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adjective
Difficult  adj.  
1.
Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous. Note: Difficult implies the notion that considerable mental effort or skill is required, or that obstacles are to be overcome which call for sagacity and skill in the agent; as, a difficult task; hard work is not always difficult work; a difficult operation in surgery; a difficult passage in an author. "There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone."
2.
Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn; as, a difficult person.
Synonyms: Arduous; painful; crabbed; perplexed; laborious; unaccommodating; troublesome. See Arduous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Difficult" Quotes from Famous Books



... difficult to accurately determine by a comparative trial the relative feeding properties of mangels and turnips, for the former are only in a fit state to be given to the animals when the latter are deteriorating. However, by comparing the ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... rode, or by the camp fire at evening, still questioned him now and then about his castle; and sometimes he almost seemed to contradict himself, but in so vast a castle may have been many styles of architecture, and it was difficult to trace a contradiction among all those towers and turrets. His name was ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... cherished ties of earth were assumed. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you, my friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me I cannot prevail; but if the same almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me I shall ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... powers of different men, in that respect, after they are grown up, because their minds have been more or less exercised in it: and I think the same cause will explain the difference of excellence in other things, gradations admitting always some difference in the first principles[1280].' This is a difficult subject; but it is best to hope that diligence may do a great deal. We are sure of what it can do, in increasing our mechanical ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the Lancashire Fusiliers, the Royal Lancaster Regiment, two companies of the South Lancashires, and Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry. Guided by Colonel Thorneycroft the force made its way successfully up the southern spur of the mountain, over most difficult and dangerous ground, and surprised the Boers guarding the entrenchments on the summit. At three o'clock those listening in the plain heard the sudden outburst of musketry, followed by the loud cheers of the troops, and knew that the position had been carried. Ten soldiers were killed ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... and having found it, proceeded to relight the tiny tallow dip. It was a difficult proceeding for the tinder was damp, and the breeze, though very slight in this hollow portion of the cliffs, nevertheless was an enemy to a trembling ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... appear to be, that the lofty manner in which she greeted him apparently went unnoticed. He met her with a warm handclasp and anxious inquiries about how she felt after all the exciting events. Too filled with eagerness to know all the details of his adventures she had found it difficult to maintain her pose, and soon was seated cosily beside him, asking him question after question, all the while furtively studying him in his proper role. As Frederic Hoff she had thought him wonderfully handsome and masterful. As Captain Sir Frederic Seymour, in his regimental finery, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... the copious discharge of its air. This is also the reason why beer and ale froth so much in vacuo. I do not doubt, therefore, but that, by the help of a condensing engine, water might be much more highly impregnated with the virtues of the Pyrmont spring; and it would not be difficult to contrive ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... there," he digressed suddenly, "to thank you for what you did. I wish to do so now." He was looking at the other squarely, as the smart civilian observes the derelict who has saved his life in a runaway. Already, there under the stars, it was difficult to credit to the full that fantastic scene of an hour ago; and unconsciously a trace of the real man, of condescension, crept into the tone. "You helped me out of a nasty mess, and I ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... believer that God rules heaven and earth, and that God, the Judge, is also Father and Redeemer. The religion of the Gospel is the religion which makes the highest moral demands, the simplest and the most difficult, and discloses the contradiction in which every man finds himself towards them. But it also procures redemption from such misery, by drawing the life of men into the inexhaustible and blessed life of Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world and ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... town, chatting away to all the people he meets, and I fear is both ignorant himself of what he is about and involuntarily deceiving others too; he is in a fool's paradise. I spoke to Henry de Ros about this last night, who seemed by no means aware of it, and it is difficult to believe that Lyndhurst and Harrowby should not be perfectly alive to all the consequences of Wharncliffe's proceedings, or that they would sanction them if they had really the tendency that George Bentinck gives me ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... upon her husband, her expression a mixture of defiance and appeal. Burton welcomed them both calmly. His tongue failed him, however, when he tried to embark upon the most ordinary form of greeting. Their appearance gave him again a most unpleasant shock, a fact which he found it extremely difficult to conceal. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to teaching the natives of the country to read their own languages in the Roman character. No Arab has ever attempted to teach them the Arabic-Koran, they are called guma, hard, or difficult as to religion. This is not wonderful, since the Koran is never translated, and a very extraordinary desire for knowledge would be required to sustain a man in committing to memory pages and chapters of, to him, unmeaning gibberish. One only ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... which Ardworth had had the precaution to have burned into the child's wrist, the lost son had been discovered; the nurse herself (found in the person of Martha Skeggs, Lucretia's own servant) had been confronted with the woman to whom she gave the child, and recognized at once. Nor had it been difficult to obtain from her the confession which completed ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was not so clear now, for fleecy clouds began to sail across it and made the search more difficult, as we clambered on over the shale, which in the steepest parts gave way under our feet. But I determinedly climbed on, sure that if I got very high up I should be able to look down and see where Uncle Dick ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... could not help feeling an intense hatred of the Mexicans. He was on the battle line, and he saw what they were doing. He resolved that now was his time to escape, and in the great turmoil caused by the excitement and rejoicing in San Antonio he did not believe that it would be difficult. ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... secondly, the Duke of Cumberland, brother of the king. Of her Walpole wrote: "There was something so bewitching in her languishing eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as difficult to resist it." And here was another widow who captivated royalty, Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was a daughter of Walter Smythe of Bambridge, Hampshire, and married, first, Edward Weld, secondly, Thomas Fitzherbert of Synnerton, Staffordshire (who ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... replies to her parents, when no visitor imposed a check on the family circle, inconceivably pained Evelyn, and greatly contrasted the flow of spirits which distinguished her when she found somebody worth listening to. Still Evelyn—who, where she once liked, found it difficult to withdraw regard—sought to overlook Caroline's blemishes, and to persuade herself of a thousand good qualities below the surface; and her generous nature found constant opportunity of venting itself in costly ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... believe it will be well," answers the king, "and thither thou shalt go upon my errand, to proclaim Christianity there." Leif replied that the king should decide, but gave it as his belief that it would be difficult to carry this mission to a successful issue in Greenland. The king replied that he knew of no man who would be better fitted for this undertaking, "and in thy hands the cause will surely prosper." "This can only be," ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... of apology, he said, afterwards, while shaking the sand out of his shoes, "It is difficult to preserve the serenity of the class-room under conditions so very dissimilar. I understand now why the golf-playing parson swears in a bunker. It is not right, but it is very human. It is the recrudescence of the old Adam, the response of humanity ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... (Father Philip) that the only way to obtain help from the Holy See was by His Majesty's return to the Catholic Church. He answered that such a step would be extremely difficult at present, not because the King had any dislike to Catholicism, neither did he wish to prevent Catholics from saving their souls; but that it was evident if he changed his religion just now, he would run great ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... a Porringer, and letting it stand a little, melt a little fresh, and as soon as it is liquid, pour into it, by gentle degrees, at times, some of the Butter that was oil'd before, keeping your Sauce-pan shaking all the while; and if you find it any way difficult to be recovered, pour in a little Milk, and shake them together, and it will recover. Memorandum, A Sauce-pan that is very thin at the Bottom is apt to oil Butter, let ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... It is not difficult to understand why ice should take more room; for we know that if we were to try to arrange bricks end to end in star-like shapes, we must leave some spaces between, and could not pack them so closely as if they lay side by side. And so, ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... shrinks from no measures, however harsh, which seem necessary for constructing and preserving the Communist State. He spares himself as little as he spares others. He works sixteen hours a day, and foregoes his Saturday half-holiday. He volunteers for any difficult or dangerous work which needs to be done, such as clearing away piles of infected corpses left by Kolchak or Denikin. In spite of his position of power and his control of supplies, he lives an austere life. He is not pursuing personal ends, but aiming at the creation of a new social ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... superior to the first two, inasmuch as they show mastery of a more difficult form. But their appeal is not so great; there is lacking a something that might be inspiration, personal sympathy—some indefinable essential that the author himself has taught us to expect. They are less hamsunsk than most ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... Christmas Numbers of the numerous picture-papers it is at first rather difficult to discover which is the genuine article illustrated, and which the advertisement, likewise illustrated. In the outside picture of the Christmas Number of The Penny Illustrated Paper, which represents a couple dancing together, I am not yet quite sure that the handsome Hebraic gentleman, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... probably the protoplasm out of which both ballad and folk-tale have been differentiated, the ballad by omitting the narrative prose, the folk-tale by expanding it. In "Childe Rowland" we have the nearest example to such protoplasm, and it is not difficult to see how it could have been shortened into a ballad or reduced to a prose folk-tale ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... the manufacture both of wool and cotton to cheapen the fabric. The vigilant eye will often detect it in woollen manufactures, in shawls, and even in sail-cloths; but when spun with cotton or wool, it is very difficult to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... when I try to recall exactly the steps that led up to the catastrophe, I find it difficult to see things clearly. I remember that very quickly I was conscious that there was danger in the air. I was conscious of it first in the eyes of Semyonov, those steady, watching, relentless eyes so aloof as to ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... against a very meagre and insufficient background of the history of the times. So it may be permissible to begin with a general outline of his figure, to be filled in, shaded, and colored as we proceed. At best our task is much more difficult of satisfactory achievement (p. 013) than an historical biography ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... remained concealed in order to escape observation, and to allow the strange Indians to go far enough away so that they could proceed without being molested. Which way to journey next was a difficult question to them, but as it would be quite impossible to cross the barren, rocky hills before them, they finally determined to go down the stream until they came to the terminus of the hills that ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... call, and by this means, with the assistance of the way-baits, they call them out of their holes, and lead them to the repast prepared for them at the place designed for taking them. But this is much more difficult to be practised than the art of trailing; for the learning the exact notes, or cries, of any kind of beasts or birds, so as to deceive them, is a peculiar talent, not easily attained to in other cases. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... and vnfaythfull. Whiche when I remember doe prouoke me to be bolde to declare vnto you mine entent, whiche by youre onely worde you may procure, the fruite whereof being gotten, you shall winne the heart of a king, to be vsed as you liste for euer. And the more the thing shal seeme harde, difficult or painefull, the greater shall your merite be, and the more firmely shall he be bounde, whiche doth receive it. Consider then my Lorde, howe profitable it is, to haue a king at your commaundement. You haue also foure sonnes, whom you cannot honourably ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... It is difficult to spoil a human being, entirely, who has spent the first ten years of life under pure domestic influences. Chester's daughter had carried a heart of gold to the Alms House, and she brought all this wealth away; but she was an impulsive, sensitive girl, and if Mrs. Farnham had ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... for its hide, was hardly worth faking home; as the flesh of the serow is very coarse, and poor eating. For all that, the animal is eagerly hunted by the natives of the Himalayas; partly because it is not difficult to come up with, and partly that these poor people are not very epicurean in ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... desired to disobey but dared not, besides Helen was the least dangerous of the three. What could she want, he considered queruously. He hadn't had a minute's peace since he came home. Madelene was in a state of tears nearly all the time; his brother-in-law, dictatorial, difficult even in his milder moods, seemed secretive and suspicious. As far as he was concerned, he kept from the house as much as possible, but this only provoked to a greater degree his young wife's tears and complaints. Only this morning, he had been treated to ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... distribution of power, and one which tends to maintain and perpetuate itself. The professional politician is frequently beaten and is being vigorously fought; but he himself understands how necessary he is under the existing local political organization, and how difficult it will be to dislodge him. Beaten though he be again and again, he constantly recovers his influence, because he is performing a necessary political task and because he is genuinely representative of the needs of his followers. Organizations such as Tammany in New York ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... Book and Job Office started with fair prospects. Henry Clemens and a boy named Dick Hingham were the assistants, and somewhat later, when brother Sam came up from St. Louis on a visit, an offer of five dollars a week and board induced him to remain. Later, when it became increasingly difficult to pay the five dollars, Orion took his brother into partnership, which perhaps relieved the financial stress, though the office methods would seem to have left something to be desired. It is about at this point that the first of the two letters mentioned was written. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... It is difficult for a European, or an American, who has not visited Egypt, to realize the conception of a Great Pyramid. The pyramidal form has gone entirely out of use as an architectural type of monumental perfection; nay, even as an architectural embellishment. It maintained an honourable ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... introduction to him Maggie had felt that there was something commanding in his manner, something she could not disobey; and now, though she fancied it was impossible to play before that multitude, she seated herself mechanically, and while the keys swam before her eyes, went through with a difficult piece which she had never ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... every one could see how crooked and bent were the branches that sprang forth from the trunk. Crows and rooks came by turns and sat on them, and talked of the hard times which were beginning, and how difficult it was in winter ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... pulled up at the chief inn, and changed horses; all being done so readily that their advent had plainly been expected. The journey was resumed immediately. Her companion never descended to speak to her; whenever she looked out there he sat upright on his perch, with the mien of a person who had a difficult duty to perform, and who meant to perform it properly at all costs. But Margery could not help feeling a certain dread at her situation—almost, indeed, a wish that she had not come. Once or twice she thought, 'Suppose he is a wicked man, who is ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy

... in the extended position of the joint may be sometimes rendered very difficult by the density, firmness, and extensive hypertrophy of the bones, which become fused into one solid mass. Any attempt to isolate the bones, and remove the anchylosed joint entire, by incising the bones as if for disease, will both prove ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... economy. The World Bank and other international financial institutions estimate the grey economy to be at least equal to that of the official economy. The actual size of this grey - largely cash - economy is difficult to calculate since the money does not pass through the hands of tax authorities or the banking sector. Remittances from Mongolians working abroad both legally and illegally constitute a sizeable portion. Money laundering is growing as an accompanying concern. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... is not easily shaken off, nor is any fear so difficult to combat and defeat as the fear of the invisible. The terrors which food and drink had for a time thrust out presently returned with sevenfold force. Men looked uneasily in one another's faces, and from them to the haze which veiled all distant objects. They muttered of the heat, which was ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... the mind to the contemplation of a single image or idea, bringing the attention back whenever it wanders, killing each irrelevant thought as it arises, as one might kill a rat coming out of a hole. This turning of the mind back on itself is difficult, but I know of nothing that "pays" so well, and I have never found any one who conscientiously practised it who did not confirm this view. The point is, that if a man acquires the ability to concentrate ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... believes he was the Joe he tells you about, and his face grows purple, and his glassy eyes dart fire out of their baggy flesh, if you insinuate never so delicately that one of his stories is in the very smallest detail just a little difficult of belief. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... an almost perfect horror in the attempted slaughter of the boy Smallbones by the hag mother of Vanslyperken; the lad's reversal of the situation and his plunging a bayonet into the wrinkled throat, makes the chapter an accomplishment difficult to displace. Remember it?" ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... accepted without investigation and delay. In the days when old Judge De Willoughby had walked through the streets of Delisleville, ostracized and almost hooted as he passed among those who had once been his friends, it would not have been difficult to prove that he was loyal to the detested Government, but in these later times, when the old man lay quiet in what his few remaining contemporaries still chose to consider a dishonoured grave, undeniable proof of a loyalty which now would tend to the honour ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... were pawns on a chessboard. They appeared like it; one thought that they realized it. Their individual intelligence and democracy had reasoned out the value of obedience and homogeneity, rather than accepted it as the dictum of any war lord. Difficult to think that 'each one had left a vacancy at a family board; difficult to think that all were not automatons in a process of endless routine of war; but not difficult to learn that they were Frenchmen once we had thrown our bombs in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... more from Robin than that. I suppose I am a typical specimen of Conservative officialdom. Until Robin came into my house it had never occurred to me to ask myself why I was a Conservative: I had been born one, and it was difficult for me to understand how any man of ordinary intelligence could be ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... "He's difficult. Twice he has nearly betrayed me. As I told you in the car, I gave him some experimental work to do and he brought the result to me—that was the sample which fell into ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... Brahmins. He arrived in safety at Adule, the port on the Red Sea in latitude 15 deg., now known as Zula, where he made acquaintance with Moses, the bishop of that city, and persuaded him to join him in his distant and difficult voyage. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... regeneration of the essential tissue elements to "carry on"; the secreting tissue is gradually replaced by connective tissue and the special function comes to an end. Even such temporary function may, however, tide a patient over a difficult period. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... shed human blood; how easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle; how much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind; how difficult and how noble it is to govern in kindness and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection! But what do men call vigour? To let loose hussars and to bring up artillery, to govern ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... bible, were various kinds—some could speak and hear, others were deaf and dumb. All could not be cast out in the same way. The deaf and dumb spirits were quite difficult to deal with. St. Mark tells of a gentleman who brought his son to Christ. The boy, it seems, was possessed of a dumb spirit, over which the disciples had no control. "Jesus said unto the spirit: 'Thou dumb and deaf spirit. I charge thee come out of him, and enter no more into him.'" Whereupon, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... left with a difficult point to settle, for it was hard for me to say whether it was better that I should do that which I had come for, or whether, by holding this man's guilty secret, I might not have in my hand a keener and more deadly weapon than ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I've done more difficult things than that. I'm going to take it apart now, and see what ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton

... English language is confessedly very difficult to be mastered. Its rules and their exceptions are so numerous, that few become thoroughly acquainted with any general system of them. Nor, among the different systems which have been published, is there any which is worthy in all respects to be accounted ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... to the fear, That in my heart's recesses deep had lain, All of that night, so pitifully pass'd: And as a man, with difficult short breath, Forespent with toiling, 'scap'd from sea to shore, Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits, That none hath pass'd and liv'd. My ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary

... stage of the arts by which men cope with the struggle for existence. If a territory is underpopulated, an increase in numbers increases the output and the dividend per capita. If it is overpopulated, the food quest is difficult and children cause hardship to the parents. On the other hand, the demand for children will be great, if the group has strong neighbors and needs warriors. The demand may be greater for boys than for girls, or contrariwise. Girls may be needed in ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... word and touch of his master, and jolted down the steep road, and Nell followed slowly. She was rather pale, as he had noticed, but she was not frightened. In all her uneventful life nothing so exciting, so disturbing had happened as this accident. It was difficult to realize it, to realize that a great strong man had been cast helpless at her feet, that she had had his head on her lap; she looked down at the patch on her dress and shuddered. Was she glad or ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... of subject nationalities against a dominant power, as in Greece, Italy, the Caucasus, India, and Ireland; and the rising of subjects against their own Government, as in France, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, or in England in the case of the Suffragettes. It is difficult to say which kind is the more detested and punished with the greater severity by the central authority attacked. Was the Nationalist rising in the Caucasus or the Baltic Provinces suppressed with greater brutality than the almost simultaneous rising of Russian subjects in Moscow? I witnessed all ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... LUNGVILLE.—If Sieyes and others expected that Napoleon would merely direct military operations from Paris, they were soon undeceived. Massena was at the head of the army in Italy, and found it most difficult to hold Genoa against the Austrians. Moreau was at the head of the army in Germany. Apart from other reasons for taking the field in person, it would not have been safe for the new ruler of France to allow himself to be eclipsed in military fame by Moreau. Napoleon, as usual veiling ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... widow, it was not probable that they would begin to do so. They lived too much asunder to be able to fall into that kind of intercourse which makes confidence between sisters almost a necessity; moreover, that which is so easy at eighteen is often very difficult at twenty-eight. Mrs. Grantly knew this, and did not, therefore, expect confidence from her sister; yet she longed to ask her whether in real truth Mr. Slope ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... admiration may be the acuteness, the common sense, the wit, the broad humanity, which abound in the writings of the best of the free-thinkers; there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation. I do not think any impartial judge will assert that, from this point of view, they are much better than their adversaries. It must be admitted that they share to the full the fatal weakness of a ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... more breeding to be sein then in some of our Contesses in Scotland. For their frinesse[200] ennemy to a retired sullen nature they are commended be all; none wt whom a person may move easily and sooner make his acquaintance then wt them, and yet as they say wery difficult to board; the Englishwomen being plat contrary. They wil dance wt him, theyle laugh and sport wt him, and use al innocent freedome imaginable, and this rather wt strangers then ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... very difficult getting on in the world," sighed a weary snail; "very difficult indeed, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... experience that I enjoyed, and he may either be enlightened or confounded. The Geologist will find himself throughout the journey in Central Africa among primitive rocks. The Naturalist will travel through a grass jungle that conceals much that is difficult to obtain: both he and the Sportsman will, I trust, accompany me on a future occasion through the "Nile tributaries from Abyssinia," which country is prolific in all that is interesting. The Philanthropist,—what shall I promise ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... to find his publisher before he begins to write. Yet it is actually such a disability under which the unproved and often the proved actor must labour. Unless some one engages him to act, and provides an audience for him, he has no opportunity of showing his powers. And such opportunities are difficult to find, unless you are a dissolute young lord, or belong to one of the traditional theatrical families,—whose members are brought up to the stage, as the sons of a lawyer are brought up to law. For the avenues to the stage are blocked by perhaps ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... rather a difficult tree to graft, and budding, on the other hand, is quite easy. You can bud into new shoots of this season's growth in July, and, if necessary, you can improve the slipping of the bark by irrigation a few days before ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... landed, and seeing that the steepness of the bank would make it a difficult task to carry the canoes up—if indeed there was room to spare above—they tied them in a bunch to the roots of the tree. Then stripping off their shoes and stockings, they waded about in the shallow ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... something unknown with that which is known, and form a common notion of both of them. Like the child who is learning his letters, the soul recognizes some of the first elements of things; and then again is at fault and unable to recognize them when they are translated into the difficult language of facts. Let us, then, take an example, which will illustrate the nature of example, and will also assist us in characterizing the political science, and in separating the ...
— Statesman • Plato

... of dark-red colour; and the higher we ascended, the more difficult we found the progress to be. At length all farther advance seemed impossible, till, on looking round, we observed an excavation for a well, with masonry around it; and beyond this were steps cut into the rock, which rock was sloped at an angle of between ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... be said about the serrated edges of masses, like those of trees seen against the sky. These are very difficult to treat, and almost every landscape painter has a different formula. The hard, fussy, cut-out, photographic appearance of trees misses all ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... clear without the aid of a map showing contours of all ridges and hollows is very difficult, and one can only attempt to give in words a rough idea of the general position. If the reader will bear in mind what a horse's hoof inverted looks like, he may get a mental picture of Ladysmith and its surroundings—the heels of the horse-shoe pointing ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... the passing carriages indifferently enough, supposing that his own liveries would presently loom up in the long line of high-seated coachmen and lacqueys, and having no especial desire to see them. His position when in Corona's company grew every day more difficult, and he thought as he stood by the stone pillar at the corner that he would on the whole be glad if she did not come. He was egregiously mistaken in himself, however. As the minutes passed he grew uneasy, and watched the advancing carriages with a feverish ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... more difficult; the boy, now grown to a man, and seeming to grow older and stronger before their very eyes, twice forced Arthur to the ground either with hip or shoulder, but never with both, while the crowd closed in breathlessly around; and the half-blind old Druid, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... add that it is, moreover, difficult to comprehend what advantage could have resulted from such a measure, since it could not evidently have produced the effect which the President declares that he had in view, of enabling him to state at the opening ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... one, I wander some miles up the mountains ere discovering my mistake. Retracing my way, the right road is finally taken; but the gale increases in violence, the cold is numbing to unprotected hands and ears, and the wind and driving snow difficult to face. At one point the trail leads through a morass, in which are two dead horses, swamped in attempting to cross, and near by lies an abandoned camel, lying in the mud and wearily munching at ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... from the southward, I was struck with astonishment, and it appeared quite a mystery that so great a number of lives could have been saved; and indeed it will never cease to be so, for that part on which the crew landed is so difficult of access, that (even in fine weather) after being placed by a boat on a rock at the base, it required considerable strength and agility, with the assistance of a man-rope, to climb the precipitous face of ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... been some conversation on that terribly difficult question respecting the foxes in Trumpeton Wood. "The fact is, Lord Chiltern," said the Duke, "I'm as ignorant as a child. I would do right if I knew how. What ought I to do? Shall ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... scales, arpeggios, the studies of Czerny and Cramer are unnecessary. I have not practiced them for some years, but pray do not think that I attempt to go without exercises. These exercises I make by selecting difficult parts of famous pieces and practicing them over and over. I find the concertos of Hummel particularly valuable in this connection, and there are parts of some of the Beethoven concertos that make splendid musical exercises that I can practice without the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... It would be difficult to do justice to the feeling displayed by Paul, even were I to repeat all he said, his piety, his gratitude, and his joy. He could talk of nothing else during the night. He seemed to be insensible to hunger and ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston

... of them in the person of the Roman emperor that the very tradition of civic autonomy, as it existed in ancient Greece, had become extinct. This difference between the political basis of Teutonic and of Graeco-Roman civilization is one of which it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance; and when thoroughly understood it goes farther, perhaps, than anything else towards accounting for the successive failures of the Greek and Roman political systems, and towards inspiring us with confidence in the future stability of the political system which ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... Her arms and shoulders, perfect in form, seemed models, in the midst of the rosy and virgin snow which covered the neighboring mountains. She was truly superb and bewitching. The Parisian world respected as much as it admired her, for she played her difficult part of young bride to an old man so perfectly as to avoid scandal. Without any pretence of extraordinary devotion, she knew how to join to her worldly pomps the exercise of charity, and all the other practices of an elegant piety. Madame de la Roche-Jugan, who watched her closely, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... a single moment suspect that she was a widow, for not only was she so young, but looked even younger. That her husband had worshipped her was not difficult of belief, and that she had been to him a kind, fond wife was indisputable;—her gratitude for his kindness and his self-sacrifices to secure her happiness had been such, that if she did not love him with the blind infatuation of youth's fond dream, she respected ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... more simple, more easy of comprehension, is, to my mind, difficult of conception. Why, children in our homes and schools may be taught the truth, and grasp it in its concrete form, and that is the highest test of the simplicity ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... things that were almost second nature. He could not love the girl as a good woman should be loved, and—and—well, the gray eyes that had their strength because of supreme honesty would surely bring him disquietude. It would indeed be difficult to change his nature much; his habits were almost like leopard's spots; they were grown into the woof of his existence. Even if he won her it must be almost entirely because of a superior diplomacy. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... finds himself overlapped on both flanks. He throws Ayres's regular brigade out on his left, and the One Hundred and Forty-sixth New York on his right. His position is difficult, but he determines to hold ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... which I call is not made: if a vast system of local franchise, if provincial institutions, largely independent and conformable to the modern spirit, are not soon established to yield fresh blood for our exhausted veins, and to fertilize our impoverished soil. Undoubtedly the work will be difficult and complicated; it will demand a firm resolute hand, but the hand that may accomplish it will have achieved the most patriotic work of the century. Tell that to your sovereign, Monsieur Sub-prefect; say to him that if he do that, there is one old French heart that will bless ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... One of the most difficult things to account for in regard to this codex is the immense number of numeral characters it contains, many of which appear to have no reference to day or other ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas

... without its significance that the most highly civilized of states have, under the pressure of economic advance, come to adopt the institution of slavery in its most degraded forms; that the problem of property and poverty may present itself as most pressing and most difficult of solution where national wealth has grown to enormous proportions. The body politic may be most prosperous from a material point of view, and at the same time, considered from the point of view of the moralist, thoroughly rotten ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... he spoke I could hear him creeping steadily upward. It soon became evident that his progress was growing slower, more difficult. Then all sounds above me ceased, and I knew he must have ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... although she did not seem particularly happy when she was with Polly, certainly she never left her side unless she were compelled to do her share of the camp work and only then when Polly insisted upon it. Already Miss McMurtry felt that Sylvia might become difficult, but then the child had had no training, and besides Miss McMurtry shared the belief of almost all other persons that Sylvia was simply stupid. Curiously enough Eleanor Meade now appeared to have been invited into the first Woodford ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... above-mentioned proposal, did, nevertheless, express its readiness to apply to the State of Maine for the assent of that State to the adoption of another conventional line, which should make the river St. John from its source to its mouth the boundary between the two countries. But it is difficult to understand upon what grounds any expectation could have been formed that such a proposal could be entertained by the British Government, for such an arrangement would give to the United States even greater advantages than they would obtain by an unconditional acquiescence in their claim to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that ariseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... and for the most part he devises deceitful ways, whereby the more easily to obtain his end. Nevertheless it happens sometimes that evil is done openly and by violence without craftiness and guile; but as this is more difficult, it is of less ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... the ground, the mode of attack, are told as variously and confusedly, as if it had been a contest between two great armies, instead of a handful of men on either side. It would seem that truth is nowhere so difficult to come at, as ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... means that He could have yielded had He so chosen. That He did not meant real struggle on His part. Not, of course, that He ever wanted to yield to what was wrong, but temptation was never so subtle, and doing the right never made so difficult as for Him. He suffered in being tempted.[13] His sinlessness meant a decision, then many a time a moist brow, a clenched hand, and set jaw, a sore stress of spirit, and deep-breathed continual prayer whose intensity down in His heart could never ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... come it is very secret; and that has no favourable aspect. The combination and spirit there seem to be universal, and is very alarming. I am the humble servant of events, and you know never meddle with prophecy. It would be difficult to descry good omens, be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... made of badger-skin hanging over his brow. His features were sharp and diminutive, his face of a deadly white, his lips pale, and his hair of a mixture between red and white. He had very little show of beard— indeed, it was most difficult to say what his age might be. He might have been a sickly youth early sinking into decrepitude, or an old man, hale in constitution, yet carrying no flesh. But the most important feature, and that which immediately riveted the attention of Amine, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... general, that the names in the Latin classics belong to a much later period of the Egyptian religion than the names found on most of the monuments. It will be found, that, as in the change from Nu to Anubis, it is difficult to trace the progress of a name from one to the other. In the cases where an ox, a ram, or a dog is worshipped with, or as a symbol of, a god, we probably have the survival of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... govern" vested in the ablest, wisest, best, 203-l. Right, under Necessity, to slay; no right to torture, because not necessary, 832-u. Righteous shall dwell in Gimli or Vingolf with God, according to the Edda, 619-m. Rightfulness of many actions difficult to prove from our standpoint, 830-m. Rights, inalienable, 24-u. Rights of man must be respected by God, the essence of justice, 704-m. Rigor impregnated by Love through Benignity produced the brain of Microprosopos, 796-u. Rigor, perfect, denoted by the Mother, female. 795-l. Ring given as a symbol ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the pitchers, it is lacking in one essential element of strength if it be not up to the mark in base stealing by its players. Effective pitching and sharp fielding are, of course, very necessary to success in winning games, as also skilful batting, especially of the strategic kind. While it is a difficult task to get to first base safely in the face of a steady and effective fire from the opposing "battery," backed up by good support from the field, it is still more difficult when the first base is safely reached to secure the other bases by good base stealing. The fact is, a greater ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... down Peter Ivanovitch from dictation for two years, it is difficult for me to be anything. First of all, you have to sit perfectly motionless. The slightest movement you make puts to flight the ideas of Peter Ivanovitch. You hardly dare to breathe. And as to coughing—God forbid! Peter Ivanovitch changed the position of the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... he found his own thoughts, aspirations, and yearnings repeated in the mind of his favourite pupil, and he was confronted by a problem more difficult to solve than any that had met him before. In his own case he felt he had a compass to steer by—the restraint and guidance of his vows and his habit to help him. But how would it be with this ardent and imaginative boy? His mind ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... look so much like gums in the distance; some of them are very large, as also are the gums in the creek. Numerous tracks of blacks all about. It is the upper part of the Finke, and at this point runs through high sand hills (red), covered with spinifex, which it is very difficult to get the horses through. We passed through a few patches of good grassy country. In the sand hills the oak is getting more plentiful. We were three-quarters of an hour in crossing the creek, and obtained an observation of the sun, 116 degrees 26 minutes 15 seconds. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... bondage for seven long years, and the sea that he loved so well, were left far behind. Sigurd and his followers rode southward over the hills, and then through long dreary dales, that were strewn with large boulder stones that made travelling very difficult. There was only a narrow horse track to guide them, and soon even this was lost in the rank herbage, and the land became a wild desolate waste without sign of human dwelling, but only the bare rugged hills, with here and there a thread of water streaming ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... exclusively,—preparations which the illustrious Swammerdam would not have been ashamed of, and dissected a melolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself ever did it? So the Master, recalling these studies of his and certain difficult and disputed points at which he had labored in one of his entomological paroxysms, put a question which there can be little doubt was intended to puzzle the Scarabee, and perhaps,—for the best of us is human (I am beginning to love the old Master, but he has his little ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... involves more than this, the complicated architectural structure will not be completely replaced. A brick which has been knocked out of a building can be easily replaced, but the renewal of an area of the wall is more difficult. In the kidney, for example, the destruction of single cells is quickly made good by new cell formation, but the loss of an area of tissue is never restored. In the liver, on the other hand, which is of much simpler construction, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... prospect of being more firmly established than ever by means of our great national commotion on this subject, is enough to make a serious mind reflect whether it be wholly the work of Satan, or whether the providence of God be not concerned in this great and difficult problem. ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... edition to be the work of Richardson himself, although in the revised version he indicates that it was composed by someone else. In this instance due acknowledgment may have been easy; but in many other places it may have been extraordinarily difficult for the author/editor to disentangle his own words and ideas ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson

... foundations,—thoroughly in earnest, seeing clearly,—and had addressed himself to the poem's composition in a happy moment when words came easily to him, and the elaboration of fine sentences was not difficult. Was it thus fame was achieved? For a while he was tempted to cross the continent and go to New York and there come unto his own, enjoying the triumph that awaited him. But soon he denied himself this cheap reward. Now he was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... has been presented in several forms. One of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that which pleases the sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called superior senses. When analysis of aesthetic facts first began, it was, in fact, difficult to avoid the mistake of thinking that a picture and a piece of music are impressions of sight or of hearing: it was and is an indisputable fact that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor the deaf man the music. To show, as we ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... University Extension still existed in a modified form. "There is a certain type of girl, for example," said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of his usefulness, "with a perfect passion for severe studies—when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. At this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch, "nearly five hundred phonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influence exercised by Plato and Swift on the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... trenches had been deepened, in some places, to twelve feet, and were fairly safe from shrapnel. The line in which we were to spend the night had been blown almost completely out of existence and it was difficult to find sufficient cover for the men. I and the bomber who was next to me in the line found a corner and there slept for the night. We were once disturbed by the enemy destroying a trench mortar store situated close to where we slept. Daybreak came ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... them—about the method of getting and the intention of spending the note. He had almost forgotten that it had not always been his, and was quite sure that he was doing the right thing—for others as well as himself—in the difficult circumstances which seemed to beset him more than the common run of men. Cheered by these thoughts he endured the discomforts of the journey with moderate patience; he almost felt that he was suffering them in a good cause, for the sake ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... by determination? I put in a little time on a couch every day. When worried I get neurasthenia and all kinds of phobias. Just now I am afraid to look at the newspapers on account of the cholera in St. Petersburg, and I have seen the time when I found it difficult to drink water after I had boiled ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... difficult to understand why the two conceptions of Mary (more especially in the souls of the monks) were so often inextricably intermingled; circumstances frequently demanded a complete fusion. As late as in the nineteenth century, a romantic poet, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... drinking. The Duchess, in that she enjoyed dining for all the reasons above cited, except that of bothering her ancient head about whose house she was seen at, was extremely pleased with her entertainment. She wagged her old head—white now, quite frankly, after many years of essays in difficult tints—whispered to her novelist, and made love to ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... promptness which at least testified of the lingering compunction of Miss Simpson. She asked if she were right in supposing the seedsman's catalogues and folders had come to her from Langbourne, and begged to know from him whether the seedsman in question was reliable: it was so difficult to get garden seeds that ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... had found it difficult to carry out the scheme described in the last chapter. They indeed who know anything of such matters will be inclined to call it Utopian, and to say that one so wise in worldly matters as our schoolmaster should not have attempted to combine so many things. He wanted a gentleman, ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... spot, for his ear, into jealousy; and, from reverberation to repercussion, would have reached her father's exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep. It had been for many days almost as difficult for her to catch a quiet twenty minutes with her father as it had formerly been easy; there had been in fact, of old—the time, so strangely, seemed already far away—an inevitability in her longer passages with him, a sort of domesticated beauty in the calculability, round about them, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... done it I wouldn't have given her friends more trouble than was necessary. I should have known that they would have had to drag me up somewhere. I should have looked for that. But I shouldn't have made myself difficult when chance gave a helping hand. Why shouldn't ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... the southward, where ships might refresh, and supply themselves with the necessary sea stock for their passage round Cape Horn, would relieve us from this embarrassment, and would surely be a matter worthy of the attention of the public. Neither does this seem difficult to be effected, as we already have an imperfect knowledge of two places, which might perhaps prove, on examination, extremely convenient for this purpose. One of these is Pepy's Island, in the latitude of 47 deg. S. and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... though Verdi was not young, for an ordinary man, in 1871, he was very young indeed for the composer of "Falstaff" and "Otello"; while in the "Traviata" period one can scarcely say he was doing more than cutting his teeth, and not his wisdom teeth. One finds it difficult to understand how ever the thing came to be tolerated by musicians. Of course the desire to find a counter-blast to Wagner has done much for Verdi; but while one can understand how Dr. Stanford and others hoped to sweep ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... to study, it is singular that most students do not learn it, and that little effort is made to teach it. It is assumed that children know how to study because they have brains. Probably a large majority of our college graduates today have not learned how to study properly, and find it difficult or impossible to take up a new study and master it. They have only learned how to do certain routine things in a mechanical way. They have learned ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain

... my real reason would lead to endless argument in which you would oppose me with more or less sophistry that would be difficult to combat. In the end, we might lose our tempers. Let us say, therefore, that you must cease calling on the lass because I ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... is my strongest plea for toleration. Were there nothing else, it is indisputable we perform all actions better for having rehearsed them. No, we do not of necessity perform them the more thoughtlessly as well; for, indeed, I find that with experience a man becomes increasingly difficult to please in affairs of the heart. The woman one loves then is granted that pre-eminence not merely by virtue of having outshone any particular one of her predecessors; oh, no! instead, her qualities have been compared with all ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... A thing difficult to get is the thing mostly prized, not the thing that is valuable. Two or three additional Kimberley mines found somewhere among the otherwise uninteresting plains of South Africa would bring down the price of diamonds amazingly. It could hardly have been the beauty, or the wit, or the accomplishments ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... must say I like the old style of walking up your birds better than driving, especially in a country like this. I never saw such difficult birds as we had this morning. You seemed to have the worst of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various

... D'Argens): "Czernichef is on march to join us. Our Campaign will not open till towards the end of this month [did open July 1st]; but think then what a pretty noise in this poor Silesia again! In fine, my dear Marquis, the job ahead of me is hard and difficult; and nobody can say positively how it will all go. Pray for us; and don't forget a poor devil who kicks about strangely in his harness, who leads the life of one damned; and who nevertheless loves you sincerely.—Adieu." [OEuvres de Frederic, xix. 327.] D'Argens (May ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... which number actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the Insurgent cause, and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many White men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... smile at the simplicity with which he imparted these hopes to his favorites: toiauthn plhrojorian schsein hlpize kai dia tou Papa eqarrei eleuqervdai thn ekklhsian apo thV apoteqeishV autou douleiaV para tou basilewV, (p. 92.) Yet it would have been difficult for him to have practised ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... upon the stage. The audience had entirely forgotten the vague rumors of the day—thought no more of the king. Their attention was wholly given to Barbarina and Cocceji, whose eyes were ever fixed threateningly upon his shrinking neighbor. Suddenly, just as Barbarina had completed one of her most difficult tours and knelt before the lamps to receive the bravos of the spectators, something flew from the loge of Cocceji, and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... Mrs. Lucy Porter, Dr. Johnson's step-daughter, positively maintained to me, in his presence, that there could be no doubt of the truth of this anecdote, for she had heard it from his mother. So difficult is it to obtain an authentick relation of facts, and such authority may there be for errour; for he assured me, that his father made the verses, and wished to pass them for his child's. He added, 'my father was a foolish old man[128]; that is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... for this law is not very difficult. The elder brothers of a family were supposed to have left their father's house before his death, and obtained a house and necessaries of their own; but the youngest, by reason of his tender age, was considered as more helpless, and not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various

... the welcome guest into the room where the unwelcome ones were seated was to Mrs. Willoughby like light in a dark place. To Minnie also it brought immense relief in her difficult position. The ladies rose, and were about to greet the new-comer, when, to their amazement, the Baron sprang forward, caught Lord Hawbury's hand, and wrung it over and over again with ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... throughout the day to be carried on in relays of three Divisions, the final Division attaining and digging in as its objective. The Ten Hundred, forming the place of honour on the left flank of the 29th Division had to carry an objective situated, of all difficult places, on the crest of a long rise in ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... Tiberius, centuries ago? Certainly no one had tended it for a thousand years or two, and the late pink roses grew unchecked. Daphne slowly worked her way to the top of the wall; this close masonry made the proceeding more difficult than it usually was at home. She stood for a moment on the summit, glorying in the widened view, then sprang, with the lightness of a kitten, to the other side. There was a skurry of frightened ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... ought to be between the Husband and Wife is cooled before they come to be throughly acquainted one with another. This is the first Thing that ought to be provided against; for when a Spirit of Dissention is once sprung up, it is a difficult Matter to bring them to a Reconciliation, especially if it ever proceeded so far as to come to reproachful Reflections. Those Things that are joined together with Glue, are easily pull'd one from another if they be handled roughly as soon as done, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... as different from other men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... and had not yet given up hope that he was alive. Indeed, she had taken measures to discover his whereabouts; but all these had failed. Still, she would not abandon the hope that he would some time reappear, knowing how difficult it was to trace one altogether unnoted by any except his own race, who were not accustomed to be careful or inquisitive with regard to the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... figure—was neat of aspect, and, what was more, she had come well recommended. She bore upon her face every evidence of respectability and character, as well as one or two lines which might have indicated years or toothache—it was difficult to decide which. On certain days, when the weather was very warm and she had much to do, the impression was that the lines meant years, and many of them, accentuated as they were by her pallor, the whiteness of her face making the lines ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... her mildly, as though she were a small bat squeaking at a mighty hawk. "Indeed! I fancy you will find that a rather difficult matter!" he answered, contemptuously. "She is one of our best nurses! James!" to a passing assistant, "escort this person and her—belongings"—looking doubtfully at the mess on the floor—"down ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... that is, by variation of limitations, in the same way as the origin of shapes. But it is quite another matter when we are concerned with the origin of a substance, whose beginning and destruction are equally difficult to explain. Sennert and Sperling did not venture to admit the subsistence and the indestructibility of the souls of beasts or of other primitive forms, although they allowed that they were indivisible and immaterial. But the fact is that they confused indestructibility with immortality, whereby ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... difficult question to settle,' said he. 'I don't want to make any mistake. So I shall have to ask you to come back ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey



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