"Manual labour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves after years of bitter experience. Totally unfitted for any station in life, many of them leave school full of self-confidence in the belief that their superior education will secure them a good opening. Despising all manual labour, they seek situations as clerks, shop-assistants, and such-like. The result is, of course, an over-supply of candidates for employment of this kind. In consequence, the girls have to fall back upon domestic service; while the boys swell the ranks of unskilled labourers and unemployed loafers, or, ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... horrid precipices. In this work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and outlaws of neighbouring provinces. It is even said that his sisters, Clarina and Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance at Il Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the exceptional conditions of Italian society during this age. She was married to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... in loading our boat. What pride we felt! no shame at being seen performing manual labour; but pride, and pleasure, and exultation. We had always been fond of boating, and now that it was about to be an useful employment, it seemed additionally agreeable. And what a noble scene for this our first adventurous voyage, upon that broad river or rather arm of the sea! We had found ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... and patiently at the temporary manual labour on which he was employed, and when that came to an end he looked about ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... this temple, having sent for workmen from all parts of Etruria, employed on it not only the public money, but the manual labour of the people; and when this labour, by no means inconsiderable in itself, was added to their military service, still the people murmured less at their building the temples of the gods with their own hands; they were afterwards transferred ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the enemy of the soul; hence brethren ought, at certain seasons, to occupy themselves with manual labour, and again, at certain hours, with ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... at those yellow and seasoned fingers, which by hard manual labour had kept herself and him in the young days of his humble obscurity, and which during sixty years had not been idle for more than six weeks in all, he grew almost apologetic ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... possible if she had been willing to let them starve, but probably in no other way. To attempt to put them out upon the land again was hopeless; they knew nothing of agriculture, and were unused to manual labour, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... were being made and parties scouring the country for timber the young engineer bent his mind to the task of inventing some better mode of getting rid of the water than by manual labour—the mine being sadly deficient in a lot of necessary gear, besides steam-power, as Ernest Wilton had quickly perceived, although he had refrained from ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Socialist to show that most of what Mr Grinder himself has been telling us is nonsensical claptrap of the most misleading kind. He tells us that the employers work with their brains and the men with their hands. If it is true that no brains are required to do manual labour, why put idiots into imbecile asylums? Why not let them do some of the hand work for which no brains are required? As they are idiots, they would probably be willing to work for even less than the ideal "living wage". If Mr Grinder had ever tried, he would know that manual workers have to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... sung as a fragment. It would have been presumption on my part to have completed the Service, so I left it, and being much occupied, forgot all about it. Just about this time we decided to do away with manual labour in blowing the organ, and substituted a small hydraulic engine. I mention this because it has ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... sensibility to the pleasures of the imagination, when judiciously managed, adds much to the happiness of life, and it must be peculiarly advantageous to those who are precluded by their station in society from the necessity of manual labour. Mental exercise, and mental amusements, are essential to persons in the higher ranks of life, who would escape from the fever of dissipation, or from the lethargy of ennui. The mere physical advantages which wealth can procure, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... the City, and was at home by eleven o'clock nightly, perfectly sober. The character of this young man was that of a distinct class, comprising the sons of mechanics who are ruined morally by being taught to consider themselves above manual labour. Had he from the first been put to a craft, he would in all likelihood have been no worse than the ordinary English artisan—probably drinking too much and loafing on Mondays, but not sinking below the level of ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... portion, which is said in the chapter house, has reference to monastic customs. The Martyrology and Necrology having been read, prayers were said for the dead recommended to the Community, as benefactors, friends, patrons, protectors, etc. Then followed a special prayer in preparation for manual labour of the day, and a chapter of the rule was read, on which the Abbot briefly commented or else gave some admonition to the Community. This monastic character will be easily recognised by a glance at the formulas used. The prayer, 'Sancta Maria ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... the preliminary to a mild appeal for creature and medical comforts, and it had two objects—to open the soul to compassion, and bar all considerations of manual labour. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... urging the adoption of machinery in aid of manual labour, one main object I have had in view has ever been the creation of an aristocracy among the labourers themselves; the substitution of a given amount of skilled labour for a larger amount of unskilled. My hope is, that we may thus engender ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... compound symbols for the first nine digits into single "figures," enabled the computer to dispense with the manual labour of the abacus, whilst in his graphic notation he retained its essential principle of place. It seems to be almost invariably forgotten by writers on {280} the subject, what, without this principle, no improvement in mere notation ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... might touch upon perils distinct from Unionism, which threaten industry, especially that growing dislike of manual labour which prevails to an alarming extent in the United States, and which some eminent economists are inclined to attribute to errors in the system of education in the common schools. I might speak of the duties of government in relation to these disturbances, and of the necessity, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... signifying a man of honour, probity, education, and taste; for, by immemorial usage, by current application, and by every rule which gives definite meaning to words, the man with a shovel in his hand, a rule in his pocket, an axe on his shoulder, a leather apron on his abdomen, or any other badge of manual labour about him—his virtues else be they as pure as grace, as infinite as man may undergo—is carefully contradistinguished from the 'gentleman.' The 'gentleman' may be a drunkard, a gambler, a debauchee, a parasite, a helpless potterer; he may be a man of spotless ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... his eyes from her for the first time, looked down at his fiddle, and idly picked at one of the strings. "But of course I can't truthfully say I love manual labour. I can do it when there is something in it; but I much prefer a hammock and a shade and a little nigger to fan me and bring me tall ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Mocitos del Dia' (Fops of the Period). The subject of the play is of local interest, with a moral exposing in farcical colours the foibles of the Cuban 'Pollo,' or dandy, whose taste for pleasure and idleness is only exceeded by his aversion for manual labour and for early matrimony. The characters ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... born in the parish of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, on the 1st day of January 1814. At the time of his birth his father rented a farm, but, being unfortunate, he was compelled to seek the support of his family by manual labour. With a limited education at the parish-school of Longside, whither his parents had removed, the subject of this memoir was sent, in his eleventh year, to tend cattle. When somewhat older, he found employment as a farm-servant; but having married in his twentieth year, he afterwards followed ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... deception, to which they seldom fail to add the crime of perjury, whenever it can be useful to shield themselves or their friends from the punishment of the law. Totally without moral education, and very seldom trained to any trade or occupation by which they can earn an honest livelihood by manual labour—their youths excluded from becoming apprentices, and their females from engaging themselves generally as servants, on account of the superstitious adherence to the mere ceremonial of their persuasion, as it respects meat not killed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the Headmaster being foremost, and earned a labouring man's wage at unloading the trucks and carrying the goods to their billets. Some of our new acquaintances watched the scene with a shocked surprise that authorities should share in the manual labour, instead of looking on and paying for it. But their feelings at last determined to admiration. "Why, sirs," they exclaimed, "you get it done as if you were used to move every three weeks." But, in fact, there was so much ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... don't think of them; I don't go in for manual labour," said the little man proudly. "But if a man don't mind that, he's pretty sure of a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dear friends, any of you. You who go to the mills, or are engaged in any other manual labour, don't think, because you may be spending your evenings and leisure in mechanics' institutes, or in attending science classes, or in working up scientific subjects, that in these pursuits you can find real peace, without religion and without God; that religion ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... met at Cluny under the abbat. In the eleventh century these were merely consultative, but in the thirteenth they had become political, administrative, and judicial, even subjecting the abbat to their control. The rule of S. Benedict was followed in the abbey and its dependencies. The monks did some manual labour, but devoted themselves chiefly to religious exercises, to teaching the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... natural force are mastered and mechanical appliances perfected, it will be quite possible for the male half of all civilised races (and therefore ultimately of all) to absorb the entire fields of intellectual and highly trained manual labour; and it would be entirely possible for the female half of the race, whether as prostitutes, as kept mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active toil, and, as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more decadently still, as the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... by an image familiar to orientals. When the wheat is reaped, it is bound in sheaves and carted to the threshing-floor, which is generally a circular spot of hard ground from fifty to one hundred feet in diameter. On this the wheat is threshed from the chaff by manual labour, but the two lie intermingled till the evening, when the grain is caught up in broad shovels or fans, and thrown against the evening breeze, as it passes swiftly over the fevered land; thus the light chaff ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... modern social science, has become essential. Such a party, to be in harmony with our traditions and our creed, to arrest in our democracy the process of class stratification which threatens to destroy it, must not draw its members from the ranks of manual labour alone, but from all elements of our population. It should contain all the liberal professions, and clerks and shopkeepers, as well as manual workers; administrators, and even those employers who have become convinced that our present economic system ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... base, where cooling is liable to take place in the pan (and thus affect the yield), the temperature may be 165 deg.-170 deg. F. (74 deg.-77 deg. C.). This latter class of soap is generally run direct to the frames and crutched by hand, or, to save manual labour, it may be run into a power-driven crutching pan (neutralising material being added if necessary) and stirred a few times ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... severe subdivision of his time and thoughts, by unceasing prayers and manual labour, he did in about three months succeed in benumbing the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... thick and drooping. The shirt was of fine linen, the drawers silk. On one finger were two good rings, the hands were clean, the nails well kept, and there was every evidence that the man did not live by manual labour. He was of the easy, cultured class, as distinct from ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... self-congratulation on which a meagre type of religion has elevated them. But at length his little stock of money was nearly expended, and there was nothing that he could do, or learn to do, in this seaport. He felt impelled to seek manual labour, partly because he thought it more likely he could obtain that sort of employment, without a request for reference as to his character, which would lead to inquiry about his previous history; and partly, perhaps, from an instinctive feeling that hard bodily labour would ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... excommunication, which, though it only operates through opinion, yet if it carries opinion with it, may, as M. Comte complacently observes, be of such powerful efficacy, that the richest man may be driven to produce his subsistence by his own manual labour, through the impossibility of inducing any other person to work for him. In this as in all other cases, the priesthood depends for its authority on carrying with it the mass of the people—those who, possessing no accumulations, live on the wages of daily labour; popularly ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... took no direct part in it. The project was originated by George Ripley, who also virtually directed it throughout. In his words it was intended "to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labour than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing all with labour adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... manual labour was a new doctrine to preach to Greeks, but Paul lays stress on it repeatedly in his letters to Thessalonica. Apparently most of the converts there were of the labouring class, and some of them needed the lesson of Paul's example ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of extinct volcanoes. The population, at least 2500 to the square league, is one of the densest to be found in purely agricultural districts: property is subdivided to an extraordinary extent. Tillage is carried on almost entirely by manual labour, with spade, hoe, or mattock; only in exceptional cases a light plough is substituted drawn by two cows, the wife of the peasant not unfrequently taking the place of one of them in the yoke. The team serves at once to furnish milk and to till ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to Hercules. These ships were freighted with provisions for the Adelantado. By chance they approached the western coast of the island, where Ximenes Roldan and his accomplices were. Roldan won over the crews by promising them fresh young girls instead of manual labour, pleasures instead of exertion, plenty in place of famine, and repose instead weariness ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... a horizontal and stationary hearth, the flame passing over a mass of ore resting on such hearth. In order to expose the upper surface of the ore to contact with air the material is turned over by manual labour. This furnace of the reverberatory type is provided with side openings by which the turning over of the ore can be manually effected, and the new ore can be ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the merciless, frightened King. What was I to do, even if I escaped from the King's party? I was too young for any employment worthy of my station in life. I had neither the strength nor the skill for manual labour. Who would employ a boy of my age on a farm or in a factory? All that I could hope would be to get away to sea, to a life which I had already found loathsome. As to going back to my uncle's house, I doubt if I would ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... not easy to walk, and this tract extended east and west, as far as they could see. The district must have been inhabited a great many years, for more had been done in it to secure a provision from the ground by hard manual labour than it would have appeared to be in the power ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... the women. If a man spoke or acted kindly to his wife, or mother, or daughter, it was by them considered a sign of weakness and effeminacy. To be harsh and cold toward the women, was supposed to be one of the signs of the ideal Indian toward which they were ever striving. All manual labour, apart from hunting and fishing, was considered degrading to be left to the women, and some, as much as possible, even left the fishing to them. Where there were no tribal wars, the perfect Indian was only the great hunter. And with the great hunter, his work ended when ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Manual labour on the canal has been done mostly by Jamaica negroes. As said before, they are immune to yellow fever; and, speaking of the negro, it may be said here that his susceptibility to pain, compared to that of the white man, is as one to three, but the effect of a fair education is ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... our journey we never once found water by chance—though chance took us to more than one dry hole—but found it only by systematic and patient work, involving many scores of miles of tracking, the capture of the wild aboriginals, and endless hours of manual labour. Without having resorted to these expedients I have no hesitation in saying that neither we nor the camels would be living today, for though without having done so, other parties have crossed as great an extent of arid country, it must be remembered that our journey was accomplished ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... cultivate a habit of mild contemplation, but it is this very habit of mind which predisposes us to anxiety when anxiety comes. Dr. Johnson pointed out how comparatively rare it was for people who had manual labour to perform, and whose work lay in the open air, to suffer from hypochondriacal terrors. The truth is that we are made for labour, and we have by no means got rid of the necessity for it. We have to pay a price for the comforts of civilisation, and above all for the pleasures of inactivity. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... College de Noyon relieved her difficulties. In this establishment Galland studied Greek and Hebrew for ten years, after which the "strait thing at home" apprenticed him to a trade. But he was made for letters; he hated manual labour and he presently removed en cachette to Paris, where he knew only an ancient kinswoman. She introduced him to a priestly relative of the Canon of Noyon, who in turn recommended him to the "Sous-principal" of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... in Russia, the Israelites of Poland are accused of great aversion to every kind of manual labour, preferring to gain a livelihood by devotion to petty commerce. It is alleged also, that they are disinclined to agriculture, avoid every mechanical pursuit, and defraud the Government of the excise and customs; that they distinguish themselves from the rest of the inhabitants by their ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... they are content with their harvests. Their carelessness is however unpardonable, in having never yet erected a mill. There is not one in all California; and the poor Indians are obliged to grind their corn by manual labour between ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... think it very likely, but, being no great traveller, cannot distinctly say—there happened to be, in Mudfog, a merry-tempered, pleasant-faced, good-for-nothing sort of vagabond, with an invincible dislike to manual labour, and an unconquerable attachment to strong beer and spirits, whom everybody knew, and nobody, except his wife, took the trouble to quarrel with, who inherited from his ancestors the appellation of Edward Twigger, and rejoiced in the sobriquet of Bottle-nosed Ned. He ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the public in general, and to the imminent danger of the common safety. Therefore, be it enacted, that "passports," that is to say, "passes," in which the distinct purpose of the journey is stated, such as a search for employment; or "wander-books," in which occupation by manual labour is the especial object, are to be granted to those natives of Prussia only who pursue a trade or art for the perfection of which travelling may be considered useful or necessary. To those only who are irreproachable in character, and perfectly healthy in body; ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... had also pronounced esteem for manual labour to be genuinely and originally German, and therefore each pupil was assigned a place where he could wield spades and pickaxes, roll stones, sow, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impression throughout the whole world. He, therefore, expected the Mussalmans to give the lead by giving up all the fineries they were so fond of and adopt the simple cloth that could be produced by the manual labour of their sisters and brethren in their own cottages. And he hoped that the Hindus would follow suit. It was a sacrifice in which the whole nation, every man, woman and child could ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... perpendicular wall of the quay except during a perfect calm, there was considerable trouble in carrying on the commerce of the port according to modern requirements; but the inventions of necessity had simplified many difficulties at the expense of increased manual labour. Boats lay a few yards off the shore, and were loaded by men who walked shoulder- deep with the packages upon their heads. I saw lighters discharging planks and baulks of timber, by shooting them into the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... was no beauty. A strong, ugly man, he was well adapted for manual labour; and that was all. His eyes were made to see with, and not for ogling. Compared with the Cockney, he was grave, and rather taciturn; but there was a deal of good old humour bottled up in him, after all. For the rest, he was frank, good-hearted, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... according to their taste and ability, are instructed in painting or music, and if intended for governesses are taught German or French. The majority of girls, after receiving a common and useful education, are employed in manual labour, and all, without distinction of age or sex, can return to the hospital should they fall ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... who wear the white robe of St Romualdo of Ravenna, looked down from their convent walls upon the work of destruction below, and have watched the waves of liquid fire surging angrily but uselessly round the rocky base of their retreat. Hard manual labour, prayer, solitude and contemplation: these are the chief duties enjoined by the famous Tuscan order, and surely no more suitable place for carrying out such precepts could have been chosen by the pious founder of this Vesuvian convent. For ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... much manual labour to be done, the difficulties in the way of education were continually becoming intensified. Soon it became impossible to continue in attendance at the day school, and he had to be content with attending an evening class after completing the day's toil. Under the most favourable ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... made up for the deficiency by copious potations of whisky; but as my mother objected to my following his example, I was frequently excessively hungry. I was not surprised therefore that my uncles did not often pay the paternal mansion a visit; they all considering themselves above manual labour, in consequence of being sons of a squireen, were living on their wits in various parts of the world, so I concluded from the bits of information ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... conclusions, as though they were axiomatic, he asserts that the measure of exchange between one class of commodities and another—such, for example, as cigars, printed books, and chronometers—is the amount of manual labour, estimated in terms of time, which is on an average necessary to the production of each of them. His meaning in this respect is illustrated with pictorial vividness by his teaching with regard to the form in which the measure of ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... in such intricacies among the craggs, that there is no room for the action of a team and plow. The soil is then turned up by manual labour, with an instrument called a crooked spade, of a form and weight which to me appeared very incommodious, and would perhaps be soon improved in a country where workmen could be easily found and easily paid. It has a narrow blade of iron fixed to a long and heavy piece of wood, which must ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... tramping over the United States I achieved a new concept. As a tramp, I was behind the scenes of society—aye, and down in the cellar. I could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of the social machine go around, and I learned that the dignity of manual labour wasn't what I had been told it was by the teachers, preachers, and politicians. The men without trades were helpless cattle. If one learned a trade, he was compelled to belong to a union in order to work at his trade. And his union was compelled to bully and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Saint Benedict, was sought for by Chiefs, Bards, and converted Druids. Clients, seeking direction from his wisdom, or protection through his power, were constantly arriving and departing from his sacred isle. His days were divided between manual labour and the study and transcribing of the Sacred Scriptures. He and his disciples, says the Venerable Bede, in whose age Iona still flourished, "neither thought of nor loved anything in this world." Some writers have represented Columbkill's ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... be twenty or thirty years at least before they will give way in the matter of Monkeys. To be a physician, a solicitor, an engineer, or a Commissioner for Oaths is denied them as effectually as though they did not exist. Indeed, no occupation is left them save that of manual labour, and on this I would say a word. It is fashionable to jeer at the Monkey's disinclination to sustained physical effort and to concentrated toil; but it is remarkable that those who affect such a contempt for the Monkey's powers are the first to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... that a number of persons subscribed a sum sufficient to have him put in a state fit to appear in the poll-room. The exhibition of his machine in a town where so many workpeople lived by the exercise of manual labour proved a dangerous experiment; ominous growlings were heard outside the school-room from time to time, and Arkwright,—remembering the fate of Kay, who was mobbed and compelled to fly from Lancashire because of his invention of the fly-shuttle, and of poor Hargreaves, whose ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... this all drop? Why had he contented himself with the easy, sociable life? Effective though he was as a teacher, he had no real confidence in the things which he taught. They only seemed to him a device of reason for expending its energies, just as men deprived by complex life of manual labour sought to make up for the loss by the elaborate pursuit of games. He did not touch the springs of being at all. He had collapsed, he felt, into placid acquiescence; Nature had been too strong for him. He had fitted so easily into the pleasant scheme of things, and he ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... birth a Southerner and a native of Kentucky, a fact which he never forgot and of which he was exceedingly proud. After the wandering boyhood of a pioneer and a period of manual labour as a "rail-splitter" he had settled in Illinois, where he had picked up his own education and become a successful lawyer. He had sat in the House of Representatives as a Whig from 1846 to 1848, the period of the Mexican War, during which he had acted with the main body of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... aware of conditions or not, who could tell? He took a keen delight in the manual labour of working on Drew's house. He and Filmer, with or without Jude, hammered, sawed and made rough designs that filled their days with honest toil and brought healthy sleep to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... meet Him. 'There shall ye see Him, lo! I have told you,' was ringing in their ears, and they went back in full confidence of His appearance there. It is very like Peter that he should have been the one to suggest filling an hour of the waiting time with manual labour. The time would be hanging heavily on his hands. John could have 'sat still in the house,' like Mary, the heart all the busier, because the hands lay quietly in the lap. But that was not Peter's way, and John was ready to keep him company. Peter thought that the best thing they could do, till Jesus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... restrictive conditions of a rugged country. The soldiers steadfastly refused to beat their swords into ploughshares or their spears into pruning-hooks, and most of them accepted a state not far removed from actual want, rather than stain their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the bounties granted to large families—an ineffective resource, inasmuch as hungry children but consumed the supply and ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... success of the speculation. Look at those damned cocks. They're always fighting. Heave a stone at them, laddie, while you're up. What's the matter with you? You seem pipped. Can't get the novel off your chest, or what? You take my tip and give your brain a rest. Nothing like manual labour for clearing the brain. All the doctors say so. Those coops ought to be painted to-day or to-morrow. Mind you, I think old Derrick would be all right if ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... manual labour for all. The pessimist believes that forgetfulness and nothingness is the whole of man. He says, 'I defy the wisest of you to tell me why I am here, and being here, what good is gained by my assisting to bring others here.' The pessimist is therefore the gay Johnny, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... structures should be noticed. One, the dock or plunge hole, which is a deep place by a sharply raised bank, both made with careful manual labour. Next, the sunning place, generally an ant-hill on which the Beaver lies to enjoy a sun-bath, while the ants pick the creepers out of his fur. Third, the mud-pie. This is a little patty of mud mixed with a squeeze of the castor ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... thought to myself: 'A nice thing it would be if only our men were to study and our women to work, as they mostly do here and in Russian ghetto towns. No,' I thought, 'I would rather that the men did some manual labour as well as study, and the women have some time for study as well ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... earth taken from ant-hills. I have just said that I built the house. This is, perhaps, not strictly correct. It was Yamba and the other women-folk who actually carried out the work, under my supervision. Here it is necessary to explain that I did not dare to do much manual labour, because it would have been considered undignified on my part. I really did not want the house; but, strangely enough, I felt much more comfortable when it was built and furnished, because, after all, it was a source of infinite satisfaction to me to feel that I had ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... under the shadow of the supposititious Peace Angel's wing, after the first occasion on which, when the tutor tried to separate them during a fight at lessons, they had turned simultaneously and attacked him, they made it the text of some recommendations. He expressed a strong objection to having manual labour imposed upon him as well as his other work: but they maintained that if only he had called the affray "a struggle for daily bread" or "a fight for a livelihood," he would quite have enjoyed it; and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... best way of educating them, and when you have once won their regard they will go through fire and water for you; but they despise any one who 'does nothing,' for, like most manual workers, they do not understand that brain-work is as hard as manual labour. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... on my soul that if it were question of my own convenience, I should like much better to work at some manual labour at certain hours of the day, as the rule is in well-governed monasteries, and have the rest of the time free to read or pray or meditate upon the Holy Scripture, instead of being troubled with all the complications and ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... sculptor, which is a kind of drawing, a part of painting; and astrology and the other sciences pass through manual operation, but they are mental in the first place, as painting, which first of all exists in the mind of the composer, and cannot attain to fulfilment without manual labour. With regard to painting, its true and scientific principles must be established: what constitutes a shaded body, what constitutes a primary shade, a derivative shade, what constitutes light: that is, darkness, light, colour, size, shape, position, distance, propinquity, motion, rest, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... calculation and management, even in games of chance. Night after night will men play at rouge et noir, upon what they call a system, and for hours their attention never ceases, any more than it would if they were in the shop or oh the wharf. No manual labour is more fatiguing, and more degrading to the labourer, than gaming. Every gamester feels ashamed. And this vice, this worst vice, from whose embrace, moralists daily inform us, man can never escape, is just the one from which the majority of men most completely, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... went by the name of provincial Imibe. Perhaps the most intelligible description of them is that they constituted the peasant and artisan class, and that they were attached to the uji in subordinate positions for purposes of manual labour. By degrees, when various kinds of productive operations came to be engaged in as hereditary pursuits, the tomobe were grouped according to the specialty of the uji to which they wore attached, and we hear of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the mother, and followed her in domestic avocations. The girl was taught to draw water, gather shell-fish, make mats and native cloth. The boy after a time followed his father, and soon became useful in planting, fishing, house-building, and all kinds of manual labour. Boys were also accustomed to club together, and wander about the settlement, the plantation, or in the bush. If they fell in with a fallen cocoa-nut one boy would sit down and name some to come and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... for their candid perusal can lay no claim to eloquence of composition: whoever thinks so will be deceived, the greater part of them being juvenile productions, and those of later date offsprings of those leisure intervals which the short remittance from hard and manual labour sparingly afforded to compose them. It is to be hoped that the humble situation which distinguishes their author will be some excuse in their favour, and serve to make an atonement for the many inaccuracies and imperfections that will be found ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... admirable. Mr. Fawcett, who accompanied me, was full in his praises of my master, whom he regarded as the greatest pioneer in the substitution of the unerring accuracy of machine tools for the often untrustworthy results of mere manual labour. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... benches for fifteen minutes out of every hour of the working day, just because his back was turned? The hill farmer has, perhaps, a preferable life in some respects to the agriculturist in the vale. He has not so much actual manual labour to get through. On the other hand, he is at a great distance from any town, or even large village; he sees no one during the day, and he has to run great risks. Wool may fall, so may the price of mutton, either of which would derange ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... varied forms does all work, having superseded animal and manual labour in everything, and man has only to direct. The greatest ingenuity next to finding new uses for this almost omnipotent fluid has been displayed in inducing the forces of Nature, and even the sun, to produce it. Before describing the features of this perfection ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... increase of function under the mental power, and so effects a concentrated cerebral exhaustion, without being able to afford compensating nutrition or repair. ....There is the same common fallacy here as in the case of manual labour. The stimulus is felt—to do good. 'I could not do my work without it.' But at what cost are you doing your work? Premature and permanent exhaustion of the muscles is bad enough; but premature and permanent exhaustion of brain is infinitely worse. And when you come to ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... civilization. He who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually sympathize more than one engaged in the less refined functions of manual labour. Every one has experience of the fact, that to sympathize with the sufferings of another, is to enjoy a ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... little unlettered, and unmannered boors, and in silence and solitude made progress in studies, which, mere matters of amusement to me, would have been hailed by many youths as tasks more severe than daily manual labour. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... and fifty years to make a beauty—a hundred and fifty years out-of-doors. Open air, hard manual labour or continuous exercise, good food, good clothing, some degree of comfort, all of these, but most especially open air, must play their part for five generations before a beautiful woman can appear. These conditions can only be found in the country, and consequently ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... respecting the present state of these islands, as well as that of Jamaica and Barbadoes, and from a consideration of the means of obviating the causes, which had hitherto operated to impede the natural increase of the slaves, and of lessening the demand for manual labour, without diminishing the profit of the planters, no considerable or permanent inconvenience would result from discontinuing the further ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... his word, temperate and enduring, and looking upon courage as the highest virtue, the true Baluch of the Derajat is a pleasant man to have dealings with. As a revenue payer he is not so satisfactory, his want of industry and the pride which looks upon manual labour as degrading making him but a poor husbandman. He is an expert rider; horse-racing is his national amusement, and the Baluch breed of horses is celebrated throughout northern India. Like the Pathan he is a bandit by tradition and descent and makes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... pleasure unalloyed. She did not miss the luxuries to which she had become accustomed. She rather relished the hard, manual labour, to which she applied herself with full energy. But her baby was a stranger to her, cried when she wished to take her up, and became only gradually accustomed to her. Her faculties had been sharpened, too; she felt a certain shyness in her husband, noticed his weaknesses, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... avoid the hostility of the pressmen, who, having heard of the new invention, were up in arms against it, as likely to deprive them of their employment. And yet, as stated by Johnson in his 'Typographia,' the manual labour of the men who worked at the hand press, was so severe and exhausting, "that the stoutest constitutions fell a sacrifice to it in a few years." The number of sheets that could be thrown off was also ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... to cleaning stalls and currying horses for my two hours' work each day. Though I hated manual labour, I bent my back to the tasks with a will, glad to endure for the fulfillment of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... importance of monastic records. He had annals compiled, and bards preserved and arranged them in the monastic chests. At Iona the brethren of his settlement passed their time in reading and transcribing, as well as in manual labour. Very careful were they to copy correctly. Baithen, a monk on Iona, got one of his fellows to look over a Psalter which he had just finished writing, but only a single error was discovered.[1] Columba himself became proficient in copying and illuminating. He could not spend an hour without ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... is exemplified in the hands of Messrs. Joseph Arch and John Burns. Both of these belong to self-made men, accustomed to hard manual labour from childhood. Their powerful ruggedness is admirably set off by the exquisite symmetry and feminine proportions of the hand of John Jackson a Royal Academician and great painter of his time. For symmetry, combined with grace, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... desiderata; and then education was almost wholly physical: mental cultivation was little cared for, and indeed, as in feudal ages, was often treated with contempt. But now that our state is relatively peaceful—now that muscular power is of use for little else than manual labour, while social success of nearly every kind depends very much on mental power; our education has become almost exclusively mental. Instead of respecting the body and ignoring the mind, we now respect the mind and ignore the body. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... former owners of the Georgian house standing on the pleasant green hill. The present owners considered the village a disgrace, but the villagers paid high rents for their plots of ground, and all the manual labour that the Big House required came from the village: the gardeners, the stable helpers, the house ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... that April's there!' How could Browning write that line without his teeth chattering! How well I understand the desire of the British to keep India and South Africa! They must have some place to go where they can get warm! Now for unpacking, or any sort of manual labour which will put my frozen ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... than Twenty Millions; and altho' its price has considerably advanced, yet Manufactured Cotton Goods have fallen full Two Hundred per cent. This prodigious diminution in price is attributable to no other cause than the introduction of Machinery, by which the expense of Manual Labour is ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... perhaps borrowed. Of course these girls help cheerfully in the household, in the dairy, and so forth? No. Some are forced by necessity to assist in the household with unwilling hands: but few, indeed, enter the dairy. All dislike the idea of manual labour, though never so slight. Therefore they acquire a smattering of knowledge, and go out as governesses. They earn but a small stipend in that profession, because they have rarely gone through a sufficiently strict ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... have suffered much from cold in winter. The day divided by services, the nights broken by prayers; probably the time was dull enough, but passed quickly, like all lives full of monotonous engagements. They were not particularly ascetic, these Benedictines, and insisted much on manual labour in the open air. Probably at first the monks did their farm-work as well; but as they grew richer, they employed labourers, and themselves fell back on simpler and easier garden-work. Perhaps some few were truly devotional spirits, with a fire ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unlimited supply of labour-power in the steam-engine came at a time when the existing supply of manual labour was proving utterly inadequate to cope with the demands of the manufacturer. This was especially the case in textile fabrics. In its earlier stages the manufacture of cotton had been retarded by the difficulty with which the weavers obtained a sufficient supply of ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... and perpetuate such a combination—that is the Greek conception of well-being; and it is because labour with the hands or at the desk distorts or impairs the body, and the petty cares of a calling pursued for bread pervert the soul, that so strong a contempt was felt by the Greeks for manual labour and trade. "The arts that are called mechanical," says Xenophon, "are also, and naturally enough, held in bad repute in our cities. For they spoil the bodies of workers and superintendents alike, compelling them to live sedentary indoor lives, and in some ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... were invented for saving much of the manual labour spent upon these processes, it occurred to the managers of the company that these machines might be advantageously worked with the water-power of the Oise at Chauny. This was in the beginning of the present century. About the same time, thanks to the foreign wars provoked by the Girondists ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... This Tomas did, and night after night was spent pleasantly by him in the company of his merry newly-made friends. True to their word, he nightly parted company with them, laden with money, and thus he had no need to spend his days as heretofore, in manual labour. This went on as long as Tomas Moris kept his word, but alas, one day, he divulged to a neighbour the secret of his riches. That night, as usual, he went to Hafod Bryn Mullt, but his generous friends were not there, and he noticed that in the place where they were wont to dance ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... were more than 50,000 Chinese, in the State of California alone. These people, very industrious at gold-washing, very patient, living on a pinch of rice, a mouthful of tea, and a whiff of opium, did an immense deal to bring down the price of manual labour, to the detriment of the native workmen. They had to submit to special laws, contrary to the American constitution—laws which regulated their immigration, and withheld from them the right of naturalization, owing to the fear that they would end ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... adherent to this Covenant agree that they will themselves seek to establish and maintain fair hours and humane conditions of labour for all those within their several jurisdictions who are engaged in manual labour and that they will exert their influence in favour of the adoption and maintenance of a similar policy and like safeguards wherever their industrial and commercial ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... loved and dear,—the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates. Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing from the vulgar, wearisome toil of uninteresting, forced manual labour. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... have a repugnance from work. Manual labour is servitude. A day of idleness is a holy day. For those whose means do not permit to live in idleness the school is the only refuge; but they must prove their quality. This is the goal which drives many Scotch boys ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... most thickly-populated district of Australia that I had yet observed, and moreover one which must have been inhabited for a long series of years, for more had here been done to secure a provision from the ground by hard manual labour than I could have believed it in the power of uncivilised man to accomplish. After crossing a low limestone range we came down upon another equally fertile warran ground, bounded eastward by a high range of rocky limestone hills, luxuriantly grassed, and westward ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare engage for; but with anything like business, except manual labour, I am totally unacquainted. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... forth her edict concerning the burying alive of Nais, and though the words were that I was to build the throne of stone, it was an understood thing that the manual labour was to be done for me by others. Heralds made the proclamation in every ward of the city, and masons, labourers, stonecutters, sculptors, engineers, and architects took hands from whatever was occupying them for the moment, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Now two sous was about the price of a pound of salt butter in the bad times of about 1417; it was the price of half a pound in the worse times of 1419; and in 1444, just four years before Villon joined the University, it seems to have been taken as the average wage for a day's manual labour.[8] In short, it cannot have been a very profuse allowance to keep a sharp-set lad in breakfast and supper for seven mortal days; and Villon's share of the cakes and pastry and general good cheer, to which he is never weary of referring, must have been slender ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and of each of these there are often many, as fishermen at Tarentum and Byzantium, masters of galleys at Athens, merchants at AEgina and Chios, those who let ships on freight at Tenedos; we may add to these those who live by their manual labour and have but little property; so that they cannot live without some employ: and also those who are not free-born on both sides, and whatever other sort of common people there may be. As for gentlemen, they are such as are distinguished either ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of property. The slave owner and his sons had mastered no special industry. They unconsciously had imbibed the feeling that manual labour was not the proper thing for them. On the other hand, the slaves, in many cases, had mastered some handicraft, and none were ashamed, ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... healthy, normal, intelligent people. The hands and feet were generally small and well-shaped, in wonderful condition—though not necessarily clean—owing to the inborn reluctance which all the people of Brazil have towards manual labour. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... everything she wore, keeping in order even the small part of the gigantic building which she and her mother inhabited, cultivating as best she could the plot of ground in the castle yard which was all the land left to her, the last of her name, and, in the midst of all this manual labour, in maintaining that prescribed amount of appearance, from which she had never been allowed to deviate since she had been a little child. A spotless perfection of neatness was indeed the only luxury left within reach of the two ladies, and for that one available satisfaction there was no trouble ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... not much better. But painting, on the contrary, is often highly sedative; because so much of the labour, after your picture is once begun, is almost entirely manual, and of that skilled sort of manual labour which offers a continual series of successes, and so tickles a man, through his vanity, into good humour. Alas! in letters there is nothing of this sort. You may write as beautiful a hand as you will, you have always something else ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merchant's (the simple mediaeval contrast common in Vicente). Meanwhile Don Rosvel, Prince of Huxonia, has fallen in love with both the daughters of the merchant, whom he agrees to serve in all kinds of manual labour as Juan de las Brozas. His brother, Don Gilberto, arrives in search of him and a quaintly charming and technically skilful play ends with a double wedding (the Crown Prince of Portugal, present at the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... abbe?" His speech showed he was French. He wore his cassock with the ease of long habit: he was young. His hand was the delicate hand of a Churchman—not coarsened by manual labour. Fandor, plunged in reflections, lost all ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... extravagancies. Upon this principle the men of learning, as they are pleased to style themselves, suffer the nails of their little fingers to grow sometimes to the enormous length of three inches for the sole purpose of giving ocular demonstration of the impossibility of their being employed in any sort of manual labour; and upon the same principle, perhaps, the ladies of China may be induced to continue the custom of maiming their female infants, in order that their children may be distinguished from those of the peasantry, who, in most of the provinces, are ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... in his first report from Edmonton when he says, "Sergt.-Major Steele has been undeviating in his efforts to assist me, and he has also done the manual labour of at least ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... relation to regions adapted to the physical qualities of our own race, it seems not less clear for the regions beyond. To refuse the aid of the tropical populations for opening up the resources of countries where the Anglo-Saxon race cannot perform manual labour, and still less establish a permanent settlement, is not to advance but seriously to injure the true interests of this colony. By opening up portions of your Northern Territory with imported labour, a new outlet will be afforded for the investment of your capital, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... that in work of this kind a man lost consciousness of his humanity, and experienced no pleasures in his exertions; he shouldered his burden like a horse that seeks to ward off the whip with his tail. Rough manual labour left no place for boredom. Yet no one seeks distractions in work, but in pleasure. Work, not appearances, he repeated, oppressed by the overpowering dulness which drove him nearly mad, and created a frame of mind quite contrary to ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... afield; manual labour dulls, if it does not altogether exorcise, them; some have other less creditable means of seeking oblivion. But the poor women, shut in in their little houses, with their anxieties and sorrow staring them in the face—God help them! So ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Guild, and to contribute a tithe of his income to a common fund, for various objects. These objects were—first: to buy land for the agricultural members to cultivate, paying their rent, not to the other members, but to the company; not refusing machinery, but preferring manual labour. Next, to buy mills and factories, to be likewise owned by the Guild and worked by members—using water power in preference to steam (steam at first not forbidden)—and making the lives of the people employed as well ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... this opportunity of bringing them in contact with the doctors, who have long since become the ideals of our school girls.... Referring to the fear some native Christians have shown of sending their girls to a school having manual labour in its curriculum, Dr. Ida exclaimed hotly, 'This fear of work is the bane of China.' Here are two doctors of exalted privileges, educated abroad, honoured alike by native and foreigner, and yet putting ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... man for all purposes, which is perhaps just about the quantity used by the ordinary man for cooking and drinking in the cold weather at home; but in a khamsin when you are doing five or six hours' hard manual labour per diem, a gallon is easily consumed. Luckily these heat waves only last about three days, but ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to hereditary opulence, does this manual labour come more unkindly than to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of heaven. Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself; and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, soon ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... is high time you began," she said calmly. "It will not only give you a greater respect for manual labour, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... taxed the strength of the citizens, but they all knew that their lives depended on their repairing and strengthening their defences before their foes should again attack them. Not only the citizens of all ranks, but their wives and children assisted, many who had never before engaged in manual labour offering their services to carry baskets of earth to the ramparts, and otherwise aiding in the work going forward. In this task the commandant was ably supported by the burgomaster and other magistrates. Jaqueline often accompanied the burgomaster, and set an example to the citizens' ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... Abbot John of Trittenham thus admonished the workers in the Scriptorium in 1486: "I have diminished your labours out of the monastery lest by working badly you should only add to your sins, and have enjoined on you the manual labour of writing and binding books. There is in my opinion no labour more becoming a monk than the writing of ecclesiastical books.... You will recall that the library of this monastery... had been dissipated, sold, or made way with by disorderly monks ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... father served and cursed and worshipped that his mother's previous answer was lost for the time being. But it recurred to his mind later and connected with his father's talk of making him a carpenter. A strong prejudice against manual labour was ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... counterbalances all the advantages that they possess over the rest of the community. This disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and riches downwards, till you approach very nearly to that numerous class who live by manual labour, becoming, however, less and less as you descend. You generally find even very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice of their natural and rational taste to their mean and ridiculous pride, and thereby providing for themselves an ample supply of misery for life. By preferring 'provident ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... into our regiment; one was very fat and reminded me of a Dickens character in Pickwick Papers; another who soon fell asleep, his head warm in a Balaclava helmet, was a tall, strapping youth with large muscular hands, which betoken manual labour, and the last was a slightly-built boy with a budding moustache which seemed to have been waxed at one end. We noticed this, and the fat soldier said that the wax had melted from the few lonely hairs on the ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... state of trade, numbers of stocking-weavers had lost work. The discontent thus produced was increased by the introduction of a wide frame for the manufacture of gaiters and stockings, which, it was supposed, would further diminish the demand for manual labour. In November, 1811, organized bands of men began to break into houses and destroy machinery. For several days no serious effort was made to check the riots, which extended to a considerable distance round Nottingham. But on November ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... relaxed over this manual labour, with the consequence that Sam Donny's tongue began to run rather freely, a certain intimacy having existed in the past between Roy and the miller's man connected with the demand and supply of meal-worms for catching and ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... subordinate to the spiritual requirements. The fourth word of the Decalogue prescribes, then, that the Israelite should for ever remember the holy day of sabbath, as a representative of religion, and should, during that day, abstain, and cause all his dependants to abstain, from all manual labour and earthly occupation, that might distract him from the contemplation of heavenly subjects, which should exclusively occupy his ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... French tragic actress, who seems to have been an actress before she saw a theatre, deserves attention. This female, destined to be a sublime tragedian, was of the lowest extraction; the daughter of a violent and illiterate woman, who, with blows and menaces, was driving about the child all day to manual labour. "I know not," says Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the other from helpless sympathy. But it is all over now, and the probity of two, presumably, gallant officers is vindicated, while the paying teller of father's bank is behind the bars with a certain prospect of years of manual labour for bed and board. Why will men be so foolish? Easily answered. The love of gold, not made in an honest way, but by speculating with other folks' money. Mr. Barr, the aforesaid teller, is a nice ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... command myself on such occasions, and Mr. —— seemed positively degraded in my eyes, as he stood enforcing upon these women the necessity of their fulfilling their appointed tasks. How honorable he would have appeared to me begrimed with the sweat and soil of the coarsest manual labour, to what he then seemed, setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid exacted labour! I turned away in bitter disgust. I hope this sojourn among Mr. ——'s slaves may not lessen my respect for him, but I fear it; for the details of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... hands, how much time they ought to be expected to consume in their regular and stated occupations, and how much would remain to them for relaxation and leisure. It has been said(18), that half an hour in the day given by every member of the community to manual labour, might be sufficient for supplying the whole with the absolute necessaries of life. But there are various considerations that would inevitably lengthen this period. In a community which has made any considerable advance in the race of civilisation, many individuals ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... finished they presented it to their beloved 'Tusitala' as an abiding remembrance of their grateful regard. It was a noble tribute to a noble nature, and one the value of which can only be fully appreciated by those who realise what the personal manual labour meant to these proud island chiefs so wholly unaccustomed to exertion of any kind, and so imbued with the idea that all labour was derogatory to their dignity. Their loving service touched Mr Stevenson and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... not displease your highness, but I am not a rascal. My name is Jacquemin Lampourde, and I ply the sword for a living. My profession is an honourable one. I have never degraded myself by taking part in trade of any kind, or by manual labour. Killing is my business, at the risk of my own life and limb—for I always do my work alone, unaided, armed only with my trusty sword. Fair play is a jewel, and I would scorn to take a mean advantage of anybody. I always give warning before I attack a man, and let him have ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... avarice that grasps, yet of the avarice that clings. He was generous as few in the matter of money, but then he had had so little—not half enough to learn to love it! Nor had he the slightest idea of any mode in which to make it. Most of the methods he had come in contact with, except that of manual labour, in which work was done and money paid immediately for it, repelled him, as having elements of the unhandsome where not the dishonest: he was not yet able to distinguish between substance and mode in such matters. The only ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... bricklayers, potters, millers, sawyers—every kind of labourer or artisan is here to be found. There are no idlers, and no unemployed. Everybody, from the humblest convert up to the bishop himself, is occupied in some sort of manual labour. It is a curious and interesting sight—a society so industrious and sober, so peaceful and well-regulated, yet built up of such divers elements drawn from such widely ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the demand is ever increasing as the tide of emigration rolls westward, so the inventive brains of the Americans are ever discovering some mechanical means of abridging manual labour, which seldom or ever meets the demand. The saws, axes, and indeed all cutting tools made at respectable establishments in the States, are said to be superior to ours. On going into a hardware store at Hamilton in Upper Canada, I saw some English spades ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird |
