"Tiresome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enemy of everything Puritanical, and not scrupulous as to veracity, may be suspected of having aggravated, if not misrepresented, the tendency of a book much more tiresome than seditious. Prynne, however, was already obnoxious, and the Star-chamber adjudged him to stand twice in the pillory, to be branded in the forehead, to lose both his ears, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, and to suffer ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... consuls took up the duties of their office. Consequently those who heard him made themselves ready to enjoy a good reign according to the letter of the compilation. At first Agrippina [in company with Pallas, a vulgar and tiresome man,] managed all affairs pertaining to the empire, and she and her son went about together, often reclining in the same litter; usually, however, she would be carried and he would follow alongside. It was she who transacted business with embassies ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... to the patient German the thing grew tiresome. In the Fliegende Blatter two young clerks were represented discussing the question of ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... write her," she sighed, chewing her pencil abstractedly. "I wish I could work a typewriter. 'Twould be so much easier to 'tend to all my letters then. It's tiresome writing things by hand. If it wasn't Elspeth, I wouldn't try today. It's so lovely and cool just to sit here and watch folks pass along the street. I 'most wish now that I had gone with Gail and Dr. Dick in their auto.—There, that's ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... crazy I was to get back to the dear old land? And Africa IS a wonderful country—I don't care what anybody says. Well, I thought I was going to have a perfectly grand time. But somehow—I don't know—after a few weeks it seemed to get tiresome. I just couldn't seem to settle down. Well, to make a long story short, one night I made up my mind that I'd come back here and find you. So I hunted up old Chee-Chee and told him about it. He said he didn't blame me a bit—felt exactly the same way himself. Africa was ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... conventionalities of her life stood ready to build a wall between this man and herself. They would sweep him out of her life as if she had never met him, never been found and saved by him, and carry her away to their tiresome round of parties and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... suddenly, her eyes very bright and her cheeks hot and anger-flushed. "Amusing!" she repeated, "ah, yes—that's just it—it's all only a joke to you, to be done with when it grows tiresome. But my life here—our life is very real—ah, terribly real, and has been—sordid sometimes. What is only sport to you for a little while is deadly earnest to me; you are only playing at poverty, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... fond of that tiresome creature at all? Confess it; doesn't she bore you to death ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... "How tiresome!" muttered Gertrude. Then aloud to Violet, as the governess left the room, "I say, Vi, does your mamma reprove ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... be tiresome; of course you are to be just as good friends with Edward as you are with me: sit down, Edward. He is telling us the most delicious stories. He is the dearest Cousin George in the world," she added, stroking his hand which ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... character of land forces on the sandy shore of North Carolina. All the saddle horses of the command were, however, upon a freight ship that did not arrive for several days, and mounted officers who had lived in the saddle for years found it slow and tiresome work to wade on foot through the soft sands in the performance of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... us a child—that will make him happy. And show me what to do to please him! Show me! Oh, show me! I'll do anything!" And who can say that her prayer was not answered? For certainly an idea did spring into her mind: those tiresome people downstairs—he liked to talk to them;—to Miss Moore, who giggled, and tried, Eleanor thought, to seem learned; and to the elderly woman who told stories. How could he enjoy talking to them when he could talk to her? But he did. So, suppose ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... she came here. Looks innocent as a wax doll doesn't she? Eve Werneth she calls herself; and she is well named after the original mother of all sin. She is Satan's own imp, and we chain her every night, for she boasts that when things grow tiresome to her she always burns her way out. I think she is the worst case we have, except the young mulatto—I don't see her here just now—who was sent up for life, for poisoning a baby she was hired to nurse. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... all the other boys and men one sometimes saw—did mysterious and extraordinary things; and all the females in this world—her mother, and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters, and Ellen the cook and Gertrude the maid—did ordinary and unexciting and generally rather tiresome things. All the males were like story books to Rosalie: you never knew what they were going to do next; and all the females were like lesson books: they just went on and ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... how,' said Lucy. 'Gilbert is so tiresome, and so is Sophy. I heard Mary telling Jane, "I'm sure the new missus will have a heavy ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... development in fifteen seconds. The chances are that the development would go on to a ruinous extent before we could pour off the developer and flood the print, or that it would go on even after the water was poured on it. Moreover, in case of under-exposure, two minutes would not be so very tiresome, but four minutes would, besides which we would risk straining the print by such prolonged development. While I am not prepared to assert it as a rule, yet it has been my experience that the time of development varies almost inversely with the length of exposure; so that if the test-strip ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... handkerchief without taking off her gloves, she put on the linen, and in doing so knocked the Queen's cap off. The Queen laughed to conceal her impatience, but not until she had muttered several times, "How disagreeable! how tiresome!" ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... that CHAULIEU wrote, but with more negligence. The latter has thought to compensate for the energy and grace that should give life to his subject (which he considers only in a playful and satirical light), by a truly tiresome multitude of incidents. Conceive three huge volumes in octavo, for a poem which required but one of a moderate size, and, in them, a versification frequently negligent. These are two serious faults, which the French will not readily overlook. No where are ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... monarchies in Europe—by the only noblemen to whom that title may still be with justice applied. The women here are attractive; a brilliant complexion adorns an elegant form; the natural but sometimes languishing and tiresome air of the ladies of the north of Germany is mingled with a little coquetry and address, the effect of the presence of a numerous Court...In a word, pleasure has taken possession of every heart." This was written when ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... still less use that those tiresome men of principle demonstrated that the money spent in tobacco would, if accumulated, form a snug little fortune to retire upon in his old age. John only laughed at this. "Wot did he want with a fortin in his old age," he would ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... might have, neither in look nor manner very refined. He soon went away, so I heard nothing of his conversation. Everybody I have met has been very civil and obliging, and I ought to be and am grateful for my reception, but I wish myself back again, and ask myself a hundred times why I came. It is tiresome to go through introductions to a parcel of people whom I shall probably never see again, whose names I can scarcely remember, and with whom, be they ever so agreeable, I have not time to form any intimacy. They all ask the same question, 'Do you make a long stay here?' to which I ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... stimulants of one's energy. They were fair and unfair. I did not care so much for my serious critics as my humorous ones. Solemnity when sustained by malice or bigotry is a bore. Some call it hypocrisy, but that is too clever for the tiresome critic. Frequently, in my scrap book, I kept ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... distinct advantage for a man to become possessed of a spell which rendered him immune from death, pain or restraint, enabled him to pass through walls and floors and generally freed him from all those little restrictions which make life the tiresome and precarious thing it is. A man so constituted would conduct himself after the manner of his fellows from day to day and would resort to the use of his peculiar powers only when the necessity arose. But ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... never, no never, was such patient kindness to a tiresome old woman, because that is what I am, and I know, my dear. I know, my dear, that I owe this to you, and it is for your sake, but it ought to be, and that is right. I do not say things always like I ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sages sought to identify Brahman with the presiding deity of the sun, moon, lightning, ether, wind, fire, water, etc., and failed; for none of these could satisfy the ideal they cherished of Brahman. It is indeed needless here to multiply these examples, for they are tiresome not only in this summary treatment but in the original as well. They are of value only in this that they indicate how toilsome was the process by which the old ritualistic associations could be got ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... example, as well as by occasional kind remarks, help him to correct any inadvertencies of taste. I know the burden of a teacher in a large school, and a perpetual sameness in the same employment, especially in this business, is a tiresome task. I consider this school of vast importance, on several accounts, and especially considering the hopes to be entertained of several interesting ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... wonder J. Elfreda is stout! I suppose I shouldn't refer to her, even behind her back, in such familiar terms, but nothing else suits her. I'm not charitable like you, Grace. I haven't the patience to look for the good in tiresome people like her. I think she's greedy and selfish and ill-bred and I wouldn't care to live in the same ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... a very apt scholar, madam," says the Colonel; and, turning to his mistress, "Did your guest use these words in your ladyship's hearing, or was it to Beatrix in private that he was pleased to impart his opinion regarding my tiresome sermon?" ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... tiresome fellow began by standing on his hind legs and making a great bow to his shadow before him on the grass. After this he whirled himself round like a top, shaking his head all the time, and ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... understood all that Lousteau's attack had meant. Lousteau had served his passions; while the brotherhood, that collective mentor, had seemed to mortify them in the interests of tiresome virtues and work which began to look useless and hopeless in Lucien's eyes. Work! What is it but death to an eager pleasure-loving nature? And how easy it is for the man of letters to slide into a far niente existence of self-indulgence, into the luxurious ways of actresses and women of easy ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... appear tiresome, and so they are when written out at length, but the time occupied in carrying them out is very short, and quartz threads break easily, unless the pull upon them is accurately in the direction of ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... be a very nice tiresome place to live in," she said, "if every one always did exactly what is absolutely right. I should not like to live among people who would be always so entirely padded and lined with goodness as they must be in your ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... owes all his worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the imperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may look beyond, and take comfort in the vision, they cannot pass ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... its parish. Wherefore the best one can do, is to get it sound, well roasted, and as fresh as may be. Much as I love and practice home preparation, I am willing to let the Trust or who will, roast my coffee. Roasting is parlous work, hot, tedious, and tiresome, also mighty apt to result in scorching if not burning. One last caution—never meddle with the salt unless sure your hand is light, your memory so trustworthy you will not put it ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... grows tiresome—we might have now, on our acre, a tree planted by Joseph Jefferson had we thought in time to be provided with a sapling, growing, in a tub. Have your prospective souvenir tree already tubbed and waiting. This idea I got from Andrew Carnegie, with whom ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... hard; and she had taken something which, after all, did not belong to her at all, and given it to Fanny. She could never get that something back. She felt that she did not dare to look at Betty Vivian. Why should not Betty hide things if she liked in the stump of an old oak-tree or under a bit of tiresome heather in the "forest primeval?" After all, Betty had not said the thing was wood; but when Sibyl had asked her she had said, "Have it so if you like." Oh! Sibyl felt just now that she had been made a sort of ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... This rather tiresome talk, which she usually endured amiably, now irritated her, and made her look with closer attention at the man who was vulgarly loquacious in his interest in such things; but she smiled as she listened, and replied pleasantly, more gracious even than usual, more indulgent toward these ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... chopped into my composition, and as my afternoons and evenings had no value in a literary way, I was often completely defeated for the day. Altogether and inevitably my work as a fictionist sank into an unimportant place. I was on the down-grade, that was evident. Writing was a tiresome habit. I was in a rut and longing to ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... tiresome!" repeated Thugut. "And our own heavenly liaison, the last romantic dream of my life, would it not also be broken off if you were to become my wife? Why would we then stand in need of secrecy—of hidden staircases and doors, and of this Turkish cabinet?—inasmuch ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... itself with little men and small facts, and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena interweave, act, and react upon each other—economic changes and political revolutions, costumes, ideas, the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... here for the world. I care not how soon we leave town. London soon grows tiresome. I wish the Captain would come. Mrs. Mirvan talks of the opera for this evening; however, I am very indifferent about it. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... "A tiresome woman," whispered Selina, with a sort of affectation of confidence; "but the fact is, Lord Marchmont used to know her husband, or his father, or his great grandfather, sometime in the dark ages, and ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... clotheslessness became stupid. It was disgusting not to have beautiful gowns to dance in. Zada L'Etoile and others had a new costume for every dance. Kedzie had one tiresome hip-length shift and little else. As usual, poor Kedzie found that realization was for ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Every body begins to feal the trip now, geting tiresome now. since they have taken all of our ditty Boxes and benches and all extra mess chests and stored them away, we have no place to sit down except on deck and let our feet hang over. then the men forward cant get enough water to keep themselves ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... It would be tiresome to recount all the battles both on sea and land, in which smaller forces defeated forces numerically greater; but it may not be possible by any other means to force the fact on the attention—even sometimes of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... In The Dunciad, an epic of the dunces, he holds up to ridicule every person and writer who had offended him. These were in many cases scribblers who had no business with a pen; but in a few instances they were the best scholars of that day. A great deal of the poem is now very tiresome reading. Much of it is brutal. Pope was a powerful agent, as Thackeray says, in rousing that obloquy which has ever since pursued a struggling author. The Dunciad could be more confidently consulted about contemporary literary history, if Pope ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... watered. When a discourse is too long, by the time the end is reached, the middle is forgotten, and by the time the middle is reached the beginning has been lost. Moderately good preachers are accepted, provided they are brief, and the best become tiresome when they are too lengthy. There is no more disagreeable quality in a ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... exclaimed Miss Ingram: "you tiresome monkey!" (apostrophising Adele), "who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?" and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... said Mrs. Bruce. "Dot never lost a bonnet in her life. You will have done with bonnets soon, but yours will do for Nancy. I expect you left it at school, you tiresome child." ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... everything marvellous out there, in the warm lands, if there had only been no sun. The stranger's landlord said that he didn't know who had taken the house opposite, one saw no person about, and as to the music, it appeared to him to be extremely tiresome. "It is as if some one sat there, and practised a piece that he could not master—always the same piece. 'I shall master it!' says he; but yet he cannot master it, however long ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... have always thought that I, like my maid Nastya, had no words of my own. One day she said to her betrothed: 'Thou must find it tiresome with me; thou always sayest such fine things to me, but I have no ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... you not bring him here?" interrupted Dulce, with a pout. "You tiresome Dick, when you must know what a godsend a strange young man is ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... guard against getting into the habit of telling long stories: they generally are tiresome. Many circumstances, in addition to the feeling that you have them to tell, may give them a consequence in your eyes, which they do not in reality possess. Lively anecdotes, or short narratives, told with spirit, are among the most amusing ingredients ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... Length.—The story tone is greatly affected also by the length of the sentences. If one's sentences are unnecessarily long, the effect will be heavy and tiresome. If they are markedly short, the result will be a monotonous, choppy, jolting effect, like a flat wheel on a street-car. The bing-bing-bing style just discussed is an illustration of the latter. The writer should aim at a happy medium, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... equal to that produced by the first lover and the first proposal coming to a girl in a large family of girls? It is delightfully sentimental, comical, complimentary, affronting, rousing, tiresome—all in one. It is a herald of lovers, proposals, and wonderful changes all round. It is the first thrill of real life in its strong passions, grave vicissitudes, and big joys and sorrows as they come in contact with idle ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... He had never seen her superior in technique. It took character, he appreciated that, to have endured the years of tiresome, mechanical practice, and to have undertaken it so intelligently that she had achieved her marvelous results; and she had, beside, youth and beauty and magnetism. All this alone would have made her a great dancer, but as he ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... variety than in your provincial Dublin, or among the Wicklow Mountains. We have the old prospect of bricks and smoke, the old crowd of busy stupid faces, the old occupations, the old sleepy amusements; and the latest news that reaches us daily has an air of tiresome, doting antiquity. The world has nothing for it but to exclaim with Faust, "Give me my youth again." And as for me, my month of Cornish amusement is over; and I must tie myself to my old employments. I have not much to tell you about these; but perhaps you may like to hear of my expedition ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... had the two in the house to contrast them, and . . . the result! A young woman with brains—in a house—beats all your beauties. Lady Culmer and I have determined on that view. He thought her a delightful partner for a dance, and found her rather tiresome at the end of the gallopade. I saw it yesterday, clear as daylight. She did not understand him, and he did understand her. That will be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... good of Cousin Monica to stay with me so long. It must have been unspeakably tiresome. And now she began to talk of business at home, and plainly to prepare for immediate ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Scholer, have you nothing to mix with this Discourse, which now grows both tedious and tiresome? Shall I have nothing from you that seems to have both a good memorie, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... treasured secrets and spoke of our relation to each other as friendship, it disturbed me unpleasantly, and I was conscious of awkwardness. In his affection for me there was something inappropriate, tiresome, and I should have ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... style is honest and hearty in tone, picturesque, often amusing, never tiresome. It is involved and ungrammatical at times, but not obscure. The critics have professed to find many inaccuracies of historical statement; but the following, from Professor Edward Arber, the editor of the English Reprint of Smith's Works, will ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... for the first night at the barracks consisted of the rations we had been given upon leaving the ship—bully beef, sour bread and cheese. Our cooks got their fires started and gave us some coffee, which stimulated us after our long and tiresome march. ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... taught to love the house of God, and how was she ever to make them see? Perhaps it had been prosy and dull to one who did not hear the Lord's voice behind the Bible words. Perhaps the old minister had been long and tiresome, and the children were weary with the journey and sleepy; she ought not to have let them stop now; and she began to say how sorry she was. But, when they saw from her words that she had really enjoyed that dull little ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... tiresome to persons who cannot read on the cars, and, being one of those unfortunates, I resigned myself, on taking my seat in the train, to several hours of tedium, alleviated only by such cat-naps as I might achieve. ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... denied nor agreed. "We had certain things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of life. I made enemies, of course, in consequence. Your racing friends——" He paused. "Milly Splay, who would have matched you with some dull, tiresome squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner, the sort of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your wonderful book." A movement of impatience on Joan's part perplexed him. Authors! You can generally lay your praise on with a trowel. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... these tiresome and absurd words quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in question—namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... off, is sure to burst on us. I'm quite sick of clever men—one never knows how to trust them; if they are not dishonest they are eccentric! I have just been telling Honoria that clever men are, after all, the most tiresome husbands. Well, what makes you so silent? What do you say? Why ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... can't be told about. Quite impossible." The living performers he did not think so good, a disbelief in Italian actors having been always a heresy with him, and the deplorable length of dialogue to the small amount of action in their plays making them sadly tiresome. The first that he saw at the principal theatre was a version of Balzac's Pere Goriot. "The domestic Lear I thought at first was going to be very clever. But he was too pitiful—perhaps the Italian reality would be. He was immensely applauded, though." He afterwards ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Love and Virtue, however, is, after all, only upon a special subject, even though of extreme importance. There are others among the books we live by which I must speak of here. It is tiresome to point out that we are all self-made men or women, consciously or unconsciously, in the sense that if we gain control of our habits, to a very large extent we acquire control of our lives. If, in Some Things That Matter ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... that the poor boy-agent at Osoamokita, had committed suicide. It was a grievous thing. He was, as I have said, a bright, intelligent young Frenchman; but living in the isolation, surrounded by savage, tiresome tribes, the strain of his responsibility had been too much for him. He had had a good deal of fever, and the very kindly head agent for Woermann's had sent Dr. Pelessier to see if he had not better be invalided home; but he told the Doctor he was much better, and as he had no one at home to go to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... is a mind that can flash out comprehension and hands that can execute finely! The more obvious beauty, also adorable sometimes—one may say it without blasphemy—begins by being an apology for folly, and ends like other apologies in becoming tiresome by iteration; and that Klesmer, though very susceptible to it, should have a passionate attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a paradox than any other triumph of a manifold sympathy over a monotonous attraction. We object less to be taxed with the enslaving excess ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... though I was rather a goose then, I really believe she was very kind, and did not want to be tiresome.' ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Bois de Boulogne—not then a formal park as it is to-day—was off the road to Chaillot, yet it was not so far that she need fear getting lost in going there or in coming back. No wonder, then, if, once this way discovered of escape from tiresome school duties, it was travelled so often by Rosalie, and that her school-work became in consequence so unsatisfactory that at length the patient nuns remonstrated. They advised Rosa's father, since she neither would nor could learn anything from books, that it would be better to put her to some ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... occurred to an inquiring mind here and there that if the representation of men's action and passion on the theatre could be made interesting, there was no good reason why the great drama of history should be dull as a miracle-play. Need philosophy teaching by example be so tiresome that the pupils would rather burst in ignorance than go within earshot of the pedagogue? Hence the historical romance, sometimes honestly called so, and limited by custom in number of volumes; sometimes not called so, and without any such limitation. This latter variety admits several ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... because Rose would tear along the road to get here in time, after we had left those tiresome Copping people, where she had to make a call. "What a slow little beast your pony is, Dorry!"—she said ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... countenance whose features were curved—wherever a curve was possible—to a degree approaching caricature. Temples, eyebrows, nostrils, and moustache, all described a series of semi-circles which, accentuated by a livid complexion and curling hair, presented an effect somewhat commonplace and a little tiresome. He had spent his existence among beings to whom nothing seemed natural which did not depart most earnestly from all that nature is and teaches: he had always endeavoured to maintain the ideal of a Christian gentleman where, as a matter of fact, Christianity was understood rather as a ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... men can trifle without being silly or be intimate without being tiresome, so few have either the mental power or the unity of vision necessary for a decent transition from mood to mood, that essayists fit to be ranked with Steele, Addison, Stevenson, are still few. Mr. Max Beerbohm has proved his title.... There, where every idea ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... she turned toward him. "For heaven's sake, Joel," she said, sharply—"you become a bore with that stupid nonsense. I want to be patient with you—I do indeed sympathize with you in your misfortunes—you know that well enough—but you're very tiresome with that eternal harping on what I believed and what I didn't believe. Now, are you going to stop to supper or not?—because if you are I must send the maid out. And there's another thing—would it be of any help to you to bring your things here from the hotel? You can ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... much more learned as a historian of literature than Joseph, but he is not so interesting a critic. Still, he followed exactly the same lines, with the addition of a wider knowledge. His reading is seen to be already immense, but he is tempted to make too tiresome a display of it. Nevertheless, he is as thorough as his brother in his insistence upon qualities which we have now learned to call Romantic, and he praises all sorts of old books which no one then spoke of with respect. He warmly recommends the Morte d'Arthur, which had probably not found ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... while," agreed Jack. "But it would grow tiresome after a few weeks, anyway. Lying here in the basin, and talking like a salesman once in a while, isn't like ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... said Drene, a slight shrug of contempt, "happens to be feminine, and may also be human. Be decent enough to defer the development of your rather tiresome theory." ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... dish of pomegranate-seed. Quoth Agib, "Sit down and eat with us, so haply God may grant us relief." At this Bedreddin was glad and sat down and ate with them, with his eyes fixed on Agib's face, for indeed his heart and entrails were taken with his love, till the boy said to him, "What a tiresome dotard thou art! Leave thy staring in my face." When Bedreddin heard this, he repeated ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... is decidedly in favour of London. A metropolitan life, with its perpetual and graceful excitements,—the best music, the best companions, the best things in short. Provincial life is so dull, its pleasures so tiresome; to talk over the last year's news, and wear out one's last year's dresses, cultivate a conservatory, and play Pope ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... charming eyes with his ironic smile. "Oh, I couldn't—I was brought up on your kind, and perfect as you are, you would only give me the tiresome, familiar society affair. There isn't any mystery about you. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... low period in the day's work, then ten minutes may suffice for a vacation. As an adjunct to such rest periods, some form of recreation should usually be planned, for the essential thing is to permit the mind to rest from the tiresome activity. ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... boat was heavy, there was no wind to propel it, and the crew were obliged to ply their huge oars the whole way. In a word, this passage was the reverse of the first,— safe in every respect,—but so sluggish and tiresome, that I a hundred times wished myself again under the guidance of the wild lad, galloping before the hurricane over the foaming billows. From eight till ten the cold was truly terrible, and though I was ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... you'll find it tiresome, Mr. Harrington," he said, as he assigned his visitor a chair, and then went back ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... kind of study which is not tiresome; and almost the only kind which is not useless: this is the knowledge which gets into the system, and which a man carries about and uses like his limbs, without perceiving that it is extraneous, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... were on a tiresome round of canned salmon, eggs, and beef, and eggs rose to six sous each. In about a fortnight we began to have fish as usual, and Lovaina signed to me that the Dummy procured them in the country. I was very curious, and asked if I might accompany ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... swinging back and forth, and bit hard upon the button of it. "I don't know whether I'm tired of him,—though he isn't a person to rest one a great deal,—but I'm tired of it. I'm perplexed and troubled the whole time, and I don't see any end to it. Yes, I wish he would go away! Yes, he is tiresome. What is he staying here for? If he thinks himself so much better than all of us, I wonder he troubles himself with our company. It's quite time for him to go. No, Fanny, no," cried Kitty with a little broken laugh, still rejecting the outstretched hand, "I'll be flat in private, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... 'shows' of every kind travel about, and settle for a few days, perhaps even for a few weeks, in various towns. The countryfolk of the surrounding district are delighted, and the showmen reap a goodly harvest of francs and centimes; but these fairs are tiresome and commonplace, much less amusing and lively than, for example, St. Giles's Fair at Oxford, though very nearly as noisy. But the kermesse proper, which still survives in some places, shows the Flemings amusing themselves ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... After this tedious, tiresome stage ride, it was indeed a luxury to find ourselves safely ensconced in the large, elegant hotel in the midst of the Calevaros, the season being quite advanced, and in consequence the hotel less crowded. This being one of the few places ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... "I am fearful that you are suspecting me of being one of the objectionable breed of he-flirts who infest this place. At the risk of being tiresome I must repeat once more that your wonderful resemblance to another person led me into this awkward error. My name, madam, is Murrill—Valentine C. Murrill—and I am sure that if you only had the time and the patience to bear with me I could find someone ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mr. Girard in the street to-day; he asked after you," continued Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that tiresome, insistent image of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... aware, and of which she was soon to feel the heat and light. She was, meanwhile, so far impressed by Mr. Magnus' confidences that she borrowed one of his novels from Caroline, who confided to her that she herself thought it the dullest and most tiresome of works. "To be honest, I only read a bit of it—I don't know what it's about. I think it's ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... then astonished at the famous verse of Boileau? This verse proves that the poet had cleverly fathomed the discovery mathematically propounded to you in these tiresome meditations and that his language is by ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... kindergartens the sticks were broken, poked into pockets, and thrown on the floor; in the orderly ones they were gazed at apathetically, no one deeming it worth while to stir a hand to arrange them, save under pressure. Sticks had been presented so often and in so tiresome a manner that they produced a kind of mental atrophy in the child,—they were arresting his development instead ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lean lifted fore finger. Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle, Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill. Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... mendicant choose, elect smell, odor same, identical sink, submerge name, nominate dip, immerse follow, pursue room, apartment follow, succeed see, perceive teach, instruct see, inspect teach, inculcate sight, visibility teacher, pedagogue sight, vision tiresome, tedious sight, spectacle empty, vacant glasses, spectacles ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... awaiting me in the form of making a correct translation of all of the letters in a very large portfolio, all of which were pertaining to that very tiresome animal, the mule. But I made not very much progress, for a very large number of gentlemen came into the office of my Uncle, the General Robert, and to all of them ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Ingmar, she couldn't exactly tell what her feelings were toward him. She liked him because he helped her with her lessons and minded her like a slave; but she could also become thoroughly put out with him sometimes, because he was clumsy and tiresome and did not know how to play. She had to admire his diligence and his aptitude for learning, yet at times she fairly despised him for not being able to show off what ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... diligent and experienced, without the Defects of singing through the Nose, or in the Throat, and that he have a Command of Voice, some Glimpse of a good Taste, able to make himself understood with Ease, a perfect Intonation, and a Patience to endure the severe Fatigue of a most tiresome Employment. ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... of Fingal[369], he said, was a mere unconnected rhapsody, a tiresome repetition of the same images. "In vain shall we look for the lucidus ordo'[370], where there is neither end or object, design or moral, nec ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... vicinity of London, which he had enjoyed in anticipation a few years before he had the leisure actually to take them,—those long walks on "fine Isaac-Walton mornings," were found to be, it must be confessed, rather tiresome and unsatisfactory. They were most melancholy failures, when compared—as Elia could not help comparing them—with the pleasant walks he and Mary had taken years before to Enfield, and Potter's-Bar, and Waltham. Nay, even the "saunterings in Bond ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him before passing out, "That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the wards ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... never know how delightful it is to be able to sit quietly on deck late in the evening, in the open air, without any tiresome wraps, and to enjoy the soft silvery light of the stars, scarcely dimmed by the brighter rays of the young moon. It is indeed a period of tranquil happiness. One is only agreeably fatigued by the exertions of the day; ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... ordained a priest in 1397. After studying at Oxf., Paris, and Padua, he taught literature in his monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. He appears to have been a bright, clear-minded, earnest man, with a love of the beautiful, and a faculty of pleasant, flowing verse. He wrote copiously and with tiresome prolixity whatever was required of him, moral tales, legends of the saints, and histories, and his total output is enormous, reaching 130,000 lines. His chief works are Troy Book (1412-20), written at the request of Henry V. when Prince of Wales, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... offspring in a cordial hatred of his oppressors; and Scotland was as much a part of the weakness of England then as Ireland is at this moment. The true and the only remedy was applied; the Scotch were suffered to worship God after their own tiresome manner, without pain, penalty, or privation. No lightning descended from heaven: the country was not ruined; the world is not yet come to an end; the dignitaries who foretold all these consequences are utterly forgotten, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... enclose you Clark's report, which I think you may like to hear. Our beloved invalid goes on well—but it must be tedious, and I need not tell you what a trial it is to me. Every day, however, is bringing us nearer the end of this tiresome illness, which is much what I had at Ramsgate, only that I was much worse, and not at first well attended to. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... and tiresome was the journey; the two Bashi-bozuk men complained of it as much as we did. At sunset we came to a well with some water left in troughs near it, but not enough for all our horses, and we had no means of getting more out of the well. This was in ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn |
