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Travail   Listen
verb
Travail  v. i.  (past & past part. travailed; pres. part. travailing)  
1.
To labor with pain; to toil. (Archaic) "Slothful persons which will not travail for their livings."
2.
To suffer the pangs of childbirth; to be in labor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Travail" Quotes from Famous Books



... perception of the want of truth and validness in notions long current, the perception that they are no longer possible, that their time is finished, and they can serve us no more. All through the last century a prodigious travail for lucidity was going forward in France. Its principal agent was a man whose name excited generally repulsion in England, Voltaire. Voltaire did a great deal of harm in France. But it was not by his lucidity that he did harm; he ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... his brain recovers it not a year after. The rest of him are bubbles and flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. He speaks best on the present apprehension, for meditation stupefies him, and the more he is in travail, the less he brings forth. His things come off then, as in a nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and convulsions, and some astonishing bombast, which men only, till they understand, are scared with. A verse or some such work he ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... which this church has sustained may be the means, in the hands of the Spirit, of constraining us to have more earnest and believing prayer, for the manifestation of His power to save unto the uttermost. That Jesus may see, of the travail of His ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... and possessed not her soul for anguish. And the slave ceased not travelling with them night and day through the passes of the mountains, till there remained but musingly march between them and their own country; when the travail pangs came upon Abrizah and she could no longer resist; so she said to Al-Ghazban, "Set me down, for the pains of labour are upon me;" and cried to Marjanah, "Do thou alight and sit by me and deliver me." Then Marjanah dismounted from her horse, and Al-Ghazban did in like sort, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... call mine own! Hark to thy mother! Come!— He turns his face away, and will not! O Thou thankless child, thou image of thy sire, Like him in each false feature, in mine eyes Hateful, as he is! Stay, then, where thou art! I know thee not!—But thou, Absyrtus, child Of my sore travail, with the merry face Of my lost brother whom with bitter tears I mourn, and mild and gentle as was he, See how thy mother kneels upon the ground And, weeping, calls thee! O let not her prayers Be all in vain! Absyrtus, come ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Godefroi tomba genoux, et dit: "Hlas! maintenant il faudra bien mourir. Voici l'hiver, je n'ai plus rien que ma hache et ma robe. Ma provision de bois que j'ai obtenu par mon travail, mes lignes, mes pauvres lignes, tout est perdu!" Et il regarda tristement la fume noire, qui montait vers le ciel. Pauvre petit Godefroi, il tait ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber

... put it into the hand that was cold. "This is the birthday of our friend," he said. "Should I wish to alter the work of my Father, in whose eyes all things are perfect? Our friend is this day delivered from the womb of earthly travail." ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... he been "stuffing"? How often has he been "stuffed"? [Laughter.] He has been stuffed twice; and if the stuffing operation was as severe and laborious as the delivery has been, he has had a troublesome time of it, for his travail has been great and the delivery ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... there is grain, and where the road is known and a regularity in the day's work can be ensured—the weights that may be carried are fully double those of the above list. Captain Burton's donkeys, in East Africa, carried immense weights. Dogs will draw a "travail" (which see) of 60 lbs. for a distance of 15 miles a day, upon hard ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... Since that hour I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth, finding small comfort in this life; yet Ezekiel Cairnes is merely the poor servant of the Lord, the chief of sinners, and must abide in travail until He cometh." ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... see the wrong that round me lies, I feel the guilt within; I hear, with groan and travail-cries, The world ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... waiter. Ossipon sat rigid, with the abstracted gaze of mental travail. After the man had gone away with the money he roused himself, with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... sans jamais avoir lu le Capital ou en en desapprouvant la teneur; par opposition a Marx ils out ressuscite l'esprit de Stuart Mill et sur tous les points ils se sont attaques a Marx, guerre des classes et materialisme historique, catastrophisme et avant tout la question de la valeur-travail."[44] ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... St. John, with a melancholy smile, "will soon dissolve, or forever confirm, your humour for dreaming; in either case, Cowley will not be less a favourite. But you must, like me, have long toiled in the heat and travail of business, or of pleasure, which is more wearisome still, in order fully to sympathize with those beautiful panegyrics upon solitude which make perhaps the finest passages in Cowley. I have often thought that he whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... king He tolde; and sche upon this thing Seith that he scholde abide al nyht And made him feste and chiere ariht, Feignende as thogh sche cowthe him thonk. Bot he with strong wyn which he dronk Forth with the travail of the day Was drunke, aslepe and while he lay, 1010 Sche hath hise lettres overseie And formed in an other weie. Ther was a newe lettre write, Which seith: "I do you forto wite, That thurgh the conseil of you tuo I stonde ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... here is painted, So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild, As if with grief or travail he had fainted, To me came Tarquin armed; so beguiled With outward honesty, but yet defiled With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish, So did I Tarquin; so ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... creation. They look like presiding deities, remote from all human weaknesses, and wearing on their faces an air of profound mystery. They are invested, not with the calm, superficial, unconscious beauty of pagan art, but with the solemn earnestness and travail of soul characteristic of the Christian creed, wrinkled and saddened with thought and worn out with vigils; and are striking examples of the truth, that while each human being can bear his own burden, the burden of the world's mystery and pain crushes us to the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... of whom it was said that he had devoured two million francs, without either saying or doing a single good thing. He rewarded the child's performance with the gift of a superb suit of cherry-coloured velvet, extravagantly trimmed with costly lace; the peasant from whose sweat and travail the money had been wrung, went in heavy rags, and his children lived as the beasts of the field. The poor youth was ill dealt with. "That is very fine," said rude Duclos, "but remember that a fool in lace is still a fool." Rousseau, in reply to the child's importunity, was still blunter: "Sir, I ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... "I shall cry aloud like a savage bear, like the wild ass, like a woman in travail! The punishment of heaven has already visited itself upon thy incest! May God inflict thee ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert

... Amid the gloom and travail of existence suddenly to behold a beautiful being, and as instantaneously to feel an overwhelming conviction that with that fair form for ever our destiny must be entwined; that there is no more joy but in her ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... of a nation's travail, of the last gasp of tyranny, and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is the example! The press extinguished, the people enslaved, and the prince undone! As the advocate of society therefore—of peace, of domestic liberty, and the lasting ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... descendants. Laban and his household remark the result, if not the stratagem. Vexation ensues: Jacob flees with his family and goods, and partly by fortune, partly by cunning, escapes the pursuit of Laban. Rachel is now about to present him another son, but dies in the travail; Benjamin, the child of sorrow, survives her; but the aged father is to experience a still greater sorrow from the apparent loss of his ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... of the earth for his possession." The degraded Hottentot, and the poor benighted Negro, will look from the ends of the earth unto Jesus, and be saved. "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." The Redeemer "shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied," in beholding the gathering together, not only of the outcasts of Israel that are ready to perish, but of churches and people from all the tongues, and kindreds, and nations of the earth. In the day of his appearing, ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... this temptation was, that I had tempted God; and on this manner did I do it. Upon a time my wife was great with child, and before her full time was come, her pangs, as of a woman in travail, were fierce and strong upon her, even as if she would have immediately fallen in labour, and been delivered of an untimely birth. Now, at this very time it was, that I had been so strongly tempted to question the being of God; wherefore, as my wife lay crying by me, I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... all our ship, thou see'st, is weak and sore Shaken with storms, and no more lighteneth Her head above the waves whose trough is death. She wasteth in the fruitless buds of earth, In parched herds and travail without birth Of dying women: yea, and midst of it A burning and a loathly god hath lit Sudden, and sweeps our land, this Plague of power; Till Cadmus' house grows empty, hour by hour, And Hell's house rich with steam of tears and blood. O King, not God indeed nor peer to God We deem ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... once that they came from Satan. Over and above the great aridity which remains in the soul after these evil locutions, there is also a certain disquiet, such as I have had on many other occasions, when, by our Lord's permission, I fell into great temptations and travail of soul in diverse ways; and though I am in trouble often enough, as I shall show hereafter, [10] yet this disquiet is such that I know not whence it comes; only the soul seems to resist, is troubled and distressed, without knowing why; for the words of ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... people lived in the centre of the chateau, W.[1] and I in one of the wings. It had been all fitted up for us, and was a charming little house. W. had the ground-floor—a bedroom, dressing-room, cabinet de travail, dining-room, and a small room, half reception-room, half library, where he had a large bookcase filled with books, which he gave away as prizes or to school libraries. The choice of the books always interested ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... transforms Old dross to dreams, that softly glows On the fierce rainbowed front of storms, And smiles on unascended snows, That from the travail of lone seas Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl, And gathers up all sorceries In the white being of ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... different. I was glad to be led away—glad to have a chance to pull myself together. But was I to have that chance? Sally, who in the stife of emotion had been forgotten, might have to be reckoned with. Deep within me, some motive, some purpose, was being born in travail. I did not know what, but instinctively I feared Sally. I feared her because I loved her. My wits came back to combat my passion. This hazel-eyed girl, soft, fragile creature, might be harder to move than the Ranger. But could she ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... white-collared and the lily-fingered cannot function there. The pink meat my lady toys with on Limoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her. Only the men who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and gutting knife know in what travail this harvest of the sea ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... future—these know instinctively that what appears to exist no longer is still existing intact, that what appeared to be ended is only completing itself. They know that the years time has taken from them are still in travail; still, under their new master, obeying the old. They know that their past is for ever in movement; that the yesterday which was despondent, decrepit and criminal, will return full of joyousness, innocence, youth, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... her own salvation as a metaphysician. When she asked her mother who made God, a slap in the face demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... on attacking, for years on end, with concentrated and increasing violence, and not suffer for it. The first effects of Jimmy's appalling travail may have been beneficent, but its later workings were malign. There's no other word for it. In nineteen-ten Jimmy was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Not of his creative energy or anything belonging to it, though he prophesied a falling off after Novel Three, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... travail and portentous birth (Her eyeballs flashing a pernicious glare) Sick Nature struggles! Hark! her pangs increase! Her groans are horrible! but O! most fair The promis'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the consciousness with which he set it against the practice of his contemporaries and particularly of Shakespeare receive explicit statement in the prologue to Every Man Out of His Humour—one of his earlier plays. "I travail with another objection, Signor, which I fear will be enforced against the author ere I can be delivered of it," says Mitis. "What's that, sir?" replies Cordatus. Mitis:—"That the argument of his comedy ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... name be us amang, What is this? for Saint James!—I may not well gang. I trust I be the same. Ah! my neck has lain wrang Enough Mickle thank, since yester-even Now, by Saint Stephen! I was flayed with a sweven,—[140] My heart out of slough.[141] I thought Gill began to croak, and travail full sad, Well nigh at the first cock,—of a young lad, For to mend our flock: then be I never glad. To have two on my rock,—more than ever I had. Ah, my head! A house full of young tharmes,[142] The devil knock out their harnes![143] Woe is he has many bairns, And thereto little bread. I ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... experimenters, among whom were Sidney and Spenser, sought diligently to compose in the quantitative metres of the classics; Puttenham, the author of one of the first English treatises on the Art of Poetry (1589), declared that by "leisurable travail" one might "easily and commodiously lead all those feet of the ancients into our vulgar language"; but while they may have satisfied themselves (Spenser certainly did not) these experimenters produced nothing of genuine ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... His shoulders, till His exhausted frame broke down; and on Calvary a thorny crown was set upon His brow, and the cruel nails pierced His hands and His feet. But the sorrow within His soul was worse to bear than bodily buffering. Travail of soul was the consummation of His afflictions, and while we do not read of a groan wrung from Him by bodily torture, soul-trouble led Him to ask His Father with "strong crying and tears," as His frame was agonized and His sweat was like drops of ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... me in Early, yet a youngling, while All unlearned in life and sin, Love and travail, grief and guile! For your world of two-score years, Cuthbert, all you ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... When thus I throw myself into thy bosom, With all the resolution of strong truth! Beats not my heart, as 'twould alarum thine To a new charge of bliss?—I joy more in thee, Than did thy mother, when she hugg'd thee first, And bless'd the gods for all her travail past. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... in a florescence of health and beauty. There is no more glorious blossoming, no more sacred symbol of living eternity than an infant at its mother's breast. It is like a prolongation of maternity's travail, when the mother continues giving herself to her babe, offering him the fountain of life that shall ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... heads do travail, now they work; Their faces run like shittles; they are weaving Some curious cobweb to ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... him, a strange noise of roaring and braying, not very great, but exceeding fierce and terrible, and not like to the voice of any beast that he knew. As has been aforesaid, Walter was no faint-heart; but what with the weakness of his travail and hunger, what with the strangeness of his adventure and his loneliness, his spirit failed him; he turned round towards the noise, his knees shook and he trembled: this way and that he looked, and then gave ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... I likened our present suffering to a case of appendicitis, that society suffers from the trouble set up within by an organ which has lost its function and needs to be cut out. Perhaps I might better liken society to a woman in the travail of childbirth, suffering the pangs of labor incidental to the deliverance of the new life within her womb. The trust marks the highest development of capitalist society: it can ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... it is well to state that the ultra clamorous days in San Blanco had long ceased, and that the new Presidente, Rodriguez, who had arisen to his honors out of the midst of the travail of fire, powder, and a modicum of bloodshed, was conducting affairs of state much to the liking of the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company, of which company Mr. Howland was the brains and guiding spirit. Need it be suggested that this amounts to saying that Mr. Howland was the ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... help or grace Of thee, ne may my strengthe not avail: Then help me, lord, to-morr'w in my bataille, For thilke fire that whilom burned thee, As well as this fire that now burneth me; And do* that I to-morr'w may have victory. *cause Mine be the travail, all thine be the glory. Thy sovereign temple will I most honour Of any place, and alway most labour In thy pleasance and in thy craftes strong. And in thy temple I will my banner hong*, *hang And all the armes of my company, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span With travail and heavy sorrow, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... so much the more. Now, all this while the captains that were in the Recorder's house were playing with the battering-rams at the gates of the castle, to beat them down. So after some time, labour, and travail, the gate of the castle that was called Impregnable was beaten open, and broken into several splinters, and so a way made to go up to the hold in which Diabolus had hid himself. Then were tidings sent ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... mental travail was a sudden growth or expansion of his creative powers. This is apparent in his work, marking the beginning of the second period. His compositions now suggest thought. There is a fecundating power in them which generates ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... well remember the intense horror with which the Christian world read of the wave of pogroms against the Jews which swept over Russia in 1891, following the inhuman enforcement of the "May Laws." Jewish women in travail, forced to flee for their lives, hid in cemeteries, and in those "cities of the dead" brought forth their babes. Jewish fathers took their daughters to brothels for safe hiding. Jewish women and girls were raped. Jewish homes were looted, and whole ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... 'The scenes exhibited far exceeded in horror anything yet recorded in European history.' (Alison.) America, in her own fulness, sent succor to famished Ireland, in 1847, and when her own day of travail came near, in 1861, England volunteered no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... semble toujours s'enfoncer d'avantage, par-tout elle roule ses flots avec bruit et fracas, elle s'est creusee un lit a des profondeurs incroyables; il n'y a point d'endroit ou l'on puisse mieux voir cet etonnant travail des eaux que sur le pont du Pfaffensprung, a une demi-lieue de Vassen; il est a une hauteur si effrayante que le premier mouvement, quand on regarde au bas du pont, est de se tenir au parapet, et ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... Wentworth chose their side, and brought the King To love it as though Laud had loved it first, And the Queen after;—that he led their cause Calm to success, and kept it spotless through, So that our very eyes could look upon The travail of our souls, and close content That violence, which something mars even right Which sanctions it, had taken off no grace From its serene regard. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... the travail set in. Lying there with her raging head tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard with cruel awareness, the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises that can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator, depositing a night-hawk. A plong of the bed spring. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... often give us glimpses of the secret of their characters and success. "Work! work! work!" was the motto of Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their mark upon the world. Voltaire's motto was "Toujours au travail" (always at work). Scott's maxim was "Never be doing nothing." Michael Angelo was a wonderful worker. He even slept in his clothes ready to spring to his work as soon as he awoke. He kept a block of marble in his bedroom that he might get up in the night ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... remain generally unsettled. It was as if a segment of the great circle of modern humanity had been transported to another world, otherwise unpopulated, and there with the experience gained through centuries of human travail—had attempted the establishment of a just, beneficent and ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... a philosophy such as that of Bergson. Other writers, in their eagerness, asserted the collaboration of the Chair of Philosophy at the College de France with the aims of the Confederation Generale du Travail and the Industrial Workers of the World. It was claimed that there is harmony between the flute of personal philosophical meditation and the trumpet of social revolution. These statements are considered in the chapter dealing with the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... doorway, the steel-watched bower of flame, Clad in her queenly raiment King Volsung's daughter came Before Sinfiotli's sword-point; and she said: "O mightiest son, Best now is our departing in the day my grief hath won, And the many days of toiling, and the travail of my womb, And the hate, and the fire of longing: thou, son, and this day of the doom Have long been as one to my heart; and now shall I leave you both, And well ye may wot of the slumber my heart is nothing loth; And all the more, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... common; but art belongs only to the finest minds and the best moments. Life is a burden of present multitudinous phenomena; but art has the simple unity of perfect science, and is a goal and aspiration. Life comes by birth, art by thought, and the travail that produces art is ofttimes the severer. The fashions of life are bubbles on the surface, and pass away with the season; but the creations of art belong to the depths of the spiritual world, where they shine like stars and systems in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... groups and leaders: Communist-controlled labor union (Confederation Generale du Travail) or CGT, nearly 2.4 million members (claimed); Socialist-leaning labor union (Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail) or CFDT, about 800,000 members (est.); independent labor union or Force Ouvriere, 1 million members (est.); independent white-collar union or Confederation Generale des ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... must not talk," said a convoy sergeant, not the one who had let Nekhludoff come up. Nekhludoff left the carriage and went in search of an official to whom he might speak for the woman in travail and about Taras, but could not find him, nor get an answer from any of the convoy for a long time. They were all in a bustle; some were leading a prisoner somewhere or other, others running to get themselves provisions, some were placing their ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... This way the Chamois leapt: her nimble feet Have baffled me; my gains to-day will scarce Repay my break-neck travail.—What is here? Who seems not of my trade, and yet hath reached 60 A height which none even of our mountaineers, Save our best hunters, may attain: his garb Is goodly, his mien manly, and his air Proud as a free-born peasant's, at this distance: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... lapses of the roaring gale I hear the cries of lives that rage and weep, That sow for ever, and that never reap; Brave hearts that travail with all hopes that fail Break with the breakers; with a wandering wail Flies sorrow with white ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... friend," continued the lady, offering a piece of gold, "in acknowledgment of thy painful travail, and of the shrines ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... chair. "I had been suffering," he commentated, long afterwards, "from a great diversity and severity of emotion." Great works of art—things with the veritable spirit of enduring life in them—are destined to be born in sore travail and pain. Those who give them birth yield up ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... has recently been made in the organ of the Communist Party, 'L'Internationale Communiste,' to start reorganizing the French working class on our program, in opposition to the C. G. T. [Confederation Generale du Travail, or French Confederation of Labor]. In England there is a separate organization of the I. W. W. that is advancing rapidly, while the influence on the old trade unions is very noticeable in their changed attitude of late ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... side of it was the mother, exhausted almost to unconsciousness, yet elate, remembering no more the anguish for joy of what had been born out of it. On the other side these two, still ignorant—as the new-born always are—of the future to which that travail had pledged them. They stood together in the narrow upper hall and their pitiful eyes met in silence. Then David took her in his arms and held her for a long moment. Then he kissed her. She whispered, "Good-by, David." But he ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... sorry for Otis Pilkington in his hour of travail. This was the fifth or sixth time that this sort of thing had happened to him, and he was getting tired of it. If he could have looked into the future—five years almost to a day from that evening—and seen himself walking blushfully down the aisle of St. Thomas' ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... my trade and follies fond, Methinks a fair name were Joconde; And for thy sake I travail make Through briar and brake, O'er fen and lake, The Southward ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... my labor and travail in this matter, I do not, neither can I, expect that every godly heart should in every thing see the truth and excellency of what is here discoursed; neither would I have them imagine that I have so thoroughly viewed this holy city, but that much more than I do here crush out is yet left ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... were, however, hard and badly cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half finished, and disquieting as a mystery. He was a close impenetrable being, in whom there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail taking place. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... in the midst of this travail, Bring forth— The solitude is so vast I am glad to be freed of it. Is it the moon I see there, Or does my own white face Hang in blank agony against the sky As if blinded ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott

... for the fulfilment of that hope lay often painfully apart. From the struggles of its early years McGill now emerged to be an established fact. The first of its buildings, the present Arts or Centre Building, had been erected and opened. The College had at last an actual home. But the days of its travail and its worry, its poverty and its depression, its fight for life itself, had ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... cases be affirmed to mark the exact moment of its nativity. And even in the modern world we must in most instances be content to fix a period, we may perhaps add a local habitation, within the limits of which the term must have been born, either in legitimate scientific travail, or the child of some flash of genius, or the product of some generatio aequivoca, the necessary result of exciting predisposing causes; at the same time seeking by further research ever to narrow more and more the limits within which this must ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... hath this gracious confidence in all the Estates here now assembled, that when they shall consider with what dexterity, pains, and travail her Majesty for ten years hath managed the affairs of this kingdom, and with such good fortune that all the counsels and intentions of her Majesty have been followed with such happy success, that the State, with great honour and reputation, hath escaped many difficulties ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... bottles, his brows bent. And across his mental travail floated another thought that brought ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... appointest unto Thy creatures that which Thou wilt and that which Thou hast foreordained unto them; wherefore are some weary and others are at rest, and some enjoy fair fortune and affluence whilst others suffer the extreme of travail and misery, even as I do." And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... he would never return, but would become 'a servant to the Spanish King.' Now that he was back, they depreciated the importance of the enterprise, and especially his part in it. Very absurdly they contended that he was too easeful and sensual to have undertaken a journey of so great travail, and had been hiding in Cornwall. Some gold he had helped to dig out with his own dagger. A London alderman persuaded an officer of the Mint to report this worthless; but Westwood, a refiner of Wood Street, and Dulmar Dimoke, and Palmer, Controllers of the Mint, pronounced ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... when we foregathered, Smuts often talked of "the world that would be." The real Father of the League of Nations idea, he believed that out of the immense travail would develop a larger fraternity, economically sound and without sentimentality. It was a great ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... heat of the battle, this commanding personage, at whose word the entire world of Paradise was in travail, had deigned to speak directly to him—Thomas Jefferson. It was at the mine on the mountain. The workmen were bolting into place the final trestle of the inclined railway which was to convey the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... voice; and such a wave of pity swept over the four people that for a long while no further word was said. Joan upstairs in her room was forgotten. Any thought of resentment in that Stella had used Sir Chichester's name was overlooked by the revelation of the long travail of ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... and being crowned with ivy, serves Bacchus! Go, ye Bacchae; go, ye Bacchae, escorting Bromius, a God, the son of a God, from the Phrygian mountains to the broad streets of Greece! Bromius! whom formerly, being in the pains of travail, the thunder of Jove flying upon her, his mother cast from her womb, leaving life by the stroke of the thunder-bolt. And immediately Jupiter, the son of Saturn, received him in a chamber fitted for birth; and covering him in his ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... mother, the moon was the protectress of women in child-birth, the goddess of love and babes, the patroness of marriage. To her the mother called in travail, whether by the name of "Diana, diva triformis" in pagan Rome, by that of Mama Quilla in Peru, or of Meztli in Anahuac. Under the title of Yohualticitl, the Lady of Night, she was also in this latter country the guardian ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... La fausse humilite ne met plus en credit. Je scais ce que je vaux, et crois ce qu'on m'en dit, Pour me faire admirer je ne fais point de ligue; J'ai peu de voix pour moi, mais je les ai sans brigue; Et mon ambition, pour faire plus de bruit Ne les va point queter de reduit en reduit. Mon travail sans appui monte sur le theatre, Chacun en liberte l'y blame ou idolatre; La, sans que mes amis prechent leurs sentimens, J'arrache quelquefois leurs applaudissemens; La, content da succes que le merite ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... philosopher. To the enriching of that conception, to the gradual hewing it out in historical shape, have gone the noblest poetry, the purest passion, the intensest spiritual vision of the highest races, since the human mind began to work. And the historical shape may crumble; but the need will last and the travail will go on; for man's quest of redemption is but the eternal yielding of the clay in the hands of the potter, the eternal answer of the creature to the urging ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is set the strong stamp of sincerity, and the attraction of a certain artlessness; the most awkward sentence rings true; and there is often a pure and simple note that touches us more than if it were the perfection of elaborated melody. The uncouth procession of the periods discloses the travail of the thought, and that too is a kind of eloquence. An honest reader easily forgives the rude jolt or unexpected start, when it shows a thinker faithfully working his way along arduous and unworn tracks. Even at the roughest, Emerson often interjects a delightful ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... LADY F. Your travail and your comfortable news: This ring, the certain sign you met with him: Binds me in duteous love unto your grace; But on my knees I fall, and humbly crave Importune that no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... that might be touched or seen, but when it came to such abstract words as virtue, vice, reason, justice, or to such terms as to believe, to doubt or to hope, "for these," said Biard, "we had to labor and sweat; in these were the pains of travail." They were compelled to make a thousand gesticulations and signs that greatly amused their savage instructors who sometimes palmed off on them words that were ridiculous and even obscene, so that the Jesuits labored with indifferent success in the preparation of their catechism. Their work ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... so to me as it once was, dear cousin," Elsie said, in a tenderly sympathizing tone. "I have thought much lately on that sweet text, 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints;' and that other, 'He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied,' and the contemplation has shown me so much of the love of Jesus for the souls He has bought with His own precious blood and the joyful reception He gives them, as one by one they are gathered home, ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... with Paul," she assured him. "Concerning him I will admit that I have had my weak moments. I think that those have passed. It was such a wonderful dream," she went on reflectively, "the dream of ruling the mightiest nation in the world, a nation that even now, after many years of travail, is only just finding its way through to the light. It seemed such a small thing that stood in the way. Since then I have met Paul's wife. She does not understand, but at least ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... era wakes before our eyes, the old world of force is gone, and the new world of righteousness and truth is here. Out of the experience and travail of the old world arises this light on life's affairs. The insects stifled by the foe and snow of winter awake at this same time with the breezes of spring and the soft light of the sun ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... adopted in Anglo-Saxon times by Alfred and Aelfric. An early fifteenth-century translator of the Secreta Secretorum, for example, carries over into English the preface of the Latin translator: "I have translated with great travail into open understanding of Latin out of the language of Araby ... sometimes expounding letter by letter, and sometimes understanding of understanding, for other manner of speaking is with Arabs and other with Latin."[40] Lydgate makes a ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... while the battle seems only to the strong and the race to those who, by some mysterious providence, come of a healthy, though not specially moral or religious, stock. And if the incidence of pain and sorrow on the world be explained by its ungodliness, why does nature groan and travail? why are the forest glades turned into a very shambles? why does creation seem to achieve itself through the terrific ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... the roses spring up by thy feet that the rocks of the wilderness wore. Ah! when thy Balder comes back and we gather the gains he hath won, Shall we not linger a little to talk of thy sweetness of old, Yea, turn back awhile to thy travail whence the Gods ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... the laborer's horses are but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There is but one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a whip skips nimbly along at the horses' side and urges the team. Under the picture is a quotation in old French, to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail and service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow, here comes Death to fetch him away. And from so rude a life does Death take him, says George Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome; and in ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... adore Of Zeus most high, the lord Of guestright and the hospitable board, Whose immemorial law doth rule Fate's scales aright: The garners of earth's store Be full for evermore, And grace of Artemis make women's travail light; No devastating curse of fell disease This city seize; No clamour of the State arouse to war Ares, from whom afar Shrinketh the lute, by whom the dances fail— Ares, the lord of wail. Swarm far ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... not the detective's opinion, but he was cautious not to say so. He had followed Dr. Gendron with anxious attention, and the contraction of his face showed the travail of his mind. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... for granted that those who argue thus do not stop to think what that means. Do they mean that you must be paid, must be bribed, to make your contribution, a contribution that costs you neither a drop of blood, nor a tear, when the whole world is in travail and men everywhere depend upon and call to you to bring them out of bondage and make the world a fit place to live in again ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... and seethes, and it hisses and roars, As when fire is with water commix'd and contending, And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars, And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending; And it never will rest, nor from travail be free, Like a sea that is laboring the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... and thus eternal life becomes the good goddess, and desire and labour the very laws of the world, while the fruitfulness of woman is again honoured, and the idiotic nightmare of Hell is replaced by glorious Nature whose travail knows no end. Leaning upon modern Science, clear Latin reason sweeps away the ancient Semitic ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw: a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed! When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. "Now," he said, grinning down at me, "now you have at last delivered all into my hands." He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door upon himself. What ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... carnal generation nothing is essential besides a father and a mother: yet to ease the latter in her travail, there is need for a midwife; and for the child to be suitably brought up there is need for a nurse and a tutor: while their place is taken in Baptism by him who raises the child from the sacred font. Consequently this is not essential to the sacrament, and in a case ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... contents of the petition were these: "That they—the old inhabitants of the deplorable town of Mansoul—confessed their sin, and were sorry that they had offended his princely majesty, and prayed that he would spare their lives." Unto this petition he gave no answer. After some time and travail the gate of the castle was beaten open, and so a way was made to go into the hold where Diabolus ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.



Words linked to "Travail" :   trouble, exercise, elbow grease, maternity, difficulty, workout, premature labor, moil, friction, pregnancy, birthing, least effort, rubbing, straining, obliquity, strain, sweat, childbed, drudge, application, detrition, overexertion, physical exertion, diligence, gestation, dig, struggle, physical exercise, birth, parturiency, uterine contraction, supererogation, fag, effort, giving birth, exercising, overkill, asynclitism, grind, do work, toil, least resistance, lying-in, labor, exertion



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