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Sedulous   Listen
adjective
Sedulous  adj.  Diligent in application or pursuit; constant, steady, and persevering in business, or in endeavors to effect an object; steadily industrious; assiduous; as, the sedulous bee. "What signifies the sound of words in prayer, without the affection of the heart, and a sedulous application of the proper means that may naturally lead us to such an end?"
Synonyms: Assiduous; diligent; industrious; laborious; unremitting; untiring; unwearied; persevering.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sedulous" Quotes from Famous Books



... should not flatter the tap-room. Broad-blown coarseness, rank debauchery, reckless prodigality, were seen at their worst in the abode of English monarchs. A decent woman was out of place amid the stupid horrors of the Pavilion or of Windsor; and we do not wonder at the sedulous care which the Queen's guardians employed to keep her beyond reach of the prevailing corruption. A man like the Duke of Cumberland would not now be permitted to show his face in public save in the dock; but in those times his peculiar habits were ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... announced, and was partaken of by Harry, in fidgety abstraction; by Elizabeth, in expectant but outwardly placid silence; by Miss Sally, in futile smiling attempts to make something out of her last conversational chances with the handsome officer; and by Mr. Valentine, in sedulous attention to his appetite, which still ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... consider it with a cool detachment, regardless of the facts that his private income was just under three hundred pounds a year, and that his experiments in cultured journalism made it extremely improbable that the most sedulous literary work would do more than double this scanty sum. Yet for all that these nasty, ugly, sordid facts were entirely disregarded, they did somehow persist in coming in and squatting down, shapeless in a black ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... girl's attractions were very great, he could not but admit to himself that she wanted a something,—a way of holding herself and of speaking, which some people call style. Lily might certainly learn a great deal from Lady Alexandrina; and it was this conviction, no doubt, which made him so sedulous in pleasing that lady on the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... consciousness of nothing save a golden time. It was all so full and mellow that he was forty before he had his only love affair of any depth—with the daughter of one of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a, natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking. His wife had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... mass, as if a drunkard had spewed it up, as may be seen, in particular, in the writings of Doctor Schmid and Doctor Eck. For there is neither rhyme nor rhythm in whatsoever they are compelled to put into writing. Hence they are more sedulous to shout and prattle. Thus I have also learned that when our Confession was read, many of our opponents were astonished and confessed that it was the pure truth, which they could not refute from the Scriptures. On the other hand, when their rebuttal was read, they hung their heads, and showed by ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... might have wished that he had been a less sedulous frequenter of that house of entertainment; but so much may be said in favour of Mr. Warrington that, having engaged in play, he fought his battle like a hero. He was not flustered by good luck, and perfectly ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... like eleven summers I've written things that aimed to teach Our careless mealy-mouthed mummers To be more sedulous ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... after sunrise one bright morning in September that Benham came up on to the deck of the sturdy Austrian steamboat that was churning its way with a sedulous deliberation from Spalato to Cattaro, and lit himself a cigarette and seated himself upon a deck chair. Save for a yawning Greek sailor busy with a mop the first-class ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... any more than anywhere else in this book, about the "sedulous ape" business. No man ever wrote as well as Stevenson who cared only about writing. Yet there is a sense, though a misleading one, in which his original inspirations were artistic rather than purely philosophical. To put the point in that curt covenanting way which ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... certain travellers, who, on returning from a country which their readers cannot easily visit, give such exaggerated accounts of it, and relate so many marvels, as to hazard their own character for veracity. I shall rather endeavour to characterize them as they appear to me after sedulous and repeated study, without concealing their defects, and to bring a living picture of the Grecian stage before the eyes ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... and when, thy days being spent, thou shalt descend to the shades below, and inhabit the Elysian fields, there also, even in the subterranean hemisphere, shalt thou pay frequent worship to me, thy propitious patron: and yet further: if through sedulous obedience, religious devotion to my ministry, and inviolable chastity, thou shalt prove thyself a worthy object of divine favor, then shalt thou feel the influence of the power that I alone possess. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... indifferent points. I do not doubt but there is a swarm of diminutive inaccuracies in my Anecdotes—well! if there is, I bequeath free leave of correction to the microscopic intellects of my continuators. I took dates and facts from the sedulous and faithful Vertue,(467) and piqued myself on little but on giving an idea of the spirit of the times with regard to the arts at ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... the thing no other way—that ancient devil of hers made re-entry into the heart of Mistress Gwyn. I was a man, and a man who had loved her; it was then twice intolerable that I should disclaim her dominion, that I should be free, nay, that I should serve another with a sedulous care which might well seem devotion; for the offence touching the guinea was forgotten, my mock drowning well-nigh forgiven, and although Barbara had few words for me, they were such that gratitude and ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... from the illusions of the camp to the most exquisite of peaceful associations, and he regarded women from a totally new point of view. It was the age of the salons, and La Rochefoucauld tells us why it was that he became their sedulous associate. He says, "When women are intelligent, I like their conversation better than that of men. There is a certain suavity in their talk which is lacking in that of our sex, and it seems, in addition, that they explain themselves with more precision, and give a more agreeable ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... ranges, to the palm groves and the arid, sunburnt tracts, where its life centred and where it tailed away into suburban edges not unlike the ragged edges of worn garments, where it was idle and frivolous, where busy and sedulous. She realised for the first time that there were two distinct layers of life in Beni-Mora—the life of the streets, courts, gardens and market-place, and above it the life of the roofs. Both were now spread out before ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... in the discharge of duties properly so called, receives general esteem. Even in matters merely ceremonial, if importance be attached to them, sedulous and exact compliance, being the distinction of the few, will earn the approbation ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... upon self-righteousness and intolerance and the stern, self-satisfied militarism that arises naturally out of these things is to be made in a number of ways. The first is a sedulous propaganda of the truth about war, a steadfast resolve to keep the pain of warfare alive in the nerves of the careless, to keep the stench of war under the else indifferent nose. It is only in the study of the gloomily megalomaniac historian ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... no doubt, in your experience, that acting is in reality no art at all, that it is mere sedulous copying of nature, demanding neither thought nor originality. I will only cite in reply a passage from a letter of the poet Coleridge to the elder Charles Mathews, which, I venture to think, goes some way to settle ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... pliable hung up his fish in the shade On a tree by the side of the way; and Rahero carried him in, Smiling as smiles the fowler when flutters the bird to the gin, And chose him a shining hook,[5] and viewed it with sedulous eye, And breathed and burnished it well on the brawn of his naked thigh, And set a mat for the gull, and bade him be merry and bide, Like a man concerned for his guest, and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... order, Nape, free-born, whose cunning hath no border,[198] Thy service for night's scapes is known commodious, And to give signs dull wit to thee is odious.[199] Corinna clips me oft by thy persuasion: Never to harm me made thy faith evasion. Receive these lines; them to my mistress carry; Be sedulous; let no stay cause thee tarry, Nor flint nor iron are in thy soft breast, But pure simplicity in thee doth rest. 10 And 'tis supposed Love's bow hath wounded thee; Defend the ensigns of thy war in me. If what I do, she asks, say "hope for night;" The rest my hand doth in my ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... with sedulous care. He had natty bush dodges for minimising the discomfort of the hot, dusty train journey. He manufactured a windsail outside the carriage window, which brought in a little breeze during the airless heat of mid-day. He contrived to get cool drinks ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... risk; there was in it nothing corresponding to the anxious solicitude imposed upon the British generals, by the length of their thin railroad line and its exposure in numerous critical points to a mobile enemy. But as a triumph of organisation—of method, of system, and of sedulous competent attention to details—the performance has reflected the utmost credit not only upon the Admiralty, to which, contrary to the rule of the United States, this matter is intrusted, and which is ultimately responsible both for the general ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... the way'; 'perpetual animation and elasticity of thought'; and language 'never laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden's own phrase) cursedly confined,'" are set over against "pointed and nicely turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction and revision," and are pronounced the superior virtues.[361] The concluding paragraph of Scott's review of a poem on the Battle of Talavera exemplifies his use of this doctrine. "We have shunned, in the present ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... throughout the whole of life, and their interactions are very complex. No one can read the chapters of "The Descent of Man" which Darwin devotes to a consideration of the mental characters of man and animals without noticing, on the one hand, how sedulous he is in his search for hereditary foundations, and, on the other hand, how fully he realises the importance of acquired habits of mind. The fact that educability itself has innate tendencies—is in fact a partially differentiated educability—renders ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... visiting and in looking after his schools; and preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Or, in the event of a vacancy, the flock looking out for a pastor are apt enough to say, 'Our last minister was an accomplished pulpit man, but what we at present want is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths' standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... queer sedulous life, month after month, year after year, known among the studios as a quaint oddity, drawn out indulgently by the men, somewhat petted, monkey-fashion, by the women, forgotten by both when out of their presence, but ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... the department, Halleck now conceived that it was his fair privilege to do the visible taking of that conspicuous prize which his lieutenant had brought within sure reach. Accordingly, on April 11, he arrived and assumed command for the purpose of moving on Corinth. Still he was sedulous in his endeavors to neglect, suppress, and even insult General Grant, whom he put nominally second in command, but practically reduced to insignificance, until Grant, finding his position "unendurable," asked ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... in him. A press gallery observer, asked by a certain Canadian periodical to name a possible successor to Sir Robert Borden four years before the Premier's resignation, picked Sir Thomas whom he said he had watched turn grey and careworn in office, sedulous at his desk, always busy, never at ease. Yet in 1912 he could lecture hon. gentlemen opposite seasoned in political intrigues as though he, himself, had discovered ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... long-expected play they had found the house 'closed for the day'; while the men took Ariadne's equanimity as an encouragement to would-be successors. The real change in the Duchess's life lay in the attitude observed towards her by all or nearly all the men; they were less reserved, more sedulous, more eager to please her, and fluttered round her chair with an obvious desire, not merely to merit her patronage, but to attract ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... extend to his person. Sir Mallaby Marlowe was a dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London's best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. His golf handicap was twelve. His sister, Mrs. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... days that elapsed before "Hornton Street, Wednesday" he considered a certain matter with sedulous care. His interview with Stepton had not been fruitless. Stepton always made an effect on his mind. Casual and jerky though his manner was, obstinate as were his silences at certain moments, fragmentary as was his speech, he had a way of darting at the essential that set him apart from ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... will abandon all state affairs to follow a Cyprian, even at the risk of injuring a deserving wife—Military Ciphers, who forsake the pursuit of glory, and distrustful of their own merit or courage, affirm their distrust by a sedulous attendance at the levees of men of power. In short, every man, in my humble opinion, is no other than a Cipher who does not apply his talents to the care of his morals and the benefit ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... first person he met was the stranger who had schooled him in the gambling game the night before. He greeted Dave cordially; his voice had a soft, sedulous, almost feminine quality which Dave had not noticed in their whispered conversation in the pool room. There was something attractive about his personality; something which invited friendship and even confidence, and yet beneath these emotions Dave felt a sense of distrust, as though part of his ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... these stanzas are couched in that most exquisite irony, in which Mr. S. has more than once succeeded. All the songs to "persons of quality" seem to be written on that purest model, "the song by a person of quality;" whose stanzas have not been fabricated in vain. This sedulous imitation extends even to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... and mulatto. Moreover, the imperial rule set up there is repugnant to their feelings and inclinations, for strange to say, in the midst of depression, this race in America has become imbued with a sentiment of republicanism and a love for its system, which will make them in Africa the sedulous imitators of ourselves, in all but in the misfortune of introducing another race to be perpetually subservient to themselves. In this career we are happy to believe they will run rejoicing, long after the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him, that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... country, the force of the economical argument against the expenditure of public money for really valuable, even though industriously unproductive, purposes. In poor countries, the capital of the country requires the legislator's sedulous care; he is bound to be most cautious of encroaching upon it, and should favor to the utmost its accumulation at home, and its introduction from abroad. But in rich, populous, and highly cultivated countries, it is not ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... iv. p. 260. Doubdan, Voyage de la Terre Sainte, p. 507. Paris, 1661.—It is remarkable that all the descriptions of the view from Mount Tabor appear to be borrowed from this sedulous Frenchman, whose work, in point ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... to Selpdorf's difficulties that he had a conscience and a heart. Perhaps Valerie had kept both awake. He, who acted a part to all the world, had been sedulous to maintain a high role before his daughter. Perhaps he valued her absolute faith in him even more than her love, which is a commoner attitude of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... wonderful, he had always approached the paper with a feeling of sickness and dislike, remembering all the hopeless beginnings he had made. But now he understood that to begin a romance was almost a separate and special art, a thing apart from the story, to be practiced with sedulous care. Whenever an opening scene occurred to him he noted it roughly in a book, and he devoted many long winter evenings to the elaboration of these beginnings. Sometimes the first impression would yield only a paragraph or a sentence, and once or twice but a splendid and sonorous word, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... cannot be." 190 And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within Admonishes: then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread; And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows 200 God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. Indeed the especial marking of the man Is prone submission to the heavenly ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... an unknown coast, which they had for the first time explored. Hunter in his official despatch commented on Bass's "perseverance against adverse winds and almost incessant bad weather," and complimented him upon his sedulous examination of inlets in search of secure harbours. But there can be no better summary of the voyage than that penned by Flinders, who from his own experience could adequately appreciate the value of the performance. Writing fifteen years later, when ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... surely! Let us suppose Guy Fawkes's scheme not prematurely discovered, and one Member of a full House privy to it and awaiting the result. That Member's position would be very like Mr Neeld's. Would he listen to the debate with attention? Could he answer questions with sedulous courtesy? ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... fortune? There is no quality so contrary to any nature, which men cannot affect, and put on upon occasions, in order to serve an interest, or gratify a prevailing passion. The proudest man will personate humility, the morosest learn to flatter, the laziest will be sedulous and active, where he is in pursuit of what he has much at heart. How ready, therefore, would most men be to step into the paths of virtue and piety, if they infallibly led to favour ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs! "And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... hands of the professed enemies of the Church as an establishment; but it was not merely as an establishment that it was in most serious danger. "Every one," it says, "who has become acquainted with the literature of the day, must have observed the sedulous attempts made in various quarters to reconcile members of the Church to alterations in its doctrines and discipline. Projects of change, which include the annihilation of our Creeds and the removal of doctrinal statements incidentally contained in our worship, have been boldly and assiduously ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... We cannot but, with all thankfulness, acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honorable rulers, to defeat the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying, that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... with sedulous calmness; but there was a jar in her voice which did not sound quite natural. Maurice simply repeated his question, and Francis ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... a fact that goes to the core of the secular struggle for human freedom that whole-hearted Americanism finds no jarring note in the sentiment of the Scot, be that sentiment ever so intense. In the sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien, and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, to the institutions under which we live. The things that nourish the one, engender attachment and loyalty to the other. So, as we cherish the memories of the Motherland, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... brethren! if you and I have to take our place in the ranks of the one-talented men, the commonplace run of ordinary people, the more reason for us to enlarge our gifts by a sedulous diligence, by an unwearied perseverance, by a keen look-out for all opportunities of service, and above all by a prayerful dependence upon Him from whom alone comes the power to toil, and who alone gives the increase. The less we are conscious of large gifts the more we should be bowed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... they had abandoned to his revenge him who had put out his eyes, took him home, and the punishment he inflicted upon him was sedulous instructions to virtue." Yet this truly comic paper does not probably know that it is comic, any more than the kleptomaniac knows that he steals, or than John Milton knew he was a humorist when he wrote a hymn upon the circumcision, and spent his honeymoon ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... reading-desk, "I shall tear myself to pieces." He certainly never acted with more impassioned earnestness—though never once, for a single instant, however, overstepping the boundaries of nature. His pulse just before had been tested, as usual, keenly and carefully, by his most sedulous and sympathetic medical attendant. It was counted by him just as keenly and carefully directly afterwards—the rise then apparent being something startling, almost alarming, as it seemed to ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... was only to last a week, and Myra seemed jealous of his sparing any portion of it to Nigel; yet the rector's son was sedulous in his endeavours to enjoy the society of his former companion. There seemed some reason for his calling at the hall every day. Mr. Ferrars broke through his habits, and invited Nigel to dine with them; and after dinner, saying ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... surprised him very much, and which left him for a day or two unable to decide what answer ought to be given. It will be remembered that Ferdinand Lopez destroyed himself in March, now three months since. The act had been more than a nine days' wonder, having been kept in the memory of many men by the sedulous efforts of Quintus Slide, and by the fact that the name of so great a man as the Prime Minister was concerned in the matter. But gradually the feeling about Ferdinand Lopez had died away, and his ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... proposing of an adversary's opinions not with approbation, but with a demonstration of their falsity, he has showed himself more acute in opposing than defending his own doctrines; and having admonished others to take heed of contrary arguments, as withdrawing comprehension, he has been more sedulous in framing such proofs as take away comprehension, than such as confirm it. And yet he plainly shows that he himself feared this, writing thus in his Fourth Book of Lives: "Repugnant arguments and probabilities on the contrary side are not rashly to be proposed, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... when, as before the fall of Napoleon, provisions were twice as dear as they now are, and wages not much more than half as high? Romans and Carthaginians were pretty much given to war: but no nations were more sedulous in the cult of Mammon. Again, the Scriptures are pretty strong against Mammon-worship, but they do not recommend this original and peculiar cure. Nay, once more: what sad errors must have crept into the text of the prophet Isaiah when he is made to desire that our swords shall be ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Nymphs, that wandered all alone Among the sylvan shadows, sedulous One to avoid and one ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... concise and systematic manner, and shall strive either to make good omissions or remedy mistakes in all these authors? I beg of you, if you think it worth while, to permit the reading of extracts from my 'magic' works, that Aemilianus may learn that my sedulous researches and inquiries have a wider range than he thinks. Bring a volume of my Greek works—some of my friends who are interested in questions of natural history may perhaps have them with them in court—take by preference one ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... dawns on the fancy of the ploughman. Far, very far is it from being fully developed. Sometimes the idea is rejected; sometimes it is fostered. At one time he is almost fixed on the 'Red Horse,' but the blazing fire and sedulous kindness of the landlady of the 'Dun Cow' shake him, and his soul labours! Heavy is the ploughed land, dark, dreary, and wet the day. His purpose is at last fixed for beer! Threepence is put down for the vigour of the ale, and one penny for the stupefaction of tobacco, and these are the joys and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... details are not often, if ever, interpolated, that the poems harmoniously represent one age, and that a brief age, of culture; that this effect cannot, in a thoroughly uncritical period, have been deliberately aimed at and produced by archaeological learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic tradition, or by the scientific labours of an editor of the sixth century B.C. We shall endeavour to prove, what we have already indicated, that the hypotheses of expansion are not self-consistent, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... of a primer)—'to enjoy their surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mysterious consciousness, our own superior knowledge and dexterity;—these, my young friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil and pains and sedulous attention which our profession, above ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... again after a hard campaign; and now that the summer has closed, nothing can be set afoot till the spring comes. By that time I shall be fit for service once more, you will see. I am taking the waters of Bath with sedulous care. They have done much for me as it is. Soon I trust to be hale and sound ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... two works of Stanhope was made by John Taylor and published in 1649 under the title "Spadacrene Anglica ... Treatise of the learned Dr. Deane and the sedulous observations of the ingenious Michael Stanhope, Esquire." The ingenious Michael Stanhope, Esquire, also appears in the 1654 edition, but in that published in 1736, Stanhope appears as Dr. Stanhope. Short[19] seems to have been the first to make Stanhope ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... constitutional royalty have doubtless a calm and chastening effect. The insanity with which he struggled, and in many cases struggled very successfully, during many years, would probably have burst out much oftener but for the sedative effect of sedulous employment. But how few princes have ever felt the anomalous impulse for real work; how uncommon is that impulse anywhere; how little are the circumstances of princes calculated to foster it; how little can it be relied on as an ordinary ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... he escape forming certain estimates of Senator Hanway, and the white purity of what motives underlay his public career. For all that, Richard was quite as sedulous as ever to advance our statesman's fortunes; loyalty is abstract, love concrete, and in a last analysis Richard was thinking on Dorothy and not upon the country. Richard, you may have observed, was no whit ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... behaviour of young Delvile, made her suspect that some engagement was in agitation on his own part, and that while she thought him so sedulous only to avoid her, he was simply occupied in seeking another. This painful suggestion, which every thing seemed to confirm, again overset all her schemes, and destroyed all her visionary happiness. Yet how to reconcile it with what had passed at their last meeting she knew ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... afterwards appeared under the title of "The Pilgrim." In 1813, after encountering numerous hardships and perils, which an enthusiast only could have endured, he completed the publication of the seventh volume of his great work. But the sedulous attention requisite in the preparation of the plates of the eighth volume, and the effect of a severe cold, caught in rashly throwing himself into a river to swim in pursuit of a rare bird, brought on him a fatal dysentery, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... some time taken an interest. He found in Thoreau not only a rare character for originality, courage, and indefatigable independence, but also a master of style, to whom, on this account, as much as any, he was inclined to play the part of the "sedulous ape," as he had acknowledged doing to many others—a later exercise, perhaps in some ways as fruitful as any that had gone before. A recent poet, having had some seeds of plants sent to him from Northern Scotland to the South, celebrated his setting of them beside those native ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... Certainly, the sedulous manner in which the new tragedy had been advertised was not without result. To me, unused as I was to theatre-going, the host of people, the hot air, the glare of the gas-lights were intoxicating. In a flutter of anxiety for Tom's success, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in countenance was a defect which a Greek could not fail to note, and his snub nose and big belly are matters of frequent and jocose allusion. But apart from these defects his physique, it appears, was exceptionally good; he was sedulous in his attendance at the gymnasia, and was noted for his powers of endurance and his courage and skill in war. Plato records it of him that in a hard winter on campaign, when the common soldiers were muffling themselves in sheepskins and felt against the cold, he alone went about in his ordinary ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... clamours rude. But when the hour of supper now approach'd, And from the pastures on all sides the sheep Came with their wonted drivers, Medon then (For he of all the heralds pleas'd them most, And waited at the board) them thus address'd. Enough of play, young princes! ent'ring now The house, prepare we sedulous our feast, 210 Since in well-timed refreshment harm is none. He spake, whose admonition pleas'd. At once All, rising, sought the palace; there arrived, Each cast his mantle off, which on his throne Or couch he spread, then, brisk, to slaughter fell Of many a victim; sheep and goats and brawns ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... believe that by deceiving me in this particular they sought to allay the violence of my grief. However that might be, this incident showed plainly that the Typees intended to hold me a prisoner. As they still treated me with the same sedulous attention as before, I was utterly at a loss how to account for their singular conduct. Had I been in a situation to instruct them in any of the rudiments of the mechanic arts, or had I manifested ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... Crocker's habit, acquired after years of practice and a sedulous study of the best models, to conceal beneath a mask of well-bred indifference any emotion which she might chance to feel. Her dealings with the aristocracy of England had shown her that, while the men occasionally permitted themselves an outburst, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... left her father's side for a moment, and though she seldom spoke to him, she did a thousand little acts of sedulous attention, which showed him that she was near to him. Her gentle touch was almost as precious to him as her voice. De Lescure sat near his wife the whole day, speaking to her from time to time in a whisper, and feeling the weight upon his spirits so great that even with her he could ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... him with sedulous care, not only her room and her clothes, but herself. She was determined she would comport herself creditably, would be equal to the occasion and fulfill the highest expectations. She was going to act like a lady—no one would ever suspect she had once waited on table in the Buon ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... his father came to the conclusion that a university training had many elements foreign to the aim the youth had set before him, and that a richer and more directly available preparation could be gained from "sedulous cultivation of the powers of his mind" at home, and from "seeing life in the best sense" at home and abroad. Mrs. Orr tells us that the first qualifying step of the zealous young poet was to read and digest the whole ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann.[3] I remember one of these monkey tricks, which was called The Vanity of Morals: it was to have had a second part, The ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "humours," and certainly he sometimes had them. It was necessary—or so Mrs. Sorrel thought—to deal with him delicately and cautiously—neither with too much levity, nor with an overweighted seriousness. One's plan of conduct with a multi-millionaire required to be thought out with sedulous care, and entered upon with circumspection. And Mrs Sorrel did not attempt even as much as a youthful giggle at Helmsley's half-sarcastically implied compliment with its sarcastic implication as to the ease with which she supported her ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... neither Chinese nor Japanese made the least attempt, nor apparently had the least desire, to govern the Islands or to overrule the natives. Without coercion, the Malay settlers would appear to have unconsciously submitted to the influence of the superior talent or astuteness of the sedulous races with whom they became merged and whose customs they adopted, proof of which can be traced to the present day. [76] Presumably the busy, industrious immigrants had neither time nor inclination for sanguinary conflicts, for those recorded appear to be confined to the raids of the migratory ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... kept sedulous watch over his patient until satisfied that she was completely out of danger, presenting her to his companions only when they assembled in the saloon for dinner some four- and-twenty hours after the catastrophe which had thrown her ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... other minds my fancy flies, Embosomed in the deep where Holland[33] lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land, And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 285 Lift the tall rampire's[34] artificial pride. Onward methinks, and diligently slow, The firm connected bulwark seems to grow; Spreads its long arms amidst the wat'ry ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... sold liberty bonds in the amount of $206,179,150, to 1,349, individual subscribers. As "dispatch bearers of the government" they have distributed over 15,000,000 war pamphlets. They have been sedulous and invaluable in checking enemy propaganda. They have served on innumerable public occasions as police aids and as ushers at great meetings. They performed one feat that might to many have appeared impossible, in searching out for the war department enough black ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... warmth, the cawing rook Anticipates the spring, selects her mate, Haunts her tall nest-trees, and with sedulous care Repairs ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... his county, the bride hied her to Roussillon, where she was received by all the tenants as their liege lady. She found that, during the long absence of the lord, everything had fallen into decay and disorder; which, being a capable woman, she rectified with great and sedulous care, to the great joy of the tenants, who held her in great esteem and love, and severely censured the Count, that he was not satisfied with her. When the lady had duly ordered all things in the ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... sedulous in maintaining these differences. It is the rarest thing in the world to find a human being of doubtful sex. Many a physician disbelieves that there ever has been a person of both sexes—a true hermaphrodite. They are very scarce, but they do exist. There is one now ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in the sunlight, quite after the fashion of the insects they mimic; and when disturbed they pretend to get excited, and seem as if ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... not in his nature to be cheerful over anything—at least without open complaint, for social indulgences that ate up a large part of the results of his miraculous economies in station management, and a sedulous penuriousness in everything beyond his wife, his children, and ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... they commanded breakfasts for all hours of the morning, and they lunched at home and dined abroad, or reversed the order, or sought all their meals in the homes of neighbouring friends, quite without notice or apology. Such was the modish manner of that summer of 1915—a sedulous avoidance of anything resembling acknowledgment of obligation to those who entertained. Indeed, if one interpreted their attitude at its face value, the shoe was on ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... university library, one of the largest folklore collections in existence, studied manuscript rather than printed sources, and carried his investigations into the ballads of all other tongues, meanwhile giving a sedulous but conservative hearing to popular versions still surviving. At last his final collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, at first in ten parts (1882-1898), and then in five quarto volumes, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... in splendid condition; he knew well enough what was up again, knew what was meant by that extra sedulous dressing-down, that setting muzzle that had been buckled on him some nights previous, the limitation put to his drink, the careful trial spins in the gray of the mornings, the conclusive examination of his plates by a skillful hand; he knew what was required of him, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... such a step in one as yet only on the threshold of the world. Lucretia therefore received the suggestions and proposals of Madarne Colonna with coldness and indifference; one might even say contempt, for she neither felt respect for this lady, nor was she sedulous to evince it. Although really younger than Coningsby, Lucretia felt that a woman of eighteen is, in all worldly considerations, ten years older than a youth of the same age. She anticipated that a considerable time might elapse ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... that, he was not the actor. The author, on Mr. Collins's showing, must have been a very sedulous and diligent student of Greek poetry, above all of the drama, down to its fragments. The Baconians assuredly ought to try to prove, from Bacon's works, that ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... political element, which has gradually assumed proportions so gigantic as has American Slavery, can, with any safety or propriety, be dealt with, except after the gravest deliberation and the most sedulous examination, in advance, of every step we propose to take. I allege nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... drooping flowers sought to be revived by watering. At intervals the sedulous attendants went to and fro, besprinkling their heads with the scented contents of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... good breakfast, ordered the bill. Then it was that he made a discovery which has been made by many others, both before and since: that it is one thing to order your bill, and another to discharge it. The items were moderate and (what does not always follow) the total small; but, after the most sedulous review of all his pockets, one and nine pence halfpenny appeared to be the total of the old gentleman's available assets. He asked ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... severely, "it is her name. But she has another name, sweeter to those who love her, those who worship her, those who have watched her with the eye of sedulous affection through the three years she has spent beneath this roof, though that name," said Mr. Faucitt, lowering the tone of his address and descending to what might almost be termed personalities, "may not be familiar to a couple of dud acrobats ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... of the manners of the respective ages which these extraordinary men adorned, and the remoteness of our own from both, may enable us, with impartiality at least, to sift the grounds of Dryden's censure. The nature of the stage in the days of Shakespeare has been ascertained, by the sedulous exertions of his commentators. A variety of small theatres, all of them accessible to the lowest of the people, poor and rude in all the arts of decoration, were dispersed through London when Shakespeare and Jonson wrote for the stage. It was a natural consequence, that ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... Observations, made by this Instrument, and withal to excite studious Naturalists to a sedulous prosecution of the same, the Reader may first take notice, that the lately named Mr. Boyle hath (as himself not long since did intimate to the Author of these Tracts) already made divers Observations of this kind in the year 1659. and 1660. before any others were ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... of his essays, tells us how he "played the sedulous ape" to Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Montaigne, and other writers of the past. And the compositors of all our higher-toned newspapers keep the foregoing sentence set up in type always, so constantly does it ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... ever see a dog with a marrow-bone in his mouth?... Like him, you must, by a sedulous lecture [reading], and frequent meditation, break the bone, and suck out the marrow; that is, my allegorical sense, or the things I to myself propose to be signified by these Pythagorical symbols;... the most glorious doctrines and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our religion, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... presence of the family, she had not seen him for several weeks. Business engagements occupied him very closely; he was called away to Albany, to Boston, and once to Philadelphia, but no farewells were exchanged with his ward, and as if conscious of her sedulous efforts to avoid him, he appeared almost ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... said, "voluntary Gods I fancy they think themselves," and I was left behind for a space in the perplexed examination of this parenthesis, while he and the botanist—who is sedulous to keep his digestion up to date with all the newest devices—argued about the good of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... To these the sedulous Enoch carefully accompanied me; for no man pursued his own interest, as far as he understood it, with greater avidity. Circumstances were unfavourable, or he would certainly have been a bishop himself. Learning, talents, and virtue might have been dispensed with, but ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... The same strict and narrow course of reading and composition was marked out for each beforehand, and it was by stealth if he read or wrote any thing beside. Their domestic economy was regulated in the same spirit as their preceptorial: it consisted of the same sedulous exclusion of all that could border on pleasure, or give any exercise to choice. The pupils were kept apart from the conversation or sight of any person but their teachers; none ever got beyond the precincts of despotism to snatch even a fearful joy; their very amusements ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... own. A child that one must regard with fondness and some pity,—what is called a dear child. Moreover, a child whose life I had saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence. I was young, not hard of heart, sedulous to fold back to the uttermost the roseleaves of every delicate and poetic emotion, magnificently generous also, and set to play my life au grand seigneur. To myself assume a responsibility which with all ease might have been transferred to an Orphan Court, to put my stamp upon ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... ARCHIE was sedulous at church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood up with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the country of Shensi, the cold and inconvenience of which were likely to have occasioned a mutiny among them. Other writers contend that chess is a game of Persian invention, since scah muth is the Persic term for check-mate; and since the Persians were sedulous in recommending it to their young princes, as a game calculated to instruct kings in the art of war. It has been attributed to Palamedes, who lived during the Trojan war; but it was a game played with pebbles, or cubes, of which he was the inventer. Palamedes ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... of artificial fire-making was perhaps preceded by a utilization of the flames caused by lightning and other natural causes, the fire being conveyed by torches from hearth to hearth and kept alive with sedulous care. Even after artificial methods of fire-making were invented, our savage ancestors were exceedingly careful to keep their fires alive, as the Mincopies are to-day, and this heedful attention left its traces until ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... following century sprung directly out of profanation such as this? Merely to narrate them, and to do so in the briefest manner, does violence to every genuine sentiment of piety. What must have been the effect produced upon frivolous and sceptical tempers when with sedulous art such things were put forward as solemn verities not to be distinguished from the primary truths of religion, and entitled to the same reverential ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... (seat): (1) sedulous, sedentary, supersede, subside, preside, reside, residue, possess, assessment, session, seige; (2) sediment, insidious, assiduous, subsidy, obsession, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... which Colonel Osborne had at once appreciated, and which made him assume a similar tone. As they spoke there was a man standing in a corner close by the bookstall, with his eye upon them, and that man was Bozzle, the ex-policeman,—who was doing his duty with sedulous activity by seeing "the Colonel" back to London. Now Bozzle did not know Hugh Stanbury, and was angry with himself that he should be so ignorant. It is the pride of a detective ex-policeman to know everybody that comes ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true worker. The greatest men are not those who "despise the day of small things," but those who improve them the most carefully. Michael Angelo was one day explaining to a visitor at his studio what he had been doing to a statue ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... lowered them for others, they rang the bell for the servant, they identified the colleges as the train slipped past Oxford, they caught books or bag-purses in the act of tumbling on to the floor. Yet there was nothing finicky about their politeness: it had the Public School touch, and, though sedulous, was virile. More battles than Waterloo have been won on our playing-fields, and Margaret bowed to a charm of which she did not wholly approve, and said nothing when the Oxford colleges were identified ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... in better; and every thing was said that could stimulate them to be industrious. This, with a few exceptions, appeared to be the principal labour both there and at Sydney; and the nightwatch were called upon by the common interest to be more than ever active and sedulous in their efforts to protect public and private property; for robberies of gardens and houses were daily and nightly committed. Damage was also received from the little stock which remained alive; the owners, not having wherewith to feed them, were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... celebrating the bounty of Providence, and it was meet that the liberality of man should be in harmony with it. Felix, grave and decorous, as became the importance of the occasion, and his assistant, multiplied themselves into a thousand waiters, sedulous to anticipate the wants of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... beauty of the poem as a work of art, are not more conspicuous than the knowledge of human nature displayed in the portraits of the principal characters. The result is, that the poem is more modern, in form and in spirit, than almost any other work of its author; the chaste style and sedulous polish of the stanzas admit of easy change into the forms of speech now current in England; while the analytical and subjective character of the work gives it, for the nineteenth century reader, an interest of the same kind as that inspired, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Secundus, from a whole number, to decimal fractions) I dispatched a letter into the country, full of excuse, and penitence, baited with all the submissive eloquence imaginable. In the mean time, I was no less sedulous to find out some employment, that might suit with my genius, and with my dependencies at home, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... about 'Doby is heated an' sedulous all sim'lar. 'Doby gets laid out for a week by rheumatics, which he acquires years before—he shore don't rope onto them rheumatics none 'round Wolfville, you can gamble! said camp bein' salooberous that a-way—over on the Nevada plateaus, an' while he's treed ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... an earthly ruler to govern their nation, but as a god who, by his divine power, would call the dead to life. Precisely as in ancient Egypt the literal belief in the resurrection of the body led to the custom of preserving the corpses with the most sedulous care, so in Peru the cadaver was mummied and deposited in the most secret and inaccessible spots, so that it should remain undisturbed to the ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... person; even his vanity was directly traceable to the early influence of an eccentric and feckless father with experimental ideas on the upbringing of a child. It was a pity that brilliantly unsuccessful man had not lived to see the result of his sedulous empiricism. His wife was left to bear the brunt—a brave exile whose romantic history was never likely to escape her continent lips. None even knew whether she saw any or one of those aggravated faults of an only child which were so apparent ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... nine-tenths may be rhetorical fiction and sedulous imitation, we ought not, on that account, to undervalue the enthusiasm inspiring the young poets. Let us, who have mostly grown blunt to the charms of Latin, not think too lightly of the elation felt by one who, after learning ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... Victoria. The London Daily Telegraph said of him at the time of his accession—speaking probably with the knowledge of Lord Burnham, its proprietor, who had for many years been on intimate terms of friendship with the Royal Family—that the new King had undergone sedulous training and been educated to rule by learning to obey. "The country will discover in him what those admitted to his confidence have always realized—admirable traits of kindliness and strength; wise common sense, practical judgment of affairs; shrewd insight into character; ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... begin the answer of them, would lead us very far beyond our present limits. It is not, as we believe, without long, sedulous study, without learning much and unlearning much, that, for any man, the answer of such questions is even to be hoped. Meanwhile, as regards Goethe, there is one feature of the business, which, to us, throws considerable light on his moral persuasions, and will not, in investigating ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... he crossed the hall and the drawing-room, wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called, but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial occasions. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... bold, but truth is stranger than fiction. By-the-by, not the least comical thing that has occurred was the visit of the upholsterer (with some further calculations) since I began this letter. I think they took me here at the New London for the Wonderful Being I am; they were amazingly sedulous; and no doubt they looked for my being visited by the nobility and gentry of the neighborhood. My first and only visitor came to-night: a ruddy-faced man in faded black, with extracts from a feather-bed all over him; an extraordinary and quite miraculously dirty face; a thick ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the yards, and broad folds of fresh canvas were flapping in the breeze, as the new sails were bent and set. Ropes were spliced, or supplied by new rigging, the spars examined, and in fine all that watchfulness and sedulous care were observed, which are so necessary to the efficiency and safety of a ship. Every spar was secured, the pumps were sounded, and the vessel held on her way, as steadily as if she had never fired nor ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... the part he took as presiding judge in Hone's trials for the publication of certain blasphemous parodies. At this time he was suffering from the most intense exhaustion, and his constitution was sinking under the fatigues of a long and sedulous discharge of his important duties. This did not deter him from taking his seat upon the bench on this occasion. When he entered the court, previous to the trial, Hone shouted out, 'I am glad to see you, Lord Ellenborough. I know what you are come here for; ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... have her own way marked her character perhaps rather more strongly than that of most spoiled children, for nature had endowed her with a strong will, which education had fostered, as it almost seemed, with sedulous care. For the fact was Mrs. Grey dreaded a contest with Pauline; she screamed so, and Mr. Grey got so angry, sometimes with her, and sometimes with the child, and altogether it was such a time, that she soon begun to think it was better not to thwart Pauline, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... dancing, and sedulous attendants on the practeezings, as he called them, of Mr. McFittoch, a dancing master, who, itinerant during the summer, became stationary in the winter season, and afforded the youth of Middlemas the benefit of his instructions ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... respect at the very opening of the 18th century. His elaborate Annales Typographici have secured him the respect of posterity.[131] LE LONG, whose pursuits were chiefly biblical and historical, was his contemporary; an able, sedulous, and learned bibliographer. His whole soul was in his library; and he never spared the most painful toil in order to accomplish the various objects of his inquiry.[132] And here, my dear friends, let me pay a proper tribute of respect to the memory of an eminently ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... house with horses and with arms, so that from that, as well as all the other sacred places, all filthy and diabolical madness of infidelity being driven out, they may occupy themselves by day and by night in honorable and useful offices. They emulously honor the temple of God with sedulous and sincere oblations, offering sacrifices therein with constant devotion, not indeed of the flesh of cattle after the manner of the ancients, but peaceful sacrifices, brotherly love, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... the first point to which all the British directed their steps every morning, in eager curiosity to know whether the business of removal had commenced. The towns and principalities, that had been plundered, were making sedulous exertions to influence the councils of the allies to determine on a general restoration; and several of the great powers leaned decidedly towards ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... Directors, The Secretary, good at pen and ink, The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink, And all the cash Collectors; With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous, Without whose help, no charlatan alive, Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive, Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous— Those good and easy innocents in fact, Who willingly receiving chaff for corn, As pointed out by Butler's tact, Still find a secret pleasure in the act Of being pluck'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... pleasant, and, for a few thousand years, went out of his way to find piles of leaves to lie down on, until one day he hit upon the bright idea of piling the leaves together himself. Then for the first time a man had a bed. His sleep was localized; his pile of leaves, brought together by his own sedulous hands, became property. Monogamy was encouraged, and the idea of home came into being. Personally I have no doubt whatever that the man who made the first bed was so charmed with it that the practice of lying in bed ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... humble or aspiring, the particular circumstances and limitations in which they are to be applied being indeterminate! But is not the experience of every day and of all the world against it? Is not the early and sedulous inculcation of just maxims of duty fell to be a great auxiliary to its performance in the circumstances in which it is necessary to apply them? Is not the possession of a general rule, with the advantages of a clear and concise expression,—in the form of familiar proverbs, or embodied in powerful ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... Magdalen Hall, Oxford. On leaving the university he was admitted a member of Clifford's Inn; but in 1604 removed to the Inner Temple. Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses, says of him that 'after he had continued there a sedulous student for some time, he did, by the help of a strong body and a vast memory, not only run through the whole body of the law, but became a prodigy in most parts of learning, especially in those which were not common or ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... very weedy, Sir! in worthless phrases, 125 A sedulous eschewer of the popular And the colloquial—one who seeketh dignity I' th' paths of circumlocution! It would have Surpris'd you tho', to hear how nat'rally He squeak'd when Curio had ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... successive hopes; and the rest are those who live by games of skill or hazard—financiers, billiard-players, gamblers, and the like. But in unloved toils, even under the prick of necessity, no man is continually sedulous. Once eliminate the fear of starvation, once eliminate or bound the hope of riches, and we shall see plenty of skulking and malingering. Society will then be something not wholly unlike a cotton ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... He declared that he accepted the office of a judge at Dr. Beaumont's trial, with a resolution of saving him; he praised his firm demeanour, the beauty of Constantia, the goodness of Isabel, and the noble self-devotedness of Neville; assuring Jobson, that he was most sedulous in employing the interest he possessed with the Protector to the advantage of this family. But he lamented that there existed one obstacle to Neville's becoming Earl of Bellingham: the Protector's betrayed confidence required ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... already conceived the design of turning the Linnaean system into a poem, which, after he had composed it, was long handed about in manuscript; and, I believe, frequently revised and altered with the most sedulous care. The stage on which he has introduced his fancied Queen of Botany, and her attendants from the Rosicrusian world, has the recommendation of being a real spot of ground within a mile of the place he inhabited. A few years ago it retained many traces of the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... man's sedulous blue eyes looked out of his pink face through his glasses at Mr. Direck, anxious for any light he could offer upon the atmospheric vagueness of ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... have been made against it! How easily it could have been shown that the coarseness, the dubious expressions, the general vulgarity of the scene, could have had no other effect than to break down that purity of thought and word which women have, and which conservative and radical are alike sedulous to preserve. And yet the actual presence of women at political meetings has not debased them but has raised the other sex. Coarseness has not become diffused through both sexes but has fled from both. To put the whole matter in a short phrase: ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... giving to her father a son to replace him who has forsaken him. Her first perception of the want of perfect oneness between Tito and herself dawns upon her through no change in him towards herself, but through his less sedulous attendance on her father. And when at last the conviction is borne in upon her that between him and her, seemingly so closely united, there lies the gulf that parts truth and falsehood, heaven and hell, it is no perceptible ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... my abode in the mansions of the dead." Watt's sympathetic reply reminds Boulton of the sentiments held by their departed friend—that, instead of indulging in unavailing sorrow, the best refuge is the more sedulous performance of duties. "Come, my dear sir," he writes, "and immerse yourself in this sea of business as soon as possible. Pay a proper respect to your friend by obeying his precepts. No endeavour of mine shall be wanting to make ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... sentimental people, encourages the practice of rousing and playing on the affections of children prematurely and far too frequently. The lady who says that as her religion is love, her children shall be brought up in an atmosphere of love, and institutes a system of sedulous endearments and exchanges of presents and conscious and studied acts of artificial kindness, may be defeated in a large family by the healthy derision and rebellion of children who have acquired hardihood and common sense in ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... point of doing so,' said the professor drily. He affected to be giving only partial attention to the narrative; but though he seemed to be sedulous in his examination of the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... crashing plunge which takes all hands down. The little schooner was actually obliged to offer assistance to a big mail-steamer—and yet she might have been rather easily carried by that same steamer. But the little vessel's lights were watched with sedulous care; the blasts might tear at her scanty canvas, but there was not a rag or a rope that would give way; and, although the awful rush of the gale carried her within eight miles of a rocky lee-shore, her captain had sufficient confidence in the goodness ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... and true, and about thirty thousand (this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed full of promise and pleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about courting them, since it seems I have got enough fuel made sure ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... with the gentry of the Whig party. Although all accounts agree in representing him as a shy man, he was at least saved from all risk of making himself disagreeable in society, by his unassuming manners, his extreme caution and that sedulous desire to oblige, which his satirist Pope exaggerated into a positive fault. His knowledge and ability were esteemed so highly as to confirm the expectations formerly entertained of his usefulness in public business; and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... trees, and its row of bright fruited raspberry or strawberry plants—when all thrifty housewives may, at small expense, have their little store of pleasant jams and jellies made from fruits which used to be beyond the reach of even our island kings, and the 'sedulous bees' located on every homestead present us with their amber sweets—we can perhaps scarcely appreciate the real importance which must have attached to these now comparatively worthless fruits at a time when the land ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... popularity, one of them might have been the beauty of his name, whose secret is revealed by the laws of prosody. Washington is a stately dactyl; Irving is a sweet and mellow spondee, and thus we have a combination which poets in ancient and modern days have sought with sedulous care, and which should close every line of hexameter verse. Hence a measure such, as that found in 'Washington Irving' terminates every line in Evangeline, or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... fear of long accompt[FN289] for naught of worldly care * Hail to them! haply garb of wool they'll change for silken wear: In life for provaunt shall suffice them salt and barley bread * Who seek th' Almighty Lord and bow the head in sedulous pray'r.' " ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... unwilling to breathe the same atmosphere with her. During the six weeks that many of us remained in London after the convention we were invited to a succession of public and private breakfasts, dinners, and teas, and on these occasions it was amusing to watch Mrs. Fry's sedulous efforts to keep Mrs. Mott at a distance. If Mrs. Mott was on the lawn, Mrs. Fry would go into the house; if Mrs. Mott was in the house, Mrs. Fry would stay out on the lawn. One evening, when we were all crowded into two parlors, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... course, I have not had to overstrain it in the attempt to reach vocal heights which have come to some only after severe and long-continued effort. But, on the other hand, the finer the natural voice the more sedulous the care required to preserve it in its pristine freshness to bloom. This is the singer's ever present problem—in my case, however, mostly a matter of ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... power of the image evoked is not to be gainsaid. It is not only brilliant on the surface, but mysterious and appealing in its depths. One swiftly forgets his intolerable writing, his mirthless, sedulous, repellent manner, in the face of the Athenian tragedy he instils into his seduced and soul-sick servant girls, his barbaric pirates of finances, his conquered and hamstrung supermen, his wives who sit and wait. He has, like Conrad, a sure talent ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... had given up the greater part of his business, had not given up his clerk; and here the old man, the clerk, passed his entire time, from half-past eight in the morning till ten at night, waiting upon his employer in various capacities with a sedulous personal attention to which he had probably not intended to devote himself when he first took upon himself the duties of clerk to a practising Chancery barrister. But Joseph Stemm and Sir Thomas were not unlike in character, and had grown old together with too ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... years, and these the freshest and fairest years of her life, she toiled in the factory for ten hours each full day, while she also gave faithful service in the mission. And yet she continued to find time for the sedulous culture of her mind. She was always borrowing books and extracting what was best in them. Not all were profitable. One was The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul by Philip Doddridge, a volume much pondered ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... self-interest will bribe to laborious services: but it is the peculiar glory, and the very characteristic, of this more generous passion, to shew itself in ten thousand little and undefinable acts of sedulous attention, which love alone can pay, and of which, when paid, love alone can estimate the value. Love outruns the deductions of reasoning; it scorns the refuge of casuistry; it requires not the slow process of laborious and undeniable proof that an ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... behind the other, going but slowly, seeking with sedulous care to avoid any noise that would bring the savages upon them. The rain, which had grown steadier, was a Godsend. It and the wind together kept up a low, moaning sound that hid the faint pressure of Paul's footsteps. The cry behind them at the cabin was repeated once, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... source of as many reprieves, calamities, and anxieties as the battle itself. Sometimes Mrs. Bonham has just gone out; at others she is at home. But, even if the cards should be superseded, which seems unlikely, there are unruly powers blowing life into storms, disordering sedulous mornings, and uprooting the stability of the afternoon—dressmakers, that is to say, and confectioners' shops. Six yards of silk will cover one body; but if you have to devise six hundred shapes for it, and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... those to which Mr. Darwin has called attention. These are, first, the observed deterioration which results, at least in animals, from continued breeding in and in, which may possibly be resolvable into cumulative heritable disease; and, secondly, as already stated (p. 285), what may be termed the sedulous and elaborate pains everywhere taken in Nature to prevent close breeding—arrangements which are particularly prominent in plants, the greater number of which bear hermaphrodite blossoms. The importance of this may be inferred from the universality, variety, and practical perfection ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... again and again piteously implored him to discover to them the cause of his malady, and received no other answer than sighs or complaints that he seemed to be wasting away. Now it so happened that one day, Jeannette, who from regard for his mother was sedulous in waiting upon him, for some reason or another came into the room where he lay, while a very young but very skilful physician sate by him and held his pulse. The young man gave her not a word or other sign of recognition; but his passion waxed, his heart ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... vanity, presume that the name and official description prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself, such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... As the rapt Jose closed his eyes and listened to the whispered conversation of the scholarly men about him, he seemed to see the consecrated Revisers, seated again at the long table, deep in the holy search of the Scriptures for the profound secrets of life which they hold. He saw with what sedulous care they pursued their sacred work, without trace of prejudice or religious bias, and with only the selfless purpose always before them to render to mankind a priceless benefit in a more perfect rendition of the Word of God. Why could not men come together now in that same generous ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... likewise the most sedulous patrons of learning. Prakrama I. founded schools at Pollanarrua[1]; and it is mentioned with due praise in the Rajaratnacari, that the King Wijayo Bahu III., who reigned at Dambeadinia, A.D. 1240, "established a school in every village, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent



Words linked to "Sedulous" :   diligent, assiduous, sedulity



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