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More "Thankless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stories are told of the abusiveness of the class, but a simple and effective rule is to overpay them at once and be done with it. I have sometimes had one cast a sorrowing glance at the just fare pressed into his down-stretched palm, and drive off in thankless silence; but any excess of payment was met with eager gratitude. I preferred to buy the cabman's good-will, because I find this is a world in which I am constantly buying the good-will of people whom I do not care ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... rejoiced in it. Pressure was coming from all sides. More than ten years had elapsed since the enactment of the Dingley bill and the position of many industries had been altered with the course of time. Evidently the day for revision—at best a thankless task—had arrived. Taft accepted the inevitable and called Congress in a special session. Until the midsummer of 1909, Republican Senators and Representatives wrangled over tariff schedules, the President making ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... since that will come to him in the ordinary course of nature. He is one of the personages in political life who excite the sympathy of Lord Rosebery, inasmuch as he must be a peer malgre lui. He served a long apprenticeship when the office of Whip was more than usually thankless, his party being in opposition. When Mr. Gladstone's Ministry was formed, it was assumed, as a matter of course, that Mr. Marjoribanks would have found for him office in other department than that of the Whip. But Mr. Gladstone, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... therefore a difficult matter to interest capital in their projects. Railroad committees were in time formed in all cities of any importance, but, with capital cowardly, as usual, and governments distrustful, their task was often a thankless one. Railroad projects matured very slowly, and, when matured, were often wrecked by jealous and short-sighted governments. After the formation of a company five and even ten years would often pass away before a charter could be secured and the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... from the contemplation of my own. I have not succeeded, and shall not succeed in expressing the affection I feel for you, or the triumph with which I find that what I undertook as a distasteful and thankless duty has rescued my life and labor from waste. My literary travail, seriously as it has occupied us both, I now value only for the share it has had in educating you; and you will be guilty of no disloyalty to me when you come to see that though I sifted as much sand as most men, I found ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... desert; who will give me wings? In cloudy horror, who shall lead my steps? The eye of God maketh the night as day. O brothers, fulfill then The terrible duty; Throw down from the altars The dim-burning tapers; And be all joy, and be the love of God In thankless hearts that know not Peter, quenched, As is the little flame that falls and dies, Here in ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... a woman. A man can grit his teeth and smash through some way, unless he sinks back into absolute indifference as a good many Indian agents do. But a woman—well, dear, I dread to think of your embarking on a task which is at once so alluring and so endless and thankless." ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... is blessedness! A year ago I did not see it as I do to-day,— We are so dull and thankless; and too slow To catch the sunshine till it slips away. And now it seems surpassing strange to me That, while I wore the badge of motherhood, I did not kiss more oft and tenderly The little child that brought me ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... nights, in which the brain grew dizzy and the heart heavy and clogged with the intensity of my pursuits. Were the dungeon and the scaffold my reward Heaven knows that I would not flinch eye or hand or abate a jot of heart and hope in the thankless prosecution of my toils. Know me, then, as one of fortunes more desperate than your own; of an ambition more unquenchable; of a philanthropy no less ardent; and, I will add, of a courage no less firm: and behold the utter hopelessness of your projects with others, when to me they ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... 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 a ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... helpless when the branding iron is laid to the flesh until slave pens smell like cook shops? Why do not the gods hear the cries of humankind fed on pods and roots and skins, beaten with clubs and hung on crosses, for no evil save honest toil for thankless masters? ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... the thankless morning, The gifts of noon unused; Think of the eve of scorning, The night ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... 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
... 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 ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... disposition in the army of William II. to relax the severity of service even temporarily. My German friends sincerely believe that the black stock and the hot tunic are what has made Prussia a strong nation, and to disturb that superstition would be a thankless task. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... who had yet discovered anything on the island, I was now invested with a certain importance. Also, I had a playfellow and companion for future walks, in lieu of Cuthbert Vane, held down tight to the thankless toil of treasure-hunting by his stem taskmaster. But at the same time I was provided with an annoying, because unanswerable, question which had lodged at the back of my mind like ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... "A thankless office, my dear. If you could make all the world wise, it would do, but fools are always angry with you ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... he'll make a good king. I ain't so much down on kings as I used to be, Hinnissy. I ain't down on thim anny more because I don't invy thim, an' ye can't be down on anny man ye don't invy. 'Tis a hard job an' a thankless wan. A king nowadays is no more thin a hitchin' post f'r wan pollytician afther another. He ain't allowed to move himsilf, but anny crazy pollytician that ties up to him is apt to pull him out be th' roots. He niver has anny childhood. He's like th' breaker-boys ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... "Ye're a thankless madam," she said, shaking her white-capped head; "maybe ye think that the fifth commandment says nocht aboot grandmithers; but ye'll be tamed some day, my woman. Mony's the gamesome an' hellicat [madcap] ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... than a literary one. Let me give you fair warning—it is 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
... but only leave All things to our Father! Would we only cease to grieve, Wait His mercy rather! Meek resigning childish choice, Graceless, thankless pressing— Listen for His gentle voice, 'Child, receive this blessing!' Faithless, foolish hearts! see you Seeds' earth-hidden growing? What our God for us will ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... that Carl should become a clergyman, but his distaste for theology did not go unexpressed. So perverse and persistent were his inclinations that they preyed on the mind of his father, who quoted King Lear and said, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... still begun—And this 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... all her being quiveringly eager to be gone. She had asked that which she was bidden to ask, had gained that which she was bidden to gain; for the rest, it was far better that she should go. Better far for him to think her dull and thankless as a stone ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... 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, ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... 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
... a Kingdom can be with a clean King—a strong King! I've fitted you to bear a burden which only a man could bear—to remind the world that 'King' means the Man Who Can—and I thought you could do it!" He paused only to draw a long breath, then hastened on again. "Yes, your task is thankless. Your Principality is small, but it is a keystone in Europe's arch. It is such Princelings as you who must send clean blood down to the thrones of to-morrow.... Is that not enough?... Have I built a King, day ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... that we have not acted rightly; for incited by counterfeit oracles we drove out into exile men who were very closely united with us as guest-friends and who undertook the task of rendering Athens submissive to us, and then after having done this we delivered over the State to a thankless populace, which so soon as it had raised its head, having been freed by our means drove out us and our king with wanton outrage; and now exalted with pride 76 it is increasing in power, so that the neighbours of these men first of all, that is the Boeotians and Chalkidians, have ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... fair Nymphs, 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
... she was held in her seat by the certainty that Robin would not let himself be carried off; and sooner than say good-bye and then find he was staying on alone she would sit there all night. Thus do mothers sacrifice themselves for their children, thought Mrs. Morrison, for their all too frequently thankless children. But though she would do it to any extent in order to guard her boy she need not, she said to herself, be pleasant besides,—she need not, so to speak, be the primroses on his path of dalliance. Accordingly she behaved as ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... finds necessary in order to house an egg may easily equal or even exceed that of the worker in building her cell and filling it with honey. That industrious one has regular and continuous work, an excellent condition for success in her egg-laying; the other has a thankless and precarious task, at the mercy of a thousand accidents which endanger the great undertaking of installing the eggs. One has only to watch the prolonged hesitation of a Coelioxys seeking for the Leaf-cutters' ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 guerdon when we hope to ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... is hardly anything within its own sphere of action of which it is not capable. So many high motives (though also some mean ones) prompt us to make broad the bases of education, that any proposal to contract them must needs be thankless and unpopular; but it is certain that, among the upper classes at least, the reason why so many men are unable to make their way in the world, is because, thanks to a too liberal education, they are Jacks of all trades and ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... those who are appreciative. We can be heroic, in an emergency, but if we are not properly thanked, we do like to growl a little. It is gratifying to our vanity to be ranked with our masculine associates, but when it comes to the hard, thankless tasks which they accept without a murmur, then we proceed to show that we know what is what, and that our refined tastes ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... fantastically rich; and some of the very rich allowed some of the very clever to wheedle from them great sums of money, knowing all the time that these would be applied to such unsettling activities as the education of thankless labourers or anti-sweating propaganda. Even towards Art rolled a few coppers; indeed, the best painter in England tells me that about this time he was earning as much as two hundred a year. It was thought odd but not shameful ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... fellow-citizens. In this point of view, a few votes less are but little sensible, while a few more would have been in their effect very sensible and oppressive to me. I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office. And never since the day you signed the treaty of Paris, has our horizon been so overcast. I devoutly wish you may be able to shun for us this war, which will destroy our agriculture, commerce, and credit. If you do, the glory will be all your own. And that your administration ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... fresh, stupid house-maiden, but, sooner than take the trouble of teaching the new servant where everything was, and how to give out the stores if she was busy, she would go back to Worms. For, after all, housekeeping for a brother was thankless work; there was no satisfying men; and Heppenheim was but a poor ignorant village ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... good wife and homemaker says to her children, "Where thou goest, I will go." She puts off her own inclinations to ease and selfishness. She studies the men who propose to educate her children; she exhorts mothers to sit beside fathers on the school-board; she will even herself accept such thankless office in the interests of the helpless youth of the schools who need a mother's as well as a father's and a teacher's care in ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... task," he said, "to explain the slowness of the masses in feeling their way to a comprehension of all that the democratic idea meant for them, but it is one equally difficult and thankless to account for the blank failure of the philosophers, historians, and statesmen of your day to arrive at an intelligent estimate of the logical content of democracy and to forecast its outcome. Surely the very smallness of the practical results thus far ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Nature that is hardest to please, 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 ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... and will run till it becomes a waking reality) strong, and free, and safe, by being good and wise. To such a spirit this bold cunning man had come, stiff-necked and heaven-defiant, a "brand plucked from the burning:" and yet equally unconscious of his danger, and thankless for his respite. Given, too, as it were, into her hands; tossed at her feet out of the very mouth of the pit,—why but that she might save him? A far duller heart, a far narrower imagination than Grace's would have done what Grace's did—concentrate ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... 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 near forty miles from the capital, and to inspect in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... 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
... our sweet Lady, Saint Mary, worketh miracles at Walsingham, never was poor woman so be-plagued as I, with an ill, ne'er-do-well, good-for-nought, thankless hussy, picked up out of the mire in the gutter! Where be thy wits, thou gadabout? Didst leave them at the Cross yester-morrow? Go thither and seek for them! for ne'er a barley crust shalt thou break this even in this house, or my name is ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... up there where he is safe, and not tempt the shafts and arrows any more. What, I 'haven't done anything then, after all?' O, haven't I! Jane, you are worse than a serpent's tooth: if Lear had been in my place, he would have talked about a thankless sister. It has been a weary, toilsome, painful task, and few men could have carried it through to so happy an end. And when I come back hungering for sympathy—I told you what my nature was—you ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... 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 I preferred for them to put ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... half-absent dilettante fashion, to some art, science, or useful avocation. Only it required a self-discipline of which, unfortunately, he was incapable. In all pursuits requiring dexterity, all sciences, the first steps are laborious, wearisome, and apparently thankless, and the Canaan which they promise is reached only after weary wandering through the desert. Prince Louis did not possess the self-denial requisite for it. So he continued his life devoted to purely external things and meanwhile was as much bored as Jonah in the whale. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no utility to humanity. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... course of the night that the captain discovered the hopelessness of reclaiming the Latin-grammar master. That thankless traitor was found out, as the two ships lay near each other, communicating with 'The Family' by signals, and offering to give up Boldheart. He was hanged at the yard-arm the first thing in the morning, after ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... is a rough account of the actual work of diplomacy. It is not a full account. There are many wrong things done which deserve criticism, but which we have not had space to mention. There is also much self-sacrificing and thankless work done by diplomatists and consuls in distant parts of the world—much seeming drudgery which can hope for no reward—many honourable services rendered to the public of which the public never hears. But the above account will suffice to give a rough idea of the organisation ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... 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 ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... constant and 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... 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 from ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... giving them a chance to develop. (8) Keawe-ulu-pu. It was his function to promote the development and fruitage of plants. (9) Keawe-lu-pua. He caused flowers to shed their petals. (10) Keawe-opala. It was his thankless task to create rubbish and litter by scattering the leaves of the trees. (11) Keawe-hulu, a magician, who could blow a feather into the air and see it at once become a bird with power to fly away. (12) Keawe-nui-ka-ua-o-Hilo, a sentinel ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... me," 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 ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... continued the captain. "Well, there 'tis. What am I goin' to do? When they wanted me to take the job in the first place I kind of hesitated. You know I did. 'Twas bound to be one of those thankless sort of jobs that get a feller into trouble, bound to be. And yet—and yet—well, SOMEBODY has to take those kind of jobs. And a man hadn't ought to talk all the time about how he wishes he could do somethin' to help his country, and then lay down and quit on the first chance that ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... BAR. Thou thankless fair! (raises ZAPHIRA.) Thus to repay the labours of my love! Had I not seiz'd the throne when Selim died, Ere this thy foes had laid Algiers in ruin. I check'd the warring pow'rs, and gave you peace, Make thee but mine, I will descend ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... my wish, was a fitting knight to play a leading role with my young lady, the desire for whose wellbeing had taken grip of me. For her sweet sake, and the sake of the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as women have to ace marriage, domesticity, and mostly all the issues of life assigned them, without training, I did not give up heart. As a first effort I determined ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... "Antiquity of Man" opens up a wide field of 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 was a particularly ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... this of course depends in a great measure on your reply." My reply, dwelling on the fatigue and cost, had the reception I foresaw. "Notwithstanding what you say, I am still in the same mind about coming to London. Not because the proofs concern me at all (I should be an ass as well as a thankless vagabond if they did), but because of that unspeakable restless something which would render it almost as impossible for me to remain here and not see the thing complete, as it would be for a full balloon, left to itself, not to go up. I do not intend coming from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... work?" said I sullenly: "I cannot please though I toil like a slave." "Work, work!" reiterated the inward voice. "I may work, it will do no good," I growled; but nevertheless I drew out a packet of letters and commenced my task—task thankless and bitter as that of the Israelite crawling over the sun-baked fields of Egypt in search of straw and stubble wherewith to accomplish ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... be a night expected more propitious to an escaping criminal: means of disguise Williams now had in excess; and the dens were innumerable in the neighborhood of the river that could have sheltered him for years from troublesome inquiries. But favors are thrown away upon the reckless and the thankless. That night, when the turning-point offered itself for his whole future career, Williams took the wrong turn; for, out of mere indolence, he took the turn to his old lodgings—that place which, in all England, he had just now ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... century. It was deluding the people and trifling with national interests. It is certain that no financier before or since ever, in Cromwellian phrase, made such a conscience of the matter, or ever found the task more thankless.[359] Great as was the effect of the close and searching argument that accompanied all this invective, even Mr. Gladstone's friends thought it too impassioned and too severe upon Lewis, in whose favour there was consequently a reaction. The cool minister contented himself ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... judges is determined in each case by the fact that the experience of each has hardened him and rendered him completely hopeless and unsympathetic. "The work of the buffalo in the oil-press," says Captain Temple, "is the synonym all India over—and with good reason—for hard and thankless ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... you thankless hussy, to say such a thing in the house where you've been clothed and fed and sheltered for so many years! You're the child of your father with a vengeance! Get ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... 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
... fools!" he exclaimed—"O thankless and disloyal people! What!—ye WILL see me now? ... ye WILL hear me? ... Aye! but who shall answer for your obedience to my words! Nay, is it possible that I, your country's chosen Chief Minstrel, should have stood so long among ye disregarded! How comes it your dull eyes ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... least, was the hatred in the heart of Savonarola. He was making war against no trivial human sins, but against godless and thankless quiescence, against getting used to happiness, the mystic sin by which all creation fell. He was preaching that severity which is the sign-manual of youth and hope. He was preaching that alertness, that clean agility and vigilance, which ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... return; he would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... laziness. I'm glad she 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 ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... at them and sighed. "I tell you, Grace, it's a thankless job, rearing a family. Connie told me to-day that my collars should have straight edges now instead of turned-back corners. And Lark reminded me that I got my points mixed up in last Sunday's lesson. I'm getting sick of this family business, I'm ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... at Asteroid Station Three. The work is not hard but it's a thankless, monotonous existence. You're alone on an anchored world a half-mile in diameter. You sign on for three years, and there you stay. You have every need within reason, including technical library and one-way radio. A government ship ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... added the petition, "designates our Society as a perpetual hotbed of regicidal conspiracy, and presents us to credulous people as an association of ambitious, thankless and corrupt assassins!" ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in the course of the night that the captain discovered the hopelessness of reclaiming the Latin-Grammar-Master. That thankless traitor was found out, as the two ships lay near each other, communicating with The Family by signals, and offering to give up Boldheart. He was hanged at the yard-arm the first thing in the morning, after having it impressively pointed out to him by Boldheart that this was what spiters ...
— Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar Master - A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Lieut-Col. Robin Redforth, aged 9 • Charles Dickens
... it as Orlando did with Morgana, breaking the talisman and dissolving the enchantment This would be a pity; but it would also be a pity that these two young persons should not come together. But why should I trouble myself with matchmaking? It is always a thankless office. If it turns out well, your good service is forgotten. If it turns out ill, you are abused by ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... slanderous tongue To daunt me, scattering in the people's ear Dark hints, and looked for partners of his wrong: Nor rested, till with Calchas' aid, the seer— But why the thankless story should ye hear? Why stay your hand? If Grecians in your sight Are all alike, ye know enough; take here Your vengeance. Dearly will my death delight Ulysses, well the deed will Atreus' ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... were the 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 repair it! 'Tis our turn! Go, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... reconstructing the political and economic organisation of Egypt. It was her hope and intention that the work should be done as rapidly as possible, in order that she might be able to withdraw from a difficult and thankless task, which brought her into very delicate relations with the other powers interested in Egypt. But withdrawal was not easy. The task of reorganisation proved to be a much larger and more complicated one than had been anticipated; and it was greatly ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... prompt, "With 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 of waiting ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... 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
... misery of your awn choosin'; go to him an' the rubbish-heap he calls a farm! Thankless an' ontrue,—go,—an' look to me in the future to keep you out of the poorhouse and no more. An' that for ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... every mercy been taken as a matter of course, and every pleasure been enjoyed with a thankless forgetfulness of the hand from which it flowed? If such has been the case, let it be so no longer; but awake and rouse ye from your lethargic slumber, be true to yourselves, and remember that you are responsible beings, and will have to account for all the time ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... industrial energy displayed in a land where Nature is a godmother, what progress agriculture might make if capital would go into partnership with the soil, which is not so thankless in Champagne as it is in Scotland, where capital has done wonders. The day when agriculture will have conquered the unfertile portion of those departments, and industry has seconded capital on the Champagne chalk, the prosperity of that region will triple itself. Into that land, now without luxury, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... zeal, under the impression at once of the immensity of the evil, so defying the feebleness of their remedial means and efforts, and of its noisome quality. At times, the rudeness of the subjects, and perhaps the ungracious reception and thankless requital of their disinterested labors, aggravating the general feeling of the miserableness (so to express it) of seeing so much misery, have lent seduction to the temptations to ease and self-indulgence. Why should they, just they of all men, condemn themselves ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... your mind is care-ridden," bandied Martin, falling in with the other's mood. "It must be a wearisome and thankless task to scatter universal knowledge amidst the brainless. Have you still got your book? That thing you ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... how thankless a thing it is for me to let my heart speak for once, like other people. I am like the boy in the fable when the wolf came! I have so often behaved in an unbrotherly fashion that when I show the aspect of a brother you think I have put on a mask. If I had had anything special to ask ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 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 Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Parliament, he would have been expelled from the House. But of course in Parliament they wouldn't have those horrid things to roll down the aisles. Poor dear Humphrey! The career of a gentleman in politics is a thankless one in this country. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... turn, began to converse in a very unrestrained manner, and, on leaving, bade Clare never to come to London without seeing him. Quitting the house in Albemarle Street, Clare ran right against Mr. Gifford, who was coming up the steps. Both apologised, and both felt somewhat confused concerning the thankless old business of ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... for you from morning till night, you thankless chit, you? And don't you begrudge me all the little amusements which turn the tradesman into the man and sweeten the pill of bondage—eh, you ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... lips; 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, have gilded,—"UNANSWERED LETTERS." In vain she cons it with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... if not, he will defend himself.[257] As for his country, he has done more for his country than has even been desired of him; and he thinks it to be better to leave the helm in the hands of pilots, however incompetent, than himself to steer when passengers are so thankless. Then we find that he robs poor Tullia of her promised pleasure at the games, because it will be beneath his dignity to appear at them. He is always very anxious for his friend's letters, depending ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... And he cursed his eldest daughter, 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 his horses to be saddled and set out ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wondering what things the coming years might hold for them and for their parents. At one time, you know, Philip Bawdrey was as innocent and guileless as any of those little shavers; and yet, in after years he proved a monster of iniquity, a beast of ingratitude, and—Oh, well, let it pass. He paid, as thankless children always do pay under God's good rule. I wonder what his thoughts were ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... understands it. Further, he gives us credit for understanding it. He has nothing of that paltry meanness or strange density of so many of his colleagues, who put us down as aimless iconoclasts or moral anarchists. He admits that we are waging a thankless war for what we take to be Truth and Progress. He is doing the same. But why, in the name of all that is reasonable, should we, when we are agreed on the momentousness of the issue either way, forthwith ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... with a hard eye. "You put the cart before the horse, I think," says he. "That which I had given was a portion of my liking, which your thankless nature does not seem to have remarked. But for my patronage, it is not given, nor (to be exact) is it yet offered." He paused a bit. "And I warn you, you do not know yourself," he added. "Youth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know you will; if not me, some other man. You will have discovered that doing the world's work even well is a thankless job, and that fame and success are the husks that swine do eat compared with even the tears and griefs of love. But you will not be lovable then, Selah; you will only be horribly intelligent and capable. I can see that, ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... there was a boy wanted and barrack for myself properly, and she used to help me and see me through to the best of her ability. I'm afraid I didn't always feel as grateful to her as I should have felt. I was a thankless kid at the best of times—most kids are—but otherwise I was a straight enough little chap as nippers go. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn't been. My relations would have thought a good deal more of ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... pity," she sighed. "So touching when a father—no matter how selfish—is wrecked by love of a thankless son. I'm sorry, indeed I am. But I warned him six years ago. Didn't ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... are going to be brave at his expense, poor man. You must not expect anything from me, my dear, but common sense. You give up all hope of being happy because you think it your duty to go on sacrificing him and yourself to a set of thankless, worthless women, and you call it being brave. I call it being unnatural ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... When one undertakes the thankless task of analyzing coldly and critically the style of Scott, the faults are plain enough. He constantly uses two adjectives or three in parallel construction where one would do the work better. The construction ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... MISCARRIAGE.—It is one of the many thankless tasks of a physician's life to insist on each patient staying in bed at least ten days after a miscarriage. The average woman and frequently the intelligent woman fails to appreciate the absolute necessity for this procedure. It is necessary and it ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... they did when they came out of the oven. Think of those loaves baked eighteen hundred years ago, and still preserved as witnesses against that wicked city. God was good to those people in Pompeii, and prepared their corn, and bread to strengthen their heart, just as He does for us. And they went on thankless and careless in their sin, till the fiery stream overtook them, and that same fire which destroyed them preserved the bread, as a sign of God's goodness ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... awful dust: Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies, To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes: Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest! Blest in thy genius, in thy love too, blest! One greatful woman to thy fame supplies, What a whole thankless land to his denies." ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... believe me, c'est un vilain metier cet de president. If he leans a little too much on this side he goes down into the mud, a little too much on the other he rolls in the dust. One must feel some respect for the man who undertakes such a thankless office. And, again, when a man rides in an open landau in pelting rain, when il lui pleut dans le nez, without an umbrella, with his hat off, saluting right and left, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... 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, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... baffled in all her schemes, matrimonial and otherwise, and cast upon a thankless, undeserving world, turned very sharp and sour; and did at length become so acid, and did so pinch and slap and tweak the hair and noses of the youth of Golden Lion Court, that she was by one consent expelled that sanctuary, and desired to bless some other spot of earth, in preference. It ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the first time published—are not without considerable interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most thorough bona fides, always ensure the conduct of the common agent against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's offer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... three, being of one mind, In hearing of all men refused to judge Judgment so thankless: they would none of it. Therefore they set the high-born sons of Troy There in the midst, spear-thralls although they were, To give just judgment in the warriors' strife. Then in hot anger Aias rose, and spake: "Odysseus, frantic soul, why hath a God Deluded thee, to make thee hold thyself ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... meager. A task he could see and a kingdom he could desire, but adequacy of preparation for world-conquest never crept into his thought. He was as niggardly in supplying his generals and armies as Queen Elizabeth, and all but as voluble in abuse of his servants in the field or cabinet, and as thankless to those who had wrought his will. Parma, and Requesens, and Don John, and Alva, he drove almost frantic by his excessive demands and expectations, coupled with his entire inadequacy in preparation and supplies. His soldiers were always on the point of mutiny for food, or ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... was soon of the settled conviction that she should never meet any one quite like him again. He was true to his promise to help her; (he never made a promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and he applied himself to the by no means thankless task with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized all his actions. There was quite a number of young girls in his parish, more proportionately than in the others. Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth had long been ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... nearly forgot," he said, turning back and smiling at his oversight. "We need a new director to take your father's place. When I'm away Burdon looks after things, so I suppose he may as well take the responsibility. It's a thankless position, but some one has to ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... ladies are never old—quite young or only moderately young, they took to the work like ducks to the water and did yeoman service. As in the case of the cable censorship, employment in the postal censorship was a thankless job; but the labourers of both sexes in the branch had at least the satisfaction of knowing that they had done their bit—some of them a good deal more than their bit—for their country ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... his hand, which he partially immerses: he remains steadfast and unmoved, and we all know that he must be drowned. The multitudes who daily perish in this manner to attest a philosophical truth, and whose bodies the unreasoning wave casts sullenly upon our thankless shores, have a truer claim to be called the martyrs of science than a Galileo or a Kepler. To use Kossuth's eloquent phrase, they are the unnamed demigods of ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the pupil's manhood;—his avarice, his ingratitude, his implacability, his inconstancy. Such a bad pupil, Monsieur!—so thankless, cold-hearted, unchivalrous, unforgiving! ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... morning there, but found nothing except the skeleton of a sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was a thankless job, and I got very cross over it. I had an ugly feeling that I was on a false scent and wasting my time. I wished to Heaven I had old Peter with me. He could follow spoor like a Bushman, and would have riddled the Portuguese ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... 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 a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... Ulysses sought with slanderous tongue To daunt me, scattering in the people's ear Dark hints, and looked for partners of his wrong: Nor rested, till with Calchas' aid, the seer— But why the thankless story should ye hear? Why stay your hand? If Grecians in your sight Are all alike, ye know enough; take here Your vengeance. Dearly will my death delight Ulysses, well the deed will Atreus' ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... madam; indeed I am not thankless of your thought of me. But I cannot go; for even if I had the spirits to sustain the role of a woman of fashion in the gay capital this winter, I feel that in doing so I should still further displease and alienate my husband. No, I must remain here in retirement, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the helpless when the branding iron is laid to the flesh until slave pens smell like cook shops? Why do not the gods hear the cries of humankind fed on pods and roots and skins, beaten with clubs and hung on crosses, for no evil save honest toil for thankless masters? ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... 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
... luck in having such a capital piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath, occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it, and will admit that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest part of a page of her own. For though Lady Bertram rather shone in the epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from the want of other employment, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... know also that I have devoted my life to a difficult, thankless task; that I ... that we shall have to expose ourselves not only to dangers, but to ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... our Indian empire—who, triumphing over obstacles hitherto insurmountable, has caused the tide of victory to flow from East to West, and make the Sepoy invincible—may not erelong be called upon to fulfil the thankless task of suppressing insurrection, and to control the kindling fury of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population? Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and in our harbours be heard no sound ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... lady!" said the artist; "I pity her from my inmost soul. Doesn't the himmortal bard observe how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child? And is it true, ma'am, that that young woman has been ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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 single all that time.—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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
... banded themselves together to resist the terrorism of the pro-King komitadjis. If he had been in Montenegro during the years after the War he would possibly agree that komitadji is the proper name for the many lawless elements who have found the traditional fighting life more congenial than the thankless task of tilling their very barren land. The moral effect of opposing to these the Montenegrin Omladina instead of Serbian troops was to destroy all pretence of the movement being a national Montenegrin insurrection against the union, and the cessation of assistance from Italy resulted in ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... "Yes, by all means," said he, "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 the quantity required. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... expected pain, Calphurnia, To labour for the thankless.—He who seeks Reward in ruling, makes ambition guilt; And ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... learned to love you, but simply as F. M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows of existence, and come and be a reality to us? Can you leave off harassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know nothing of you, and begin at last to live to yourself ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... shock me, it does make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to have lived for a week, or a day: but oh, what has God given to this thankless earth, and what has the earth thrown away; and in nine cases out of ten, from its own neglect and carelessness! What that boy might have been, what he might have done as an Englishman, if he could ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... wake, For 'tis their offerings, not their alms we take. "Long may these founts of Charity remain, And never shrink, but to be fill'd again; True! to the Author they are now confined, To him who gave the treasure of his mind, His time, his health,—and thankless found mankind: But there is hope that from these founts may flow A side-way stream, and equal good bestow; Good that may reach us, whom the day's distress Keeps from the fame and perils of the Press; Whom ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Sometimes, what has 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 ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... 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 may choose The ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... nodded here. "You have set my thankless service above your life, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... already, and so has nothing to gain in that 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 ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... awakening memory. Many wore uniforms—French, Austrian, Belgian, Mexican. Some were dancing gaily, laughing and flirting as they went by. Others looked careworn and absorbed by the preoccupations of a distracted state, and by the growing consciousness of the thankless responsibility which the incapacity of their rulers at home, and the unprincipled deceit of a few official impostors, had placed upon them. But all, whether thoughtful or careless, whether clairvoyant or blind, whether ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... as yet made no remarkable impression on the religious mind of the Siamese. Devoted, persevering, and patient laborers, the field they have so faithfully tilled has rewarded them with but scanty fruits. Nor will the fact, thankless though it be, appear surprising to those whose privilege it has been to observe the Buddhist and the Roman Catholic side by side in the East, and to note how, even on the score of doctrine, they meet without a jar at many points. The ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... 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
... finish, or 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 I had to begin again! No, no! you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... casually from day to day, as the ripe eggs descend from the ovaries. They are prepared long beforehand, during the bad weather, at the end of March and in April, when flowers are scarce and the temperature subject to sudden changes. This thankless period, often cold, liable to hail-storms, is spent in making ready the home. Alone at the bottom of her shaft, which she rarely leaves, the mother works at her children's apartments, lavishing upon them those finishing-touches which ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... and to their fate resigned The restless, thankless, rebel kind; Left to themselves, they went to work, First signed a treaty ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... look at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... last of waiting, patiently, humbly, resigned like the beast of burden which awaits the slaughterhouse. Beasts of burden! Are we not that, all we who with brow bent under humiliation, injustice, thankless toil; with the heart embittered by tedious deception and tedious despair, miseries of heart and miseries of body, wait, wait ever, wait vainly for a more brilliant sun to shine at last, until at the end of the day there rises before ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... 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 a face you have got by it! See to what you are brought ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... very unrestrained manner, and, on leaving, bade Clare never to come to London without seeing him. Quitting the house in Albemarle Street, Clare ran right against Mr. Gifford, who was coming up the steps. Both apologised, and both felt somewhat confused concerning the thankless old business of giving and ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... love triumpheth o'er his buskined poet. What lawful is, or we profess love's art: (Alas, my precepts turn myself to smart!) 20 We write, or what Penelope sends Ulysses, Or Phillis' tears that her Demophoon misses. What thankless Jason, Macareus, and Paris, Phedra, and Hippolyte may read, my care is. And what poor Dido, with her drawn sword sharp, Doth say, with her that loved the Aonian harp. As[328] soon as from strange lands Sabinus came, And writings did from divers ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... control of all the machines from one central station, built at the edge of the Northern Glacier. Here were brought the scant few of the prolats that had been spared, a pitiful four hundred men and women, and they were set to endless, thankless tasks. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Hegels, just as there were two Voltaires; and the later, or more conservative Hegel, had developed his All-godhead till it had become a compromise with the Christian view. And so Father Uriel, who never wanted to be behind the times, became a rationalistic Christian, who was given the thankless task of combating Rationalism and himself. (Pause.) I'll shorten the whole sad history for Father Uriel's sake. In 1850 he again became a materialist and an enemy of Christianity. In 1870 he became a hypnotist, in 1880 a theosophist, and 1890 he wanted to shoot himself! I met him ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... David; 'but he has prodigals that trouble him sair, and we maun see til't 'at we binna thankless ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... army's name! Say, had her blood stained temple[1] missed the kindness Of some vow promised fruit of victory, Foiled of some glorious armour through thy blindness, Or fell some stag ungraced by gift from thee? Or did stern Ares venge his thankless spear Through this night foray that ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... were closed. Even the forlorn Mrs. Starkey seemed to go back almost as happy as when she had issued forth in the evening with her newly found nephew. The sudden gleam of hope which his unlooked-for coming had let in upon a toilsome and thankless life—for we know more about her position in Mr. Manlius's household than we have been at liberty to disclose—had, indeed, gone out in darkness; but the Christmas merriment, and the kindness which for one evening had flowed around her, had so fertilized one little spot in her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... 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
... Billy, who in the space of half a minute had ranged himself alongside his master. "You to question the word o' Miller Lyddon, you crooked-hearted raven! Who was it spoke for 'e fifteen year ago an' got 'em to make 'e p'liceman 'cause you was tu big a fule to larn any other trade? Gert, thankless twoad! An' who was it let 'em keep the 'Green Man' awpen two nights in wan week arter closin' time, 'cause he wanted ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... reward, to bear up manfully against injustice, and not to despond because his rewards are slow. It would be very easy for an author to make everybody good, or, if any were bad, to dismiss them, out of hand, to purgatory and places even worse. But it would be a thankless toil to read the writings of such an author. His characters would fail in vraisemblance, and his incidents would lack in interest. The world is a sort of vast moral lazar-house, in which most have sores, either of greater or less degree of virulence. Some are ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... why anybody should bother his 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
... privilege of occupying the floor of a small 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... prayer! How fair, how lovely 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
... 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 ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... gave him, to his great joy and astonishment, the living of Drumston, worth 350L. a-year. And now, at last, he might marry if he would. True, the morning of his life was gone long since, and its hot noon spent in thankless labour; but the evening, the sober, quiet evening, yet remained, and he and Jane might still render pleasant for one another the downward road toward the churchyard, and hand-in-hand walk more tranquilly forward to meet that dark tyrant Death, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... go, and I'll now give ye these whole papers and documents, I would say that my dead brother Hugh has here in his will laid out yere whole life for the three years of the minority. He has put on me the thankless labor and care of watching over yere worldly gear, and of keeping ye safely to the lines of prudence and of a just economy. And my duty to my dead brother, I will do just as his own words and hand and seal lay it down! To-morrow ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... dog was so greedy and thankless, he never wagged his tail, but would snap at the victuals his mistress herself was eating; and when she did give him the choicest dainties that came off her gridiron, and the very top of the cream, he would only ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... This fine moral, that not to enjoy our being is to be ungrateful to the Author of it, is well expressed in Spenser, F. Q. b. iv. c. viii. st. 15. For he whose daies in wilful woe are worne The grace of his Creator doth despise, That will not use his gifts for thankless nigardise. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Ye thankless ones!" the Old Year cried; "Have I not given you night and day, Over and over, score upon score, Wherein to live, and love, and pray, And suck the ripe world to its rotten core? Yet do you reek if my reign be done? E're I pass ye crown the newer one! At ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... handling money and keeping it straight as the class had thought when they had elected him to his post of business manager. Paying bills and rigorously noting down every expenditure was no easy task. It was a thankless job, anyway—the least interesting of any of the positions on the paper, and one that entailed more work than most. To kick at Mel would be rank ingratitude. It was not likely he had made a mess of things wittingly. Therefore the only alternative, since neither Mel's pride nor his own would ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... the hatred in the heart of Savonarola. He was making war against no trivial human sins, but against godless and thankless quiescence, against getting used to happiness, the mystic sin by which all creation fell. He was preaching that severity which is the sign-manual of youth and hope. He was preaching that alertness, that ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... They? Yes. We'll probably lose the Philippines now," he added gloomily; "but it's my thankless country's fault; you all had a chance to make me dictator, you know. Miss Erroll, do you want a second-hand sword? Of course there are great ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Revolve the fleeting moments of your youth, While Care as yet withheld her venom'd tooth; 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 bawbles are not left to boys), Recall one scene so much beloved to view As those where Youth her garland twined for you? Ah, no! amid the gloomy calm of age You ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... 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 ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... 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 ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no utility to humanity. There ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... by the breath of her spirit; 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
... wife! I should be a cur, and worse than a cur—a thankless wretch—to wish to restrain you in anything!" he answered, sealing his agreement ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... tooth it is to have a thankless child!'" exclaimed Mrs. Conly in anguished accents, rising as if to go, but instantly falling ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... 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 measure, which I felt ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... with the troops; 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
... 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... There's fennel for you, and columbines:] Fennel was considered an emblem of flattery, and columbine was anciently supposed to be a thankless flower; signifying probably that the courtiers flattered to get favours, and were thankless after receiving them. Columbine was emblematical ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... 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 ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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 and youth; that he must lay aside his cricket ball, his hoop, his ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... almost here," said Mrs. Candy. "Well, it would have been a great deal better for you to have remained here with me; but I am clear of the responsibility, that is one thing. If there is one thing more thankless than another, it is to have anything to do with children that are not your own. You know how to darn stockings, at any rate, Matilda; I have taught ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... 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 his horses to be saddled and set out with his followers for ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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 ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fruit of deliberation, if I had had 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 of my present ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... duties and offices again and again forced upon John Jay—whether as a writer, jurist, envoy, or legislator—the evidence of his own letters, and especially the testimony of his fellow statesmen, adequately confute such misrepresentations as we have noted. It is a thankless, and, we believe, a superfluous task to vindicate the manliness, sincerity, and patriotism of the authors of the 'Federalist' and their fellow statesmen; indeed, their illustrious opponents in political questions again and again bore witness to the worth, wisdom, and integrity of the men, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... respected him and even loved him as a dear friend, but that I could not be faithless to the memory of my adored husband. I was very sorry; for he was very angry. He called me cold, silly and even ungrateful, so to reject his hand. I began to think that it was selfish and thankless in me to disappoint so good a friend, but I could not help it, loving the memory of my sainted husband as I did. I was grieved to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a hard, hard life and thankless for every one concerned, from bill-topper to sweeper; yet there is a furious colour about it, and I think no one connected with it would willingly quit. The most hard-worked of all are the electricians. First in the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... and cant, ever saw the ideal above it all, who, loving her profession and loving humanity and promised to a life of service, gently, beautifully, firmly stood by her principles. For three months they were in daily contact—three thankless months for the nurse, three months of cunning, evil-minded, suspicious testing by the patient. Finally the very goodness of her friend seemed intolerable, and a paroxysm of rage and resentment broke loose, in which she cursed ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... 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 ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... clergyman, but his distaste for theology did not go unexpressed. So perverse and persistent were his inclinations that they preyed on the mind of his father, who quoted King Lear and said, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... She knew pretty well what ugly face would look up at her when she spoke; for she felt sure that the slouching, ungainly figure was that of Simon Hartley. Her heart burned with indignation against the graceless, thankless churl who could rob the man on whose charity he had been living for two years. She made a step forward, with words of righteous wrath on her lips; then paused, as a new thought struck her. This man was an absolute ruffian; and though she believed him to be an absolute coward also, still ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... dose of it before you're entirely finished!" he responded. "When the case comes on in London. That's the ticklish part of the business. We'll meet there again, I expect, as Mr. Lake and I will be bound to give our evidence—which is a thankless task at the best of times.... Hello! Dollops, got the golf-clubs and walking-sticks? That's a good lad. Now we'll be off to old London again—eh, Lake? Good-bye, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... diplomatist, and of Southwell's intimate friend, William Blathwayt, an influential English official interested in the colonies. He had been in the employ of the government, and now, probably at the instance of Southwell and Blathwayt, he was selected to fill the difficult and thankless post of commissioner to New England. That he had ability and courage no one can doubt, and that he pursued his course with a tenacity that would have won commendation in other and less controversial fields, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... thanks," says S. Paul. Remember, Adam and Eve were in Paradise surrounded by every blessing, but we do not hear that they thanked God for them, and they lost them. Beware lest a thankless spirit forfeit those good things which you now enjoy. "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits! Who forgiveth all thy sin: and healeth all thine infirmities: Who saveth thy life from destruction; and crowneth thee ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... envoys at the Hague exhausted themselves in efforts, both private and public, in favour of the prisoners, but it was a thankless task. Now that the great man and his chief pupils and adherents were out of sight, a war of shameless calumny was began upon him, such as has scarcely a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... leading role with my young lady, the desire for whose wellbeing had taken grip of me. For her sweet sake, and the sake of the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as women have to ace marriage, domesticity, and mostly all the issues of life assigned them, without training, I did not give up heart. As a first effort I determined that Dawn should chaperon ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... could see and a kingdom he could desire, but adequacy of preparation for world-conquest never crept into his thought. He was as niggardly in supplying his generals and armies as Queen Elizabeth, and all but as voluble in abuse of his servants in the field or cabinet, and as thankless to those who had wrought his will. Parma, and Requesens, and Don John, and Alva, he drove almost frantic by his excessive demands and expectations, coupled with his entire inadequacy in preparation and supplies. His soldiers were always on the point ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... like to be disturbed when he was playing the flute. He was a man whose hair had turned gray already in the thankless task of tying up wounds on battlefields where others reaped ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... by the various cooks of the seamen's messes, and driving the laggards up the hatches, when all hands are called. It is indispensable that he should be a very Vidocq in vigilance. But as it is a heartless, so is it a thankless office. Of dark nights, most masters-of-arms keep themselves in readiness to dodge forty-two pound balls, dropped down the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... "So touching when a father—no matter how selfish—is wrecked by love of a thankless son. I'm sorry, indeed I am. But I warned him six years ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... life's uncertain main Mishap shall mar thy sail; If faithful, wise, and brave in vain, Woe, want, and exile thou sustain Beneath the fickle gale; Waste not a sigh on fortune changed, On thankless courts, or friends estranged, But come where kindred worth shall smile, To greet thee in the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the death of the Prince, the mystery has not yet been removed, and the field is still open to conjecture. It seems a thankless task to grope in the dark after the truth at a variety of sources; when the truth really exists in tangible shape if profane hands could be laid upon it. The secret is buried in the bosom of the Vatican. Philip wrote two letters on the subject to Pius ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the 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; on the upper lip was a brown floss ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... elder son, My best beloved! See, thy mother calls! Come to her! Nay, no more will I be harsh, No more enangered with thee! Thou shalt be Most precious in mine eyes, the one thing left I call mine own! Hark to thy mother! Come!— He turns his face away, and will not! O Thou thankless child, thou image of thy sire, Like him in each false feature, in mine eyes Hateful, as he is! Stay, then, where thou art! I know thee not!—But thou, Absyrtus, child Of my sore travail, with the merry face Of my lost brother whom with bitter tears I mourn, and mild and gentle ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to represent the University in the somewhat thankless task of coaxing and coercing backward communities to expend the necessary money and effort to bring their schools up to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... failures. She had learnt lessons when she felt 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 a task ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... 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
... December, 1870, my predecessor declared that— 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 ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... 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.
... extremely short-sight made me equally helpless in waiting on the Duchess. I was astonished at the patience with which she bore my awkwardness, but my fellow-servants, with whom I was most unpopular, were less merciful. The hard and thankless existence, so different from anything which I had been accustomed, threw me into a profound depression, until I began to cherish the idea ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... 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 ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... "It's a thankless thing, any way ye like to take it, Hepsy, hevin' other folks' youngsters round. I don't see why we should be bothered with 'em;" with which remark Josh ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... was hard and thankless work. There was the apathy of the people and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians. It would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the Conservative Cork Constitution or that of the Nationalist Eagle, of Skibbereen, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... here to show up that man as a fraud. But what do I find? A poor, unpaid, half-starved man that loves his thankless work better than his life, teaching what not one schoolmaster in a thousand can teach; teaching his whole school four better things than were ever printed in any school-book,—how to study, how to think, how to value knowledge, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... imperfect 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 handful of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... was not surprised, for "as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined," but my step-mother was disappointed with the results of all her anxious solicitude, and began to see when it was vain, how thankless such indulgent efforts prove in the end. Freddy's soul was altogether absorptive, taking in whatever offerings gratified him, but yielding no return, and I ask, is there anything so discouraging to an ardent love as this cold neutrality, which ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... and we must garland that pump with flowers. And believe me, c'est un vilain metier cet de president. If he leans a little too much on this side he goes down into the mud, a little too much on the other he rolls in the dust. One must feel some respect for the man who undertakes such a thankless office. And, again, when a man rides in an open landau in pelting rain, when il lui pleut dans le nez, without an umbrella, with his hat off, saluting right and left, he ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... fostering evermore A soft content of soul! But ah, I shudder at thine anguish sore— Thy doom thro' years that roll! Thou could'st not cower to Zeus: a love too great Thou unto man hast given— Too high of heart thou wert—ah, thankless fate! What aid, 'gainst wrath of Heaven, Could mortal man afford? in vain thy gift To things so powerless! Could'st thou not see? they are as dreams that drift; Their strength is feebleness A purblind race, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... The 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
... He is not the first great man who has found the world thankless. Oddly enough, it troubled him little in comparison with the satisfaction he felt in seeing his exalted projects meet with success. So that good things were effectually accomplished, he cared not a whit who ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... 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 Eleseus keeps coming here for, anyway. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... laborious man. Hunting is his profession, but it is one by which he can barely exist. He hopes to sell a horse or two during the season, and in this way adds something of the trade of a dealer to his other trade. But his office is thankless, ill-paid, closely watched, and subject to all manner of indignities. Men suspect him, and the best of those who ride with him will hardly treat him as their equal. He is accepted as a disagreeable necessity, and is dismissed as soon as the country can do better ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... solvent in use for its isolation, as it does not dissolve the majority of the remaining constituents of the hop, especially the hop-resin, which they contain in considerable quantity. Still, the extraction of hop-bitter acid from hops is a troublesome and thankless job, the petroleum ether taking up certain substances which add greatly to the difficulty of purifying the crystals. On the other hand, we can readily and quickly attain our object, if we employ for our original material ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... a tract society, and was given as territory the towns on the east side of the Hudson River. Tract selling in this generation is probably the most thankless, profitless work that any human being could undertake. The poor old man was burdened with a heavy bundle of the worst literary trash of a religious kind ever put out of a publishing house. He was to get twenty-five per cent. on ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... of him had undergone a change: the great change for which he had not dared to hope. The evil consequences of his long months of pampering disappeared. Regret for what had been grew faint. He was glad of the present: he held out glad arms to the future—that future of labor, possibly thankless, which he was to dread no more. In fact, he was become a man, honest and clean and strong; and, for a time, he dwelt in peace with his best self, and believed ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... these youths ran past one's eye, ran through one's fingers. They were not static, not even stable. They were restless birds of passage who fidgeted through their years, and even through the days of which the years were made: intent on their own affairs and their own companions; thankless for small favors and kind attentions— even unconscious of them; soaking up goodwill and friendly offices in a fashion too damnably taken-for-granted ... You gave them an evening among your books, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... everybody, either in a few big 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, and knowing that your recognition is purely negative, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... suppose, of a brilliant and capable man who holds his own and makes himself felt. The only result on the mind, from contemplating him, is that one revels in the possibility of metempsychosis and pictures him as being born again to some dreary and thankless occupation, a scavenger or a sewer-cleaner, or, better still, penned in the body of some absurd and inefficient animal, a slug or a jelly-fish, where he might learn to ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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
... the dream, and will run till it becomes a waking reality) strong, and free, and safe, by being good and wise. To such a spirit this bold cunning man had come, stiff-necked and heaven-defiant, a "brand plucked from the burning:" and yet equally unconscious of his danger, and thankless for his respite. Given, too, as it were, into her hands; tossed at her feet out of the very mouth of the pit,—why but that she might save him? A far duller heart, a far narrower imagination than ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... capacity of forlorn hope. And this on Miss Marrable's own birthday! and this in her father's house! and this after the unutterable sacrifices of six weeks past! Of all the domestic disasters which the thankless theatrical enterprise had inflicted on the Marrable family, the crowning misfortune was now ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... 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 in ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... gods begin to confer benefits on those who recognize them not, they continue them to those who are thankless for them.... They distribute their blessings in impartial tenor through the nations and peoples;... they sprinkle the earth with timely showers, they stir the seas with wind, they mark out the seasons by the revolution of the constellations, they temper the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... 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 partially paid force, the Volunteers, and the rifle ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... for more than a year after we saw him in Ireland at his thankless work. It was our first year in London, and we were near enough to watch closely the progress of his fight. But it was a fight not to be won. The spring of 1882 saw his resignation—on May 2d—followed on May 6th by the Phoenix ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
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