places for constituents. The present system does not secure the best men, and often not even fit men, for public place. The elevation and purification of the civil service of the Government will be hailed with approval ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... resources, to exercise forethought and economy in the conduct of life, to cherish self-respect and self-dependence, and to provide for their comfort and maintenance in old age, by the careful use of the products of their industry, instead of having to rely for aid upon the thankless dole of a ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... to draw the attention of those who are interested in ascertaining the previous history of the country they inhabit and love, be they members of scientific societies or of colonial governments, the task undertaken will not prove a thankless one. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... borne away one member of the household, the "Last Carrier" from force of habit hastens to perform the same thankless service for the remainder;—thus ere summer sunshine streamed on the husband's grave, another yawned at its side, and a wreathed and fluted shaft shot up close to his mausoleum, to tell sympathizing friends and careless strangers that the second wife of Daniel Grey had been snatched ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... bestial Armenians, human debris which even soldier-coveting Middle Europe rejected—these were herded down into the holds, as rich cargo was dug out by the straining winches, and given to the thankless sea to make space ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... they are not loth To entice their lovers' wiles. None but thankless folk and rough Can resist when Love beguiles. Now enlaced, with wreathed smiles, All together dance and play.— Youths and maids, enjoy to-day; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... seemed a thankless wretch, my dear Miss Mitford,' etc. etc. 'You, my dear friend, know too well what it is to have to finish a book, to blame my not attempting,' etc. etc. 'This is the thirty-ninth letter I have written since yesterday morning,' says Harriet Martineau. 'Oh, I can scarcely hold the pen! I will not ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... a translator is a thankless one at best. Be he never so skilful and accurate, be he never so amply endowed with the divine qualifications of the poet, it is still questionable if he can ever succeed in saying satisfactorily with new words that which has once ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... forward with some of his yearlings, who carried the heavy balks, or flooring timbers, on their shoulders. It was hot, hard work—-"thankless," as the young men ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... enough; at length thy labour ends, And thou shalt live, for Buckingham commends; Let crowds of critics now my verse assail, Let Dennis write, and nameless numbers rail, This more than pays whole years of thankless pain— Time, health, and fortune, are not lost in vain. Sheffield approves; consenting Phoebus bends, And I and Malice ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... time no one can ever know. When, one bright sunshiny Saturday, I went down to see how he was getting on, I found him worn and haggard, too evidently paying the penalty of sleepless nights and thankless care. I was a little shocked to hear that Lawrence had been summoned, but when I was taken into the sick room I realised that they had done wisely to send for the ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... noon and in plain sight and hearing even of three or four enlisted men, orderlies, horse-holders, etc., had the post commander spoken words that meant nothing short of discredit, if not disgrace, to the subaltern who was at that very instant riding away on a perilous as well as thankless mission. Deep, embarrassed silence fell on one and all of the major's hearers for a single instant. Cranston reddened with indignation, little Sanders with wrath. Truman looked quickly and curiously about him. All three were eager and ready to speak, yet by common consent the ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... be expected in the streets or suburbs, neither speed nor any indication of the intentions (if any) of Dupont. Lanyard spared himself the thankless trouble of watching to see if they were followed—having little doubt they were—and took his ease by the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... are rightly attributed to him, still more in these. So also does Gabriel Harvey, Spenser's friend, a curious coxcomb who endeavoured to dissuade Spenser from continuing The Faerie Queene, devoted much time himself and strove to devote other people to the thankless task of composing English hexameters and trimeters, engaged (very much to his discomfiture) in a furious pamphlet war with Thomas Nash, and altogether presents one of the most characteristic though least favourable specimens of the Elizabethan man of letters. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... much of Africa. He had been traveling on some teaching errand, and had fallen sick and lain nearly a whole month at Kadona's village. Kadona had brought him many gifts milk and ground-nuts and honey. The sick man for his part had not been thankless. As for gifts, he had given a knife and salt and soap and matches, but he had also shown fellow-feeling, which meant much more. Their friendship, signed and sealed outwardly by what they gave, was underlain ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been perfectly at liberty not to marry him. She had been in love with a clever man who had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the hope that this thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing that she cared for his own. Restless, discontented, visionary, without personal ambitions, but with ...
— The American • Henry James
... part of what she had been bred to regard as "living decently." She suspected that but for Etta's example she would be yielding, at least in the matter of cleanliness, when the struggle against dirt was so unequal, was thankless. Discouragement became her frequent mood; she wondered if the time would not come when it would be her fixed habit, as it was with all but a ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... your full share in developing our little second fiddle's capacity to play first?" he asked the baby, with his face against hers. "Never mind, little one, never mind. Baby doesn't know—but John Rayburn does—that this being a means of education to other people is a thankless task sometimes. Don't cry. Aunty Charlotte will kiss her hard and fast by and by, to make up for losing her temper with the little maid. I suspect you were very, very trying, to make Aunty Charlotte look ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to serve the opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in that. One of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich family in order to have bread; the other goes to attack it and is beaten. The serving family is the origin ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... into the more technical side of Chinese music would be a thankless task, for in the Chinese character the practical is entirely overshadowed by the speculative. All kinds of fanciful names are given to the different tones, and many strange ideas associated with them. Although our modern chromatic scale (all but the last half-tone) is familiar ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... my boy, that's a compact. I'm not sure just what will need to be done to enter you in the Bureau, but whatever is necessary, we'll do. I think you have decided on a life that will be hard and sometimes thankless, but at least it is a man's job, and will have its own compensations. You couldn't possibly do anything more useful. We'll go home by way of Washington, visit the Fisheries Bureau together, and see what arrangements we ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... journey would kill you in winter. And he would not like it. We are bound to think of that for her sake cold-hearted, thankless, meagre-minded creature as ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... administration free from his overpowering presence, that it might learn to go alone; partly and chiefly, he wished to spend such time as might remain to him where he could do most service to his country. But he was growing weary of the thankless burden. He was heard often to say that he had lived long enough. Men of high nature do not find the task of governing their fellow-creatures ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... on being reappointed for a second term, took up the thankless task at an especially black moment. He was as brave as a lion; and if his red beard gained him the nickname of 'Rufus,' the Red Viceroy was as fearless as though his life were absolutely secure, instead of depending wholly on the vigilance ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... give you a title. You shall no longer be a mere servant, but a private secretary; and that you may be a master as well as a servant, I present you the estate Czernihon, near Rheinsberg. There you will be lord of your peasants and workmen, and learn if it is not a thankless office to rule. Are you satisfied, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... demands, to be styled and treated as Emperor—if these things be granted, we do not see how even the shadow of blame can attach to the much-abused ministers, on whom fortune threw one of the most delicate and thankless of all offices. His house was, save one (that of the governor), the best on the island: from the beginning it was signified that any alterations or additions, suggested by Napoleon, would be immediately attended to; and the framework of many apartments was actually prepared ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... However, it is hard for one given up to constitutional hypos like him; to be filled with the milk and meekness of the gospels. Yet, with deference, I deny that my old uncle Johnson really believed in the sentiment ascribed to him. Love a hater, indeed! Who smacks his lips over gall? Now hate is a thankless thing. So, let us only hate hatred; and once give love play, we will fall in love with a unicorn. Ah! the easiest way is the best; and to hate, a man must work hard. Love is a delight; but hate a torment. And haters are thumbscrews, Scotch ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... last part of the conversation between Mrs. Livingstone and 'Lena. Instantly changing her manner, Mrs. Livingstone motioned her niece from the room, heaving a deep sigh as the door closed after her, and saying that "none but those who had tried it knew what a thankless job it was to ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... obdurate. I knew from experience that for five kopeks, or less, I should receive thanks, reverences to the waist or even to the ground; but that the gift of more than five kopeks would result in a thankless, suspicious stare, which would make me feel guilty of some enormous undefined crime. This was Count Tolstoy's experience also. We devoted ourselves to cabby ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... one who should rather be selected for commendation a kindred spirit, a well-wisher, a man after your own heart, a promoter, if I may be bold to say it, of your pursuits. See to it that you catch not the tone of our latter-day philosophers, and be thankless, petulant, and hard of heart, to him ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Chamu said again: Thou owest me not abuse, but gratitude, O woodman: for see, I have brought her back to thee, all across the sand, where many in my place would have left her in the middle of the way, for it was a thankless task, and she was a cross-grained burden, that was very loath to come at all. So as thou seest, thou wert very wrong, to call even Atirupa robber: for here she is again. And the women are silly creatures, who only have themselves to blame, since they flock to him, like flies to honey, all of ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... churls, her Peeping Toms,—"compact of thankless earth," who bored moral auger-holes in fear, and spied. Her nudeness was more complete than hers of Coventry, by as much as ridicule is more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... thee, Sakr-el-Bahr, of what thou art, of what I have made thee. Bethink thee of all the bounty these hands have lavished on thee. Thou art my own lieutenant, and mayest one day be more. In Algiers there is none above thee save myself. Art, then, so thankless as to deny me the first thing I ask of thee? Truly is it ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... fit of sickness. Afterwards, through my indiscretion, it was seen, and in some little time more it was acted; and I, through the remainder of my indiscretion, suffered myself to be drawn into the prosecution of a difficult and thankless study, and to be involved in a perpetual war with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in conclusion, they were precluded, by their present relations with France, from entering into any other negotiation; nor could they listen to any such proposals without deserving to be stigmatized as the most lewd, blasphemous, and thankless mortals, that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gone? she had slipped away from the merry party, and was by Joe's couch. Joe's heart was very full, full with the newly-awakened sense that he loved and that he was loved; full of earnest resolves to become less selfish, less thankless, less irritable. He knew his lot now, knew all that lay before him, the privations, the restrictions, the weakness, and the sufferings. He knew that he could never hope again to share in the many joys of boyhood ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... "True, O thankless one! but the women of the village say that thou lookest upon me as a fool because I can neither make mats nor do many other things such as becometh a wife. And for this did Merani, my cousin, teach me how to make a wide hat of FALA to shield thy face from the sun when thou art out ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... pressing evil, and not to establish any particular system, or any specific combination of ideas, resolutions, or designs. Its sole policy was at first confined to the support of the Restoration against the reaction: a thankless undertaking, even when most salutary; for it is useless to contend with a headlong counter-current. While you are supporting the power whose flag serves as a cloak to reaction, it is impossible to arrest the entire mischief you desire ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and read through all that seemed to concern me the first day. I have doubted whether it would be most considerate to return you thanks for it, making you pay for a letter: or to leave you thankless, with a shilling more in your pocket. You see I have taken the latter [? former], and God forgive me for it. The book is a good one, I think, as any book is, that notes down facts alone, especially about health. I wish we had diaries of the lives of half the unknown ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... wondered, in a kind of daze, that any man should ever have felt the faintest ambition to do a thing so thankless ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... against the Athenians." Then Nicocles, the dearest and most faithful of his friends, begged to be allowed to drink the poison first. "My friend," said he, "you ask what I am loath and sorrowful to give, but as I never yet in all my life was so thankless as to refuse you, I must gratify you in this also." After they had all drunk of it, the poison ran short; and the executioner refused to prepare more, except they would pay him twelve drachmas, to defray the cost of the quantity required. Some delay ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... didn't catch sight of me; she'd have talked about nothing for a fortnight." There was a picture of a huge snake in Deep Haven, and I was just wondering where he could be, or if there ever had been one, when we heard a boy ask the same question of the man whose thankless task it was to stir up the lions with a stick to make them roar. "The snake's dead," he answered, good-naturedly. "Didn't you have to dig an awful long grave for him?" asked the boy; but the man said he reckoned they curled him up some, and smiled as he turned ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... his lips. Nobody had shown up except him, he kept thinking over and over to himself: nobody except him. He had the thankless job of "opening ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... some remnants of old wine in the once well stored cellar, and, thankless as his visitor seemed likely to turn out, his hospitality would not allow him to withhold ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... "As thankless a task as that of Moses," said the other, watching him curiously. "For you will not see the pleasant land,—you will not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... times, even in our own, many names spring to our recollection of those who have trodden or (in different degrees, some known, and some unknown) are treading the same thankless path in the Church of Germany, in the Church of France, in the Church of Russia, in the Church of England. Wherever they are, and whosoever they may be, and howsoever they may be neglected or assailed, or despised, they, like their great prototype and ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... the remnant which may be to come[al] I am content; and for the past I feel Not thankless,—for within the crowded sum Of struggles, Happiness at times would steal, And for the present, I would not benumb My feelings farther.—Nor shall I conceal That with all this I still can look around, And worship ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... great undertaking to describe accurately all these canals and the various positions they have occupied at different epochs, and the task would at best be most thankless and useless, for, with the exception of the larger ones, the minor ones keep constantly changing their course by cutting themselves new beds in the soft soil. Anybody who has visited eastern Sistan, even in a very dry season, as I did, knows too ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... for miles around, looking for a place where they might open a tea-room if they did decide to do so. They said good-by to the Tubbses and returned to New York, to the noisy streets and the thankless ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... through the Rhine country, or shouldering at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time, his wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena. Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar. In Carl a new aspiration had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... knife to cut into such a nature, to which her own formed the strongest contrast. Mademoiselle Thuillier was remarkable for her regular and correct beauty, but a beauty injured by toil which, from her very childhood, had bent her down to painful, thankless tasks, and by the secret privations she imposed upon herself in order to amass her little property. Her complexion, early discolored, had something the tint of steel. Her brown eyes were framed in brown; ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... attention; because, what is wanted in this matter, is not receipts for new dishes, but clear instructions how to make those already established in public favour." This reasoning is very just, for none but the most thankless of gourmands, or the gourmet who wished to affect the sorrows of the great man of antiquity,—would sit down and weep for new worlds of luxury. Good cookery is too rarely understood and practised to justify any such wishes; and to prove this, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... on doing what they wanted to do, and they bribed the old serving-man—a thankless wretch who regularly complained when he received his wages, of being underpaid—and they stole into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the tree. He was lying in a turret-room ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... isn't another creature living Would do it, and prove, through every disaster, So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving, To such a miserable thankless master! No, Sir!—see him wag his tail and grin I By George! it makes my old eyes water! That is, there's something in this gin That chokes a fellow. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... chests from human eyes, A fire may come, and it may be Bury'd, my friend, as far from thee. Thy vessel that yon ocean stems, Loaded with golden dust and gems, Purchased with so much pains and cost, Yet in a tempest may be lost. Pimps, and a lot of others,—a thankless crew, Priests, pickpockets, and lawyers too, All help by several ways to drain, Thanking themselves for what they gain. The liberal are secure alone, For what we frankly give, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... me in this pool, found great solace and content, insomuch that (to my great wonder) I presently found myself whistling like any boy. At last I got me forth mightily refreshed, and that the wind and sun might dry me, strove to cleanse my garments, but finding it a thankless task I got dressed at last, but my chain-shirt I left folded beside the pool and I much ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... moment is the only natural, courteous, and truthful course. Ten days hence, the reply, which now comes of its own accord, cannot be found; what might have been a source of pleasure to two persons will have become a piece of thankless drudgery. In vain the conscientious correspondent, at the appointed time, takes the letter which she would answer out of the compartment of her portfolio, whereon stationers, cunningly humoring a popular weakness, have gilded,—"UNANSWERED LETTERS." In vain she cons it with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... upon the mornes. But for these services she never accepts any reuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor in immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, listens to everybody's troubles, gives everybody some sort of consolation, trusts everybody, and sees a great deal of the thankless side of human nature without seeming to feel any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be she appears to have everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything to her neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought bad- ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days, But the fair ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... Curses light upon thy lips for having uttered that detested name! Thousands of miles have I flown to shun the hearing of it. Is the madman here? Have you set eyes upon him? Does he yet crawl upon the face of the earth? Unhappy? Unparalleled, unheard-of, thankless miscreant! Has he told his execrable falsehoods here? Has he dared to utter names so sacred as those ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service. But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale against the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Goneril, so as was terrible to hear, praying that she might never have a child, or, if she had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her which she had shown to him; that she might feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear him out, but in a rage ordered ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... have demonstration of a change of ministerial conduct in the management of affairs in Chili, before again exposing myself to difficulties of so painful a nature, and re-occupying a situation which I have found to be harassing, thankless, and unprofitable. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... therefore on her thankless errand and Fisher flung himself down at the table with his face buried in his hands. In this room but a few short hours ago Charlie had faced and turned away his anger with all the courage and sweetness which, combined, had made of ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... with terror. Her dismay at seeing her face so altered that she did not know herself cannot be told. Whereupon the old man said to her, "You ought to recollect, Renzolla, that you are a daughter of a peasant and that it was the fairy that raised you to be a queen. But you, rude, unmannerly, and thankless as you are, having little gratitude for such high favours, have kept her waiting outside your heart, without showing the slightest mark of affection. You have brought the quarrel on yourself; see what ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... with regret than with fatigue when he must leave the happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It is all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they shall not be thankless, nor she a stepmother ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... throughout, the ordinary process of cementing must be omitted and careful puttying substituted for it. While if it is adopted the whole must be puttied before cementing, otherwise the cement will run in between the various thicknesses of glass. It would be an expensive and tedious and rather thankless process, for the repairer's whole aim would be to hide from the spectator the fact that anything ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... educated, the ignorant, the deformed, the blind, the evil, the honest, the mad, and the sane. Some in real professional beggars' style called down blessings on me; others were morose and glum, while some were impudent and thankless, and said to supply them with food was just what I should do, for the swagmen kept the squatters—as, had the squatters not monopolized the land, the swagmen would have had plenty. A moiety of the last-mentioned—dirty, besotted, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... this subject which is embodied here, and this turns out to be, as usual, the clearest scientific negative that could be invented. But in the design, and in all the labour of this piece,—in the steadfast purpose that is always working out that definition, with its so exquisite, but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving it and pointing it with its pen of diamond in the rock for ever, approving itself 'to the Workmaster' only,—in this incessant design,—in this veiled, mysterious authorship,—an ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... upon its stem, The wicked and the weak, by some dark law, Have a strange power to shut and rivet down Their own horizon round us, to unwing Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur With surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks, Far seen across the brine of thankless years. 50 If the chosen soul could never be alone In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, No greatness ever had been dreamed or done; Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; The nurse ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... could have served her purpose better than this studied discretion. He measured the rare magnanimity of self-effacement so deliberate, he felt how few women were capable of exchanging a luxurious woe for a thankless effort. Madame de Mauves, he himself felt, wasn't sweeping the horizon for a compensation or a consoler; she had suffered a personal deception that had disgusted her with persons. She wasn't planning to get the worth of her trouble back in some other way; ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... lay moaning, and in almost delirious agonies respecting that future world which she quite ignored when she was in good health.—Picture to yourself, oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and baby story was a rank fake—I'm a marine," said the well-dressed man taking another drink. It seemed to him that the task of helping the needy was a thankless one, and he wished he had the overcoat back again. He had been waiting nearly two hours when the switchman came in. "I had a hard time finding a purchaser," explained the striker, "and finally when I did sell it I could only get twelve dollars and ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... thus a thankless and difficult one. Nor is it quite certainly of real use to the community. For the prophet is generally too much ahead of his times. He discounts the future at a ruinous rate, and he takes the consequences. If you happen ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Treason's writhing asp Struck madly at her girdle's clasp, And Hatred wrenched with might and main To rend its welded links in twain, While Mammon hugged his golden calf Content to take one broken half, While thankless churls stood idly by And heard unmoved a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Or forgive not Gifts or thefts for grace or guerdon, Love that misses Fruit of kisses Long will bear no thankless burden. ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... even in death! The pitying destroyer has touched gently on those heavenly features. That sweetness was no mask—the hand of death even has not removed it! (After a pause.) But how is this? why do I feel nothing. Will the vigor of my youth save me? Thankless care! That shall it not. (He ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... encouraged the Porte in its policy of delay and subterfuge, and Turkey soon came to look on Germany as its only strong, sincere, and disinterested friend in Europe. For the indefinite continuance of chaos and bloodshed in Macedonia, after the other powers had really braced themselves to the thankless task of putting the reforms into practice, Germany alone ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... speculation into a variety of difficult and obscure though interesting subjects. In the light of modern research it would be an easy task to pile up a mountain of criticism on points of detail. But, though easy, it would be a thankless task. It is scarcely too much to say that the dominant impression of most readers after perusing this book will be one of astonishment and admiration at the insight and breadth of view displayed by the author. When it was written the subject ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... occasion as if England must take sides in a struggle which, it soon became apparent, was to be fought out to the bitter end. Thoughts of mediation had occurred, both to Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, and in 1862 they contemplated the thankless task of mediation, but the project was abandoned as at least premature. Feeling ran high in England over the discussion as to whether the 'great domestic institution' of Negro slavery really lay at the basis of the struggle or not, and public opinion was split into ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... two classes who need counselling—those who overwork either mind or body or both, and there are many such, especially among those who conduct the multitude of our public journals. No profession is so exacting or exhausting as is theirs, or so generally thankless, and none so greatly influential for good or evil. These classes are, however, small compared with those who die for the want of a proper amount ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... Moran bitterly—"to bring up daughters, to love them, to toil and save and deny ourselves for them, and then to see some strange man, of whom we have no certain knowledge, carry them off captive to his destiny and his desires. 'Tis a thankless portion to be ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... received graciously by the old lady sitting in a richly furnished room; and opened her business. The tapestry dropped out of Margaret Van Eyck's hands. "Gone? Gone from Sevenbergen and not told me; the thankless girl." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... airs; then the boy was compelled to jump through blazing hoops while grasping a huge wine jar with his teeth. Trimalchio was the only one who was much impressed by these tricks, remarking that it was a thankless calling and adding that in all the world there were just two things which could give him acute pleasure, rope-dancers and horn blowers; all other entertainments were nothing but nonsense. "I bought a company of comedians," he went on, "but ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the time or power to deliberate, I know not. My thoughts flowed with tumult and rapidity. To shut this spectacle from my view was the first impulse; but to desert this man, in a time of so much need, appeared a thankless and dastardly deportment. To remain where I was, to conform implicitly to his direction, required no effort. Some fear was connected with his presence, and with that of the dead; but, in the tremulous confusion ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... pullets?" he wrote to a lady who had presented them to him. "I began by sending two of them to people to whom I am indifferent. That made me think of the difference there is between a present and a testimony of friendship. The first will never find in me anything but a thankless heart; the second.... Ah, if you had only given me news of yourself without sending me anything else, how rich and how grateful you would have made me; instead of that the pullets are eaten, and the best thing I can do ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... possibility that she should show any affection save the affection of a mother for her son? Ah! Pudentilla, you are unhappy in your offspring! Far better have been barren than have borne such children! Ill-omened were the long months through which you bore them in your womb and thankless your fourteen years of widowhood! The viper, I am told, reaches the light of day only by gnawing through its mother's womb; its parent must die ere it be born. But your son is full-grown and the wounds he deals are far bitterer, for they are inflicted on you while you yet live ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... had a hard life enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labor and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But what matter? To-night there was hot liquor in the glass and hot blood in the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... however he may be hardest to satisfy, with the attempt to follow her. The accomplished poet will derive pleasure from verses which are a mockery to the soul of the unhappy mortal whose business is judgment—the most thankless of all labours, and justly so. Certain fruits one is unable to like until he has eaten them in their perfection; after that, the reminder in them of the perfect will enable him to enjoy even the inferior a little, recognizing ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... French from Canada and from their possessions in the East Indies. When the peace of 1763 was made, this was counted the most disastrous part of that final record and sealing of misfortune. When we see with what attachment the ordinary Frenchman of to-day regards what is as yet the thankless possession of Algeria, we might easily have guessed, even if the correspondence of the time had set it forth less distinctly than it does, with what deep concern and mortification the French of that day saw the white flag and its lilies driven ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... hospital and hospital grounds, and nursed the victims of the scourge. They did not utter a complaint nor ask for a "soft" detail; they did their duty as they found it. Another battalion was detailed immediately after the surrender to guard the Spanish prisoners. This most thankless duty was performed by them with fidelity and care. The commander of the battalion and half his officers were proficient in the Spanish language as a part of their preparation for the campaign, and they soon established cordial relations ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... came to nestle in her arms and frighten it away. You have done well, brave soldier-man, for now I am right sure she does not wonder any more why the day should have come when the one she had helped so much should have forgotten the help and been thankless for all the love that she ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... way,—whose rights as a man and a citizen are denied,—for such a man to enlist and to fight, without bounty, pay, honor, or promotion,—without the promise of gaining anything whatever for himself,—condemned to a thankless task on the one side,—to a merciless death or even worse fate on the other,—facing all this because he has faith that the great republic will ultimately be redeemed; that some hands will gather in the harvest of this bloody sowing, though he be lying dead under it,—I tell ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... when he had fasted a whole day, he would once more take up his osier with a low growl and revile the wealthy who lived in idleness. The trade of a basket-maker, when followed in such a manner, is a thankless one. Antoine's work would not have sufficed to pay for his drinking bouts if he had not contrived a means of procuring his osier at low cost. He never bought any at Plassans, but used to say that he went each month to purchase a stock at a neighbouring ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... kind letters, which supply the vacancy of all other information. You will perhaps know before you receive this, that after having employed Pitt, and through him, me, and also General Ross, separately, to press Tom to accept the thankless office of his Secretary, Lord Cornwallis has, without one word of communication to him, written to say that, Pelham declining, he desires to have Lord Castlereagh. It is of a piece with all the rest! Pelham has declined, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God) were shut out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night, he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and went to sleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his old companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said: "There's no use arguing with my father, Joe. He has a terrible job, and it's on his mind all the time. He hates being a Security officer, too. It's a thankless job—and no Security officer ever gets to be more than a major. His ability never shows. What he does is never noticed unless it fails. So he's frustrated. He's got poor Miss Ross—his secretary, you know—so she just listens to what he says must be done and she writes it out. Sometimes he goes ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... leave a thankless throne with a joy I find it impossible to express. As I sat on horseback, half-way up the hill above the burning city, and heard the clash of arms, I was filled with amazement to think that men would actually fight for the position of ruler of the people. Whether the insurrection has brought ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... that reset?" he said, smiling and twisting the ring about on her finger; then he went on with his thankless explanation. "It's not that I don't want you to do this or that; it's simply that, for the moment, we're rather strapped. I've just been to see the steamer people, and our passages will cost a good deal more ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... from Sydney and Melbourne waving the traffic along with a flag just as he used to do at the corner of Pitt and King Streets. Just as he used to see that the by-laws of the local council were carried out, so he now has to see to the rules and orders made by the local general. It is a thankless job generally; but when they get as far as this most people begin to be a little grateful ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... in the presence of an artist, the works displayed in his studio. Extravagant praise is also in bad taste. A few cordial words of praise and pleasure should, of course, be spoken, and a friend may sometimes point out where improvements could be made; but it is a thankless task generally, and it is in much better taste to leave all criticism to the public journals, when the paintings ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... father's farm. Latterly he had been working upon land which his father had given him, in the hope that he would marry and settle down. He had become restless. The village was beginning to look small, and he asked himself with wonderment how he had been content in it so long. The work was hard and thankless. Was this life? Was there nothing beyond this? Was there not not a great world outside the forest? What was this? Was it not stagnation? The woods—yes, the woods were beautiful, but why was it they made him sad? Why was it that when the sun set against the ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... waking; and he who at dinner always forgot he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all the company, now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed for an hour together." Many of his friends implored him to give up the hopeless and thankless task. Walpole still clung to office; still tried new stratagems; planned new combinations; racked {189} his brain for new devices. He actually succeeded in inducing the King to have an offer made to the Prince of Wales of an addition ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... attention and courtesy. Mauritius first belonged to the Dutch (for the Portuguese did not attempt to colonize it), who seem to have been bullied out of it by pirates and hurricanes, and who finally gave it up as a thankless task about the year 1700. A few years later the French, having a thriving colony next door at Bourbon, sent over a man-of-war and "annexed," unopposed, the pretty little island. But there were all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... English sloop-of-war Jaseur is purchasing it at 5 milreis, for bills on England. Indeed, the abuses here of all kinds are too numerous to be detailed by letter, and to endeavour to put a stop to them, unless under the express authority and protection of the Imperial Government, would be a thankless task. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... people, still conscious of their danger, accompanied his triumph with acclamations of joy and gratitude, which were imputed as a crime to the victorious general. But when he entered the palace, the courtiers were silent, and the emperor, after a cold and thankless embrace, dismissed him to mingle with the train of slaves. Yet so deep was the impression of his glory on the minds of men, that Justinian, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, was encouraged to advance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... edits—thankless job! - A Sunday journal for the factious mob With bitter paragraph and caustic jest, He gives to turbulence the day of rest; Condemn'd, this week, rash rancour to instil, Or thrown aside, the next, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... that I have been the means of imposing upon Her Majesty's troops a laborious, ungracious, and apparently thankless duty; but my intentions and motives have been so fully, and I trust, satisfactorily discussed throughout Great Britain, that I dare hope that the officers and men will believe that I invited them to participate in a constitutional ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... can hardly imagine how busy they were kept, all that afternoon—Sara and Yassuh and Pirlaps and Avrillia—supplying crumbs and suet to those thankless Birds. The lovely Skybird did, toward sundown, trill a beautiful little song of gratitude; but she addressed it to nobody in particular, and looked all the time straight into a fog-bush—because of course it would have been very bad manners, as she thought, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... conscience informed him that he was actually admiring the breaking of the Sabbath; whereupon he rose. But all the time he was about amongst the rest of his people, his thoughts kept wandering back to the desolate room, the thankless boy, and the ministering woman. Before leaving, however, he had arranged with Sara that she should bring her brother to the shop ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... natural or artificial perfume with others of the rankest and most intolerable odour: but a diet of alternate sweetmeats and emetics is for the average of eaters and drinkers no less unpalatable than unwholesome. It is useless and thankless to enlarge on such faults or such defects, as it would be useless and senseless to ignore. But how to enlarge, to expatiate, to insist on the charm of Herrick at his best—a charm so incomparable and so inimitable that even English poetry can boast of nothing quite like it or worthy to be named ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... to the eminent station of the Village Schoolmaster,—from the thankless office of pouring cold rudiments into heedless ears, RITSON took a poetical flight. It was among the mountains and wild scenery of Scotland that our young Homer, picking up fragments of heroic songs, and ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... also showed the sort of work to be done in this thankless protection of the metropolis. During one of the sessions there had appeared in the lobby an excellent man, Dr. Levi Silliman Ives, formerly Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, who, having been ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... these perils; I hoped that thou wouldst requite my services with much gratitude; and behold! I have found thee, and thee alone, punish my valour sharpliest. But I forbear all vengeance, and am satisfied with the shame within thy heart—if, after all, any shame visits the thankless—as expiation for this wrongdoing towards me. I have a right to surmise that thou art worse than all demons in fury, and all beasts in cruelty, if, after escaping the snares of all these monsters, I have failed to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... sharpened her wits and instincts amazingly. I am sure that she was just as well aware of the nature of Jerry's infatuation as though Jerry had told it himself. If Una cared for him as deeply as I had had the temerity to suppose, then her position was difficult—painful and thankless. But whatever her own wish to help him, I am sure that the nature of the desire was unselfish. After events prove that. All that Una saw in the situation of Jerry and Marcia was a friend who needed helping, who was worth helping from the snare of an ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... there.—But what was to atone to Philip for his lonely childhood, his lonely youth, always with the shadow resting upon it; his hopeless infatuation for a woman who would not see, his whole life devoted to that cold and thankless lot of service ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... weapon. Is it the desperation of your fear Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend, Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed 60 Was but to try you. As for me, I think, Thankless affection led me to this point, From which, if my firm temper could repent, I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak The ministers of justice wait below: 65 They grant me these brief moments. Now if you Have any word of melancholy comfort To speak to your pale wife, 'twere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... from your picture, but them photographs always flatter. That's the reason I never had any took. You're rather thin and brown. But you've good eyes and you look clever. Your father writ me you hadn't much sense, though. He wants me to teach you some, but it's a thankless business. People would rather ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in our history is our treatment of the Indian. To speak of it is a thankless task—thankless, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,—but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation; veritas odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be busie with voe vobis, let him looke shortly for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the part of an arbitrator between married people is not ordinarily my function. It's too thankless a task and one's experiences are, as a rule, too unhappy. But you should not permit your feeling of honour, justly wounded as, no doubt, it is, to hurry you into acts that are rash. For, after all, your wife is not responsible for ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... have come on a thankless mission, Willa," she began. "Every time I have tried to help you or teach you anything, you have looked on it, in your spiteful way, as mere jealousy on my part, although why I should be jealous ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... he had spoken a word so idle when he ought to have been grave and wise, but that he felt that he had been altogether remiss in his duty as guide, philosopher, and friend. There were old sorrows, too, on this score. In the main Sir Thomas had discharged well a most troublesome, thankless, and profitless duty towards the son of a man who had not been related to him, and with whom an accidental intimacy had been ripened into friendship by letter rather than by social intercourse. Ralph Newton's father had been the younger ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... brightened. The Law was coming at last! He could not help but wonder what Dunlavey's feelings would be when he heard of it. For himself, he felt as any man must feel who, laboring at a seemingly impossible task, endless and thankless, sees in the distance the possible, the end, and the plaudits ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was unsuited to the stage and would need to be radically revised. So the luckless author, having no other recourse, returned to the village of Oggersheim, in the vicinity of Mannheim, and there, with the faithful Streicher to keep him company, he spent the next few weeks, partly upon the thankless revision of 'Fiesco' and partly upon 'Louise Miller', which interested him more. Having done his best with 'Fiesco' he sent it to Dalberg, who curtly refused it a second time. His theatrical hopes thus completely baffled, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... which the other took and dropped into the till, without acknowledgment or remark. Now Mary had not restored the money with any view to praise or reward: the thought of either had not occurred to her; but she was, nevertheless, pained by the dry, cold, thankless manner with which the restitution was accepted, and she felt that a little civility would not have been out of place on such ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne—a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame Sand. I passed a couple ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... newspapers which had sparkled with his forceful, high-minded criticism die; and lived miserably upon a daily allowance of thirty sous, earned by copying for the Palais. Marcas lived at that time, 1836, in the garret of a furnished house on rue Corneille. His thankless debtor, become minister again, sought him anew. Had it not been for the hearty attention of his young neighbors, Rabourdin and Juste, who furnished him with some necessary clothing, and aided him at Humann's expense, Marcas would not have taken advantage of the new opportunity ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... wrongs, Strange, horrible, and foul! By what deep guilt belongs 90 To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!'[165:1] By Wealth's insensate laugh! by Torture's howl! Avenger, rise! For ever shall the thankless Island scowl, Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow? 95 Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud! And on the darkling foe Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! O dart the flash! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... baffled in all her schemes ... and cast upon a thankless, undeserving world, turned very sharp and sour ... but the justices of the peace for Middlesex ... selected her from 124 competitors to the office of turnkey for a county Bridewell, which she held till her decease, more than thirty years afterwards, remaining ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the invitation with pleasure," replied Marshall, whose manners were all that his attire was not. "I shall be glad to talk with you on many subjects. To-morrow I shall pay my respects to Mr. Hamilton. His has been a trying but not a thankless task. He has addressed himself to the right class of men all over the country, winning them to his sound and enlightened views, giving them courage, consolidating them against the self-interested advocates of State sovereignty. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... out-building in company with several rough-looking pack-train teamsters similarly incased; I pass a not altogether comfortless night, the pattering of rain against the one small window effectually suppressing such thankless thoughts as have a tendency to come unbidden whenever the snoring of any of my fellow-lodgers gets aggravatingly harsh. In all this company I think I am the only person who doesn't snore, and when I awake from my rather fitful slumbers at four o'clock and find the rain no longer pattering against ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... to suffer you, who have caused me, when dead, to be restored from the shades to life— to leave me unrewarded? Oh, you deem me too thankless! But look— I see Bacchis standing before the door; she's waiting for me, I suppose; ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
