"Tedium" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the logs, where the daubing had dropped out, Smith watched the lights in the ranch-house. He relieved the tedium of the hours by trying to imagine what was going on inside, and in each picture Dora was the central figure. Now, he told himself, she was wiping the dishes for Ling, and teaching him English, as she often did; and when she had finished she would bring her portfolio into the dining-room ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... strength of Henry and his brothers, but the punctilious pride and sullenness, and almost something of the license, of the Scot. The camp had not proved the school of chivalry that James, in his inexperience, had imagined it must be under Henry, and the tedium and wretchedness of the siege had greatly added to its necessary evils by promoting a reckless temper and willingness to snatch at any enjoyment without heed to consequences. Close attendance on the kings had indeed prevented either Malcolm or Percy from even having the temptation of running into ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... waxes numb, Alien and strange these shows become, And stricken with life's tedium The streams run dry, The choric spheres themselves are dumb, And ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... he has another outbreak. Encolpius and his friends have been shipwrecked near Croton. On their way to the town Eumolpus beguiles the tedium of the climb by the criticism of Lucan and the attempt to improve on the Pharsalia, which have been discussed in the chapter on Lucan. If neither his poetry nor his criticism as a whole are sound, they are at least meant seriously. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... the world over, and after you have put away the wonder and tenderness of youth what is there left? The few sprigs of green that sometimes invade the barrenness of your materialism, the few glimpses of summer which flash past the eye of the wintry soul, the half hours off during the long tedium of burrowing, these reveal to the hardened earth-seeker the universe which the youthful mind has with it always. No fear and no favor; the open fields and the light upon the hills; morning, noon, night; stars, the bird-calls, the water's ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... breadth of mind, those rare powers—fruit of nature and of our interchange of thought—treasures whence should issue a unique satisfaction for passion and desire, hours of poetry to outweigh years, joys to make a man serve a lifetime for one gracious gesture,—all this is to be buried in the tedium of a tame, commonplace marriage, to vanish in the emptiness of an existence which you will come to loath! I hate your children before they are born. They will ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... read 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 world attributes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... you warmly. For whom but my brother would these poor men have worked as they did upon the Orange Room— and all to show their gratitude? But it appears the worst part of captivity is its tedium and the way it depresses the mind; one sees that it must be. They dread Sundays most of all. And I said I would speak to you, and if any ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... profession, and character of his companions, the most talkative member of the company begins, and the conversation gets under way with all the more vivacity because those present feel a need of enlivening the journey and forgetting its tedium. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 an idea ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... 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 which ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... tastes, changefulness, and love of display and excitement. He has done no harm, and given as much amusement as he has been paid for. Indeed, I consider him more an ornamental and useful character than otherwise. He has brightened many a traveler's recollections, relieved the tedium of many a weary hour in a foreign city, and, with all his deception, has never severed himself from the popular faith, nor sold out the popular cause. I dare say his death, when it occurs, will cause more sensation and evoke more tears, than that of any better ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... 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 ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... were not at all unusual in the Club at Manila, for they presented the only antidote to the leaden, soul-killing tedium of the dull monotony of garrison duty. Since the new insurrection on Mindanao and in the whole southern portion of the archipelago, the question as to the actual causes of the uprising, or rather the secret authors thereof, continually gave rise to heated ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... with the bishop and other notables, both men and women, sat Mrs. Swinton, and she sighed with unspeakable weariness. It had been one of those dull, monotonous, clerical days, replete with platitudes, the tedium of custom, and all the petty ceremonies and observances that she hated. She returned home worn out physically, and mentally benumbed. Netty, who had remained away, on pretence of a bad cold, met her mother ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... sportsman; it was really lamentable to hear him describe, while it would occasionally prompt a smile to see his expedients, to relieve it. Finding little that was congenial to his tastes or his talents in the arts or the society of the place, he would sometimes seek to abridge the tedium and length of his stay at Rome, by episodes of lark-shooting at Subiaco, or by looking after wild-boars at Ostia; and some, to whom hunting was indispensable, would hire dogs and make them chase each other, while they harked on the ragged pack, on the best ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... delicate plant, interesting as an exile, as a flower transplanted from its own soil, as a child torn from its mother, became a mutual object of attraction. It was thus that Louisa pointed it out to her parents as it lay on the deck in its glass case, exposed to the mid-day sun. She charmed the tedium of the voyage in hourly watching the progress which she believed visible in the feeble offset. She had felt interested in it from the moment Desclieux had shown her all the glory he was to gain by it for France, and then she had become attached ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... miss the constant intercourse with which they had flattered themselves—the only thing that made London endurable to poor Emma. She amused Violet with her lamentations over her gaieties, and her piteous accounts of the tedium of parties and balls; whereas Violet declared that she liked them ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pass over the wooing so cavalierly. It has been told, with perhaps tedious accuracy, how Eleanor disposed of two of her lovers at Ullathorne; and it must also be told with equal accuracy, and if possible with less tedium, how she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... which freed me even for a moment from tedium," said the pharaoh, laughing. "O gods! what a day! If Thou hadst heard our discussions, if Thou hadst seen the faces of our counselors! And in addition to all, it pleased the worthy queen to honor our assembly with her ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... discovered a new amusement with which to enlighten the tedium of waiting while Maggie was in the kitchen foraging for food. The game was called "local color," in honor of Patty Wyatt's famous definition in English class, "Local color is that which makes a lie seem truthful." The object of the ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... edifying with views of foreign travel and cartoons bearing on the larger issues of the election. Within doors the telegraph operator was already installed at the ancient table which had graced the grand-paternal distillery, and William Irons was making good the tedium of a dreary day in the deserted office by goggling from the ticking instrument to a consignment of iced champagne just ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... not like your look, Your brows are (see the poets) bent; You're biting hard on Tedium's hook, You're jaundiced, crumpled, footled, spent. What's worse, so mischievous your state You have no pluck to try and trick it. Here! Cram this cap upon your pate And come with me ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... pathetic bells, or some figure 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 amid 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 among the rushes by the waterside the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... 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
... plot—not too easy to grasp at the first, thanks to the difficulty we found in following the unfamiliar names of the characters. Both these interests were dominated by the attraction of the admirable setting. Fortunately the scenes were numerous and brief, but we still suffered considerable tedium from the affected and drawling delivery of the heroine. The frequent assurances which we received as to the exceptional quality of Mameena's beauty, and the fact that, to our knowledge, she had three husbands in the course of the play, never quite convinced us ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... brook the tedium of this irksome and laborious process. To increase the number of impressions, he resorted to various expedients. The type was set up in duplicate, and even in triplicate; several Stanhope presses were ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... he bestowed it on the first child he met. Yoshida Kenko, who became a recluse in 1324, is counted among the "four kings" of Japanese poetry—Ton-a, Joben, Keiun, and Kenko. He has been called the "Horace of Japan." In his celebrated prose work, Weeds of Tedium (Tsure-zure-gusa), he seems to reveal a lurking love for the vices he satirizes. These three authors were all pessimistic. They reflected the tendency ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the royal personages.... Conversation, it may readily be imagined, was not well maintained under these trying circumstances, and had it not been for some excellent watermelons which were handed to us, the tedium of the interview ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... that she had felt a certain disturbance of her previous sensation of well-being; no longer were her nights passed in the tranquil and dreamless sleep of heretofore, and at times she was oppressed by a sensation of tedium, such as she had never experienced before. Strangest of all, however, was the sudden access of lassitude which would often come over her even in the daytime, under the influence of which she fancied that she could ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... compasses were again and again, with small reluctant extensions to successive greater distances, defining the scope of the knowledge proper for a man of his condition? It is a bad thing, is it, that he has a multiplicity of ideas to relieve the tedium incident to the sameness of his course of life; that, with many things which had else been but mere insignificant facts, or plain dry notions and principles, he has a variety of interesting associations; like woodbines and roses wreathing round ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... 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
... Lady Massey, as, indeed, nobody could help doing; and for her sake, had there been no separate interest surrounding the young lord, it would have been most painful to her that through Lord Carbery's absence a periodic tedium should oppress her guest at that precise season of the day which traditionally dedicated itself to genial enjoyment. Glad, therefore, was she that an ally had come at last to Laxton, who might arm her purposes of hospitality with some powers of self-fulfilment. And yet, for a service of that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... on leave of absence from the front, Paris represented what McGee had voiced to Larkin—a place where the war was over for the time limits of their passes. Forgotten, for a few brief hours, were all the memories of military tedium, the roar of guns, the mud of trenches, the flaming airplane plunging earthward out of control—all these things were banished by the stimulating thought that here was the world famous city with all its amusements, its arts, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... reflections steadily in mind as regards religious instruction 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 same extent, or nearly so, of religious ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... came to be lived as the Father intended His children to live, when one almost old woman found the Fountain of Youth revealed by the fine art of play. A blessed revelation it is to every life when the joy of play robs the working hours of their tedium and weariness. He lives as master who makes play of ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... the picture which a crowd presents at a public execution;—much like a crowd, we may be sure, at any other public spectacle. Whatever the object which gathers together a mob of the lowest class, they will soon begin to relieve the tedium of expectation by coarse jests, drunkenness, and brawling. Yet these descriptive logicians are never weary of painting to us the grotesque and disgusting scenes which the mass of spectators exhibit on these occasions, as if this were quite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... embrowned with smoke, as was also the mantel of the huge open fire-place at the end of the room. The rudely-carved names and initials on the wall betrayed the labours of an idle hour. Around the ample hearth, during the long winter nights, the war-scarred veterans beguiled the tedium of a soldier's life with stories of battle, siege, and sortie, under Moore and Wellington, in the Peninsular wars; and one or two grizzled old war-dogs had ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... labors and knowledge of the soil, and by his practiced dexterity 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 narrator's own language, presents a graphic picture of the provincial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... acquaintances, thus opportunely thrown together so that they might while away in conversation the tedium of their journey, represented very different and yet very similar types of manhood. A celebrated traveler, after many years spent in barbarous or savage lands, has said that among all varieties of mankind ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... first admirers was a gentleman of sixty, who called upon me with a large roll of manuscript. He had retired from business two years before, so he informed me, and, having always been a great lover of poetry, he determined to fill up the tedium of his life of ease by writing some for himself. Now everybody knows that I am not a poet,—the few patriotic verses which I wrote during the war having simply been the result of excitement,—and why should he apply to me? O, there was a great deal of poetry in my prose, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... 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 on the viol ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... number or lighter in contents, and after dealing as well as he could with two important parts of Saint Pierre's works, he threw up the task.[260] It must not be supposed that Rousseau would allow that fatigue or tedium had anything to do with a resolve which really needed no better justification. As we have seen before, he had amazing skill in finding a certain ingeniously contrived largeness for his motives. Saint Pierre's writings were full of observations on the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Clive 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 has long been lost, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that ran: God only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure, he never acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking ruler; yet he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that they tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of him. He disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and the arts by which he ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... he knew that she was much on deck after midnight, he was studious to keep out of her way. The tedium of stopping in a stuffy stateroom, when the spell of restlessness was on him, waiting for the sounds of his neighbour's return before he might venture forth, was nothing; anything were preferable to figuring as the innocent bystander ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to the classes with me and spelled into my hand with infinite patience all that the teachers said. In study hours she had to look up new words for me and read and reread notes and books I did not have in raised print. The tedium of that work is hard to conceive. Frau Grote, my German teacher, and Mr. Gilman, the principal, were the only teachers in the school who learned the finger alphabet to give me instruction. No one realized more fully than dear Frau Grote how slow and inadequate her spelling ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the road or a rough R. F. D. box nailed 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 end and always, in the pasture at the other end, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... "stanes." To every man two stanes. You can either get 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... addressed had performed his duty by sitting on a fence and "righting up" his pockets, to beguile the tedium of his exile. Before his multitudinous possessions could be restored to their native sphere, Thorn was himself again, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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
... time has no effect on the surviving subjective appreciation; but this must surely be an error, since our mental image of any period is determined by the character of its contents. Wundt says that when once a tedious waiting is over, it looks short because we instantly forget the feeling of tedium. My self-observation, as well as the interrogation of others, has satisfied me, on the contrary, that this feeling distinctly colours the retrospective appreciation. Thus, when waiting at a railway station for a belated ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... most kindly dropped in to relieve the tedium of our evening with his company—his distinguished company." He pronounced the words suavely, without a trace of sarcastic emphasis, yet somehow I felt my face flush. And all the time he was staring at me blankly with his wide, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... spread through St. Ignace. Father Rielle was seen to drive away, and Dr. Renaud was already at the Manor House, but Ringfield, shut up in his own room, reading and pondering, heard nothing of the matter for several hours. However, Poussette and Miss Cordova, to relieve tedium, went into the kitchen, where, secure from both Stanbury and Schenk, the ex-actress took a lesson in cooking, by tea-time producing pancakes so excellent that they rivalled if not excelled those of her instructor. Indeed, with ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... 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 sentences, in the words of Dr. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and so forth. Masters and Fellows wore a distinctive costume, which remained almost unchanged in its fashion for no less than three centuries.[86] Withal, it was a serious company, but in nowise solemn, and the tedium of the journey was no doubt beguiled by song, story, and the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... She felt humiliated. Evidently he had regarded her merely as some one with whom it might he agreeable to idle away the tedium of a journey—but that was all. It was obviously his intention that that should be the beginning and ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... there was nothing to relieve the tedium of Hannah's life, and but for her trust in God her reason must have given way under the strain, for it was not only her own sorrow, but her father's as well, which she had to bear. With him there was no rest, day or night, and every breath was a prayer ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... form 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 characteristic observations. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... exclusively to biographies of saints, to the legend of Saint Columban, written by the monk, Jonas, and to that of the blessed Cuthbert, written by the Venerable Bede from the notes of an anonymous monk of Lindisfarn, he contented himself with glancing over, in his moments of tedium, the works of these hagiographers and in again reading several extracts from the lives of Saint Rusticula and Saint Radegonda, related, the one by Defensorius, the other by the modest and ingenious Baudonivia, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... six hours, driving round and round and round the pylons, hour on hour, safe and steady as a train, never taking the risk of sensational banking, nor spiraling like Johnstone, but amusing himself and breaking the tedium by keeping an eye out on each circuit for a fat woman in a bright lavender top-coat, who stood out in the dark line of people that flowed beneath. When he had descended—acclaimed the winner—thousands of heads turned his way as ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... light or easy journey he had thus rashly undertaken on the faith of a dream,—for dream he still believed it to be. Many weary days and nights were consumed in the comfortless tedium of travel, . . and though he constantly told himself what unheard-of folly it was to pursue an illusive chimera of his own imagination,—a mere phantasm which had somehow or other taken possession of his brain at a time when that brain must have been acted upon (so he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... man and woman who came to me on such errands, 'My dear friend, my business is with your spiritual welfare, and with that alone. The doctor and solicitor must take care of your worldly concerns. It is my duty to insure your eternal felicity when the tedium of delirium tremens and the divorce court is all over, and that is really all ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... alone, pondering what was the matter with him. Had that little witch dropped the old familiar poison into his veins after all? Certainly some women made life vivacity and pleasure, while others—his mother or Mrs. Watton, for instance—made it fatigue or tedium. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... five-and-twenty or more, of handles to his little name, if you should ever require it); who, finding matters so backward at Frankfurt, and nothing to do there, has been out, in the interim, touring to while away the tedium; and is here only as sequel and corroboration of Belleisle,—say as bottle-holder, or as high-wrought peacock's-tail, to Belleisle:—of the eminent Montijos I have to record next to nothing in the shape of negotiation ("Treaty" with the Termagant ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thing like regular occupation. We do nothing all the day but wander restlessly about among the old haunts which were our favourites in the peaceful time of our early sojourn here. Max has endeavoured to relieve the tedium, and get up an interest of some sort, by renewing his attempts against the great eel. But the patriarch is as wary, and his stronghold beneath the roots of the buttress tree as impregnable as ever, and all efforts to his prejudice, whether by force or ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... his early cup of tea that Easter Saturday afternoon, Louis had no project whatever in his head, and he was excessively, exasperatingly bored. A quarter of an hour earlier he had finished reading the novel which had been mitigating the worst tedium of his shamed convalescence, and the state of his mind was not improved by the fact that in his opinion the author of the novel had failed to fulfil clear promises—had, in fact, abused his trust. On the other hand, he felt very appreciably stronger, and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... 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!" etc.; all of which he delivered in a bass voice so powerful that it caused the rafters of the ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... familiarity with the properties of lines, angles, circles, spheres, cylinders, cubes, cones, and the conic sections will be acquired, which will give a life and reality to the geometrical studies which will occupy them in their school career. Dancing and singing will relieve the tedium of sitting, shake off the surplus energy, give rest to the body, and power, time, and tune to the voice. Models of houses, stores, workshops, kitchens, farms, and factories, which later on they will assist in making, will be a source alike ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... 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 ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... in the West looked out eagerly for the Missouri, hoping to find the valley of the river rich in scenery which would relieve the tedium of the journey. But when we came out upon the river-bank and looked at the dull shores, and the sandy bed, which the scant stream does not cover, but through which it creeps, treacherous and slimy, in half a dozen channels, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... having laboured all day through a hell of tedium and distress, he came to the water-hole. He marked it from afar by its dusty willows; he wondered if this time he would find water. It struck him that he must. He began to walk faster; he curbed a heady desire to break into a run. As it was, he came slowly, steadily ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... 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 ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... days 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 ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... sheltered I was from the breeze, gathered about my head in swarms. A winter wren at my elbow struck up to sing, going over and over with his exquisite tune; and a scarlet tanager, also, not far off, did what he could—which was somewhat less than the wren's—to relieve the tedium of my situation. Finally, when my patience was well-nigh exhausted,—for the afternoon was wearing away and I had some distance to walk,—a swift flew past me from behind, and, with none of that poising over ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... who had spent so much of my lifetime in solitude, the tedium of the voyage so much complained of was gaiety itself; with three fellow-passengers besides the captain, the time passed very agreeably. On board these floating palaces a passenger, in fact, finds everything that can contribute to his comfort; the best of accommodation, the best of fare, and the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... as under his own; and having taken great pains to instruct him in seamanship, and make him well acquainted with the dangers of the coast, he thought that, as Newton was fully equal to the charge of the vessel, he might as well indulge himself with an occasional glass or two, to while away the tedium of embarkation. A stone pitcher of liquor was now his constant attendant when he pulled on board to weigh his anchor; which said pitcher, for fear of accidents, he carried down into the cabin himself. As soon as sail was on the vessel, and her course shaped, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... who, under the assumed name of Fer'amorz, accompanies Lalla Rookh from Delhi, on her way to be married to the sultan. He wins her love, and amuses the tedium of the journey by telling her tales. When introduced to the sultan, her joy is unbounded on discovering that Feramorz the poet, who has won her heart, is the sultan to whom she is betrothed.—T. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the gun crew who were not occupied in scanning the water with their glasses were glad enough to beguile the tedium of the days before the danger zone was reached in ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... watch, when we had nearly run out the south-east trades, I went forward, looking for someone to talk to, or anything to relieve the tedium of my two hours on the lee side of the poop. I found Welsh John sitting on the main-hatch and disposed to yarn. He had been the most intimate with Duncan, harkening to his queer tales of the fairies in Knoidart when we others would scoff, and naturally the talk came ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... not bored, droning on in the same key from morning till night. [Despairingly] I am dying of this tedium. What shall I do? ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... 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
... should settle at York, to remain "for ever" in each other's company. They started in a post-chaise, the good Harriet reading aloud novels by the now forgotten Holcroft with untiring energy, to charm the tedium of the journey. At York more than one cloud obscured their triune felicity. In the first place they were unfortunate in their choice of lodgings. In the second Shelley found himself obliged to take an expensive journey ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... this time, the young Virginian lay bound in a wigwam, guarded by a brace of old warriors, who occasionally varied the tedium of watching by stalking to the door, where, like yelping curs paying their respects to passers-by, they up-lifted their voices and vented a yell or two in testimony of their approbation of what was going on without. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... but joyous citizen of the world at large was Mr. Phelan Harrihan, as, with a soul wholly in tune with the finite, he half sat and half reclined on a baggage-truck at Lebanon Junction. He wag relieving the tedium of his waiting moments by entertaining a critical if not fastidious audience ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... 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 ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... me, in the gentlest, the most considerate way possible, that I am not here to relieve the tedium of a life made lonely by a bereavement equal to your own, in conversation however beguiling, or in quest of a sympathy of which, I dare to say, I feel assured. For, in a sense, it is as to a public assembly, or rather as to a great institution, immemorially venerable and august that I have to address ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... belief that arms and hearts are open to receive one—and the arms and hearts of women, too, as far as they allow themselves to open them—is the salt of the earth, the sole remedy against sea- sickness, the only cure for the tedium of railways, the one preservative amid all the miseries and fatigue of travail. These matters are private, and should hardly be told of in a book; but in writing of the States, I should not do justice to my own convictions of the country if I did not say how pleasantly social intercourse ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... 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 through tears, and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... father since then," replied Charles, "and I fear his illness is much more serious than I had any idea of. That being the case, I feel it would be wrong to press any one, even Middleton, to stay and share the tedium of a sick-house." ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... he held the hand of a woman and placed a kiss on it, in the glances with which he seemed to tear her away from her shelter, in the intonation given to certain words, was attained the primitiveness of desire and conquest under cover of polished refinement. Amid the tedium and dissatisfaction of ordinary and exercised lovemakers this method seemed cynical, but bold and honest. It might have been compared to the shaggy head of a beast sticking out of a basket of heliotropes, which have ever the character of sameness as has their odor. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... 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 to a ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... not dragged, every sail a good rap full, "fast asleep," without the tremor of an eyelid, if I may so style a weather leach, or of any inch of the canvas, from the royals down to the courses. Every condition was as if arranged for a special occasion, or to recompense us for the tedium of the horse latitudes. The moon was big, and there was a clear sky, save for the narrow band of tiny clouds, massed like a flock of sheep, which ever fringes the horizon of the trades; always on the horizon, as you progress, yet never visible above when the horizon of this ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... she come up hand over hand, making a running mooring off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah's list of stores she was out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Prepared to buy a ballad, if one apt To move his fancy offers. Crispin's sons Have, from uncounted time, with ale and buns, Cherish'd the gift of Song, which sorrow quells; And, working single in their low-rooft cells, Oft cheat the tedium of a winter's night With anthems warbled in the Muses' spight.— Who now hath caught the alarm? the Servant Maid, Hath heard a buzz at distance; and, afraid To miss a note, with elbows red comes out. Leaving his forge to cool, Pyracmon stout Thrusts ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... 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. ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... driven forth to make the purchases; Mr. Pyecroft, under Jack's guidance, went below to forage for the anaesthetic of immediate crumbs; and Mary, tender-heartedly, remained behind to relieve the tedium of and give comfort to the invalid. She straightened up the room a bit; urged the patient to eat, to no avail; then went out of the room for a minute, ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... spirit came into the empty house, sweeping and garnishing would only entice the seven to take the place of the one. So he tried to interest his pupil once again in his old studies; and by frequent changes did ere long succeed in holding tedium at bay. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... turned in, and they might have enjoyed a nice chat while he smoked on the poop. In her heart of hearts, she was beginning to acknowledge that a voyage through summer seas on a cargo vessel, with no other society than that of unimaginative sailormen, savored of tedium, indeed, almost of deadly monotony. Her rare meetings with Hozier marked bright spots in a dull round of hours. During their small intercourse she had discovered that he was well informed. They had hit upon a few kindred tastes in books and music; ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... so easily, that it was suspected that she did not realize the tedium of confinement, and was relieved by being allowed to be inactive. Until she should go home, she might do whatever did not fatigue her; but most sights, and even the motion of the carriage, were so fatiguing, that she was much more inclined to remain at home and revel ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prodded the unwilling beasts along. On a curve I counted the wagons ahead and behind. I knew that there were forty of them, including our own; for often I had counted them before. And as I counted them now, as a child will to while away tedium, they were all there, forty of them, all canvas-topped, big and massive, crudely fashioned, pitching and lurching, grinding and jarring over sand ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Fenimore at Wellington) with Mrs. Marigold's famous potted shrimp and other comestibles, and had put him up, during here and there holidays and later a vacation, when his mother and aunts, with whom he lived, had gone abroad to take inefficacious cures for the tedium of a futile life. Oxford, however, had set him a bit ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... in love with Marion. He knew that he was not at all in love with Anna Klein. But she helped to relieve the office tedium. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were coming from the theatre she told me all about the piece with charming grace and wonderful memory; she seemed to wish to give me some pleasure in return for the tedium to which she had condemned me. When we got home we had supper, and that evening, Heaven be thanked! I heard nothing more about the cabala. Before we parted, Esther and her father made me promise ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... are sleepy, Geoffrey. The rest of my mournful history will help to wile away the tedium of the ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... exclaimed, rising, "I must write some letters at once." She sighed, as if in tedium. The fact that her fortune was vaguely threatened did not cause her anxiety: she scarcely realized it. What she saw was an opportunity to evade the immediate meeting with Edwin—the meeting which, a few minutes earlier, she had ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... this 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 ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... supernatural fireworks by night, enchantments, vampires, guns that went off by themselves—all this jugglery was fast being done to death, and what at first had been a nerve-shaking novelty was becoming a mere tedium. In opera The Castle of Otranto was played out. Into this region of inspissated gloom Richard burst with Rienzi, the brilliant, the fearless, the tragic hero; all was blazing light and colour; it sparkled; if the champagne of it was ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... and moon-glimpse over the surface of the shuddering water. I had to hold my hat on, and was growing rather tired, and inclined to go back in disgust, when a little incident occurred to break the tedium. A sudden and violent squall of wind sundered the low underwood, and at the same time there came one of those brief discharges of moonlight, which leaped into the opening thus made, and showed me three girls in the prettiest flutter and disorder. It was as though they had sprung ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always difficult part) was elaborately unconvincing, though played by a clever actress; Guildenstern and awkward Rosencrantz deserved any fate which awaited them in England. Neither Laertes nor Horatio seemed authentic. But Mr. TOM REYNOLDS' grave-digger had humour and avoided tedium. Hamlet was the thing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... applied in excess, and, like the 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 ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... dim the heavens, The light of sunbeams rarer grown— Already every day is shorter, While with a smitten hollow tone The forest drops its shadow leafage; Upon the fields the mists lie white, In lusty caravans the wild geese Now to the milder South take flight; Seasons of tedium draw near, ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... far, but that 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 ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... The tedium of routine duty occupied our time without specially exciting incident until pleasanter weather towards the middle of April brought rumors of impending army movements again. About April 20 we heard the cavalry under Stoneman were on the move, and this was confirmed the next ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... mismanagement of his affairs—and the affairs of those dependent on him—Ann recognised that she might very well have been still pursuing the rather dull, uneventful life which obtained at Lovell Court, without the prospect of any vital change or happening to relieve its tedium, whereas the catastrophe which had once seemed to threaten chaos had actually opened the door ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... that, Mildred?" said Presbury, with a nasty little laugh. He had been relieving the tedium of this sight-seeing tour by observing—and from time ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... distinguished 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 change might come over the color ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... portraits of public exhibitors being of course recognizable by the public, and, if good, serving the purpose of advertisements. Unluckily, Mrs. Jameson proposed accompanying me, in order to lighten by her very agreeable conversation the tedium of the process. Her intimate acquaintance with my face, with which Mr. Pickersgill was not familiar, and her own very considerable artistic knowledge and taste made her, however, less discreet in ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 boat was run alongside, the coxswain ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... bitter calamity which befell him in such advanced years when, together with a beloved daughter, he was very severely injured by the overturning of his carriage. The painful results of the accident and the tedium of convalescence he bore with the utmost equanimity, and he comforted his friends rather than himself by the declaration that he had never met with a like misfortune, and it might well have seemed pleasing to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... then," replied his friend. "You've said your say. Now I'll say mine. I can ease the tedium of Miss Leslie's trip up the coast; and I stand ready to do so—on two conditions. In the first place; you're to come aboard and stay aboard. After I find a chaperon for her at Aden, you're to go on home with me, ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... when this story begins. The stream of boys with shiny black bags had poured out through the gate and swelled the great human river; some of them were perhaps already at home and enlivening their families with the day's experiences, and those who had further to go were probably beguiling the tedium of travel by piling one another up in struggling heaps on the floors of various railway carriages, for the entertainment of those privileged to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... a pale ghost of pity for you wandering up and down what was once my heart. After the glorious intoxication of Parisian life, how can you endure the tedium of this dullest of humdrum—this most moral and stupid of all country towns? Little gossip, few flirtations, neither beaux esprits nor bons vivants—what will become of you? Now, whatever amusement, edification, or warning you may be able to extract from my society, I here beg permission ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... intelligent Greek, Mustapha by name. Barbers are privileged persons for many reasons: running from one employer to another to obtain their livelihood, they also obtain matter for conversation, which, impertinent as it may sometimes be, serves to beguile the tedium of an operation which precludes the use of any organ except the ear. Moreover, we are inclined to be on good terms with a man, who has it in his power to cut our throats whenever he pleases—to wind up; the personal ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the weak in character are put to the horrible torture of imprisonment, not for hours but for years, in the name of justice. It is a place where the hardest toil is a welcome refuge from the horror and tedium of pleasure, and where charity and good works are done only for hire to ransom the souls of the spoiler and the sybarite. Now, sir, there is only one place of horror and torment known to my religion; and that place is hell. Therefore it is plain ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... with whom we held several seances, relieved the tedium of waiting for a slate-communication by writing in pencil on slips of paper, under Spirit control, as we were assured, communications from a succession of Spirits. The hand of these communications was good, and in each one different as it would appear from different individuals. There ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... played the old chorals, Dorothea listened quietly, though it could not be said that she was perfect at concealing her tedium. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... 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 was replete with more intense excitement than my riper ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... evenly distributed in degree, are equally constant in kind. In Kyd, in Greene still more, in Peele more still, in Marlowe most of all, phrases and passages of blinding and dazzling poetry flash out of the midst of the bombast and the tedium. Many of these are known, by the hundred books of extract which have followed Lamb's Specimens, to all readers. Such, for ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Walter Raleigh, the petted courtier of Elizabeth, fell on evil days after her death. On the charge of taking part in a conspiracy against the crown, he was sent to the Tower, where he was kept a prisoner for thirteen years. From the tedium of his long confinement, he found relief in the composition of a History of the World. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... sent home in failing health. She thought of the sad weeks, so melancholy in the impossibility of making an impression, or of leading poor Louisa from her frivolities, she recalled the sorrow of hearing her build on future schemes of pleasure, the dead blank when her prattle on them failed, the tedium of deeper subjects, and yet the bewitching sweetness overpowering all vexation at her exceeding silliness. Though full one-and-twenty years had passed, still the tears thrilled warm into Mrs. Ponsonby's ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... detested the government a hundred times more than they did, and with better reason. He had been a lifelong heretic; was a heretic to-day, upon sincerer conviction than them all. What a queer comedy he had been playing of late years—simply from tedium and disgust. He to believe in God? What sort of a God was it who was gracious only to the young, and left the old in the lurch? A God who, when the fancy took him, became a devil; who transformed wealth into poverty, fortune into misfortune, happiness into ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... all sang Burns—for Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is, perhaps, but one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself—his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his brother—his helper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... as in freedom, if Ralegh failed in one effort for the reconstruction whether of his fortune, or of his career, he was always ready for another. He felt all the tedium of the uphill struggle. 'Sorrow rides the ass,' he exclaimed; 'prosperity the eagle.' Never for an instant was he dejected to the extent of faltering in the energy of his protests against the endeavours to suppress him. As Mr. Rossetti ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... corner one might happen upon a man and a girl. They would be sitting very close together, and behaving... well, as men and maidens sometimes do, to beguile the tedium of voyages at sea. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling |
