Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Toilsome   Listen
adjective
Toilsome  adj.  Attended with toil, or fatigue and pain; laborious; wearisome; as, toilsome work. "What can be toilsome in these pleasant walks?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Toilsome" Quotes from Famous Books



... curious in having a hollow chamber between the pulp and the kernel, beset with hard spines which produce serious wounds if they enter the skin. The eatable part appeared to me not much more palatable than a raw potato; but the inhabitants of Santarem are very fond of it, and undertake the most toilsome journeys on foot to gather a basketful. The tree which yields the tonka bean (Dipteryx odorata), used in Europe for scenting snuff, is also of frequent occurrence here. It grows to an immense height, and the fruit, which, although a legume, is of a rounded shape, and has but one seed, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... Their march was toilsome; and Mildred, taking advantage of a commodious place, sat down to rest upon the lava. At the altitude which they had reached the temperature changes,—a cold wintry wind was blowing—and she had not quite prepared herself for so sudden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... we saw at once the sense of her words. She had before her a toilsome journey in the companionship of men. She must needs ride, since there was no other way of travelling possible; and why should the frailest and tenderest of the party be burdened by a dress that would incommode ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... point after point in the regions where they penetrated, and upon the routes leading thither. The western coasts of North America, being reached only by the long and perilous voyage around Cape Horn, or by a more toilsome and dangerous passage across the continent, remained among the last of the temperate productive seaboards of the earth to be possessed by white men. The United States were already a nation, in fact as well as in form, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... weapons to the wicked farmer? 4. Lesbia invites the good sailor to dinner. 5. Why is Lesbia with the good sailor hastening from the cottage? 6. Sextus, where is my helmet? 7. The good sailors are hastening to the toilsome battle. 8. The horses of the wicked farmers are small. 9. The Roman people give money to the good sailors. 10. Friends care for the good sailors. 11. Whose friends are fighting with the ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... passed some abandoned diggings, where little colonies of patient, toilsome Chinamen had established themselves, and were washing and sifting the earth discarded by previous miners; making, we were told, on the average, two or three cents to the pan. The Chinaman regularly pays, as a foreigner (and is almost the only foreigner who does so), his mining-license ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... Centreville, in the scorching heat and suffocating dust of this tropical July morning, slowly, but surely, along the Warrenton Pike and the cross-road to Sudley Springs Ford—a distance of some eight miles of weary and toilsome marching for raw troops in such a temperature—in this order: Burnside's Brigade, followed by Andrew Porter's Brigade,—both of Hunter's Division; then Franklin's Brigade, followed by Willcox's ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... sweet, fine, and sunny the short dry grass seemed to us after our long toilsome stay in the sub-aqueous gloom of the Skeena forests! We seemed about to return to ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... the future course of our travellers was down hill, but in some respects it was more toilsome than their uphill journey had been. The scenery changed considerably in respect of the character of its vegetation, and was even more rugged than heretofore, while the trees were larger and the underwood more dense. Many a narrow escape ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... the hut with wistful eyes. "There is a woman there," she said, and Landless heard her voice tremble for the first time in their long, toilsome and painful journey. "There is no need to pass them by, is there? It looks very fair and peaceful. May we not rest here for ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... out of the Big Aspohegan with a rush. There was an air of expectation about the camp. Everything was ready for a start down-stream. The hands who had all winter been chopping and hauling in the deep woods were about to begin the more toilsome and perilous task of "driving" the logs down the swollen river to the great booms and unresting mills about its mouth. One thing only remained to be done ere the drive could get under way. The huge "brow" of logs over-hanging the stream had yet to be released. To whom would fall the task of accomplishing ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... native miners came from the highlands of the province of Segovia, near to the boundary of Honduras. The inhabitants of the lower country are mostly vacqueros, used to riding on horseback after cattle, and not to be tempted, even by the much higher wages they can obtain, to engage in the toilsome labour of underground mining. The inhabitants of Segovia, on the contrary, have been miners from time immemorial, and it is work they readily take to. I had often desired to see for myself what ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves farther from civilisation and comfort; but, where the sun shines, the latter becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among ourselves. Yet I confess housekeeping became rather a toilsome task, especially as I was suffering in my health, and could ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... charitable to the poor, a peacemaker among his neighbours, and a faithful and kindly guardian to his young brothers. Carefully he instructed them in all the mysteries of their art, though it lengthened his own labour by many a toilsome hour. Patiently he bore with the waywardness and inexperience of their youth. At hearth, and board, and labour, Gottleib was their blithe companion; in hard work, their help; in times of trouble, their comforter; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... rightly or wrongly, I have got the impression that more might be done in the army to lower the rigid caste-barrier which separates the ranks. No doubt it is inevitable and harmless at home, but in the bloody, toilsome business of war it is apt to have bad results. Of course is only part of the larger question of our general military system, deep-rooted as that is in our whole national life, and now placed, with all its defects and ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... wharves was the smell of tarred seams and cordage,—sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass, regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... few happy strokes, he sketched the defendant buying this land, packing up, bidding adieu to the dear down-country home, and his toilsome journey into the woods, arrival, and purchase, and poor, hard life of toil and deprivation: here was his all. He sketched the plaintiff as a well or ill-to-do gentleman, of a speculative turn of mind, whose eye ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... value, he must renounce it. He must become one of us, knowing good and evil, looking before and behind. In this direction—in the gradual improvement of the labourer—lies our future progress, progress slow and toilsome, little suited to the socialist who calculates on changing, as with the touch of a wand, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... slow and toilsome march; but the party were in the highest of spirits, and, in the hope of seeing the lights at Groenfontein at the end of an hour or so, they kept on, only pausing now and again to listen for danger and to rearrange Lennox, whose ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... following day were a toilsome time for us, but by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on "the Queen". There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many toilsome and unnecessary hours. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... strength, when he was offered a situation in an iron-store, to handle iron, and occasionally perform the duties of a clerk. Three hundred dollars was the salary. He caught at it, as his last hope, with eagerness, and at once entered upon his duties. He found them more toilsome than he had expected. The business was a heavy one, and kept him at fatiguing labour nearly the whole day. Never having been used to do hard work, he found on the morning of the second day, that the muscles of his back, arms, and legs, were ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... rusty emotions and toilsome lives of the Thrums weavers will always remain a book that has given me something, and the fact that mine is merely the popular view and that what I feel in it can be equally felt by the majority of fellow-creatures, this fact, such is my hardened and abandoned state, only makes ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... landscape painter, is ever on the look out for picturesque "bits" and atmospheric effects as a subject. In Bloomfield we get something altogether different—a simple, consistent, and fairly complete account of the country people's toilsome life in a remote agricultural district in England—a small rustic village set amid green and arable fields, woods and common lands. We have it from the inside by one who had part in it, born and bred to the humble life he described; and, finally, it is not given as ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... bench until they reached the timbered plateau that stretched in sheer black slope up to the peaks. Here rose the great and gloomy forest of firs and pines, with the spruce overshadowed and thinned out. The last hour of travel was tedious and toilsome, a zigzag, winding, breaking, climbing hunt for the kind of camp-site suited to Anson's fancy. He seemed to be growing strangely irrational about selecting places to camp. At last, for no reason that could have been manifest to a good woodsman, he chose a gloomy bowl in the center ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... to the Dominican mission which reached the islands in 1606 depict the difficulties, besides the long and toilsome voyages, which the missionaries encountered on their journey to the other side of the world. Diego Aduarte, one of the most noted of the Dominican missionaries in the Far East, is in charge of a reenforcement to go to the Philippines, and applies (at some time in 1604) to the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... from their store of food and began a terrible and toilsome journey. On either side of the river lay dessicated swamp covered with dead reeds ten or twelve feet high. Doubtless beyond the swamp there was high land, but in order to reach this, if it existed, they would be ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... she said, had never seen a foreigner, so, though the rain still fell heavily, they were astir in the early morning. They wanted to hear me speak, so I gave my orders to Ito in public. Yesterday was a most toilsome day, mainly spent in stumbling up and sliding down the great passes of Futai, Takanasu, and Yenoiki, all among forest-covered mountains, deeply cleft by forest-choked ravines, with now and then one of the snowy peaks of Aidzu breaking ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... pertinacious way, which no men and no intrenchments could permanently withstand. His lieutenant, Sherman, made one desperate assault,—not, as it seemed, because there was a possibility of taking the place, but rather to demonstrate that it could not be taken. Then slower and more toilsome methods were tried. It was obvious that a siege must be resorted to; yet it was not easy to get near enough ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... first to whom the right one occurs, may happen to almost any body; at least in the case of a set of phenomena which the whole scientific world are engaged in attempting to connect. The honor, in Kepler's case, was that of the accurate, patient, and toilsome calculations by which he compared the results that followed from his different guesses, with the observations of Tycho Brahe; but the merit was very small of guessing an ellipse; the only wonder is that men had not guessed it before, nor could they have failed to do so if ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... answered, and turned to meet McFarlane, a short, black-bearded man, with fine dark eyes and shapely hands—hands that had never done anything more toilsome than to lift a bridle rein or to clutch the handle of a gun. He was the horseman in all his training, and though he owned hundreds of acres of land, he had never so much as held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the lord of great herds, the claimant of empires ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... girls were at home and undisturbed in the quiet farm house, the mountaineering party, headed by Sigurd, were well on their way towards the great Fall of Njedegorze. They had made a toilsome ascent of the hills by the side of the Alten river—they had climbed over craggy boulders and slippery rocks, sometimes wading knee-deep in the stream, or pausing to rest and watch the salmon leap and turn glittering somersaults in the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... and could put away an incredible amount. Truly, his make-up was a constant wonder to me. Riding through the "hungry belt" I would be famishing, but to my question: "Are you hungry?" he would answer, "No." After a toilsome journey, and no supper at the end: "Would you like to eat?" "No." But let an ostrich or a deer come in sight, and he could not live another minute without food! Another proof to Yantiwau of my incapacity was the fact that when my matches were all used I could ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... return without any further delay. The path back was as rough and toilsome as the way down had been; but Tom was now full of hope, and his elastic spirits had revived so thoroughly that he cared but little for the fatigue of the journey. It was traversed at last, and he descended the slope to the place ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... the Chamber to face certain creditors, he was forced to appear in the Bois with a calm countenance, and gallop beside Marie's carriage in the leisurely style of a man devoid of cares and with no other duties than those of love. When in return for this toilsome and wholly ignored devotion all he won were a few sweet words, the prettiest assurances of eternal attachment, ardent pressures of the hand on the very few occasions when they found themselves alone, he ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... enough to thank God," Felicita murmured, lying back in her seat and shutting her eyes. Presently the children returned, and, after another silent row, slower and more toilsome, as it was up the river, they drew near home again, and saw Madame's anxious face watching for them over the low garden wall. Her heart had been too heavy for her to join them in their pleasure-taking, and it was ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... but the roads were heavy and toilsome to the foot-passenger; for the snow lay deep; and frost had succeeded just sufficient to glaze the surface into a crispness which retarded without absolutely resisting the pressure of the foot. Their progress was therefore ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... the scene of his first cowboy activities. It had not changed, although the cattle were not so numerous. Familiar as yesterday were the bogholes, where he and his partner—what was that cow-puncher's name?—had spent so many toilsome days and nights. ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... into our lives. We should crown the man who has achieved distinction and advise him as to pitfalls. "No sadder proof," Carlisle has said, "can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." There is no royal road to a lasting eminence but the toilsome pathway of diligence, self-denial and high moral rectitude; surely not by turning sharp corners to follow that "will-o'-the wisp" transient success, at the expense of upright conduct. Neither suavity of manner nor the gilding of education will ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... cross-beam, trying to raise its lower sky-line a couple of inches with a foot-adz. I had not supposed that the job would be especially difficult. I did not realize that the old white-oak beam in a century and a half had petrified. We were having a pretty toilsome time with our shelves, but I never saw a man sweat and carry on like Henry Jones. He had to work straight up, with his head tipped back, and his neck was rather short, with no proper hinge in it. Besides, it was August, and pretty still and intense, and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... enabled for nearly three years to give his strength to his Master's service. Sickness sometimes laid him aside, and taught him what he had to suffer; but he rose from it to go forth again to his joyful labors. Often, after a toilsome day, there were inquirers waiting for him, so that he had to begin work afresh in a new form. But this was his delight; it was a kind of interruption which he allowed even on a Saturday, in the ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... difficulties, and he had resolved how to meet them. A thoroughly practical man, he proceeded first to take up that which he rightly regarded as the greatest—the discontent in the army. Assembling a council of his nobles, he laid before them the actual position: told them how, after many toilsome marches and bloody fights, they had won numerous rich and extensive provinces. To abandon these and to return to Kabul would be shame indeed. 'Let not anyone who calls himself my friend,' he concluded, 'henceforward make such a proposal. But if there is any among you who ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson

... the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... The way was so toilsome over the rugged mountain passes, that often the men who followed her would give out, and foot-sore, and bleeding, they would drop on the ground, groaning that they could not take another step. They would lie there and die, or if strength came ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford

... medicine, it is the spring which awakens human passions. In early Greek tradition, spring and summer were noted as the time of greatest wantonness. "In the season of toilsome summer," says Hesiod (Works and Days, xi, 569-90), "the goats are fattest, wine is best, women most wanton, and men weakest." It was so, also, in the experience of the Romans. Pliny (Natural History, Bk. XII, Ch. XLIII) states that when the asparagus blooms ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... beginning to sparkle with minute bubbles, not too sweet and not so oily as the milk of the coconut, is nectar to a hot and thirsty soul. No summer drink have I drunk so innocently restorative after a hot and toilsome march on a broiling May morning. But the Bhundaree will not squander it so: he takes care not to clean his pots, and when he takes them down in the morning the liquor is already foaming like London stout. Not that he means to drink it himself, for ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... unapproachable skies? Though these gave strength to the strong man, And wisdom gave to the wise; When strength is turn'd to derision, And wisdom brought to dismay, Shall we wake from a troubled vision, Or rest from a toilsome day? ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... now a toilsome journey to perform, partly along the coast and partly inland, where the rocks which jutted into the sea, were so precipitous that we were unable to climb over them. Still, though Marian was already much fatigued, we pushed forward, as it was of the greatest importance that we ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... woman like all the rest, but now you are far exalted even above men." This correspondence plainly reveals the tragedy of the lacerated man of the Middle Ages, as compared to the never-varying woman, emerging perfect from the hands of nature. A long and toilsome road still stretches out before him; she had reached the goal, without a struggle, at the outset. How strange is this cry of a mediaeval nun: "It seems as if the world had grown old, as if all men and all living creatures had lost their freshness, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... Carian home for Greece, he concentrated his thoughts on the quickest and easiest method of winning a brilliant reputation for himself and his works. He might have gone the round, and read them successively at Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta; but that would be a long toilsome business, he thought, with no end to it; so he would not do it in detail, collecting his recognition by degrees, and scraping it together little by little; his idea was, if possible, to catch all Greece together. The great Olympic Games were at hand, and Herodotus bethought ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... soul in his work, put all one's strength into, strain every nerve; spare no efforts, spare no pains; go all lengths; go through fire and water &c (resolution) 604; move heaven and earth, leave no stone unturned. Adj. laboring &c v.. laborious, operose^, elaborate; strained; toilsome, troublesome, wearisome; uphill; herculean, gymnastic, palestric^. hard-working, painstaking; strenuous, energetic. hard at work, on the stretch. Adv. laboriously &c adj.; lustily; pugnis et calcibus [Lat.]; with might and main, with all one's might, with a strong hand, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... commanded that the cattle should share the sweet blessing of the one day's rest. Moreover He 'forbade to muzzle the ox that trod out the corn. 'Nay, let the poor overwrought soul snatch a mouthful as he goes his toilsome round: the bulk of the grain shall still be for man.' Ye will object perchance that St. Paul, commenting this, saith rudely, 'Doth God care for oxen?' Verily, had I been Peter, instead of the humblest of his successors, I had answered him. 'Drop thy theatrical poets, Paul, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... Bishop Sanderson has observed, 'enlarges itself and triumphs in this argument more frequently than in almost any other; and he clears it often and beyond all exception, both by Scripture and reason, that the life of a wicked or worldly man is a very drudgery, infinitely more toilsome, vexatious, and unpleasant than a godly life is.' [Footnote: Sermons, London, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... our ever-righteous Lord, His teachings we performed; straightway he raised His baneful voice infect with wickedness:— 'Lo, ye are wretched more than all mankind; Ye go upon wide wanderings, and ye fare On many toilsome journeys; ye give ear Unto a stranger's teachings 'gainst our law; A prince without a portion ye proclaim; 680 Ye say, in sooth, that with the Son of God Ye daily converse hold! The rulers know From what beginning his ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... for this is a rural festival, and the last sheaf lifted from the last furrow is placed on the top of the cart-load ornamented with ribbons and flowers, while the foreheads of the oxen and the whip of the driver are decorated also. The triumphant and toilsome entry of the cabbage into the house is a symbol of the prosperity and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... truth when I said, Touch not this. Be healed then now, at length, and recover the life thou hast lost. Lo, I am bearing thine infirmity; drink then the bitter cup. For thou hast of thine own self made those my so sweet precepts, which were given to thee when whole, so toilsome. They were despised, and so thy distress began; cured thou canst not be, except thou drink the bitter cup, the cup of temptations, wherein this life abounds, the cup of tribulation, anguish, and suffering. Drink then," He says, "drink, that thou mayest live." And that the sick man may not ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... stirred them up by exhortation and example,—with this difference, that while it was evidently the business of the monks so to do, the priests, on the other hand, had only taken fork in hand for the sake of a little gentle exercise. One unhappy Jacques Bonhomme made hot and toilsome hay in thick brown clothes, plainly manufactured from a defunct Brother's gown; for, to judge from appearances, a cast-off gown is a thing unknown. It was good to see a Brother, in horn spectacles of mediaeval cut, tenderly chopping a log for firewood, and peering ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... Bigorre, in the Pyrenees. His principal reason for going there was to recruit his shattered health. "On our arrival at Nismes," he says, "and during our few days' sojourn there, I began to feel the effects of my long, toilsome Russian journey; and, in the hope of preventing a return of my suffering complaint, I thought it justifiable to make trial of the sulphur baths and water of Bagneres." But he had also another object in view: "I had long thought," he adds, in a letter from Bigorre, "whether there ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... Londoners of the crowds on the Lord Mayor's day. The houses were gaily decorated. Doors, windows, balconies, and roofs were thronged with gazers. An eye accustomed to the pomp of war would have found much to criticize in the spectacle. For several toilsome marches in the rain, through roads where one who travelled on foot sank at every step up to the ancles in clay, had not improved the appearance either of the men or of their accoutrements. But the people of Devonshire, altogether unused to the splendour of well ordered camps, were overwhelmed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... labour, provided it only be undertaken at their own bidding, although few have the grace to find it when necessity compels to the task. Alec Trenholme found the new form of labour to which he had bidden himself toilsome and delightful; like a true son of Adam, he was more conscious of his toil than of his delight—still both were there; there was physical inspiration in the light of the snow, the keen still air, and the sweet ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel; and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grape vines that twisted their coils and tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... at last, Setting a watch upon my unwise heart, That thus would mix its sorrow with my art, I resolutely shut away the past, And made the toilsome present passing bright With dreams of what was hidden from my sight In the far distant future, when the soil Should yield me golden fruit for ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... limited quantities of the public lands be made to all citizens of the United States who have emigrated, or may hereafter within a prescribed period emigrate, to Oregon and settle upon them. These hardy and adventurous citizens, who have encountered the dangers and privations of a long and toilsome journey, and have at length found an abiding place for themselves and their families upon the utmost verge of our western limits, should be secured in the homes which they have improved by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... our biscuits." Of course there are none, and, as it is not contrary to army etiquette to do so, the whole mess professes to be very sorry. Sometimes, however, the foragers returned well laden with good things, and as good comrades should, shared the fruits of their toilsome hunt with ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... some months. Nina has been sick all summer, is a mere skeleton and looks ten or fifteen years older than she did before that fatal visit to Lincoln University. I do not think that she will ever be the same woman she was before and sometimes I feel sure her toilsome journey on this earth must be near its close. The tears will come whenever I ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... ills, A toilsome life I follow; Compelled to carry from the hills These logs to the impatient mills Below there ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... bean't afeard o' nothin' nor nobody. Oh! life's a very fine thing when you're young; but youth's tur'ble quick agoin'—the years roll slow at first, but gets quicker 'n quicker, till, one day, you wakes to find you 'm an old man; an' when you'm old, the way gets very 'ard, an' toilsome, an' lonely." ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... I benignly answer, "No, you are in the tropic clime of youth." While on the high ground no view of any kind, except along the mountains for a mile or two east and west, could be obtained. I was greatly disappointed at having such a toilsome walk for so little purpose. We returned by a more circuitous route, eventually reaching the camp very late at night, thoroughly tired out with our walk. I named this mountain Mount Musgrave. It is nearly 1700 ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... themselves, or the goatherds with their little flocks. He had helped her up a steep bit of climbing. The exertion had brought an unwonted colour to her face. Her hand lay in his, soft and warm. His closed on it and held it. It was the hand of one who had never done anything toilsome in her life, the hand of a petted darling. He remembered another hand, thin, brown, capable. None of Mary's later years of ease had given her the hand of a woman of leisure. It was the hand of a comrade, a helpmate. Nelly's hand fluttered in his ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... are not all on the battlefield. The Cuban campaign wrecked a promising career as a foreign correspondent which I had been building up for some ten or fifteen years with toilsome effort. It was for a Danish newspaper I wrote with much approval, but when the war came, they did not take the same view of things that I did, and fell to suppressing or mutilating my letters, whereupon ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... and inevitably the lot of the weak; and do not be misled by the fame which accompanies certain talents whose greatest merit consists in their rarity, and a long and toilsome apprenticeship. It is easier for M. Lamennais to recite a philippic, or sing a humanitarian ode after the Platonic fashion, than to discover a single useful truth; it is easier for an economist to apply the laws of production and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... them into their present bondage. And then the Olynthians, again,—how he cheated them, first giving them Potidaea and several other places, is really beyond description. Now he is enticing the Thebans by giving up to them Boeotia, and delivering them from a toilsome and vexatious war. Each of these people did get a certain advantage; but some of them have suffered what all the world knows; others will suffer whatever may hereafter befall them. As for you, I recount ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... a ship is hardly the place for a woman when the wild winds try their strength against the works of man. On the whole, if we reckon up the pains and pleasures of life on board ship, the balance is all in favour of pleasure. The sailors have a toilsome life, and must endure much; but they have health. It is the sense of physical well-being that makes the mind so easy when one is on the sea; and refined men who have lived in the forecastle readily declare that they were happy but for the invariable dirt. Instead of trooping to stuffy lodgings, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... nine bullets I added some dozen nails, pocketing them to the same purpose. And now having collected our possessions (of more value to us than all the treasures of Peru), we set forth upon our long and toilsome journey, our gaze bent ever upon the cliffs that frowned upon our right hand, looking for some place easy of ascent whereby we might come to the highlands above (where we judged it easier travelling) and with Pluto stalking on before ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... Canadian immigrants had to undergo before reaching their destination were much greater than was the case with the people who went direct in ships from American ports to Halifax and other places on the Atlantic coast. The former had to make toilsome journeys by land, or by bateaux and canoes up the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu, the Genesee, and other streams which gave access from the interior of the United States to the new Canadian land. The British government did its best to supply the wants ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... over six feet two, and the kindly calm assurance in his lean strong visage, gave to Bruce and Roger the feeling of safety they needed. For this kind of work was his life. He had specialized on women, and after over fifteen years of toilsome uphill labor he had become at thirty-seven one of the big gynecologists. He was taking his success with the quiet relish of a man who had had to work for it hard. And yet he had not been spoiled by success. He worked even harder than before—so ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... darkness again returned, we moved forward, weary, hungry, and footsore, still governed in our course by the North Star. During all this toilsome way, but few words passed between us, and these generally in low whispers. So untiring was the search, and so thoroughly alarmed and watchful were the population, that we felt that our safety depended upon a bare chance. Again making our way from wood to wood, and avoiding farm ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... come to this quiet place and think it all over, and if I did not write you to the contrary within a few days you might believe that I had yielded to your wishes. I found myself more worn and weary from my toilsome life than I imagined. I was lonely; I dreaded my single- handed struggle with the world, and my heart overflowed with gratitude toward you—it does still—for your kindness, and for all that you promised to do for me. I had not the will nor the disposition to ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... cliffs and often pausing to admire the immensity and grandeur of the black rock palisades towering so far above them, they soon found themselves under the nose of the point of rocks. Entering the crevice in the cliffs known as "The Chimney Stairway," they commenced the steep and toilsome climb to the summit; Fillmore Flagg taking the lead and assisting Miss Fenwick, George Gaylord performing the same service for Mrs. Bainbridge; fifteen minutes later they stood, almost breathless, upon the summit, the blue sky all about them, a precipice ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... meat, the troops started in good spirits. Terence procured the services of a peasant well acquainted with the mountains, and was led by paths used by shepherds across the hills, and after a twelve hours' toilsome journey came down into the defiles that the French were following. There he learned from peasants, that, with the exception of a small scouting party two days before, there were no signs ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... seemed to be to go round one end or the other; but it only appeared to be the simpler plan, for on trying to put it to the test it soon proved itself to be the harder, promising as it did a long, toilsome climb, whichever ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... reason to believe that the wedded life of these two was thoroughly happy, save that Lassus was an indefatigable fiend of work. As his biographer Delmotte says, "His life indeed had been the most toilsome that one could think of, and his fecund imagination, always alert, had enfante a multitude of compositions so great that their very number astounds us (they exceeded two thousand), and forbids us almost to believe them the work of one man. This ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... time on the sea-shore, he rose and walked along the toilsome shingle, scarcely noting which way he went—his thoughts being busy with the martyrdom he had witnessed, flushing one moment with a glorious indignation, and fainting the next with despondent reflections on his own friendless state. For he looked upon himself as adrift on the tides of the world, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... not often molested by visitors on account of the somewhat toilsome climb required to reach it, is the church of Our Lady of Pehna on the summit of Mt. Nillau. Built in 1622 on this high point to be more easily protected from any possible invasion of the Chinese from the main ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison

... bearing up the stranded ship, until she floats above the bar without a straining timber or struggling seaman, instead of the ineffectual and toilsome efforts of the struggling crew and the strain of the engines, which had tried in vain to move her an inch until that heavenly impulse lifted her by its ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... showered upon us perpendicularly his brightest and fiercest rays. My boots were torn, my feet cut, and the perspiration streamed from my brow. To my guide, however, the ascent appeared to be neither toilsome nor difficult. The heat of the day for him had no terrors, no moisture was wrung from his tanned countenance; he drew not one short breath; and hopped upon the stones and rocks with all the provoking agility of a mountain goat. Before we had accomplished ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the summit was rather toilsome, for the snow, which was softened by the blazing sun, was from ten to twenty feet deep, but the view was one of the most impressively sublime I ever beheld. Snowy, ice-sculptured ranges bounded the horizon all around, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... years old his father was suddenly removed by death. His mother was then left to provide for the aged mother of her husband, as well as her own little family, of whom the youngest was an infant of a few weeks old. This was a weary and toilsome task. Neither of her sons were old enough to render her any assistance on the farm, and the slender income arising from it would not warrant the expense of hiring needful laborers. She was obliged ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... the order the governor telegraphed back that I was sick almost to death, and not able to bear the fatigue of the long, toilsome journey, and asked for further orders. As soon as this news reached my devoted wife she at once set out, in spite of all the entreaties of her friends and advisers, to cross the wastes of Siberia, and take her place at ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... of the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... the misery of the toilsome journey, we could hardly see an inch before us, although the sun took right good care to blaze down right immediately over our heads through the tops of the trees. We could only tell we were ascending from ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... take officially? There were troops at Frayne going forward in strong force within the week. There were other officers within call, a dozen of them, who had done nowhere near the amount of field service performed by Dean. He, a troop commander just in from long and toilsome marches and from perilous duty, had practically been relieved from the command of his troop, told to take ten men and run the gauntlet through the swarming Sioux. The more Folsom thought the more he believed that ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... obtaining true notions by frequent experiments; and who, possessed with too high an opinion of their own abilities, rather choose to consult their own imaginations, than inquire into nature, and are better pleased with the charming amusement of forming hypotheses, than the toilsome drudgery ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... is like a glad father, delighting to be able to encourage a strong healthy son to undertake some athletic feat which will entail arduous effort and careful training, or to stimulate him to prepare for a difficult literary examination by a prolonged and toilsome course of study, knowing he will obtain honours and permanent advantage from his attainments? So, our HEAVENLY FATHER delights to trust a trustworthy child with a trial in which he can bring great glory to GOD, and through which he will receive permanent enlargement of heart, and blessing ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... have been: Here is a man who has struggled toughly; who has /es sich recht sauer werden lassen./ Goethe's life, whether as a writer and thinker, or as a living active man, has indeed been a life of effort, of earnest toilsome endeavour after all excellence. Accordingly, his intellectual progress, his spiritual and moral history, as it may be gathered from his successive Works, furnishes, with us, no small portion of the pleasure and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for on their tops The beauty and the majesty of earth, Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st, The haunts of men below thee, and around The mountain summits, thy expanding heart Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world To which thou art translated, and partake The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look Upon ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelph of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous journey: not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example. In England the English were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... write it, and very difficult to read it when written. There was a very great practical obstacle, too, in the way of its general introduction, in the want of any suitable materials for writing. To cut letters with a chisel and a mallet upon a surface of marble is a very slow and toilsome process. To diminish this labor the ancients contrived tables of brass, copper, lead, and sometimes of wood, and cut the inscriptions upon them by the use of various tools and implements. Still it is obvious, that by such methods as these the art of writing could ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Hermon eagerly interrupted the other, "still think it worth the trouble to take from her what she alone can bestow. They save themselves the toilsome search for the model which others so successfully used before them, and bronze and marble still keep wonderfully well. Bring out the old masterpieces. Take the head from this one, the arm from that, etc. The pupil impresses the proportions on his mind. Only so far as the longing for the beautiful ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... no relation who would own me, or friend who would protect. If I went into the country it would be to the toilsome occupations of a day-labourer; but even that was better ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown



Words linked to "Toilsome" :   heavy, laborious, arduous, effortful, gruelling, grueling, operose, backbreaking, toilsomeness



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com