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Drudgery   /drˈədʒəri/   Listen
Drudgery

noun
1.
Hard monotonous routine work.  Synonyms: donkeywork, grind, plodding.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Drudgery" Quotes from Famous Books



... a much better test of character than any one act of heroism, however noble. It was many years of drudgery, and reading a thousand volumes, that enabled George Eliot to get fifty thousand ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... old landlords in Scotland even in the youth of the author. In requital mine host was always furnished with the news of the country, and was probably a little of a humorist to boot. The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gudewife was very common among the Scottish Bonifaces. There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family who condescended, in order to gain a livelihood, to become the nominal keeper of a coffee-house, one of the first places ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... rational principles of life; much less did they think of teaching them religion, or attempt civilising and reducing them by kind usage and affectionate arguments. As they gave them their food every day, so they gave them their work too, and kept them fully employed in drudgery enough; but they failed in this by it, that they never had them to assist them and fight for them as I had my man Friday, who was as true to me as the very flesh ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... anxious for his little sons to be placed out in the world as early as possible. Thus it came that in 1484 Baccio was taken away from his brothers, who played under the shadow of the old gateway, and was put to do the drudgery of the apprenticeship to art. He had to grind colours for Cosimo—who, as we know, used a great deal of colour, having dazzled the eyes of the Pope with the brilliancy of his blue and gold in the Sistine Chapel ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... outbuildings distinctly, as they lay towards him on the slope. Well, he would not go there many more times! Another resource would be lost to him, another place gone: the only company he cared for in the alien, ugly little town he was losing. Nothing but work, drudgery, constant hastening from dwelling to dwelling among the colliers and the iron-workers. It wore him out, but at the same time he had a craving for it. It was a stimulant to him to be in the homes ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... nothing else can bring. A born artist loves to paint for painting's sake; to such an one there is something almost sacramental in the very mixing of the colours. The true sculptor hears music in the tapping of the mallet upon the chisel as he shapes the marble into grace and beauty. There is no drudgery in the calling that is yours by ordination of nature, by right of true heartfelt affection. The kind of preacher we mean would rather talk about preaching than about any other subject, providing he meet with one like-minded ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... wedged in with the other members of the crew, bad food, and over exertion told upon his frame. From the moment when all hands were piped to lash hammocks to the moment when the signal was given for turning in, it was one long round of thankless drudgery. But he proved himself to be very quick and nimble. Before long, no one could lash his hammock with the seven turns in a shorter time than he. After learning the work on the mainsails and trysails he was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... I live, we shall earn enough, perhaps, between us to keep Lucien until success comes. My courage will never fail," said Eve, brightening. "There is no hardship in work when we work for one we love; it is not drudgery. It makes me happy to think that I toil so much, if indeed it is toil, for him. Oh, do not be in the least afraid, we will earn money enough to send Lucien into the great world. There lies ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... letters of a commonplace man to a commonplace woman, written when they loved each other, and so they were touched with something of the divine. They must have been, else how could they have sustained this woman through fifteen years of drudgery? They were the only tangible foundation left of the structure of dreams she had built about this man. All the rest of her house of love had tumbled about her ears fifteen years before, but with these few remaining bricks she had erected ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... did. But doing it she had to abandon the easy life of a scholar and the aristocratic environment of a cultured, prosperous, Quaker family, of Moorestown, New Jersey, for the rigors of a ceaseless drudgery and frequent imprisonment. A flaming idealist, conducting the fight with the sternest kind of realism, a mind attracted by facts, not fancies, she has led fearlessly and with magnificent ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... think he does; but in his ardour for music he seems to forget all about it. It does seem such a pity that all Alexis's time should be wasted in this drudgery. If I could only be sure of more extra work for my designs, I could set him free; and if Sir Jasper were only at home, I am sure he would put the boy in the way of earning his education. If it were only as a pupil teacher, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... men, if once imbued with a love for geometry, and having once got over the drudgery of elementary acquisition, should be favourably situated for its cultivation, follows as a matter of course. The great difficulty lay in finding sufficient stimulus for their ambition, good models for their imitation, and adequate facilities for publishing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... a man so serious, so self-contained, and not yet three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... people in Scythia as impotent as eunuchs in the discharge of a venerean exploit; because that, without any cessation, pause or respite, they were never from off horseback, or otherwise, assiduously employed in some troublesome and molesting drudgery. ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... I beheld a vain thing under the sun: 8. one who toileth restlessly without enjoying his riches. For whom do I wear myself out and bereave my soul of pleasure? This too is vanity and irksome drudgery. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... partner. See that he has a chance to do part of the work, not only its "chores," but also its forms of service. But even a boy's attitude to the "chores" will depend on whether they are a responsibility with a degree of dignity or a form of unpaid drudgery. His room should be his own room, and he should be responsible for its neatness and its adorning. Services which he does regularly for all should receive regular compensation. In all services which the home renders for others he should have a share; this is his training for the larger ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... without questioning her justice to Havill. The room she had offered him was prepared as a studio. Drawing-boards and Whatman's paper were sent for, and in a few days Somerset began serious labour. His first requirement was a clerk or two, to do the drudgery of measuring and figuring; but for the present he preferred to sketch alone. Sometimes, in measuring the outworks of the castle, he ran against Havill strolling about with no apparent object, who bestowed on him an envious nod, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... To Bryan this suggests as a hierarchy of habits, the plateau of little or no improvement, meaning that lower order habits are approaching their maximum but are not yet automatic enough to leave the attention free to attack higher order habits. The second ascent from drudgery to freedom, which comes through automatism, is often as sudden as the first ascent. One stroke of attention comes to do what once took many. To attain such effective speed is not dependent on reaction time. This shooting together of units distinguishes the master ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... has China been content to plough, to sow, to reap, and with her harvest support one-quarter of the human lives on our planet. Drudgery has been her lot, frugality her virtue. Only so had she lease of breath. Now she is to unlock her mines, build ships, and roads of commerce, and with the magic of machinery set her people free. If that magic is owned by a few, there will ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson

... were to work in the kitchen and go to market from time to time, performing this menial drudgery under the personal inspection of the warrior who governed the garrison and fortress, but who in vain attempted to make Maria van Reigersbergen tremble ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... at drudgery, denying you your money, even trying to make you believe your father was insane!" remarked Ford, as the narration ended. "I knew he was a villain. That will is a forgery, Bob. We'll get back the property for you, never fear. Dardus may have money. But your friends Perkins and ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... long been leveled with the earth, and their site converted into the green lawns and leafy alleys of the battery, where the gay apprentice sported his Sunday coat, and the laborious mechanic, relieved from the dirt and drudgery of the week, poured his weekly tale of love into the half averted ear of the sentimental chambermaid. The capacious bay still presented the same expansive sheet of water, studded with islands, sprinkled ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... other, with a wink, when he believed neither of the Hosmers was looking at him. "You see, this happens to be Tilly's birthday. She hasn't had a real one for ever so long, and Andrew and me, why, we've fixed it that she should take a holiday from her drudgery and we'd all go off for a little lark. Now, perhaps you two would like to keep us company. How about that, boys? You've been pretty kind to my sister, and we all feel that you're our good friends. What do you say about tagging along? In my walks about this section of country, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... all the four were violent Tories, and that among them were men who had accompanied Jeffreys on the Bloody Circuit, and who had consented to the death of Cornish and of Elizabeth Gaunt. Jones, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man who had never before shrunk from any drudgery, however cruel or servile, now held in the royal closet language which might have become the lips of the purest magistrates in our history. He was plainly told that he must either give up his opinion or his place. "For my place," he answered, "I care little. I am old and worn out in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a mere preamble, and leads up to the fact that after ten years or so of drudgery I inherited a legacy which, though small, was sufficient to satisfy my simple wants. Finding myself independent, I rented a quiet house removed from the uproar and bustle of London, and there I settled down with the intention of producing some great work which ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... their briefs to escort convoys and patrol the highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district, or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[2330] subject to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to the public.—For the first six months they do it with good grace; their zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against "brigands," and in suppressing taxes, rents, and tithes, is active enough. But now that this much is obtained ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... laboriously spelled out her instructions to me in special lessons twice a week, to give Miss Sullivan a little rest. But, though everybody was kind and ready to help us, there was only one hand that could turn drudgery ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... the things worth while are at some time or other stored away in books by the thinkers. Every phase of history, every movement to better mankind and lift it above the drudgery of mere toil, every beautiful thought is to be found in them and the better the book the more will be found in it of these very things. When we have finished the day's work we can pull down a volume from the shelf and in a moment be lost in an entirely different world. The ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... there are adequate motives in the case of all who follow the pursuit professionally: the other is hardly ever attained where there is not, or where there has not been at some period of life, an ardent desire of celebrity. Nothing less is commonly a sufficient stimulus to undergo the long and patient drudgery, which, in the case even of the greatest natural gifts, is absolutely required for great eminence in pursuits in which we already possess so many splendid memorials of the highest genius. Now, whether the cause be natural or artificial, women ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... death between him and his darling. He saw now the immeasurable hopes his residence at Beckley had lured him to. Rose had slightly awakened him: this letter was blank day to his soul. He saw the squalid shop, the good, stern, barren-spirited mother, the changeless drudgery, the existence which seemed indeed no better than what the ninth of a man was fit for. The influence of his mother came on him once more. Dared he reject the gift if true? No spark of gratitude could he feel, but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... gentlemen were all quite willing that women should join their societies and churches to do the drudgery; to work up the enthusiasm in fairs and revivals, conventions and flag presentations; to pay a dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being members of their various organizations; to beg money for the Church; to circulate petitions from door to door; to visit saloons; ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... it would not do, and what sort of a man Charles Grant was. Frankland Lewis does not seem to like his office, but he says he shall bring it into order if he remains there, and make it a Privy Councillor's office without drudgery. He and, indeed, all seem to wish they were better and more boldly led in the House of Commons. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... twenty years of age, Emil Gluck was enrolled as an instructor of chemistry in the University of California. Here the years passed quietly; he faithfully performed the drudgery that brought him his salary, and, a student always, he took half-a- dozen degrees. He was, among other things, a Doctor of Sociology, of Philosophy, and of Science, though he was known to the world, in later ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... whose more refined spirits out-wing these dull times, and soar above the drudgery of dirty intelligence, have I made sacred these fancies: I know the years, and what coarse entertainment they afford poetry. If any shall question that courage that durst send me abroad so late, and revel it thus in the dregs of an age, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... to the Belgians, our kind A.D.V.S. ordered him to be shot. He was one of the best friends I had in the war, and I am glad he entered the horses' heaven as a soldier, without the humiliation of a purgatory in some civilian drudgery. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... precise simplification of form. But for the activity of a small band of sculptors and caricaturists centred for the most part in Munich,[71] we might be content to regard Germany not as a fount of culture but rather as one of the world's workshops, a well-organised ergastulum for dealing with the drudgery of modern civilisation, for manipulating secondary products and extracting derivatives, a large factory for the production of dictionaries, drugs and ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... counterbalance in his firmness of character. If his father was too mundane, he was too transcendental. As for instance, he approved at the present moment, in theory, of the life of a parish clergyman; but could he have commenced the life to-morrow, he would at once have shrunk from its drudgery. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... as things go in fairy stories, we should prepare ourselves to see Hetty pass through a season in drudgery and hardship, with the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... against the correctors for the blunders they let pass. The idea that so magnificent a person as an editor or author should correct proofs had not arisen. It was the business of the young men who had been hired to do this drudgery; and all blame rested with them. So far as the evidence goes, it was the same all through Erasmus' life. In the case of one of his most virulent apologies (1520) he says that he corrected all the proofs himself; but from the stress he ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... and picking stone was drudgery, and haying and harvesting I liked best when they were a good way off; picking up potatoes worried me, but gathering apples suited my hands and my fancy better, and knocking "Juno's cushions" in the spring meadows with my long-handled knocker, about the time the first ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... He spoke of these things as "sins of his youth," professing an invincible distaste, in these later years, for the drudgery of work. He called himself an old dreamer. There was a shed, it is true, attached to the house, a shed which went by the name of a studio. All visitors were taken to see this atelier. It was smothered in dust and cobwebs. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... her strength and sphere of life. Such taxation is barbarism and savageness. This heathenism always destroys home. The American Indian has no home; he lives an idle, lazy, good-for-nothing life, while his wife, or woman, as the case may be, does all the drudgery. For this very reason he was never elevated, as a general rule, above a shot-gun and a hound dog, and never had a home superior to Doolittle's birth-place, which, he said, was "at Cape Cod, Nantucket, and all along up and down ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... favorite horse taken from her; her conducting of family worship suspended; her familiarity with her sisters" (who somewhat sympathized with her) "much abridged." The kitchen maid was dismissed, and the tall, delicate Elizabeth was driven to the drudgery of kitchen and washroom, and ordered to "be quiet and diligent as a servant," under charge of having proved herself "unworthy of a daughter's place in the family!" To this servile toil Elizabeth submitted without ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er

... done his best to work it off. He had collected all the valuables from the wreck, made a new mast, set up a rude capstan to draw the boat ashore, and cut a little dock for her at low water, and clayed it in the full heat of the sun; and, having accomplished this drudgery, he got at last to his labor of love; he opened a quantity of pearl oysters, fed Tommy and the duck with them, and began the great work of lining the cavern with them. The said cavern was somewhat shell-shaped, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... farm. Up on the wind-swept plateaus, in the boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of drudgery, where the watching of grazing herd gives him leisure for contemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take on a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, God becomes one, unrivalled like the sand of the desert and the grass ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... letters, a score of which he was that night getting off his conscience—an arrear which would not have troubled him had he not ceased, for two or three days, altogether to employ Philip Feltram, who had been accustomed to take all that sort of drudgery off his hands. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... moment's conversation will inform a man of sense that he is only a conceited fool. As to his political transactions, he has by his side, as a secretary, a man of the name of Petry, who has received a diplomatic education, and does not want either subtlety or parts; and on him, no doubt, is thrown the drudgery of business. During a European war, Turreaux's post is of little relative consequence; but should Napoleon live to dictate another general pacification, the United States will be exposed, on their frontiers, or in their ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... we feed the children by waiting? Will waiting put George and Tom, and Sam, out into the world? Will it enable my poor girls to give up some of their drudgery? Will waiting make Bessy and Jane fit even to be governesses? Will waiting pay for the things we ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the brick molds at Pa-Tum and carried heavy loads of brick on their shoulders to the masons on the walls. Of course the sheep suffered for lack of care. The children also pined from neglect. Life for the Hebrews became a grinding treadmill of hardship and weariness and drudgery. ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... of myself when I look at the date of your last. It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I have had a collection of poems by a lady, put into my hands to prepare them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing corn with my own hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plasterers, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... desertion has been forgiven. He has spoken to us the words of peace, "Behold thy mother, thy brother, thy son." For, let us not forget, all work for others, for the bodies, the minds, the souls of our brethren in the family of God, is capable of being raised from the level of professional drudgery, and of becoming the direct ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... soon as possible, taking no interest in her work, and when she came out her brain was a sluggish and unresponsive as one might expect. Well aware of her shortcomings, she made light of them, insisting laughingly that she was the dunce of the family and Virginia its genius. She would do the drudgery of housekeeping while her sister ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... was prick'd well enough before, an you could have let me alone: my old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery: you need not to have pricked me; there are other men fitter to ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]

... did not make much difference to him whether he became a soldier or a sailor. He had longed to see the world, to share in deeds of adventure, and, above all, to escape from the dreary drudgery of the clothier's shop. These objects would be attained as well in the army as in the navy; and, indeed, now that he thought of it, he preferred the active service which he would see under Marlborough or Peterborough to the monotony of a long sea voyage. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... satisfactorily. He had hardly been in London a fortnight when he looked about him for work, and, nothing better offering, he engaged himself as washer-up at one of Veglio's many restaurants. After six weeks he was rescued from the uncongenial drudgery of scullion by a comrade, a fellow-Calabrian, who earned a good living as decorator of West-end cafes, and who took on Bonafede to assist him in frescoing a ceiling at the Trocadero, not, however, before ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... almost gone, and now all that they had looked for was to be given them. There was no man present who did not know that his ranch was worth treble what it had been a few days ago, or woman who could not see that henceforward there need be no more ceaseless drudgery. One, indeed, laughed inanely, clasping her hardened hands, and a dimness crept into eyes, more than one pair of eyes, from which the care that had long lurked ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... according as he was wanted or not wanted in the Patriarchal presence, and business had gone on in its customary course. Bleeding Heart Yard had been harrowed by Mr Pancks, and cropped by Mr Casby, at the regular seasons; Mr Pancks had taken all the drudgery and all the dirt of the business as his share; Mr Casby had taken all the profits, all the ethereal vapour, and all the moonshine, as his share; and, in the form of words which that benevolent beamer generally employed on Saturday evenings, when he twirled his fat thumbs after ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... 'prentice boys busy shutting up shop, and the work girls going home, and the shop folks peeping abroad, and the white 'buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home to their dinners, we part from him. He is back. To-morrow, the early rising, the dusting, and drudgery, begin again—but with a difference, with wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires and ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... revolution, Scott and Byron, were equally in revolt against conventional diction. Scott elevated ballad-poetry to a level which it had never before attained, and composed some of the most beautiful songs in the English language. If it be remembered that he was cramped by the drudgery of legal offices during the best years of his life, that he was nearly thirty when he made his first literary venture, that he was crippled by financial ruin and broken health during his later years, that his anonymous contributions to periodicals would ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... gained him some favour at Hanover, and he was sent on some political business to the German Courts. He then served Harley in Holland and Germany practically as a political spy. His later years were passed in literary drudgery and poverty. Among his numerous writings may be mentioned Account of Prussia and Hanover, Origines Judaicae, History of the Druids, and a Life of Milton prefixed to an ed. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... heart! Who wore it out with sensual drudgery Before it came to me? What warped its valves? It has been used; ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... seeped up through the soil and lay there, heavily. Oil! Weeks of suspense, weeks of disappointment, weeks of hope. Through it all Ma Barstow had washed, scrubbed, cooked as usual, and had looked after the welfare of the Barstow litter. Seventeen years of drudgery dull the imagination. When they struck the great gusher—it's still known as Barstow's Old Faithful—they came running to her with the news. She had been washing a great tubful of harsh greasy clothes—overalls, shirts, drawers. As the men came, shouting, she appeared in the doorway of the crazy ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... set to work to get pupils. He was obliged to ask the favours of many an important personage, to knock at many an inhospitable door. This unfortunate beginning, the almost mortal illness which he was only just recovering from, this forced drudgery—all that did not make him very fond of Rome. It seems quite plain that he never liked it, and till the end of his life he kept a grudge against it for the sorry reception it gave him. In the whole body of his writings it is impossible to find a word of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... the year following were given to hard and monotonous painting from nature while the weather permitted, and in the winter to working out clumsily the mysteries of picture-making, a work which, as I was without direction or any correct appreciation of what I had it in me to do, became a drudgery which I went through as an indispensable duty, but with no satisfaction. My larger studies from nature (25x30 inches) had attracted attention and had been hung on the line, getting for me the election to the Associateship of Design, and the appellation of the "American ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... getting rich that we forget that by and by, when we have become rich, we shall have to learn how to live; for work can never be an end in itself; it is a "means of grace" when it is not drudgery; and it must, in the long run, be a preparation for play. For play is not organized idleness, frivolity set in a fanciful order; it is the normal, spontaneous exercise of physical activity, the wholesome gayety of the mind, the natural expression of the spirit, without self-consciousness, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... the endless possibility of life on earth. She wanted her sons to be freer, to achieve a new plane of living. The peasant's life was a slave's life, she said, railing against the poverty and the drudgery. And it was quite true, Paolo and Giovanni worked twelve and fourteen hours a day at heavy laborious work that would have broken an Englishman. And there was nothing at the end of it. Yet Paolo was even happy so. This was ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... this table becomes a stupid thing, a dead thing, and an incubus upon the spirits of her pupils. To such a teacher mathematics is a lifeless thing, without hope or potency, the school is a mere convenience for the earning of a livelihood, the work is the drudgery of bondage, and the children are little less than an impertinence. The vitalized teacher is different. To her the multiplication table pulsates with life. It stretches forth its beneficent hand to give employment to a million workers, and food ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... academic education thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her children to take a still more responsible ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... listened to her,—and I often think it good for me to listen to her patiently,—the expressions you used in your letter, about "drudgery," occurred to me. I remember the time when I, too, deified the "soul's impulses." It is a noble worship; but, if we do not aid it by a just though limited interpretation of what "Ought" means, it will degenerate into idolatry. For a time it was so with me, and I am not ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... more useful; who make fair copies of foul manuscripts, give the signification of hard words, and take a great deal of other grammatical pains. The obligation to these men would be great indeed, if they were in general able to do anything better, and submitted to this drudgery for the sake of the public; as some of them, it must be owned with gratitude, have done, but not later, I think, than about the time of the resurrection of letters. When works of importance are pressing, generals themselves ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... Ivan's days began to be full: full of a dry work that contained many sources of keen interest to him. Certainly the greater part of it was the merest drudgery. Each afternoon he bent over a desk, laboriously copying manuscript music; meditating upon his morning of study at the Conservatoire; or seeking to hear the music the notes and signs of which he had been writing down. And this last exercise, idle ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... almost a briefless one at present, for his habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner, with a style that was like the stroke of a sledge-hammer. In spite of this literary work, for which he got very well paid, Mr. Saltram generally contrived ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... her sisters married a German husband in America some years ago, who kept her in great comfort, with a fine 'capull glas' ('grey horse') to ride on, and this girl has decided to escape in the same way from the drudgery of the island. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... missed this night patrol for a hundred thousand," he said inwardly—"and they say that the life of a patrolman is a monotonous drudgery." ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... Church, and being deluded by the sophistry of some Romish priests, he changed his religion for theirs[2], quitted his living, and taught a grammar school in the town of St. Alban's; which employment he finding an intolerable drudgery, and being of a fickle unsteady temper, he relinquished it, came up to London, and took lodgings in Gray's Inn, where he commenced a writer for the stage with tolerable success. He had the good fortune to gain several wealthy and beneficent ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... the prophet and the seer; but instead of being thrilled by the eager search for truth, our classes too often sit listless on the bench. It is not because the lecturer is dull, but because the pupils do not prize the end enough to relish the drudgery required for skill in any great pursuit, or indeed in any sport. To make them see the greatness of that end, how fully it deserves the price that must be paid for it, how richly it rewards the man who may compete for it, we must learn—and herein lies the secret—we ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... agreed to go. Claudia felt, it must be owned, a little disappointed at what she had heard from her friends, but was inclined to believe that between the old life at home and the drudgery for the bare means of existence there still lay many things which she could do. She revolved the subject in the course of a morning walk on the day they were to visit the club, and returned to the shelter of her aunts' home with something of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... in her rage she had been able on the previous evening to dismiss her titled lover, and to imply that she never meant to see him again, now, when the remembrance of the loss came upon her amidst her daily work,—when she could no longer console herself in her drudgery by thinking of the beautiful things that were in store for her, and by flattering herself that though at this moment she was little better than a maid of all work in a lodging-house, the time was soon coming in which she would bloom forth as a baronet's bride,—now in her ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... lessen the labour of those who wish to be thoroughly acquainted with their profession; and an attentive perusal of the following pages will save them much of the irksome drudgery attending an apprenticeship at the stove: an ordeal so severe, that few pass it without irreparable injury to their health;[58-*] and many lose their lives before ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... intellect, to seek knowledge rather than attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride, and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily, is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of beneficent labor, for ourselves and for our fellow men? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... are openest to the war-trumpet now. Ha! that is spirit-stirring!—that wakes up the old Revolutionary blood! Your manlier nature had been smothered under drudgery, the poor daily necessity for bread and butter. I want you to go down into this common, every-day drudgery, and consider if there might not be in it also a great warfare. Not a serfish war; not altogether ignoble, though even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... then," agreed Tom, much relieved, for he wanted to be pulling in the fish rather than doing the drudgery. "I'll look after these two holes, Jack, and you skirmish around the others. And by jinks! if I haven't got ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... on by some glittering reflex of Renown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed of innumerable observers. To no one of whom, however, though otherwise a most diligent solicitor and purveyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar courtierships were his paid drudgery, or leisure-amusement; the worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, voluntary business. Does not the frothy-hearted yet enthusiastic man, doffing his Advocate's wig, regularly take post, and hurry up to London, for the sake of his Sage chiefly; as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... croaking? The disconsolate tone in which you bade me farewell at Noble House, [The first stage on the road from Edinburgh to Dumfries via Moffat.] and mounted your miserable hack to return to your law drudgery, still sounds in my ears. It seemed to say, 'Happy dog! you can ramble at pleasure over hill and dale, pursue every object of curiosity that presents itself, and relinquish the chase when it loses interest; while I, your senior and your ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... interrupted by a few hours of attendance at the academic classes. From the ill-effects of such surroundings Odo was preserved by an intellectual curiosity that flung him ravening on his studies. It was not that he was of a bookish habit, or that the drudgery of the classes was less irksome to him than to the other pupils; but not even the pedantic methods then prevailing, or the distractions of his new life, could dull the flush of his first encounter with the past. His imagination ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... it is that I don't look forward with any interest to taking up the old drudgery again. Of course that loss of interest may be merely physical—I should call it so in a nervous patient, no doubt. But in myself it seems different—it seems to go to the roots of the world. You know it was always the imaginative side of my work that helped me over ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... the peasant manual labor is a small matter, especially if it serves to postpone the payment of interest due. And so Rigou, while requiring little premiums on each month's delay, squeezed a great deal of manual labor out of his debtors,—positive drudgery, to which they submitted thinking they gave little because nothing left their pockets. Rigou sometimes obtained in this way more than ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... the labour had been of a herculean character. He had spared himself no labour or drudgery which its prosecution involved. To accomplish it he had left his home and lived a semi-savage life for nearly three months, that he might perfect himself in the language. Without any special training for the important undertaking, and under the greatest disadvantages, he had not ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... notice and assistance than their gifted brethren, who are better able to make their own consequence felt and acknowledged; for it must not be forgotten that these honest, hard-working men actually perform the greater part of all the routine drudgery of the service, and perhaps execute it better than men of higher talents could ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... wear any covering or ornament on the head. They have a few bracelets of brass, but neither ear-rings nor nose-rings; and some, more lucky than the rest, wear a necklace of beads. They prefer the smallest Venetian beads to the larger and more gaudy ones of England. The labor of the house, and all the drudgery, falls on the females. They grind the rice, carry burdens, fetch water, fish, and work in the fields; but though on a par with other savages in this respect, they have many advantages. They are not immured; they eat in company with the males; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... not been entirely reserved for him, had accumulated in a supreme delight, been kept back, like the best of all presents, for the last. He was glad that it wasn't too late for him to enjoy it. Here, suddenly, intervening in the midst of a prosaic drudgery, a tepid and meaningless period, was a magnificent relief. By God, would he take advantage of it! Would he! There was a knock at the door, and the hotel valet hung a freshly pressed suit in the closet; the shoes into which he intended to change were in a perfection ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... light-hearted as a schoolboy just escaped from drudgery, while Bertie's Nellie, as a matter of course, was overcome ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... awful drudgery for a while,' he continued, almost in the confidential tones of yore. 'To have so much money, your uncle had the poorest way of doing business. He had the customers all under his thumb, and made them fetch and carry what they wanted themselves; in that way he saved a man's wages. I'm not giving ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... type-setting machines of great complexity, printing-presses of great size and cost, and much curious machinery in the departments of electrotyping and bookbinding; but these machines, intended to relieve the drudgery of monotonous manual labor, do not supplant the necessity for a higher skill in craftsmanship. They really make that ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... a good mechanic, particularly an operator, could make as much as seventy-five dollars a week, working about fifteen hours a day. However, during the first two or three weeks I was too much borne down by the cruelty of my drudgery to be interested in the luring rewards which it held out. Not being accustomed to physical exertion of any kind, I felt like an innocent man suddenly thrown into prison and put at hard labor. I was shocked. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... evidently did—bad as he was, set herself deliberately to marry him—a well-planned, mercenary marriage, by which she might raise herself out of her low station into a higher, and escape from the drudgery of labor into ease ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... masterless men are forcibly prevented from producing the food they need. And you, as an artist, can tell me that at present great artists invariably do starve, except when they are kept alive by charity, private fortune, or some drudgery which hinders them in the pursuit ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... had worked on board the barges plying up and down the canal and had occasionally been harnessed with other women to the towing rope of a pakschuyt plying between Broek and Amsterdam. But when Hans had grown strong and large, he had insisted on doing all such drudgery in her place. Besides, her husband had become so very helpless of late that he required her constant care. Although not having as much intelligence as a little child, he was yet strong of arm and very hearty, and Dame Brinker had sometimes great ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... was left behind, and the weather proved glorious as they sped on towards the tropics, both going through all the drudgery to be learned by Government men, in company with the ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... Silk Crape Petticoat, a White Shift and also a blue with her, and a mixt Blue and White Linsey Woolsey Apron." In 1728 the News Letter published an advertisement of a runaway Indian servant who, wearied by the round of domestic drudgery, adorned herself in borrowed finery and fled: "She wore off a Narrow Stript pinck cherredary Gown turned up with a little floured red and white Callico. A Stript Home-spun quilted petticoat, a plain muslin ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... is not myself that I have to bring forward, but simply to continue to write in perfect tranquillity and with a free mind. To do this obliges me to seclude myself, to avoid the salons, the half- opened pianos and the society drudgery imposed by the large towns, where I very easily feel myself ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... idleness while Laura Waynefleet toiled late and early at the lonely ranch. Again, he seemed to see her steady eyes with the quiet courage in them, and the gleam of her red-gold hair. Even then she was, he reflected, in all probability occupied with some severe drudgery. It was a thing he did not like to contemplate, and he almost resented the fact that Gordon should have brought such thoughts into his mind. His comrade had broken in upon his contentment like a frosty wind that stung him to ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... a sweetener of toil is love! love to a dear earthly parent, and still more love to Christ: there is no drudgery in the most menial employment where that is the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... may understand that I continue to write, as Tony Lumpkin says—not to please my good-natured friends, "but because I can't bear to disappoint myself;" for that which I commenced as an amusement, and continued as a drudgery, has ended in becoming a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... seemed, it was true indeed. Father worked. Mrs. Cadge wondered whether she, too, was to have a vacation, after her years of drudgery. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... Receiver- General, into his office, St. John street, at $600 per annum. This house was afterwards occupied by a Mrs. Stinson (I think as a boarding-house); sold to Judge Aylwin, who left it by will to his nephew, Robt S. Bradley, who now owns it. James Allsop did not like the drudgery of Mr. Hale's office, who sent him to England with a recommendation to the late Duke of Kent, asking for a Paymastership. There were difficulties at first, he not being considered old enough; but at last he was gazetted to one in the 1st Batt., 44th Regt., and this Battalion was ordered ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... upon the cross. St. Augustine, in like wise, though he would gladly have lived and died doing nothing but fixing his soul's eye steadily on the glory of God's goodness, had to come down from the mount likewise, and work, and preach, and teach, and wear himself out in daily drudgery for that God whom he learnt to serve, even when he could not adore Him in the press of business, and the bustle of a ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... "I'm my own master. Why, I can't begin to fill the request for 'stuff.' I can go where I please, do as I please. At last I shall work. For I don't call the drudgery done under compulsion work." ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... she, with great firmness. And—in spite of the fact that little Renee begged and pleaded—he was forced to give up his idea of seafaring life for the dry drudgery and routine of a clerk at law. He was now about ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... posterity, without being pestered by the small but countless botherments, which, like mosquitoes, sting us in the world of work-day toil. That hope and herself are gone—she to wither into patiently pining decline—it to make room for drudgery." It is all sordid as well as terrible. We have no right to know these things. Mrs. Oliphant is almost justified in her protest against Charlotte as the first to betray ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... eldest, almost her own age, could only read with difficulty words of two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their comprehension. In the long vista of future years she saw nothing but dreary drudgery at her detested old trade without ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... like something that he had lost and would never find again. It made him dissatisfied, fickle, and resentful. He went back to his college work with a temper which handicapped him in everything. His lessons seemed like the dullest drudgery to one who felt sure that he had in him the making of a poet or a musician, he did not quite know which—perhaps it was both. The fellowship of the other boys, with its rude and hearty democracy, streaked with funny little social prejudices and ambitions, was a ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... requires so much time and energy that, in spite of good intentions, the thinking is postponed for a more convenient season until it constitutes an insignificant part of study, while memorizing, the drudgery of study becomes ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... blended from extreme to extreme. Hence by a sequence of ideas which might be traced if it were worth while, he either detested or respected opinion, and instinctively sought to escape a cold shade that mere sensitiveness would have endured. He could have submitted to separation, sickness, exile, drudgery, hunger and thirst, with stoical indifference, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... credit, and what remains? I do not ask what remains to the few, but to the many? Take away this system of credit, and then tell me what is left for labor and industry, but mere manual toil and daily drudgery? If we adopt a system that withdraws capital from active employment, do we not diminish the rate of wages? If we curtail the general business of society, does not every laboring man find his condition grow daily worse? In the politics of the day, Sir, we hear ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... thought much about it before, I always hated it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It was just drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd like to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... made an end of his story he charmed her into sleep, for Ariel was at hand, and he had work for him to do. Ariel, who longed for his complete freedom, grumbled to be kept in drudgery, but on being threateningly reminded of all the sufferings he had undergone when Sycorax ruled in the land, and of the debt of gratitude he owed to the master who had made those sufferings to end, he ceased to complain, and promised faithfully to do whatever ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... we know The homeliest thing that mankind does is so. The world is of a large extent we see, And must be peopled; children there must be: 30 So must bread too; but since there are enow Born to that drudgery, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... taskmaster, but a benefactor, lavish of favours? What matters it that he has in charge things of trust and moment which, by miscarrying, will work distress to many? What matters it that others are about him, engaged in this same drudgery of doing one's duty, to whom, should he succeed in villainy as he trusts to do, his example will remain, a wrecker's light to entice the storm-tossed upon a rocky shore? What matters it,—I am told, gentlemen, that the prisoner has a good and industrious sister,—what ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... remark that such expressions as these are neither to be taken as evidences of a passing disgust for the drudgery of text-book tasks, nor as signs of an indolent disposition. They are the assertion of a principle which Father Hecker maintained throughout his life. He never felt the least interest in studies not undertaken as a result of some supernatural impulse, or pursued in view of some supernatural aim. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... of the Solway hills in front. But in the "winter wind," girt by drifts of snow, no post or apothecary within fifteen miles, it may be dreary enough. Here Carlyle allowed his wife to serve him through six years of household drudgery; an offence for which he was never quite forgiven, and to estimate its magnitude here seems the proper place. He was a model son and brother, and his conjugal fidelity has been much appraised, but he was as unfit, and for some of the same reasons, to make "a happy fireside clime" as was Jonathan ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... gentleman; certainly not for literary men and people of culture. They think it will pay them better to run their wretched sheets for the proletariat. We shall see. Oh, I am better out of it, of course. I see that clearly; and I am thankful to be clear of their drudgery.' (My listening mind brightened.) 'But yet—there's your education to be thought of. Expenses are—And, of course—H'm!' (Clouds shadowed my outlook once more.) 'This pitiful anxiety to cling to the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... at the bottom of all. And on the other hand, a nail ill driven, a joint ill fitted, a tracing clumsily done, anything to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, moved him to shame and anger. With such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at Fairbairn's. There would be something daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practised scales, impatient of his own imperfection, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... water, and then papa gets out a Greek book and translates to me. Sometimes I listen to the sea, instead of to him, and go to sleep. But he doesn't mind. He is looking better, but work is loading up for him again as soon as we get back to Oxford about a week from now. If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the things he loves. Nobody knows what a mind he has. He is not only a scholar—he is a poet. He could write things as beautiful as Mr. Pater's, but his life ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... deepening of the child's interest in that work which in some form or other he will have with him always, is the quickening of the mother's own interest in what may have come to seem to her mere daily drudgery. Any woman who undertakes to perform so simple an operation as dish-washing with the help of a bright happy child, asking sixteen questions to the minute, will find that common-place operation full of possibilities; and if she will answer ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... the nation; For which she's fortify'd no less Than all the island, with four seas; Exacts the tribute of her dower, in ready insolence and power; 600 And makes him pass away to have And hold, to her, himself, her slave, More wretched than an ancient villain, Condemn'd to drudgery and tilling; While all he does upon the by, 605 She is not bound to justify, Nor at her proper cost and charge Maintain the feats he does at large. Such hideous sots were those obedient Old vassals to their ladies regent; 610 To ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... heavy work and drudgery about camp, and it troubled Bob not a little to see them working while the men were idle. Several times he attempted to help them, but his efforts were met with such a storm of protestations and disapproval, not only ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... machine has taken away much of the drudgery of home sewing, but its use does not lessen the need of skill in hand work. No machine can finish ends of belts, collars, sew on trimmings, fastenings, and like work and the finish has much to do with the ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... no difficulty in procuring a temporary post in a lawyer's office as a clerk. The drudgery was terrible. Daily, from nine in the morning to six in the evening, he found himself chained to the desk, and obliged to go through the dullest and most mechanical routine, the only respite being half an hour in the middle of the day, which he spent in dining at an eating-house. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... had become closer. This one woman filled many human relationships for him—mother, sister, friend, lover, and wife in one. The boarding-house had come to be an affair of transients and young clerks, so that all her time that could be spared from the drudgery of housekeeping was spent in the studio. Slowly he became amenable to her ever-present devotion, and even, in his way, thoughtful for her. And she was ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick



Words linked to "Drudgery" :   toil, labour, grind, drudge, labor, plodding



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