Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Travail   /trəvˈeɪl/   Listen
Travail

noun
1.
Concluding state of pregnancy; from the onset of contractions to the birth of a child.  Synonyms: childbed, confinement, labor, labour, lying-in, parturiency.
2.
Use of physical or mental energy; hard work.  Synonyms: effort, elbow grease, exertion, sweat.  "They managed only with great exertion"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Travail" Quotes from Famous Books



... Bermondsey factory. Glowering at his feet lay a vicious mongrel dog—bull-terrier, Irish-terrier, mastiff—so did Lola with her trained eye distinguish the strains. When she asked for his wife in travail the chivalrous gentleman took his pipe from his mouth, spat, and after the manner of his kind referred to the disfigurement of her face in terms impossible to transcribe. She ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... Philistines sport! Nay, all of them had aptitudes, perhaps of a distinguished kind; and must, by their own and other people's labor, have got a training equal or superior in toilsomeness, earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings' grandees, or the like show-figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The very ballet girls, with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous; ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... "Great travail is created for every man, and a heavy yoke upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb, till the day that they return to the mother of all things."—Ecclus. xl. 1.: cf. 2 Esdr. vii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... is found to-day in travail with a new and higher order, the conception can be traced to the seminal words of the Bible. The institutions and manners of progressive civilization are what they are because in the heart of that civilization has lain ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... in sore 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 Twins she ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... is not solvable, even in fiction, unless it be by "fantastic" treatment. But perhaps the more so on this account did it haunt me. And out of the travail of my mind around it, out of the changing shadows of restless speculation, gradually emerged, clear and alive, the being of Adrian Landale and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... birth of the new child, or divine idea, you should so detach mortal thought from its 463:9 material conceptions, that the birth will be natural and safe. Though gathering new energy, this idea cannot injure its useful surroundings in the travail of spiritual 463:12 birth. A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive. The new idea, conceived and born of Truth and Love, is 463:15 clad in white garments. Its beginning will be meek, its growth sturdy, and its maturity undecaying. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... was unhappily not able to trace, involved the death or abstraction of her only brother, a boy of about five years old. No, Colonel, I shall never forget the misery of the house of Ellangowan that morning! the father half-distracted—the mother dead in premature travail—the helpless infant, with scarce any one to attend it, coming wawling and crying into this miserable world at such a moment of unutterable misery. We lawyers are not of iron, sir, or of brass, any more ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... do our little bit of work, and remember that whilst we do it, He for whom we are doing it is doing it in us, and let us rejoice to know that at the last we shall share in the 'joy of our Lord,' when He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. Though He builds all Himself, yet He will let us have the joy of feeling that we are labourers together with Him. 'Ye are God's building'; but the Builder permits us to share in His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... not the flower, Having no form or comeliness, in chief Sharing thy thoughts with thine acquaintance Grief; Thou wert despised, rejected in thine hour Of loneliness and God-triumphant power. Oh, not three days alone, glad slumber brief, That from thy travail brought Thee sweet relief, Lay'st Thou, outworn, beneath thy stony bower; But three and thirty years, a living seed, Thy body lay as in a grave indeed; A heavenly germ dropt in a desert wide; Buried in fallow soil of grief and need; 'Mid earthquake-storms of fiercest hate and pride, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... recreation sake, To see the country would a journey take Some dozen mile, or very little more; Taking his leave with friends two months before, With drinking healths, and shaking by the hand, As he had travail'd to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... new 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 ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... a kindred love as pure as itself. Shall we appeal to the artist? If he deserve the name, he will disdain the imputation that either wealth or fame has ever aided at the birth of his ideal offspring: it was Truth that smiled upon him, that made light his travail, that blessed their birth, and, by her fond recognition, imparted to his breast her own most pure, unimpassioned emotion. But, whatever mixed feeling, through the infirmity of the agent, may have influenced the artist, whether poet ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... citoyen, Qui ne cherchas le vrai que pour faire le bien, Qui d'un peuple leger et trop ingrat peut-etre Preparais le bonheur et celui de son maitre, Ce qu'on nomme disgrace a paye tes bienfaits. Le vrai prix de travail n'est que de vivre ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... beginning of a round of visits which Alban found tiresome to the last degree. How many glasses of wine he sipped, how many cigarettes he lighted, he could not have told you for a fortune. It was nearly five o'clock when they returned to the hotel and the Count proposed an hour's repose "de travail." ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... things are within us—God is good— And flight is destined for the callow wing, And the high appetite implies the food, And souls must reach the level whence they spring; O Life of very Life! set free our Powers, Hasten the travail ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... life to the very core; in 1845 he dug up a hero literally from the grave in his "Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell," and after writing in 1851 a brief biography of his misrepresented friend, John Sterling, concluded (1858-1865) his life's task, prosecuted from first to last, in "sore travail" of body and soul, with "The History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great," "the last and grandest of his works," says Froude; "a book," says Emerson, "that is a Judgment Day, for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Christ "for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts 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 Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... problem to be able to agree upon methods and policies which combine depth, wisdom, patience, and order. We have seen how titanic the labour is; impatience will help nothing; here if anywhere is needed the love that is patient, and ready for the travail of ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... that, by hearing thereof, our hopes in Him, in whom is no change, may be established, and His name be by us forever lauded. 'Tis manifest that, as things temporal are all doomed to pass and perish, so within and without they abound with trouble and anguish and travail, and are subject to infinite perils; nor, save for the especial grace of God, should we, whose being is bound up with and forms part of theirs, have either the strength to endure or the wisdom to combat their ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... in raging rout, As when water wrestles with fire, Till to heaven the yeasty tongues they spout; And flood upon flood keeps mounting higher: It will never its endless coil unravel, As the sea with another sea were in travail! ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... made this merry gentle nightingale; Her sound went with the river as it ran, Out through the fresh and flourish'd lusty vale; 'O Merle!' quoth she, 'O fool! stint of thy tale, For in thy song good sentence is there none, For both is tint,[4] the time and the travail, Of every ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him. Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... how many men, what indomitable tenacity and cheerful spirits enlivened the trenches. The correspondents it employed wrote home rejoicing; its leading articles were noble hymns of praise. In times of darkness and travail one cannot but be glad of such a press as this. So glad were the Government of it that Mr. Potter became, at the end of 1916, Lord Pinkerton, and his press the Pinkerton press. Of course, that was not the only reward he obtained for his ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... lying and groaning, her travail coming on; a Wolf came running to her aid, and, offering his assistance, said that he could perform the duties of midwife. She, however, understanding the treachery of the wicked animal, rejected the suspicious services of the evil-doer, and said: ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... bravery my friends could show me, In all the faith my innocence could give me, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me, I sued and served: long did I love this lady, Long was my travail, long my trade to win her; With all the duty of my ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... it! Finally it come! After five weary trips to Washington, after much weary waitin and much travail, I hev got it. I am now Post Master at Confedrit x Roads, and am dooly installed in my new position. Ef I ever hed any doubts ez to A. Johnson bein a better man than Paul the Apossle, a look at my commission removes it. If I ketch myself a feelin that he deserted us onnecessarily ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... quickened to a pace set by a mighty conflict. Never again would Jean McKenzie laugh or cry over little things. She would laugh and cry, of course, but back of it all would be that sense of the world's travail and tragedy, made personal by her ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... his pathway with that of the olden transcendentalist with his ascent of travail and pain, we find a profound satisfaction in the picture of power, peace and ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... enterprise in hand, so deep as to control private vexation (the very same motive which made Columbus bear so mildly with insult and contumely from his followers),—such a man is worthy to be put in comparison with the other great discoverer who worked out his enterprise through poverty, neglect, sore travail, and the vicissitudes of courts. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that Prince Henry was undoubtedly the father of modern geographical discovery, and that the result of his exertions must have given much impulse to Columbus, if it did not ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... into the town. He found its "newspaper row" that day and a Frenchman to whom he had a letter. With this man Joe went to the Bourse and that night to the Chamber of Deputies. He got "Sunday specials" out of them both, and then went on to the Bourse de Travail. And in the few spare moments he had, Joe told us of the things he had seen. Rumors of war and high finance, trade unions, strikes and sabotage burst on my startled artist's ears. It made me think of the harbor! This ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... wastes; He falls, gets up again, And ever more and more he hastes, Torn, bleeding, and arrives at last Where ends the path, Where all his troubles end; A vast abyss and horrible, Where plunging headlong, he forgets them all. Such scene of suffering, and of strife, O moon, is this our mortal life. In travail man is born; His birth too oft the cause of death, And with his earliest breath He pain and torment feels: e'en from the first, His parents fondly strive To comfort him in his distress; And if he lives and grows, They struggle hard, as best they may, With ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... to his mind, which was at length accomplished in some sort, although he continued alternately to bewail his fatigue, and to exult in the conscious sense of having discharged an arduous duty. "You errant cavaliers," said he, addressing the knight, "may now perceive that others have their travail and their toils to undergo as well as your honoured faculty. And this I will say for myself and the soldiers of Saint Mary, among whom I may be termed captain, that it is not our wont to flinch from the heat of the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... awful moment 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 union of the two countries, I conjure ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... harden themselves against thy mercy—let them wag their heads and shoot out the lip at me: let the thorns press upon my brow, and let my sweat be anguish—I desire to be made like thee in thy great love. But let me see the fruit of my travail—let this people be saved! Let me see them clothed in purity: let me hear their voices rise in concord as the voices of the angels: let them see no wisdom but in thy eternal law, no beauty but in holiness. Then they shall lead the way before the nations, ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... out for a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen Savior—must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built. The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which assures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision often comes quite ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... 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 things in the carriages or attending on a lady who was ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... hard travail I raised a temple. It had no doors or windows, its walls were thickly built with ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... was undefiled by sin. It was the Paradise of God. For a brief period it knew no sorrow, no suffering, no curse and no death. That is what has been; but it shall surely be again. Creation will have a second birth, and after its travail pains, death and the curse will flee away. Once peace reigned, no strife was known and no groans heard in all creation's realm. That is what has been; it shall be so again. Groaning creation will be delivered; peace on earth and glory to God ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein

... Mme. Lebrun for the picture in which she is represented with her children. In the dining-room is a secretaire given to Louis XVI. by the States of Burgundy, and portraits of the King and Marie Antoinette. The Cabinet de Travail of the queen was a cabinet given to her on her marriage by the town of Paris; in the Salle de Reception are four pictures by Watteau; the Boudoir has a Sevres bust of the queen; in the Chambre-a-coucher is the queen's bed, and a portrait of the Dauphin ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... bonne, malgre beaucoup de travail, surtout d'ecriture. Esteve, mon secretaire, se marie. Beau caractere. Bon autographe, ecrivant vite. Je lui procure un emploi et le moyen de faire fortune s'il veut. Il fait un meilleur mariage que ne lui appartient; malgre cela je crains qu'il ne la fasse pas comme un ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... have been more numerous than others, although the journey from the United States is long and costly. But I am sure that when for the first time they see Paris—its palaces, its churches, its museums—and visit Versailles, Fontainebleau, and Chantilly, they do not regret the travail they have undergone. Meanwhile, however, I ask myself whether such sightseeing is all that, in coming hither, they wish to accomplish. Intelligent travellers—and, as a rule, it is the intelligent class that feels the need of the educative influence of travel—look ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... l'ame. This was a decree of the Convention for the people at large, and your Lordship will allow that this must have a ridiculous effect upon the walls of a church entirely in ruins, as is often the case. Another modern inscription is—Citoyens, respectez le bien d'autrui, c'est le fruit de son travail et de son industrie; and perhaps close by it you may read propriete nationale a vendre, in direct violation of the other, offering to sell property of which some unfortunate person has been robbed by the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... as Nature with great pangs of travail hath sent it forth from the womb of its mother into the regions of light, lies, like a sailor cast out from the waves, naked upon the earth in utter want and helplessness; and fills every place around ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... 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, The ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... her incomparably amusing chaperon? Frank has my orders to bring you back to renew these happy days, while the birds are in their first song, and the leaves are in their youngest green. I have prepared your rooms chez nous—a chamber that looks out on the Champs Elysees, and a quiet cabinet de travail at the back, in which you can read, write, or sulk undisturbed. Come, and we will again visit Enghien and Montmorency. Don't talk of engagements. If man proposes, woman disposes. Hesitate not—obey. Your sincere ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... land," Michael said. "Never mind—it's coming. The labour and travail of the war will bring forth Liberty. The pains of childbirth are soon forgotten—mothers know how soon, when the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... in travail.—Throw over the top of the house where the woman lieth in travail, a stone, or any other thing that hath killed three living creatures: namely, a man, a wild ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... of course, are not (speaking generally) specimens of the highest order of literature; but still, some experience, some thought, some observation, have gone to produce even them. And it is unquestionably out of deep sorrow, out of the travail of heart and nature, that the finest and noblest of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... plain gospel speech, driving me forth into the wilderness, even as Jehovah's prophets of old. 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

... did see that face Was never ear did hear that tongue, Was never mind did mind his grace That ever thought the travail long; But eyes, and ears, and every thought Were ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... stage. Northerners, who have never seen or felt the beauty of the South, talk sad nonsense about the superiority of German over Italian music. It is true that much Italian music is out of place in Northern Europe, where we seem to need more travail of the intellect in art. But the Italians are rightly satisfied with such facile melody and such simple rhythms as harmonise with sea and sky and boon earth sensuously beautiful. 'Perche pensa? Pensando s' invecchia,' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... or pressure groups: Communist-controlled labor union (Confederation Generale du Travail) 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 (Force Ouvriere) 1 million members (est.); independent white-collar union (Confederation ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... eve of her travail and when things with O'Connell were at their worst—the answer came ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... exclave est une chetive economie, et que le fonds place dans l'esclavage ne rend pas son interet. C'est peut-etre plus a cette consideration, plus encore a l'impossibilite pecuniaire de recruter; c'est plus, dis-je, a ces considerations qu'a l'humanite, qu'on doit l'introduction du travail libre dans une partie de la Virginie, dans celle qui avoisine la belle riviere de la Shenadore. Aussi croiroit-on, en la voyant, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... disguised herself like a man, travelled with her paramour to Athens, where she made such progress in learning, that coming to Rome, she met with few that could equal her; so that, on the death of Pope Leo IV. she was chosen to succeed him; but being got with child by one of her domesticks, her travail came upon her between the Colossian Theatre and St. Clement's, as she was going to the Lateran Church, and died upon the place, having sat two years, one month, and four days, and was buried there without any pomp. He owns that, for the shame of this, the Popes decline ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... I a king I might command content (Mundy) Were my heart as some men's are, thy errors would not move me (Campion) What hap had I to marry a shrow (Pammelia) What is our life? a play of passion (Gibbons) What needeth all this travail and turmoiling (Wilbye) What pleasure have great Princes (Byrd) What poor astronomers are they (John Dowland) What then is love, sings Corydon (Ford) When Flora fair the pleasant tidings bringeth (Carlton) When I was otherwise than now I am (Byrd) When thou must home ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... 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; ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... agreable que de voir de matin un infinite de petits bateaux de pecheurs qui sortent de la riviere avec le jour, et qui ne rentrent que le soir, lorsque le soleil se couche. Vous diriez un essaim d'abeilles qui reviennent a la cruche chargees du fruit de leur travail. Lettres Edifiantes Tome 1. For a more modern account of this city I beg leave to refer the reader to Captain Thomas Forrest's Voyage to the Mergui Archipelago pages 38 to 60, where he will find a lively and natural description ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... aglow Smiled glad through her childbirth pain, How was the mother to know That her woe and travail were vain? A smirking servant smiled When she gave him her child to keep; Did she know he would strangle the child As it lay in ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... of the forest, on the ridge, where the dim road ran under the scattered oaks, he saw the last of the battle of the dying storm raging over the valley below. Great masses of cloud were in travail; when the sun was hidden, the world was wrapped in shade and chill; when it burst forth, every wet tree and spear glistened and twinkled in the flood of warmth and light, the dried brown grass sparkled with jewels, and the great roadside rain pools ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... furnished with an honest policy if he intends to set out to the world nowadays. And this is no less necessary in a bookseller than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are plots and counter-plots, and a whole army of hackney authors that keep their grinders moving by the travail of their pens. These gormandizers will eat you the very life out of a copy so soon as ever it appears, for as the times go, Original and Abridgement are almost reckoned as ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... theories of Saint Simon and Fourier were exploited still further by Louis Blanc and Proudhon. Blanc's writings had an immense vogue among the workmen of Paris. This was especially true of his "Organisation du Travail," published this year, wherein he proclaimed the opportunity to work as a social right. Proudhon carried Etienne Cadet's "Icarian" theories so far that in his famous book, "What is Property?" after describing the conditions ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... ah! What once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... 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 ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... existence is a means, not an end; for when all has been said, the one God carries with it the idea of one humanity. The Fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood of man. And so, amid all its trust that the long travail of centuries cannot fulfil itself in Israel's annihilation, amid all its particularism, there soars aloft the belief in the day when there will be no religions, but only Religion, when Israel will come together with other communions, or they with Israel. And so, ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... 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, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... that oppresses one, this hushed endurance of the travail of life. How do these women ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... joy of creation," as Kipling names it, is not less to be grouped with those precious experiences in which the self is sloughed away, and the soul at one with its content. I speak, of course, of intellectual production in full swing, in the momentum of success. The travail of soul over apparently hopeless difficulties or in the working out of indifferent details takes place not only in full self- consciousness, but in self-disgust; there we can take Carlyle to witness. But in the higher stages the fixation of truth and the appreciation of ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... can the ship shun Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links, Past or future, unsolved by Egyptian Or Theban, unspoken by Sphinx? The riddle remains still unravell'd By students consuming night oil. Oh, earth! we have toil'd, we have travail'd, How long ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... past," as my first Japanese acquaintance said to me, and we ignore fundamental facts when we forget that for centuries unnumbered Japan existed for the soldier, as the rosebush for the blossom. The man of martial courage was the goal of all her striving, the end of all her travail. Society was a military aristocracy, the Samurai the privileged class. And at the same time commerce was despised as dishonorable and industry merely tolerated as a necessary evil. In the Japan of Yalu, Liao-yang, and Mukden we have no modern Minerva springing ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and misery." ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... not see how everything is waking? The sleep has lasted centuries, but some day the lightning will strike, and the bolt, instead of bringing ruin, will bring life. Do you not see minds in travail with new tendencies, and know that these tendencies, diverse now, will some day be guided by God into one way? God has not failed other peoples; ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... Presently, his luck turned against him and he knew it not; so he said to himself, "I have wealth galore, yet do I toil and travel from country to country; so better had I abide in my own land and rest myself in my own house from this travail and trouble and sell and buy at home." Then he made two parts of his money, and with one bought wheat in summer, saying, "Whenas winter cometh, I shall sell it at a great profit." But, when the cold set in wheat fell to half the price for which ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... snow was still falling with quiet relentlessness. It was wrapping deeper and deeper the white slopes of the mountains and piling feathery drifts against the windward sides of the sighing pines. Here and there a burdened branch creaked under its travail. Now and then the wind that drove the snow rose to a gusty whisper, and a stark limb scraped the eaves of the house with grating, lifeless fingers. But between the occasional stress-cries of the storm, there came the low, dirge-like monotony of the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... half of some other feeling that he was at a loss to interpret. Gregory's big voice was little heard. The sinister glitter in his brother's eye made him apprehensive and ill at ease. For him the hour was indeed in travail and like to bring forth strange doings—but not half so much as it was for Crispin and Joseph, each bent upon forcing matters to a head ere they quitted that board. And yet but for these two the meal would have passed off in dismal silence. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... he was amidst of this, he heard suddenly, close anigh 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 a great cry and tumbled down in a swoon; for close ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... attention to the scene of the crucifixion. As they proceed to describe it, they obviously feel that they are dealing with a transaction of awful import; and they accordingly become more impressive and circumstantial. Their statements, when combined, furnish a complete and consistent narrative of the sore travail, the deep humiliation, and the dying utterances of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... the tower the greater was its fall, to the very foundations they had digged. So it chanced for many days, till not one stone remained upon another. When the king knew this marvel, and perceived that his travail came in nowise to an end, he took counsel of his wizards. "By my faith," said he, "I wonder sorely what may be amiss with my tower, since the earth will not endure it. Search and inquire the reason of this thing; and how these foundations ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... will not carry men to the immortal gods; that the Washington Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is there, as here, naught for such objects; quite incompetent for such; and, in fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will require to be (with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect yet) remodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed, torn asunder, put together again—not without heroic labour and effort, quite other than that of the stump-orator and the revival ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... of late years has attracted considerable attention, and much acute criticism has been expended on the question of its origin and significance. Valuable material has been collected, but the studies, so far, have been individual, and independent, the much needed travail ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... that little republic, so begun in sorrow and travail, there came in after-years the dimples and the smiles of the prosperous child who would one day rise in the lap of the mother-country, and, asserting its rights by means of Patrick O'Fallen Henry and others, place a large and ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... unhappily, he was very strong; he came of an iron race, long born and bred to such cruel travail; so that he did not die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal burdens, the scarifying lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, the curses, and the exhaustion which are the only wages with which the Flemings repay the most ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... wrongs; who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives; women, indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might lay the heavier stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in youth, and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and their disfigured persons, which could not be published elsewhere, of so much stock upon ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... the pilgrim's bosom wrought With all the travail of uncertain thought; His partner's acts without their cause appear, 'Twas there a vice, and seem'd a madness here: Detesting that, and pitying this, he goes, Lost and confounded ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... more, That 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 ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... His promise for those "who sow in tears": those to whom to be a channel of Divine communication to the world means soul burden and travail. It is they who are bound to ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter

... not rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic extravagances of the old girl. She had found a phrase by which to describe her, a phrase assuredly contemptible, which she had got, I know not whence, upon her lips, invented by I know not what confused and mysterious travail of soul. She said: "That woman is a demoniac." This phrase, culled by that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly comic. I myself, never called her now anything else, but "the demoniac," ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... a sudden that they dare not speak out and tell what they wanted? Or did they take it for granted that Congress would always act in the premises according to their wishes, and that too, without their making known their wishes? If, as honorable senators tell us, Maryland and Virginia did verily travail with such abounding faith, why ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... dearer to her than all, Wolnoth, her darling. For the rest of her sons were stalwart and strong of frame, and in their infancy she had known not a mother's fears. But Wolnoth had come into the world before his time, and sharp had been the travail of the mother, and long between life and death the struggle of the newborn babe. And his cradle had been rocked with a trembling knee, and his pillow been bathed with hot tears. Frail had been his childhood—a thing that hung on her care; and now, as the boy grew, blooming and strong, into youth, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... poetical prose,—with, here and there, a rhyme or a metrical line, as they might occur—and then, afterwards to reduce with much labor, this anomalous compound to regular poetry. The birth of his prose being, as we have already seen, so difficult, it may be imagined how painful was the travail of his verse. Indeed, the number of tasks which he left unfinished are all so many proofs of that despair of perfection, which those best qualified to attain it are always ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... from Cicero to the effect that "l'habitude au travail donne de la facilite a supporter ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... occasionally sees happy results of the travail of soul for the lost ones; but would to God there were many more Christian employers like the one Sarah found, who treat her so kindly, as well as give her what she is capable of earning, that she makes extra effort to prove her appreciation and gratitude. "But," you say, "there are not many ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... same thing at every house that faced toward the river, in every hamlet, the length of a long road. At last she came to my native town and to the house of red sandstone in which my mother lay in travail. Mara stretched, and grew, and looked in at the window; the house lighted up within and grew more and more light, flames flickered within, burst forth at all the windows, and united together above the high roof. Like a great scarlet flower the house stood there in the night, the light ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... basket of good things to cheer the inner man? Or, when his wife is confined, perhaps she brings some little delicacies, a breast of pheasant, a bottle of port wine, and strengthens her with motherly counsel in the hour of her travail. Is this so? Hodge's wife could tell you that the cottage door has never been darkened by her presence: that she indeed would not acknowledge her if passed by chance on the road. For the landlady sails forth to the adjacent town in all the glory of those fine feathers ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... by the other guns and caissons in front, but when my gun-carriage was midway on it the whole structure collapsed. The struggle the detachment of men and horses underwent during the rest of this night of travail constituted still another feature of the vicissitudes of "merry war." Fortunately for us, Lieut. Jack Jordan was in charge, and, as Rockbridge men can testify, any physical difficulty that could not be successfully overcome by a Jordan, where men and ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... man in the lane was he—would look from lightship to cottage window; then back again, as he waited there between the travail of the sea without, and the travail of the woman within. Soon an infant's wail of the very feeblest was also audible in the house. He started from his easy pacing, and went again westward, standing at the elbow of the lane a long time. Then the peace of the sleeping village which lay that way was ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... concerning the earnest expectation and waiting of the creatures for the revelation of the children of God; which waiting the apostle characterizes as a sighing in eager desire for man's redemption. A little later he compares the state of the creature to a woman in travail, saying it cries out in its anguish. The sun, moon and stars, the heavens and earth, the bread we eat, the water or wine we drink, the cattle and sheep, in short, all things that minister to our comfort, cry out in accusation against the world because they are subjected ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... blood of three kings, you know; surely that would overcome the blood of the good God knows how many peasant swine. She is not red, and hairless, and dirty now, in faith! She is clean-limbed, and straight, and white. A thousand louis to a sou, that she is!" ... His brow was creased in the travail or retrospection. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... Despotism and License, mingling in unblessed union, engendered that mighty Revolution in which the lineaments of both parents were strangely blended. The long gestation was accomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hopes and terror, that agonizing travail and that portentous birth. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... gave me a lesson in bed-making before he locked me up for the night. Hammocks had been dispensed with in Holloway ever since Sir Richard Cross groaned in the travail of invention, and produced his masterpiece and monument—the plank bed. Yet so slow is the official mind, that the rings still lingered in some of the cells. The plank bed is constructed of three eight-inch deals, held together ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... not show more than does this picture the very great thirst of the dropsical and the other effects of that malady. A wonderful thing, too, in those times, was a ship that he made in this work, which, being in travail in a tempest, was saved by that Saint; for he made therein with great vivacity all the actions of the mariners, and everything which is wont to befall in such accidents and travailings. Some are casting into the insatiable sea, without a thought, the precious merchandize won by so much sweat and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... Long has that travail been. Kings, Kaisers, Popes, The stern Crusader and the pirate Dane, Each, centered in his own ambitious hopes, But helped the cause he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... no more helpful contribution by example than prove a Republic's capacity to emerge from the wreckage of war. While the world's embittered travail did not leave us devastated lands nor desolated cities, left no gaping wounds, no breast with hate, it did involve us in the delirium of expenditure, in expanded currency and credits, in unbalanced industry, in unspeakable waste, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... with a village customer, he has not shown his best goods to the innocent reporter of his sayings. However that may be in this case, let me contrast in a single glance the momentary effect in conversation of the two neighbors, Hawthorne and Emerson. Speech seemed like a kind of travail to Hawthorne. One must harpoon him like a cetacean with questions to make him talk at all. Then the words came from him at last, with bashful manifestations, like those of a young girl, almost—words that gasped themselves forth, seeming to leave a great deal more behind them than they told, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... Creator. From beast to citizen seemed dull enough; but from citizen to God—what intoxication of zest does this thought engender! Can the creature dare it? Is this the great venture? Is this the meaning of the travail of the ages? Or is it only a process from citizen to man, from tamed beast to free spirit feeling the Soul of All at the inmost centre of himself, and finding the means at last of incarnating that soul in the community, in politics, trade, ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit

... I suffer with my thoughts until I relieve myself by getting them down as best I can on paper, then I bury them in my trunk along with their elder brothers. I know I ought to burn them, but I haven't the heart to murder my children born in such travail. Some day, however, it will have to be done, otherwise they'll crowd their father-mother out of house ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson



Words linked to "Travail" :   strain, birth, premature labour, gestation, difficulty, effort, diligence, premature labor, friction, least effort, exercising, obliquity, parturition, birthing, supererogation, overexertion, application, asynclitism, trouble, do work, overkill, rubbing, work, pull, maternity, least resistance, exercise, uterine contraction, workout, detrition, effacement, pregnancy, physical exercise, giving birth, straining, struggle, physical exertion



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com