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Tedium   Listen
noun
Tedium  n.  (Written also taedium)  Irksomeness; wearisomeness; tediousness. "To relieve the tedium, he kept plying them with all manner of bams." "The tedium of his office reminded him more strongly of the willing scholar, and his thoughts were rambling."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tedium" Quotes from Famous Books



... practice, when he lunched alone, to relieve the tedium of the meal with the assistance of reading matter in the shape of one or more of the evening papers. Today, sitting down to a solitary repast at the Piccadilly grill-room, he had brought with him an early edition ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... situation warrant. The artist is so impatient of dulness, so greedy of fineness, in all his relations, that he is apt to subject himself to a wasteful strain in talking to unperceptive and unappreciative persons. It is not that he desires to appear brilliant; it is that he is so intolerant of tedium that he sacrifices himself to fatiguing efforts in trying to strike a spark out of a dull stone. The spark is perhaps struck, but he parts with his vital force in striking it. He will be apt to be reproached with being eremitical, self-absorbed, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Manuela and endeavour to engage her in conversation. He was, to say truth, very much the reverse of what is styled a lady's man, and had all his life felt rather shy and awkward in female society, but being a sociable, kindly fellow, he felt it incumbent on him to do what in him lay to lighten the tedium of the long journey to one who, he thought, must naturally feel very lonely with no companions but men. "Besides," he whispered to himself, "she is only an Indian, and of course cannot construe my attentions to mean anything so ridiculous ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... burning candles, and by swallowing forks. This last feat had carried the captain beyond bounds of enthusiasm; he formally offered the Gascon a situation for life on board ship if the chevalier would promise to charm thus agreeably the tedium of the voyages ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... quartered in Agra fort, the Taj has always suffered mutilation. The Mahrattas looted it of everything movable and systematically wrenched precious stones from their places in the design ornamenting the fabric of the interior. After the Mutiny came the red-coated soldier, who relieved the tedium of garrison duty by appropriating any attractive piece of inlay overlooked by the Mahrattas—these pretty bits made interesting souvenirs of India for sending home ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... not tiresome. To the philosophic mind, Dr. Frampton, there should be no such thing as tedium, boredom, ennui, and I trust that mine is philosophic. You were much in my thoughts, sir, between the attacks of sea-sickness. By frequent perusal I had committed your two epistles to memory, and while silently rehearsing their well-turned ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... foreseen, tongues did wag—those tongues of the countryside, avid of anything that might spice the tedium of dull lives and brains. And, though no breath of gossip came to Winton's ears, no women visited at Mildenham. Save for the friendly casual acquaintanceships of churchyard, hunting-field, and local race-meetings, Gyp grew ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... soliloquy is in the nature of a reflection on the action and seems to bear all the ear-marks of a heritage from the original function of the tragic chorus[138]. It devolved upon the actor by sprightly mimicry to relieve, in these scenes, the tedium that appeals to the reader. So in Cap. 909 ff. the canticum of the puer becomes more than a mere stopgap, if he acts out vividly the violence of Ergasilus; and in Bac. 1067 ff. the soliloquy would acquire humor, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... de Astrorum Judiciis, the writing of which beguiled the tedium of his voyage down the Loire on his journey to Paris in 1552, is a book upon which he spent great care, and is certainly worthy of notice. Cardan's gratitude to Archbishop Hamilton for the liberal treatment and gracious reception he had ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... of the woman who seeks to earn her living by work other than unskilled manual labour; secondly, the difficult physiological conditions in which woman is placed by the excess of the female over the male population and by her diminished chances of marriage [1]; and thirdly, the tedium which obsesses the life of the woman who is not forced, and cannot force herself, to work. On the top of these grievances comes the fact that the suffragist conceives herself to be harshly and unfairly treated by man. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... However brave and tenacious the French people might be, and he knew that none were more so, he was sure they could not prevail over the strength of free peoples like those who fought under the British flag, free to grow, whatever their faults might be. So, old Monsieur Rollin, who had brought tedium to many, brought refreshment and ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... there again—perhaps before the week is out. It is as old as "Robinson Crusoe"; as old as man. Our race has not been strained for all these ages through that sieve of dangers that we call Natural Selection, to sit down with patience in the tedium of safety; the voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our society as it exists, the bourgeois is too much cottoned about for any zest in living; he sits in his parlour out of reach of any danger, often out of reach of any vicissitude but one of health; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ago, especially after I had founded the "Eye-Witness," I was, in the tedium of the effort, half convinced that success could not be obtained. It is a mood which accompanies exile. To produce that mood is the very object of the boycott to which ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... writer, and would by no means eat the bread of idleness or dependence; but there is reason to believe that it was a more stringent compulsion which obliged her, at an advanced period of the year, and in a peculiarly delicate situation, when even peasants remain on shore, to encounter the tedium and perils of a voyage in a sailing vessel. We have heard, in fact, from a quarter which ought to be correctly informed, that she was proceeding to the residence of a near relative of her father, with the intention of remaining there till some favorable ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... ascertained that he was to be kept a prisoner in the cottage until the return of the Wasp, he at once made up his mind to submit with a good grace to what could not be avoided. In order to prove that he was by no means cast down, as well as to lighten the tedium of his confinement, Jo entertained himself by singing snatches of sea songs—such as, "My tight little craft,"—"A life on the stormy sea,"—"Oh! for a draught of the howling blast," etcetera, all of which he delivered in a bass voice so powerful ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... The monotonous tedium of routine slave-labor was very often broken by some scene of cruelty to one or another of the poor blacks, either by the master or his overseer; and woe unto the luckless one if the master should happen to be in ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson

... a class of persons to whom art in general is but a fashionable luxury, and music in particular but an agreeable sound, an elegant superfluity serving to relieve the tedium of conversation at a soiree, and fill up the space between sorbets and supper. To such, any philosophical discussion on the aesthetics of art must seem as puerile an occupation as that of the fairy who spent her time weighing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... did not so much care for the soft, yielding, brown sands on which the sea-waves broke. The coasts to which he had been used in his youth were either rocky or firm as a macadamized road. Nor was he beguiled into forgetting the tedium of walking over them, as his companion was, by the fascination of the shells and sea curiosities to be picked up on them. Many a mile have I trotted along beside him or behind him, gathering these treasures, while he strode forward, abstracted, with his gaze fixed towards the long ridge ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... There was tedium, rather, in the possession of bodies as durable as metal, as renewable as wax, as insensitive as water. In the fiercest onset of the passions, prolonged to satiety, there was always an element of the unreal. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... Perkins was weaving sweet fancies to beguile the tedium of her uneventful life, a very different scene was being enacted, a few miles away, in the humble home of John Watson, C. P. R. section-man, in the little town of Millford, where he and his wife and family of nine were working out their own destiny. Mrs. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... he began, "but I knew his secretary and travelling companion quite well in a happier day in Boston. The recital here will be Saturday evening, which means that they will remain here on Sunday until the evening train East. I shall suggest to my friend that his employer, to while away the tedium of the Sunday, might care to look in upon me in the afternoon and meet a few of our best people. Nothing boring, of course. I've no doubt he will arrange it. I've written him to Portland, where ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... padlocks. Nor did he visit the Prince save every third day when he lessoned him on the knowledge to be extracted from the wall-pictures and renewed his provision of meat and drink, after which he left him again to solitude. So whenever the youth was straitened in breast by the tedium and ennui of loneliness, he applied himself diligently to his object-lessons and mastered all the deductions therefrom. His governor seeing this turned his mind into other channel and taught him the inner meanings of the external objects; and in a little ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... representatives of each naturally surviving after the next had appeared. Romanticism, half lurid, half effeminate, yielded to a brutal pursuit of material truth, and a pious preference for modern and humble sentiment. This realism had a romantic vein in it, and studied vice and crime, tedium and despair, with a very genuine horrified sympathy. Some went in for a display of archaeological lore or for exotic motifs; others gave all their attention to rediscovering and emphasising abstract problems of execution, the highway ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... military imperialism. The former alternative is dismissed by most responsible statesmen. They declare that they do not wish to destroy the German people or the German nationality or the civilized life of Germany. I will not enlarge here upon the tedium and difficulties such an undertaking would present. I will dismiss it as being not only impossible, but also as an insanely wicked project. The second alternative, therefore, remains as our War Aim. I do not see ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... absolutely nothing in common. Mary, though only the senior by two or three years, was not only clever, but very intelligent and well read, and she had plenty of conversation. But the subjects for which she cared, though they would have delighted Joan, were utter tedium to Mittie's empty ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... tedium by another summons to the office. Fortified with a glass of good wine, he returned to the encounter, inwardly calling upon his gods to direct him how to meet it. He found poor old Father Pennycuick aged ten years in the hour since he had seen him last. But he still ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... was a quiet one and Tom was not sent out to work under shell fire. For a few days he was left unmolested to the tedium of prison life, and he began with renewed zest to formulate plans for ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... of the way, the wild untenanted stretch was unbroken by any incident; yet I remember no tedium by the way; and I believe that a trip taken with Grandma and Grandpa Keeler through the most trackless desert would inevitably have been made to teem with diversion. Those blessed souls! I smile, looking back, but ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... to the throat when at last he left his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal speaker seemed to be an American; ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... her and her father by some tasteful decorations in their honour, unknown to them. Owen and Gladys worked very hard at floral and evergreen mottoes for the tent, whilst Rowland gave his advice as he sat with his mother, and tried to amuse her during the tedium ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... far later period, Mark Twain had resorted to lecturing to pay off debt. He still owed a portion of his share in the Express; also he had been obliged to obtain an advance from the lecture bureau. He dreaded, as always, the tedium of travel, the clatter of hotel life, the monotony of entertainment, while, more than most men, he loved the tender luxury of home. It was only that he could not afford to lose the profit ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... living before his elevation to the post of secretary. A veritable beachcomber Father Francisco Nieto seems to have been, and the type of many a European in Paraguay, who asks no better than to forget the tedium of our modern life and pass his days in a little palm-thatched hut lost in a clearing of a wood or ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... nature rather unfavourable to the existing government and dynasty. He entered, therefore, without hesitation into the resentful feeling of the relations who had the best title to dictate his conduct, and not perhaps the less willingly when he remembered the tedium of his quarters, and the inferior figure which he had made among the officers of his regiment. If he could have had any doubt upon the subject it would have been decided by the following letter from his commanding officer, which, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... sail. The men paddle away most vigorously; the Barotse, being a tribe of boatmen, have large, deeply-developed chests and shoulders, with indifferent lower extremities. They often engage in loud scolding of each other in order to relieve the tedium of their work. About eleven we land, and eat any meat which may have remained from the previous evening meal, or a biscuit with honey, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... been plodding among musty law books and threading legal intricacies, with occasional interruptions, caused by fits of impatience and disgust at the detail and tedium of study, until he had at length fought his way through and placed himself in the front rank of his profession. His brilliant achievement in the famous Jenkins case, in the outset of his career, had at once won for him a position at the bar which most young men ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... nonspiritualistic mediums and particularly in psychometry we obtain communications between one subconsciousness and another and revelations of unknown, forgotten or future incidents which are equally striking, though stripped of the vapid gossip and tedium reminiscences with which we are overwhelmed by defunct persons who are all the more jealous to prove their identity inasmuch as they know that they do ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... in the confusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed an encouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in no wise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept at fever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the long wait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, of noisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence that oft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!" The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not even picture ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... of us who knew Dr. Schaff intimately, one of his most attractive traits was his jovial humor and inexhaustible fund of anecdotes. When I made a visit to California—journeying with him to the Yosemite—his endless stories whiled away the tedium of the trip. How often when he sat down to my own, or any other table, would he tell how his old friend, Neander, when asked to say grace at a dinner, and roast pig was the chief dish, very quaintly said: "O, Lord, if Thou canst bless ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... guests bearing huge trays of refreshments and French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of champagne, had sunk back into a large damask chair, apparently overwearied either with the excitement of the scene or its tedium; and while, for an instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter and music, a young man stole forward and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his hand on which was a chased silver goblet filled to the brim with wine, which he offered as reverentially ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... impression is inevitably produced by every verbal description of a complicated process. Compare the time occupied in describing a movement in fencing with that required to execute it; compare the tedium of the grammar and dictionary with the rapidity of reading. Like every practical art, criticism consists in the habit of performing certain acts. In the period of apprenticeship, before the habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of each act separately ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... commissary's conduct toward her, Janice entered eagerly into the gaiety with which the army beguiled the tedium of winter quarters. Dislike of Clowes precluded Andre and Mobray from coming to the house, but they saw much of the maiden elsewhere. She and Peggy Chew had been made known to each other by Andre early in the British occupation, and they promptly established the warm friendship that girls ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... travel it mattered little which hotel I stayed at, but to-morrow and the next day, the long week we were to spend together passed before my eyes, the tedium of the afternoons, the irritation and emptiness of Platonic evenings—"Heavens! what have I let myself in for," I thought, and my mind went back over the long journey and the prospect of returning bredouille, as the ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... and of Rumbold. He committed the one fault which the House of Commons never forgives, he wearied it. Such dramatic effect as he might have got out of his position as a proconsul arraigned before a senate he spoiled by the length and tedium of his harangue. He took two days to read a long and wordy defence, two days which he considered all too short, and which the House of Commons found all too long. It yawned while Hastings prosed. Accustomed to an average of eloquence of which the art ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a merry jest, and of whom we know barely more than the name. With so many other precious fragments of our national poetry, it is preserved in the collection of George Bannatyne, the namefather of the Bannatyne Club, who beguiled the tedium of his retirement in time of plague by copying down the popular verse of his day. It is the progenitor of John Grumlie, and gives us a lively series of pictures of the housewifery and the husbandry, as well as the average human ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... aerial perspective whatever, they cannot represent transparent bodies, they cannot represent luminous bodies, nor reflected lights, nor lustrous bodies—as mirrors and the like polished surfaces, nor mists, nor dark skies, nor an infinite number of things which need not be told for fear of tedium. As regards the power of resisting time, though they have this resistance [Footnote 19: From what is here said as to painting on copper it is very evident that Leonardo was not acquainted with the method of painting in oil on thin copper plates, introduced ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... received a present of an armadillo, or ant-eater, who is certainly a wonderful animal, and well worth studying, in the tedium of a calm between the tropics. The body proper is but about nine inches, but, when stretched at length, he covers an extent of two and a half feet, from head to tail, and is wholly fortified with an impenetrable armor of bony scales. On any occasion of alarm, it ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... Splendor. Instead of which, at the last moment, the ex-diva had telephoned that she would join her at the hotel, and Cassy foresaw a tedious sitting about in the lobby, for Ma Tamby was always late. But when have misfortunes come singly? Cassy foresaw, too, that the tedium would not be attenuated ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... plans were started at the tea for relieving the tedium of the daily drives and the regulation teas and receptions. For one thing, weather permitting, they would all breakfast at twelve on the yacht, and then sail about the harbor, and come ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden, fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with other fair women playing ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... in the garrison. Gleason had a vehement interview with the post commander and galloped off to town, where he spent much time telegraphing and awaiting replies. Then, to wear off the tedium of the intervening hours, he resorted to several haunts well known to the inhabitants of those days, and did more or less betting on uncertain games, and much more wrestling with an insidious enemy. He was crazy drunk when lifted from ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... which ought to be enforced to the letter of the law. The strong temptation which the tedium of a voyage presents to numbers pinned up in a small space to resort to drinking, has frequently made sad havoc of the money, comfort, and health of emigrants, when, especially, the ship steward has contrived to lay in a good stock of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... there was to know. She grasped the literary details more quickly than I had anticipated. I found afterwards that the long months of the voyage had not been entirely taken up with the cooking of bacon and the swabbing of decks; there had been long stretches of tedium beguiled by talk on most things under heaven, and aided by her swift and jealous intelligence her mental horizon had broadened prodigiously through constant association with a cultivated man. . . . When I reached the point in my story where Jaffery gave ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... at him sharply, but passed downstairs with no more than a "Good night." So Archelaus, too, was feeling life to be empty?... Archelaus had bewailed the past before now, and the vanished glories of the garrison, but never the tedium of his ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... be regarded as vaunting over your comrades, who, I've no doubt, relax the tedium of war in temperate indulgence of some of these vices. 'Put up thy sword; states may be saved without it,' would sound out of keeping for a warrior whose States drew the sword when the olive-branch was offered them. You see, I ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... ceased speaking, and sat back watching the anchored vessel and relieving the tedium of the long row by scratching the monkey's head and pulling its ears, the animal complacently accepting both operations, and turning its head about so that every portion should receive its share of the scratching, till all at once the ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... and amateurs who feel competent to sustain their share of the administrative burden should come forward as nominees, or at least should respond when approached by their friends. That office-holding involves tedious work, all admit, but this tedium is a small enough price to pay for the varied boons of amateurdom. In unofficial labour an equal willingness should be shown. Why is it that all the private revision in the United is performed by about three men at most, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... without seeming provocation, insist on picking a quarrel with the middle-aged stranger, whom we will call Mr. Z; and if further along in the voyage Mr. Z should introduce himself to you and suggest a little game of auction bridge for small stakes in order to while away the tedium of travel; and if it should so fall out that Mr. Y and his friend Mr. X chanced to be the only available candidates for a foursome at this fascinating pursuit; and if Mr. Z, being still hostile toward the sobered and repentant Mr. Y, should ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... in conjunction with the opiate, seemed to comfort him, for presently he fell asleep. With a heavy heart the girl left him to attend to her other patients and at three o'clock Ajo came in and joined her, to relieve the tedium of the next three hours. The boy knew nothing of nursing, but he could help Patsy administer potions and change compresses and his presence was a distinct relief ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... are those who know what fed the root, What long, dull tedium as of wintry hours, What rapture as of spring-light after showers, Went to the ripening of this strange, frail fruit. Defeat and hope, disaster, joy and pain, Grief, pleasure and despair—the same old train That follows every soul. No grafted seed, No alien ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... continued on her cruise, with varying fortunes. Sometimes weeks would pass with no prizes to relieve the tedium of the long voyage. Occasionally she would run into a neutral port for coal or water, but most of the time was spent on the open sea. The crew were kept actively employed with drills and exercises; while the officers, yawning over their books or games, longed for the welcome cry from ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... uncommercial employment of capital at home: the only practicable alternative. It knows that war, on its romantic side, is "the sport of kings": and it concludes that we had better get rid of kings unless they can kill their tedium with more democratic amusements. It notes the fact that though the newspapers shout at us that these battles on fronts a hundred miles long, where the slain outnumber the total forces engaged in older campaigns, are the greatest battles ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... was more, he saw by this the possibility that other articles of food might be reckoned on, by means of which he would be able to relieve his diet from that monotony which had thus far been its chief characteristic. If he could find something else besides clams and biscuit, the tedium of his existence here would be alleviated ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... from that Time Garment of which Carlyle speaks. While this Accelerator will enable us to concentrate ourselves with tremendous impact upon any moment or occasion that demands our utmost sense and vigour, the Retarder will enable us to pass in passive tranquillity through infinite hardship and tedium. Perhaps I am a little optimistic about the Retarder, which has indeed still to be discovered, but about the Accelerator there is no possible sort of doubt whatever. Its appearance upon the market in a convenient, controllable, and assimilable ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... behind the door, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to think of what must follow, racked by confinement and borne to the ground with tedium. This particular phase, he felt with gratitude, could not last for ever; whatever impended (even the gallows, he bitterly and perhaps erroneously reflected) could not fail to be a relief. To calculate cubes occurred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his own half-crazed, half-cunning expression of countenance, sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to the race of domestic clowns or jesters, maintained in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the tedium of those lingering hours which they were obliged to spend within doors. He bore, like his companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous to intrust with edge-tools. In place of these, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... feet below her, the house making itself bright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry. For they were only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view to that family worship which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought on the relaxation of supper. Already she knew that Robert must be within-sides at the head of the table, "waling the portions"; for it was Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted Gilbert, who officiated. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... present life threatened to be the tedium of nothing to do. She could not read, practise her songs, and learn poetry by heart all the hours of the day: less than three sufficed her often. If she had been bred in a country-house, she would have possessed numerous interests that she inevitably lacked. She was a stranger amongst the villagers—neither ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... he bade men not to crush their souls out under the burden of Duty; they are to remember that a wise life is not wholly filled up by commandments to do and to abstain from doing. Hence, we have in Emerson the teaching of a vigorous morality without the formality of dogma and the deadly tedium of didactics. If not laughter, of which only Shakespeare among the immortals has a copious and unfailing spring, there is at least gaiety in every piece, and a cordial injunction to men to find joy in their existence to the full. Happiness is with him an aim that ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... of spring and kisses and a perfect spiritual companionship.... As I have said, he gets into a terrible muddle. Anyhow, between the two conflicting ideals, he does not fall to the ground of vulgar amours. At the risk of tedium I feel bound to insist on this aspect of his life. For in the errant cosmopolitan world in which he, irresponsible and now well salaried bachelor had his being, he was thrown into the free and easy comradeship of hundreds ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... skill, the love of adventure, and the great variety of enterprise, ascribed to James, the young Lord of Douglas. He had, in the eyes of this Southern garrison, the faculties of a fiend, rather than those of a mere mortal; for if the English soldiers cursed the tedium of the perpetual watch and ward upon the Dangerous Castle, which admitted of no relaxation from the severity of extreme duty, they agreed that a tall form was sure to appear to them with a battle-axe in his hand, and entering into conversation in the most insinuating ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... of houses and stores, a shack for a station, a freight house and corral with cattle-chutes, and a long platform on which the uneasy passengers might stroll to relieve the tedium of the wait. ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... following morning the prisoners were brought forth, loaded up with the baggage belonging to the explorers and, surrounded by an armed guard of sixty men, they set out upon a forward march, accompanied by the entire populace of the village, who beguiled the tedium of the journey by continually singing what seemed to be songs of a highly ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... further removed than in France, from the pictures which the ancient poets have left us of the shepherds and shepherdesses in their pastoral poetry. The songs by which they endeavour to while away the tedium of their monotonous life, are more remarkable in their form and substance than in the other European nations to which I have had access. I never recollect without surprise, that being on a mountain situated at the junction-point of the kingdoms of Valencia, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... things, as it lay behind the political spectacle. All through the later chapters, too, the happy use of conversations between the two men on literary and philosophical matters relieves what might have been the tedium of the end. For these vivid notes of free talk not only bring the living Gladstone before you in the most varied relation to his time; they keep up a perpetually interesting comparison in the reader's mind between the hero and his biographer. One is as eager to know what Mr. Morley ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of life and joy, bearing us upward like the wings of a skylark, as he bathes in the sunlight of the upper ether, and carols forth his joy. There will undoubtedly be a variety, too, in heavenly employment, corresponding with our varying states, and making tedium impossible. This may be illustrated by imagining what would be a perfect mode of spending a day in this world. We wake in the morning refreshed by repose, and as we look forth at the sun our spirits rejoice in the beauty of the wakening day, and rise toward the heavenly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... rather a calm and reposeful absorption in a thought which can yield us all its beauty, and assure us of the existence of a principle in which we can rest and abide. As life goes on, we ought not to find relief from tedium only in a swift interchange and multiplication of sensations; we ought rather to attain a simple and sustained joyfulness which can find nurture ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and consumed enormous packets of wool and worsted, which were sent to her monthly from York. And she had a companion in her daughter, whereas Sir Anthony had no companion. Wherever Lady Aylmer went, Miss Aylmer went with her, and relieved what might otherwise have been the tedium of her life. She had been a beauty on a large scale, and was still aware that she had much in her personal appearance which justified pride. She carried herself uprightly, with a commanding nose and ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... of comradeship! On the contrary, while she was still ill in bed, and almost absolutely dependent on what he might choose to do for her, she gibed and flouted him past bearing, mainly, no doubt, for the sake of breaking the tedium of her confinement a little. And when she was about again, and he was defending her weakness from Aunt Hannah, it seemed to him that she viewed his proceedings rather with a malicious than a grateful eye. It amused and excited her to see him stand up to Hannah, but he got little reward ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... painting. But when all was painted, it is needless to deny it, all was spoiled. You might, indeed, set up a scene or two to look at; but to cut the figures out was simply sacrilege; nor could any child twice court the tedium, the worry, and the long-drawn disenchantment of an actual performance. Two days after the purchase the honey had been sucked. Parents used to complain; they thought I wearied of my play. It was not so: no more than a person can be said to have wearied of his dinner when he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... passage through French. Such are 'benefice', 'divorce', 'office', 'presage', 'suffrage', 'vestige', 'adverb', 'homicide', 'proverb'. The stress in 'div['o]rce' is due to the long vowel and the two consonants. A few of these words have been borrowed bodily from Latin, as 'odium', 'tedium', 'opprobrium'. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... Now his thoughts always stopped at the glad moment of giving up the ghost. More lives beyond the grave? Why, the world was not large enough for one life. It had to repeat itself incessantly. Books, newspapers, what tedium! A few ideas deftly re-combined. For there was nothing new under the sun. Life like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing. Shakespeare had found the supreme expression for it as for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... now left, by the death of her daughter, to a dreary solitude, sought to relieve its tedium, during the absence of her son-in-law when on his frequent voyages, by keeping, as she had done ere his return from foreign parts, a humble school. It was attended by two little girls, the children of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... Tower, where the next twelve years of his life were spent in confinement. Fortunately, he had never ceased to cultivate literature with a zeal not often found in the soldier and politician, and he now beguiled the tedium of his lot by an entire devotion to those studies which before had only served to diversify his more active and engrossing pursuits. Of his poetical talents we have already made short mention; to the end of life he ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... pleasure to its dregs, and flee from home as jejune and supine. The husband leaves his wife, and seeks his company in fashionable saloons, at the card table or in halls of revelry. The wife leaves the society of her children, and in company with a bosom companion, seeks to throw off the tedium of home, at masquerade meetings, at the theater or in the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... in the use of the necessary implements. He has accordingly produced a volume which may either be read consecutively or dipped into at random with the certainty of entertainment and without risk of tedium. Among the sources from which his material is drawn he assigns the first place to the Memoirs of Tate Wilkinson and its sequel, The Wandering Patentee, and the summary which he gives, as far as possible in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... she could not catch the next train to town if she meant to walk. He was going in that direction himself and would give her a lift if she liked. She accepted the young man's offer; but if he made it in order to beguile the tedium of his way, he ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... entire circumference of the globe, and he has seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with the tedium of monotony; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of his tea for a halfpenny less than the English merchant, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... to a pine trunk, these indicated that civilization still existed, but they were only melancholy blurs. She was in a cold enchantment. All of her was dead save the ability to keep on driving, forever, with no hope of the tedium ending. She was bewildered. She passed six times what seemed to be precisely the same forest clearing, always with the road on a tiny ridge to the left of the clearing, always with a darkness-stilled house at one ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... a multitude of useful hints and suggestions regarding the proper care of the person and the formation of refined habits and manners. The subject is treated with good sense and good taste, and is relieved from tedium by an abundance of entertaining anecdotes and historical incident. The author is thoroughly acquainted with the laws of hygiene, and wisely inculcates them while specifying the rules based upon them which regulate the civilities ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous

... your "stanes" in England and travel out with them, or hire them in the locality. They make the most pleasant travelling companions and at times are the cause of many amusing incidents which beguile the tedium of the journey. Also they often lead to your picking up chance acquaintances. I have known one stone placed in a dimly lighted corridor of a train productive of much merriment and harmless banter. Being of considerable weight they do not readily respond to a playful ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... showed no change of manner toward Gualtier. To her, application to any thing was a thing as irksome as ever. Perhaps her fitful efforts to advance were more frequent; but after each effort she used invariably to relapse into idleness and tedium. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... that shadow lies every thought that points towards the troublous and labouring career of other men. But," he resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, almost solemn voice,—"but after all, is this cowardice or wisdom? I find no monotony—no tedium in this quiet life. Is there not a certain morality—a certain religion in the spirit of a secluded and country existence? In it we do not know the evil passions which ambition and strife are said to arouse. I never feel jealous or envious of other men; I never ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the most painful moments of our lives were the result of our having followed the doctrine of Jesus or the doctrine of the world? He instanced the gambler and the libertine, who willingly confess themselves unhappy, but who, he asked, ever heard of the good man saying he was unhappy? The tedium of life the good man never knows. Men have been known to regret the money they spent on themselves, but who has ever regretted the money he has spent in charity? But even success cannot save the gambler and libertine from the tedium of existence, and when the preacher said, "These ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... certainly not suggested in her erect bearing and serene face as she moved about her stateroom setting in order the books, magazines, flowers, and candy, with which Banneker had sought to fortify her against the tedium of the trip. As the time for departure drew near, they fell into and effortfully maintained that meaningless, banal, and jerky talk which is the inevitable concomitant of long partings between people who, really caring for each other, can find ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Hammond could say better and more comprehensive things than even her dear old tutor, Mr. Hayes. Hammond was abreast of the present-day aspect of those things in which Prissie delighted. Her short talk with him made up for all the tedium of the rest ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... Yu-lang, the tedium of beholding the hideousness of all the guests was curiously diminished by the pleasure of seeing ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli

... notice. In the few cities which you approach the frame-houses and plank-walks preserve the memory of the backwoods. In vain you look for the village church, which in Europe is never far away. In vain you look for the incidents which in our land lighten the tedium of a day's journey. All is barren and bleak monotony. The thin line of railway seems a hundred miles from the life of man. At one station I caught sight of an "Exposition Car," which bore the legend, "Cuba on Wheels," and I was surprised as at a miracle. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... never taught; nor lectured, that is to say, I have never had to express my thoughts about mechanical things in ordinary everyday language, and I doubt very much if I could do so now without extreme tedium. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... would be hunting all day—compelled him to stop at home and devote himself to Vera. Mr. Herbert Pryme, however, had no such excuse, real or imaginary, and yet he stands idly by the corridor window, idly, yet perfectly patiently—relieving the tedium of his position by the unexciting entertainment of softly whistling the popular airs from the "Cloches de ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... only. It was not only famine and hardship which they underwent, but the incessant combats—and mortal tedium—of the trenches. Ah! the trenches! Those words summed up a whole volume of suffering. No longer fighting in open field; no longer winter-quarters, with power to range; no longer freedom, fresh air, healthful ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... experimenting upon mind; and the mind which is before him to be the subject of his operation, is exactly in the state to be most easily and pleasantly operated upon. The reason now why some teachers find their work delightful, and some find it wearisomeness and tedium itself, is that some do, and some do not take this view of their work. One instructer is like the engine-boy, turning without cessation or change, his everlasting stop-cock, in the same ceaseless, mechanical, and monotonous ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... was how well the linnets must be seasoned to tobacco smoke if they could sing at all in the atmosphere which those Corydons were so carefully polluting. Corydon, besides his pipe, had adopted nuts and beer to solace the tedium of the quarter of an hour that yet intervened before the Bermondsey bird and its Walworth antagonist were to be "on the nail;" and ever and anon fresh Corydons kept dropping in, until some fifty or sixty had assembled. They were all of one type. There was a "birdiness" discernible on ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... been written in the intervals between arduous professional engagements. Begun on the Atlantic during my voyage home from Central America, the first half relieved the tedium of a long and slow recovery from the effects of an accident occurring on board ship. The middle of the manuscript found me traversing the high passes of the snow-clad Caucasus, where I made acquaintance with the Abkassians, in whose language Mr. Hyde Clark finds analogies with those of my ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... King's return to Hoghton Tower, orders were given by Sir Richard for the immediate service of the banquet; it being the hospitable baronet's desire that festivities should succeed each other so rapidly as to allow of no tedium. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of April the tedium of winter quarters was relieved by the good news of Grant's successes before Petersburg. It was evident that Lee's army was breaking up, and to guard against the possible escape of any fragment of it by the valley highway, on the 4th of April Hancock sent Dwight's division back to Camp Russell, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... into whose frugal and industrious lives the later Irish and German immigrants fitted, on the whole, with little friction. Even the Dutch oven fell before the cast-iron cooking stove. Happiness and sorrow, despair and hope were there, but all encompassed by the heavy tedium of prosaic sameness. ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... fourth day thereafter the long tedium of existence in the settlement began to be broken in earnest. Before they could digest the flavour of one event, something else happened. In the afternoon word came down to Stiffy and Mahooley that the bishop had arrived at the French Mission, bringing ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... birthdays, while he had reached a time of life when they had ceased to have any interest for him. Most of us, if we live long enough, experience that indifference. The birthday emotion vanishes with the toys that awaken it. I remember when life was a journey from one birthday to another, the tedium of which was only relieved by such agreeable incidents as Christmas, Easter, and the school holidays. But for many years I have stumbled up against my birthday, as it were, with a shock of surprise, have given it a nod of recognition as one might greet an ancient acquaintance with whom one has ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... Duesseldorf to form part of the new garrison. He was received by the city authorities, and was at the same time, doubtless, greeted from balcony and window by multitudes of fair-haired Crefeld maidens, who looked with delightful anticipations on the gallant soldiers, who were to relieve the tedium of their evenings, riding by. "To-day," the Emperor told the assembled city fathers, "I have kept my word to the town of Crefeld, and when I make a promise I keep it too (stormy applause). I have brought the town its garrison and the young ladies their ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... all a farce, of course, but underneath the fantastic affectation there was a very real sentiment, that of the intolerable tedium of captivity. Raleigh had been living a life of exaggerated activity, never a month at rest, now at sea, now in Devonshire, now at Court, hurrying hither and thither, his horse and he one veritable centaur. Among the Euphuistic 'tears of fancy' which he sent from the Tower, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... gloves on; his long white hands were bare, he could not touch a toad. It was true that the beast had amused him, and that he had chatted to it; but after all, this was a piece of childish folly—an unmanly way, to say the least, of relieving the tedium of captivity. What was Monsieur Crapaud but a very ugly (and most people said a venomous) reptile? To what a folly he had been condescending! With these thoughts, Monsieur the Viscount steeled himself against ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... No tedium vitae round him lowers, The charms of contrast wing his hours, And every scene embellish:— From prison, City, care set free, He tastes his present liberty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... philosophers and seekers after the beauty that underlies the form of things, they made the picture express its own significance, and every song find echo in the souls of those that heard. You will find no tedium of repetition in all their poetry, no thin vein of thought beaten out over endless pages. The following extract from an ancient treatise on the art of poetry called 'Ming-Chung' sets forth most clearly certain ideals to ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... domestic circle, whose members, all adorned by refinement and literature, were many of them, like himself, distinguished by genius. Yet active life was the genuine soil for his virtues; and he sometimes suffered tedium from the monotonous succession of events in our retirement. Pride made him recoil from complaint; and gratitude and affection to Perdita, generally acted as an opiate to all desire, save that of meriting ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and dreary level. But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide horizons that have a certain charm of their own even in their dulness and monotony; and amongst the rushes by the waterside the flowers grow, and the trees rise ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... for the young, and, especially, as regards religious services for them. Go back to your own youth, and recollect how little command of attention you had yourself, how volatile you were, how anxious to escape all tedium, how weary of words, how apt to dislike routine. Then see whether you make sufficient allowance for these feelings in dealing with the young; and whether it might not be possible to give them the same holy precepts, to communicate the ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... on their way to London; so that they might avoid the crowd of people who would know them at the Cambridge station. As soon as they had got away from the door of Robert Bolton's house, the husband attempted to comfort his young wife. 'At any rate it is over,' he said, alluding of course to the tedium ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... contented. Her character lent itself to gratitude. She did not feel the tedium of wealth; on the contrary, she often took an almost childish pleasure in it. But no one could guess that, for her bearing was always full of dignity and repose. People suspected that there was something questionable about her origin, but as no one could answer questions they left off asking ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... sleepy, Geoffrey. The rest of my mournful history will help to wile away the tedium ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... carriage beside him;" and the two young fools drive, in such a cavalcade of hoofs and wheels,—talking we know not what,—into Potsdam; met by his Majesty and all the honors. What illustrious gala there then was in Potsdam and the Court world, read,—with tedium, unless you are in the tailor line,—described with minute distinctness by the admiring Fassmann. [pp.396-401.] There are Generals, high Ladies, sons of Bellona and Latona; there are dinners, there are hautboys,—"two-and-thirty blackamoors," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... tolerant contempt in Zehru's ringing voice. "I will explain some of the things that puzzle you. There is no reason why I should trouble myself to do so, yet it may while away the tedium of the short wait yet remaining before my apparatus becomes charged to the required point. Listen carefully, Earthling, for at best you will find many of my thoughts beyond the feeble limits of the word forms with ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... lightning of night, only serve to darken the gloom through which they occasionally break. Happiness is not that state of repose, or that imaginary freedom from care, which at a distance is so frequent an object of desire, but with its approach brings a tedium, or a languor, more unsupportable than pain itself. If the preceding observations on this subject be just, it arises more from the pursuit, than from the attainment of any end whatever; and in every new situation to which we arrive, even in the course of a prosperous ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... the Mounted Infantry explored the ground in front, preventing the possibility of a surprise. Tramp, tramp, mile after mile, hour after hour, plodded the two brigades, with many a halt to enable the man-drawn guns to keep with them. But tedium and fatigue were thought nothing of. The man who would consider a five-mile walk without an object a frightful infliction would think nothing of ten with a gun in his hand, and the chance of game getting up every minute. It is the same with all sports. How far across country could you ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... the marchand de coco with his bell; a regiment of the line with its band; a chorus of peripatetic Orpheonistes—a swallow, a butterfly, a humblebee; a far-off balloon, oh, joy!—any sight or sound to relieve the tedium of those two mortal school-hours that dragged their weary lengths from half past one till half past three—every ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... scenery in my narrative, that I thought it well to group in a few pages the African pictures I have given in the last chapter. My story had too much of the bareness of the Greek stage, and I was conscious that landscape, as well as action, was required to mellow the subject and relieve it from tedium. After our dash through the wilderness, let us return to the slow ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," he said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," he said, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this—by feminine society, for instance. We think it no scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a class, a necessary ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... they were finally signed, sealed, and delivered to the old man-servant who acted as gardener, coachman, and general factotum to our household, and when we started off my father placed a book in my hands, that I might have something with me to beguile the tedium of the journey. My father accompanied me as far as Salisbury to bespeak the care and attention of the guard on my behalf, but finding that the only other inside passenger was an old gentleman of whom ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... smiled pensively at the water-lilies; nor was his happiness entirely and solely the essence of his material ease. This was his third morning out of doors, and on each of the two mornings that were gone Hortensia had borne him company, coming with the charitable intent of lightening his tedium by reading to him, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... give free and honest expression to your thoughts? Now, were you not summoned to the Shamrag's presence to answer for the crime of lese-majeste? And were you not, for your audacity, left to brood ten days and nights in gaol? And what tedium we have in Shakib's History about the charge on which he was arrested. It is unconscionable that Khalid should misappropriate Party funds. Indeed, he never even touched or saw any of it, excepting, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... services. You pointed me to the fact that you had observed that rule in the case of the Louisiana and Carolina troops, and you will not fail to perceive that others find in the fact a reason for the like disposal of them. In the hour of sickness, and the tedium of waiting for spring, men from the same region will best console and relieve each other. The maintenance of our cause rests on the sentiments of the people. Letters from the camp, complaining of inequality and harshness in the treatment of the men, have already dulled the enthusiasm ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlin defence of the Beast People and of M'ling. M'ling, he said, was the only thing that had ever really cared for him. And suddenly ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... night with something on your mind you are to be forced to speak of in the morning—a compulsion awaiting you as a lion awaiting the debut of a reluctant martyr in the arena of the Coliseum? Did you, so watching, feel—not the tedium—but the maddening speed of the hours, the cruelty of the striking clocks? Were you conscious of a grateful reliance on your bedroom door, still closed between you and your lion, as the gate that the eager eyes ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... that he is allowed to remain when the landlord wants to turn him away. Chance throws him into the society of a man of culture and education, who is only too glad of the opportunity of relieving the tedium of his surroundings in this rough uncultivated place by passing a few hours in the companionship of a man of his own rank of life. Chance contrives that this gentleman shall have in his possession a large sum of money which he shows to Ronald, who is greatly in need of money. Opportunity ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover, by innumerable sins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference to the meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the sense of what she read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, without harvesting its profit. His sister's voice, too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak, which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin. In both sexes, occasionally, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... are you to enter into my feelings if I do not relate the facts that insensibly shaped my character, made me timid, and prolonged the period of youthful simplicity? In this manner I cowered under as strict a despotism as a monarch's till I came of age. To depict the tedium of my life, it will be perhaps enough to portray my father to you. He was tall, thin, and slight, with a hatchet face, and pale complexion; a man of few words, fidgety as an old maid, exacting as a senior ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... chambers. "A mere trifle like that," he said to himself contemptuously, as he entered the outer room, where a small and exceedingly sharp office boy, rejoicing in the euphonious name of Malachi Murphy, beguiled the tedium of the waiting hours by cutting the initials of his family on the legs of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... feeling, at this period, among us, that the voyage had but now commenced. The labours of a bad summer, and the tedium of a long winter, were forgotten in a moment when we found ourselves upon ground not hitherto explored, and with every apparent prospect before us of making as rapid a progress as the nature of this navigation ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... which bring their natural impulses into play, going to school is a joy, management is less of a burden, and learning is easier. Sometimes, perhaps, plays, games, and constructive occupations are resorted to only for these reasons, with emphasis upon relief from the tedium and strain of "regular" school work. There is no reason, however, for using them merely as agreeable diversions. Study of mental life has made evident the fundamental worth of native tendencies to ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... contrived to ingratiate himself, and to whom his gun was no unwelcome assistant in the chase. The Knight had assured him of the absence of all danger from the Indians, but even without such assurance, Arundel would have preferred to encounter some peril rather than submit to the tedium he ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... ascending with its numerous grotesque pinnacles, half-way up to the rood of the choir, had been washed, and dusted, and rubbed, and it all looked very smart. Ah! How often sitting there, in happy early days, on those lowly benches in front of the altar, have I whiled away the tedium of a sermon considering how best I might thread my way up amidst those wooden towers, and climb safely to the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... a temporary escape from the tedium of Frankfort that, towards the end of May, 1772, Goethe proceeded to Wetzlar, a little town on the Lahn, a confluent of the Rhine. His settlement in Wetzlar had the semblance of a serious professional purpose, since Wetzlar was the historic legal capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and the seat ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown



Words linked to "Tedium" :   tedious, boredom, fatigue, tediousness, blahs, tiresomeness



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