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Laboured   Listen
adjective
laboured  adj.  
1.
Same as labored; British spelling (Chiefly British)
Synonyms: graceless, labored, strained.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Laboured" Quotes from Famous Books



... hastened to withdraw to a little distance, where they silently awaited the officers' approach. Before long the sergeant, a little, withered sort of a fellow with diminutive features and a sandy, stubby moustache, called out in gruff, stern, hoarse, laboured accents: ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... solemnity hanging like a dark pall over the community. Of course many visits to the sick, dying, and afflicted became necessary, but it is remarkable that, among all the children of God among whom Mr. Muller and Mr. Craik laboured, but ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... himself the question,—Cui bono? and repeated it several times on his drive, until a verse of Scripture came, unbidden, to his lips. "For what hate man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?" and "there is one event unto all." Austen's saying, that he had never learned how to enjoy life, he remembered, too. What had Austen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... 2, 1822, died April 13, 1880. In memory of the simplicity, kindliness, and integrity of his life and of his unselfish, untiring, and patriotic devotion as a public man, this monument is erected by the united gifts of all classes in the town he loved and for which he laboured." ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... bells of London were pealing as he laboured. Wildly beat his heart, and his blood began to race. Then—there came a light step and, suddenly, beside him Stood his lady Alice, with ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... No laboured eulogium—no lengthened panegyric could have described more significantly the character of the dying villager of Bethany. Four mystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of his pen the Apostle unfolds a heart-history; ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... made good progress along it, for he had a long distance to travel before the sun went down. The way had been rudely constructed by that great maker of roads—the army—and the troops who had built it did not know, when they laboured at it, that they were preparing a path for their own retreat should disaster overtake them. The grim and silent horseman had been the brains, where the troops were the limbs; this thoroughfare had ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... Now the long-laboured soul Listens, and pines. But never a note of hope Sounds: whether in those high, Transcending unisons of resignation That speed the sovran sun, As he goes southing, weakening, minishing, Almighty in obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley

... of a piece. He never distinguished between his work as a Bishop and his work as an educational reformer. He drew no line between the secular and the sacred. He loved the Brethren's Church to the end of his days; he regarded her teaching as ideal; he laboured and longed for her revival; and he believed with all the sincerity of his noble and beautiful soul that God would surely enable him to revive that Church by means of education and uplift the world by means ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... butter, and theology; isn't learned, nor classical, nor rhetorical, but possesses common sense; expresses himself so as to be understood—a thing which some regular parsons have a difficulty in doing; and has laboured Sunday after Sunday for years all for nothing—a thing which no regular parson ever did or ever will do. We somewhat respect a man who can preach for years without pocketing a single dime, and contribute regularly towards a church which gives him no salary, and never intends doing. The homilies ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... danced through while dressing in the morning. Her memory was bad, and she never mastered spelling; even after her schooldays were over, she always carried a little dictionary in her pocket. She laboured for years at the piano, not only under her father's orders, but because she passionately loved music, but she had neither ear nor facility, and to her importunities for both the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers who grudge at t'other shilling. De Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before printed, and had his Probatum. The "Horns" is in a poor taste, resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it "Jack Horner:" but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and wrung from me my slow consent. But did you read the "Memoir ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... a sacred duty to perform, which left him not the choice of action, and he performed it to the letter. He had a feeling conscience, and a reasoning heart, and the home of his youth, and the sister who had grown up with him, the father who had laboured, the mother who had striven for him, visited him by night and by day—in his silent study, and in his lonely bed, comforting, animating, and supporting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... significance in this connection that the Karens, whom we regard as the nearest relatives of the Kayans, were found to worship a Supreme Being, and have proved peculiarly apt pupils of the Christian missionaries who have long laboured among them. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... valuable improvement? Much may be said on both sides. Of the mind justly polished, without verging to the squeamish and effeminate, nature exhibits the most delightful sources of enjoyment. He that turns aside from the simplicity of her compositions with disgust, for the sake of the over curious and laboured entertainments of which art is the inventor, may justly be pronounced unreasonably nice, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... isn't transparent that Jevons's mind, Jevons's whole nature was scrupulously clean. Even his brutality was not spontaneous. He broke his neck to get it. You could see him putting his tongue out as he laboured the brutality. You could see him sweating as he went over it again, removing all the marks of labour, making for his effect of sincerity and ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... scents the presence of some creature unseen, her alarm could not have displayed itself more suddenly and more causelessly. I interposed in vain. The fear from which she was suffering I might have soothed, but the serious heart-disease, under which she laboured, was beyond the reach of all moral palliatives. To my unspeakable horror she was seized with convulsions—a shock to the system, in her condition, which might have laid her dead at any moment ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... stubby, grossly stout man, thin-legged, thick-necked, all body and beard: clad below in tight trousers, falling loose, however, over the boots; swathed above in an absurdly inadequate pea-jacket, short in the sleeves and buttoned tight over a monstrous paunch, which laboured (and that right sturdily) to burst the bonds of its confinement, but succeeded only in creating a vast confusion of wrinkles. His attitude was that of a man for the moment amazed beyond utterance: his head was thrown back, so that of his face nothing ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... Captain Wopper, when he observed that Dr Lawrence turned deliberately to converse with the Professor, leaving Lewis to assist Emma to alight, even although he, the Captain, had, by means of laboured contrivance and vast sagacity, brought the Doctor and the mule into close juxtaposition at the right time. However, the Captain's temperament was sanguine. He soon forgot his troubles in observing the curious ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... proprietor. He had now a new source of pride: that this land, which he watered with his sweat, should bring forth abundantly; that his cattle, whom no strange hand might touch, should be the sleekest and fattest of all. Solitary and unaided he laboured in house and field, as if wishing to defy that fate which had torn from him the only two people he had loved. As he could love them no longer he had rather be quite alone, save for the little chap who trotted after him everywhere, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... that harvested More keen than birds that labour in the sea, With spear and net, by shore and rocky bed, Not with the well-manned galley laboured he; Him not the star of storms, nor sudden sweep Of wind with all his years hath smitten and bent, But in his hut of reeds he fell asleep, As fades a lamp when all the oil is spent: This tomb nor wife nor children raised, but we His fellow-toilers, ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang

... be the son of some poor labourer. A day or two after their meeting, they caused him to be clothed in a suit of black; and, in the course of a few weeks, he gave proof of extraordinary talent. He was, besides, very grateful, and laboured so earnestly in the service of his masters, that although in fact exceedingly attentive to his studies, it might well have been thought that he did nothing but wait ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... ever contradicted Walter's statements, and the conclusions which remaining affection, and his own unwillingness to own himself a dupe, laboured to draw, he now inquired how his estates came to be confiscated, and his person cast out of the protection ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... sung, stirred, and stepped across the border of Belgium. Then were spread out before men's eyes all the beauties of his culture and all the benefits of his organization; then we beheld under a lifting daybreak what light we had followed and after what image we had laboured to refashion ourselves. Nor in any story of mankind has the irony of God chosen the foolish things so catastrophically to confound the wise. For the common crowd of poor and ignorant Englishmen, because they only ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... private difference of opinion with the trustees of the church—but this was not true. All sorts of plans were proposed for raising the required sum of our expensive church management, in which I concurred and laboured heartily. It was said that I resigned because the trustees were about to decide in favour of charging a nominal fee of ten cents to attend our services. I made no objection to this. My resignation was a surprise to the congregation ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... in the street, Sam shuddered at the thought of the hands that had laboured that the soft cheeks and the untroubled eyes of this one woman might be. Into his mind came the face and figure of a little Canadian nurse who had once cared for him through an illness—her quick, deft fingers and her ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... in the least—everybody allows that Lady Sneerwell can do more with a word or a Look than many can with the most laboured Detail even when they happen to have a little truth on their side ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... all, from the ancient of days, who have gained this "praise eternal," to those of our own age, who have laboured for, and will also obtain it. And chiefly among such as have sweetly carolled among us—still more, if ye be young and warm-hearted, with the affections pure and true within you—bring the dear lays of a poet—a ladye ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... last, A—— V——, after a moderate labour of four hours' continuance, was delivered of a female child. About a month previously, she had laboured under an attack of intermittent fever, which yielded, in a few days, to the ordinary treatment. She was 23 years of age, an English-woman by birth, had generally enjoyed good health, and was as well as usual at the time of her confinement. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... constrained to abdicate the Throne of England, endeavoured the Preservation of this his Kingdom of Ireland, where his faithful Subjects, (a Remnant of the various and manifold Wastes of foregoing Reigns) considering the thousand Disadvantages they laboured under, made such a Stand as later Ages will look up to with Astonishment! A Parcel of Men, congregated in the utmost Hurry and Confusion, undisciplin'd, unarm'd, uncloathed, unpaid! Yet did those very Men, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... about L800 a year, and Antony rewarded the one that cooked the supper which pleased Cleopatra, with the present of a city. With the fall of the empire, the culinary art sank into less consideration. In the middle ages, cooks laboured to acquire a reputation for their sauces, which they composed of strange combinations, for the sake of novelty, as well ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... their speeches, or to witness their example; and I am assured by Count von Beust, who travelled in Bavaria last year, that their progress among the lower classes is astonishing, considering the short period these emissaries have laboured. To any one looking on the map of the Continent, and acquainted with the spirit of our times, this impious focus of illumination must ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... by them hath been equal. Bhima, however, is possessed of greater might, while the son of Dhritarashtra is possessed of greater skill and hath laboured more. If he were to fight fairly, Bhimasena will never succeed in winning the victory. If, however, he fights unfairly he will be surely able to slay Duryodhana. The Asuras were vanquished by the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... hers for the opiate Dr. Baker had left; it was swallowed without resistance, and a quiet to which the invalid had been a stranger for days stole little by little over the wasted frame. The grasp of the fingers relaxed, the laboured breath came more gently, and in a few more minutes she slept. Twilight was long over. The ghost-hour was past, and the moon outside was slowly gaining a wider empire in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... might undo my father's false conspiracies, who sought to bring a base traitor and a slave into the throne imperial; for I well perceived, as long as he held the treasure, there was a possibility of deposing your Majesty. And this troubled my thought exceedingly, so that I laboured how I might find out where my father's treasure was hid; and to that end I watched and attended night and day in the woods, in the bushes, and in the open fields; nay in all places wheresoever my ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown

... reasoning life, 'tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) Is only this, if God has placed him wrong? Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, May, must be right, as relative to all. In human works, though laboured on with pain, A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; In God's one single can its end produce; Yet serves to second too some other use. So man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, Touches some ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... seems fainter now, like voices far away, As though they only sang of rest, and laboured not to-day; The hum of bees seems softer, too, from out the clear blue heaven, As if the lowliest creatures knew this day for rest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various

... fierce soldier, leading a mare with a very young colt by her side, who compelled the old man, with oaths and threats, to carry the colt. As they trudged along, they met a poor woman with a sick child in her arms. The old man, as he laboured under the weight of the colt, kept groaning, "O Allah! O Allah!" and, supposing him to be a dervish, the woman asked him to pray for the recovery of her child. In compliance, the old man said: "O Allah! ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... find another man who lived so entirely for his duties. It is not enough to say that Akakiy laboured with zeal: no, he laboured with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment was written on his face: some letters were even favourites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... had received of the boyl-yas from the women, after Mulligo's death, I endeavoured to obtain from Kaiber a more ample statement of their belief relative to these people. The difficulty I laboured under upon this head, as well as the dread they entertain of these sorcerers, will be best shown by the following account of his answers to my questions, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... effect of the loftiest eloquence. He had a great deal more to tell them of the darkness and misery and sin through which he was passing, when the minister found him and laid hands on him, and followed him day in and day out, and never got tired of him, nor discouraged about him, but laboured with him, and encouraged him, and gave him the hope that though he could not save himself, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... his men set to work in earnest, and laboured untiringly for hours and hours, but without finding anything. A halt was called at last for rest and refreshment; then the work was commenced with ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... "Laura" was or was not a work of the highest art, was a question you might have heard discussed at every other dinner-table. Perhaps the criticism that was most to the point was that of Miss Gladys Armstrong, who proclaimed publicly that Langley Wyndham laboured under the disadvantage of not being a woman, and having no imagination to make up for it. Meanwhile the tone of the larger reviews remained unchanged. The reviewers, to a man, had committed themselves to the position that the book was Wyndham's masterpiece; ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... the ass's braying I was a long time before I came upon him quite down upon the stony shore, with not a blade of grass nor even a thistle for him to nibble at. How he got there is to me a problem to this day; but how I laboured to get him up again will ever remain in my mind, for it makes me feel sore all over to think ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... hotte Sommer, the Grashoppers gaue them sel- ues to pleasaunt melodie, whose Musicke and melo- die, was harde from the pleasaunt Busshes: but the Ante in all this pleasaunt tyme, laboured with pain and tra- uaile, she scraped her liuyng, and with fore witte and wise- [Sidenote: Winter.] dome, preuented the barande and scarce tyme of Winter: for when Winter time aprocheth, the ground ceasseth fro[m] fruict, [Sidenote: ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... the authorities rejected them. MacDowell's attitude in the matter was criticised, misunderstood and misrepresented at the time. He was even accused of neglecting the duties of the position he held, whereas, as it afterwards transpired, he had laboured ungrudgingly at his task. It is pleasant to know that his students were among the first to uphold his character. His patience, his droll criticisms, and the illuminating quality of his teaching endeared him to ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... all preservatives from its ravages, although not a sure one; for many doctors who have laboured fearlessly have yet died. Have you thought of any way of ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... an ivory pallor, began to cover his features like a fine mask, at sight of which the girls, Elizabeth and Grace, with their mother, knelt down and hid their faces. Every one in the room knelt too, and there was a profound stillness. Tom's breathing grew heavier and more laboured,—once they made an attempt to lift the weight of his child's dead body from his breast, but his hands were clenched upon it convulsively and they could not loosen his hold. All at once Elizabeth lifted her ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... of Forth, on the borders of West and Mid Lothian, and was thenceforth known as Law of Lauriston. The subject of our memoir, being the eldest son, was received into his father's counting-house at the age of fourteen, and for three years laboured hard to acquire an insight into the principles of banking as then carried on in Scotland. He had always manifested great love for the study of numbers, and his proficiency in the mathematics was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... unsettled portions of the line. Their continuance in the country was evidently expected, for Howe said: 'If a portion of comparatively wilderness country were selected for the experiment, the men {110} might have sixpence per day carried to their credit from colonial funds while they laboured, to accumulate till their earnings are sufficient to purchase a tract of land upon the line, with seed and implements to enable them to get a first crop when the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... prospect of good wine, or the delight of better company, or the thought of what was going to happen on the morrow, I could not tell; but it seemed to me the little Doctor laboured under a great deal of excitement, and I became more and more afraid that he would insist on bearing us company while the Earl and the Countess were away at church. Now it was enough to have on my hands two such ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... begin to fail; and though they laboured through many thousands of years, they came to no better resource. And so it was they ceased to have communication with the Great Redoubt; for the current had a lack of power to work the instruments; and the recording instruments ceased to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... there was little room for squeamishness as to the conditions under which men laboured—when little boys, instead of brooms, were sent up ill-constructed chimneys, with no sense of remorse from their employers, who in their turn had probably commenced business by going up themselves ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... other white, the one unprincipled, the other unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common purposes of effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of character. Shakespeare has laboured the finer shades of difference in both with as much care and skill as if he had had to depend on the execution alone for the success of his design. On the other hand, Desdemona and Aemilia are not meant to be opposed with anything like strong contrast to each other. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Master of Manchester Grammar School; upon the death of Mr. Purnell, in 1764, he succeeded him as Head Master. The colleges of St. John, in Cambridge, and of Brazenose, in Oxford, can bear witness to the success with which he laboured for more than half a century in his profession, having received from the Manchester school, whilst under his direction, a very considerable number of well-grounded classical scholars. He died at Manchester on April 19, 1807, aged seventy-nine. Some further particulars respecting him may be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... laboured continually, each at his different task, for the work in the mine never stopped, Oliver being in charge during the day and Quick at night for a whole week, since on each Sunday they changed with their gangs, Quick taking the day shift ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... skirmishers, to throw us into confusion, had donned caps which were a faint imitation of our own, and also provided themselves with Red Cross brassards" (The Battle of Verdun. H. Dugard). Not to be tedious on this point, which really does not require to be laboured, let me finish with one quotation from a vivid series of war-pictures. Boyd Cable is writing of men in the trenches: "Civilised Man, in his latest art of war, has gone back to be taught one more simple lesson by the beast of the field and the birds ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... was said, the only sound heard being the middy's hoarse breathing as he laboured hard to recover ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... reined in sharply, bringing the horse to a standstill, one ear turned down the wind. The night's silence was broken by a multitude of sounds—the laboured breathing of the spent bronco, the saddle creaking as the dripping flanks rose and fell, the touch of wind in the tree-tops and the chorusing of the myriad tree-toads. But through all these, distinct, as precise as a clock-tick, ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... pardon, for having paid so little attention to the education of princes on whom the fate and happiness of twenty-five millions of men depend. Luckily," added she, "the King and his brothers, still young, have incessantly laboured to repair ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... him to the perception of those principles which formed the groundwork of his preaching as a Reformer. From his exemplary conduct there, and his wonderful and active conversion, he was compared to St. Paul. In quite another sense he resembled the great Apostle. The latter, when a Pharisee, had laboured to justify himself before God by the law and the prophets. 'O wretched man that I am,' Luther there must have exclaimed of himself, and afterwards looking back on his experiences, have counted all as 'dung and loss' in order to be justified rather by faith through ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... Robarts did love Lady Lufton heartily; but it must be acknowledged of her ladyship, that with all her good qualities, she was inclined to be masterful. She liked to rule, and she made people feel that she liked it. Mrs. Robarts would never have confessed that she laboured under a sense of thraldom; but perhaps she was mouse enough to enjoy the temporary absence of her kind-hearted cat. When Lady Lufton was away Mrs. Robarts herself had more play in the parish. And Mark also was not unhappy, though he did not find it ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... years. This is very natural. One starts in life with sensuous susceptibilities to beauty, with a strong feeling for colour and for melodious cadence, and also with an impulsive enthusiastic way of expressing oneself. This causes young work to seem decorated and laboured, whereas it very often is really spontaneous and hasty, more instructive and straightforward than the work of middle life. I write now with much more trouble and more slowly, and with much less interest in my subject than ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... however, on the contrary, that the mountain-scenery greatly increased in sublimity the nearer we advanced towards Roncesvalles, and on our return that which had looked well on our way had dwindled into tameness in comparison with what we had left. Our driver, in the true spirit of his country, laboured to convince us that even the Basque on the Spanish side was inferior to that on the French—a fact we were not in a condition to decide on, as readily as we could with respect to the scenery. I think, as a general rule, that a foreign traveller may always be sure, if a country is abused ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... his other works, and it is only fair they should. Chaucer wrote in prose his tale of the parson, and his tale of Melibeus, both taken from the French, his translation of Boethius, and his treatise on the Astrolabe. His prose is laboured and heavy, sometimes obscure; he, whose poetical similes are so brilliant and graceful, comes to write, when he handles prose, such phrases as this: "And, right by ensaumple as the sonne is hid whan the sterres ben clustred (that is to seyn, whan sterres ben covered with ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... composes a history of thought during this objurgated period, and also edits, in sumptuously inconvenient volumes, the works of its two great novelists, Richardson and Fielding; and, finally, there now trembles on the very verge of completion a splendid and long-laboured edition of the poems and letters of the great poet of the eighteenth century, the abstract and brief chronicle of his time, a man who had some of its virtues and most of its vices, one whom it is easy to hate, but still easier ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... laboured among the Indians and the few whites and squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, and cities springing up! Now once more he was living the life of civilization, exchanging ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb, Love laboured honey busily. I was the hive and Love the bee, My heart the honey-comb. One very dark and chilly night Pride came beneath and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... light," she said. And through the chinks in the curtain the bright light shone. Celia heard a loud rattle upon the table, and then fainter sounds of the same kind. And as a kind of horrible accompaniment there ran the laboured breathing of the man, which broke now and then with a sobbing sound. They were stripping Mme. Dauvray of her pearl necklace, her bracelets, and her rings. Celia had a sudden importunate vision of the old woman's fat, podgy hands loaded with brilliants. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... is not, my dear Charlie, from any want of randy lust on my part, for, especially at first, there is an extreme desire to be well laboured by the biggest prick one could find in existence; the natural irritation of the parts seem to be increased by the way in which the sensual system is affected in that quarter. Former experience has taught me that it is much better to bear ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... days I laboured under the impression that this mode was quite unique, but was soon proved mistaken, for on going to the Post Office to get my mail (three carriers having been killed, there were no longer any deliveries) I discovered that it was little short of general. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... unearthly. He felt that shame which men always experience in allowing their feelings to overcome them; and by a great effort he mastered his emotion and spoke, but the voice partook of the strong nervous excitement under which he laboured, and was hollow and broken, and seemed more like that which one might fancy to proceed from the jaws of a sepulchre than one of flesh and blood. Beaten by the storm, too, his hair hung in wet flakes over his face and added to his wild appearance, so that the men all started ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... was touched by this visual harmony; but every chord and tone found a separate concord or discord, in innumerable associations and reminiscences. It was, in truth, a chorus to the eye, unattended by the noise and distraction produced by the laboured compositions of Handel; while it filled the whole of its peculiar sense with an effect like one of the tender symphonies of Haydn. It was a Panorama, better adapted, however, to a poet than a painter; for it had no foreground, no tangible objects for light and shade, nor any eminences ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... deny. In the third line of the foregoing extract, the meaning clearly is, "as which token of duty;" and it is the performance of this "token of duty" which Katharine hopes may "do him ease." The imitator, as usual, has caught something of the words of the original which he has laboured to reproduce at a most unusual sacrifice of grammar and sense; the following passage appearing to represent that the wives, by laying their hands under their husbands' feet—no reference being made to the act as a token ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... told Malone that 'Hume, in compiling his History, did not give himself a great deal of trouble in examining records, &c.; and that the part he most laboured at was the reign of King Charles II, for whom he had an unaccountable ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... in Ireland which must of necessity involve the north in fresh troubles. In his letters to England, he complained that the country 'so swarmed with priests, Jesuits, seminarists, friars, and Romish bishops, that if speedy means were not used to free the kingdom of this wicked rabble, which laboured to draw the subjects' hearts from their due obedience to their prince, much mischief would burst forth in very short time. For,' he said, 'there are here so many of this wicked crew, that are able to disquiet four of the greatest kingdoms ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... the vigour of life, a distinction for which hundreds, perhaps thousands, had laboured through life in vain. But mine was no couch of rosy prosperity. The period was threatening. The old days of official repose were past, never to return. The state of Europe was hourly assuming an aspect of the deepest peril. The war had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... but here one of them went first, and climbed up the bank with its end of the stick, after which the second followed and brought up the other. An inch or two farther, on the level ground, the second ant left hold and went away, and the first laboured on with the twig and dragged it unaided across the rest of the path. Though many other ants stayed and looked at the twig a moment, none of them now offered assistance, as if the chief ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... her people called her "close" and mean? She knew what she was about, but in her slow, silent way she had learned, while she laboured apart, to feel an undying gratitude to the woman who had ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... things filling her heart were too many for it, and too strong; there came no tears, but her breathing was laboured; and her brow was dark with what seemed a mountain of oppression. Pitt was half-glad that just now there came a call for Esther from the room behind them. Both went in. The colonel wanted Esther to search in a repository of ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... the vastness of their dominions and the equivalent greatness of their national duty and responsibility. It helped to lay the foundation of that Imperial future of which Disraeli then dreamed and for which others have since laboured with a measure of success shown in the events preceding and following the accession of Edward VII., King ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... concerning the cost of government, was commenced some time in November last, under the following circumstances, and has but just been concluded. As early as the July preceding, a writer in the employment of the French government produced a laboured article, in which he attempted to show that, head for head, the Americans paid more for the benefits of government than the French. Having the field all to himself, both as to premises and conclusions, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... laboured for his thought, and grandly he carried out his plan. He became the greatest 'art-collector' in all history, and the men of his time imitated him. Domitius Tullus, a Roman gentleman, had collected so much, that he was able to adorn certain ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the said Maister James Halyburtoun, Alexander his brother, and the said Johne, did what in thame lay to have stayed the furie of the multitude, yit war thay nocht able to put ordour universalie; and tharfoir thay send for the Lordis, Erle of Ergyle, and Lord James, who, cuming with all diligence, laboured to have saved the Palace and the Kirk. [SN: THE DISTRUCTIOUN OF SCONE.] Bot becaus the multitude had fundin, bureid in the Kirk, a great number of idollis, hid of purpose to have preserved thame to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... it—Rubens, for instance; perhaps he saw it on the faces of the women who gathered fruit or laboured at the harvest in the Low Countries centuries since. He could never have seen it in a city of these northern climes, that is certain. Nothing in nature that I know, except the human face, ever attains this colour. Nothing like it is ever seen in the sky, either ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... unfortunate persons stirred up the heart of a Christian woman, Sarah Martin, residing in Yarmouth. Though compelled to support herself as a dressmaker, she devoted much of her time, as did John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, to visiting her suffering fellow-creatures. For twenty-four years she thus laboured, visiting day after day the prisoners and malefactors in the town gaol. There was no one on earth to reward her, no one to thank her; but she trusted in God, and gave Him the praise that she was thus able to labour ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... baronet and his lady, and the girl hath no notion what sort of equipage we travelled with, it was not easy to make a discovery of me, unless she accidentally, in her travels, light upon you (meaning the Quaker), or upon me; either of which must unavoidably blow the secret I had so long laboured to conceal. ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... fetching out of a dark corner the articles required, assisted in charging the hole which his uncle had just finished boring. This was the last hole which the man intended to blast that night. For weeks past he had laboured day after day—sometimes, as on the present occasion, at night—and had removed many tons of rock, without procuring either tin or copper sufficient to repay him for his toil, so that he resolved to give it up and remove to a more hopeful part of ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... aunt, but it must not be supposed that this was the general opinion of Uncle Josie's guests; by no means; many remarks were made upon Miss Wyllys's being so decidedly plain; and even her dancing was thought inferior by some of the company to the more laboured graces of Mrs. Hilson, or the downright indifference of Adeline: as for Jane, she ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... Still it laboured and strove, then was still, a dark spot, then struggled again. I went out of the house and down the steep slope, at risk of breaking my leg between the rocks. I knew the ground so well—and yet I got well shaken before I ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... But at that time the Jews who had remained in Babylon came to their aid. These men had never ceased to labour along with their brethren in Palestine for the advancement of their nation; and in particular they had laboured earnestly at the problem of worship, and the result of their labours was a religious constitution so rigid in its ideas, so logically worked out in detail, and so skilfully incorporating and appropriating to itself all the past traditions and usages of the race, that ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... come to the hour of my destruction—the 16th of June, 1722. The smouldering fires which had laboured in my breast for nine months burst into a flame which overwhelmed both Aurelia and me. I committed an unpardonable sin, I endeavoured to repair it with an act of well-nigh incredible temerity. What occurred on that night is, in fact, the origin of these Memoirs and their sole ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... of Jerusalem, "the Roman commander, 'with a generous clemency, that inseparable attendant on true heroism, 'laboured incessantly, and to the very last moment, to preserve the place. With this view, he again and again intreated the tyrants to surrender and save their lives. With the same view also, after carrying the second wall the siege was intermitted four days: to rouse their fears, 'prisoners, to the number ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... gun-powder plot not succeed,) between it and the tree, and forcing it out until the pain produced became insufferable. By this means the cord was loosened gradually, and moving it a little higher up where the muscles had not yet been bruised, he repeated the process. In this manner he laboured with certain but tardy success. But while he was thus engaged, Joe's predicament became each moment more critical. The wood being by this time pretty well seasoned, began to burn more freely. The blaze was making ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... a minute: he laboured under a severe sense of mortification and wrath, which it was no easy task to suppress. I rose, and, from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his embarrassment, took up my station in the doorway, surveying the external prospect as I stood. He followed my example, and left the room; but presently ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... king, who gave him a lieutenant-colonelcy and charged him with the organisation of the militia in Upper Calabria. Eager to serve his country, the newly made field officer hurried to his post. The English had not yet landed, but some of Ruffo's former followers had been put on shore, and laboured, not unsuccessfully, to induce the peasantry to revolt. Pepe soon found himself in action. Surprised in the town of Scigliano, he shut himself up in a house with two-and-twenty French soldiers, and there made a desperate defence against an overpowering force of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... earth, such as the Azores or Western Isles in the Atlantic, the two first mentioned necessaries, viz. fit temperature and pure air, are so constantly present that the inhabitants no more think of them as necessaries to be laboured for than they think of the gravitation which holds their bodies to the earth as such a necessary. But in colder, or changing climates, to procure house-shelter, clothing, and fuel, for cold weather becomes a very considerable ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... also he was exiled the land, with diuerse of his complices. But within two yeares after, he was called home againe, and restored to his church, wherein he liued not long, but died for sorrow, bicause he could not cleere himselfe of offense in the said rebellion, albeit that he laboured most earnestlie so to doo, that he might thereby haue atteined ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... been a strong man, this John, for on this bit of land he lived and laboured for sixty years and more, and on it he brought up, and then sent out, to make a place for themselves, in their own, or in other land's, five strong sons and four fair daughters. And he had so brought them up ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... voice under which Sophocles laboured often prevented his appearing in his own tragedies; but this did not at all injure his fame, for he continued to write into extreme old age with uniformly increasing reputation. It is recorded that he composed one hundred and twenty tragedies, of which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... of an expedition of this kind is certainly no sinecure; but I am sure that no one who has not occupied a similar post can conceive the anxieties and disquietudes under which I have laboured during all these difficult days. Almost ever since our departure from Ghat we have been in fear, either for our lives or our property. Danger has ever hung hovering over us, sometimes averted, sometimes seeming to be turned ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... immigrants was the holy Samson, who laboured to convert pagan Brittany to Christianity. He hailed from Pembrokeshire, and the legend relates that his parents, being childless, constructed a menhir[2] of pure silver and gave it to the poor in the hope that a son might be born to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... to talk. I could not help remarking how very like he is to his writing, and how much the same thing it was to hear or to read him; but that nobody could tell that without coming to Streatham, for his language was generally imagined to be laboured and studied, instead of the mere common flow of his thoughts. "Very true," said Mrs. Thrale, "he writes and talks with the same ease, and in the same manner."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 120. What a different account is this from that given by Macaulay:—'When ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... thing. To let it be so soon destroyed would be an evil augury and submission to a desecration. To tell Kenneth Thornton would kindle his resentment and provoke a dangerous quarrel. She herself must remedy the matter. So Dorothy Parish went for her spade, and late into the night she laboured at that ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... and trying to assume an easy stride in spite of the uncomfortable addition to his already rotund figure, he slipped into the hotel, where avoiding the lighted elevator, he laboured quickly, ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... messengers stated, was all that the women would grind for us. Twenty of them had been set to work to fill our order, and when they had laboured until their hands were tired, they declared they would grind no more; and if the caballeros in the mountains wanted further quantities, they should come and make mills of themselves. From this we judged that their tempers ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... 1868 he was transferred to Mysore under Runga Charlu, and for thirteen years filled various offices in that state; but when Mysore was restored to native rule in 1881, he became personal assistant to Runga Charlu, whom he succeeded as diwan in 1885 . For the next seventeen years he laboured assiduously to promote the economic and industrial development of the state, and proved an able assistant to the Maharaja Chamarajendra. By means of railway, irrigation and mining works, he added greatly to the wealth of the state, and put it on a sound financial footing. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... came later to the island all trouble in the premises. In these facts was an unceasing theme of declamation and complaint to be found. It was surprising how little the people really knew of the oppression under which they laboured, until this stranger came amongst them to enlighten their understandings. Nor was it less wonderful how many sources of wrong he exposed, that no one had ever dreamed of having an existence. Although there was not a tax of any sort laid in the colony, not a shilling ever collected ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... to be awakened in the minds of many who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people have long laboured; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring is not justly due from us to them, is a consideration worthy of our serious and deep attention; or if this obligation did not weightily lay upon us, can benevolent minds be directed to any ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... was the jumble sale again mentioned, a fact which in itself should have aroused my suspicions; but I am like that, innocent as a sucking-dove. I had put the matter out of my mind altogether until yesterday evening, when, hearing the sound of laboured breathing and the frantic clanking of a bicycle pump proceeding from the shed, I went thither to investigate, and was nearly capsized ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various

... cutting grass in that same swale across which, a month before, had been tracked the deep-planted, laboured footprints. As she mowed, she moved forward slowly, the bent snathe describing a regular half-circle, the long, curved blade clearing a fragrant path. Her hat was off, and lay at a distance behind her, where it floated, boat-like, on ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... form, running through three numbers of Society. Last year, at a press dinner, I found myself next to Mr. Arthur Goddard, who told me he had acted as Competition Editor, and that quite a number of now well-known people had taken part in these admirable competitions. My painfully laboured novel only got honourable mention, and my comedietta was lost in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... worst show is made by idle and luxurious grandees. Authors occupy a middle position, and in Froude's own books "chapter after chapter vanished away, leaving the paper clean as if no compositor had ever laboured in setting type for it. Pale and illegible became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which I had secretly prided myself. A few passages, however, survived here and there at long intervals. They were those on which I had laboured least and had almost forgotten, or those, as I observed in one or two ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul



Words linked to "Laboured" :   labored, effortful



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