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arduous
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  • The day had been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams.   (source)
    arduous = difficult
  • My dear guardian, with the assistance of Miss Prism, has the arduous task of looking after me.   (source)
  • It was much rarer for an Ygnirod to achieve the status of Snilfard, since the way up is usually more arduous than the way down: even if he were able to amass the necessary cash and acquire a Snilfard bride for himself or his son, a certain amount of bribery was involved, and it might be some time before he was accepted by Snilfard society.†   (source)
  • There were other, deeper, nooks in the wall, but they were either too small or too high to reach without an arduous climb.†   (source)
  • The journey of the Trisolaran Fleet is long and arduous, and the fleet must pass through two interstellar dust belts.†   (source)
  • The next line of the article was, "A new technique, utilizing a pizza-wheel-type cutter, makes quick work of a once arduous step.†   (source)
  • Both her husband and Amanda were in favor of creating mayhem with sexual stereotypes, or reversing sexual roles as arduously and as self-consciously as possible—hence, he often wore an apron while shopping; hence, her hair was shorter than his, except on her legs and in her armpits, where she grew it long.†   (source)
  • Hauling Sticky and Constance to safety was an arduous, tricky business (and an unpleasant one, too, as Constance complained the whole time of Sticky's elbow in her ribs).†   (source)
  • Driven by this thought, he began the arduous journey, on foot, back through the Spine.†   (source)
  • The march to the concession stand was sustained and arduous.†   (source)
  • Once I was through a thin layer of topsoil, I hit heavy, dense clay studded with rocks—the backfill from the excavation of our basement—and the going was slow and arduous.†   (source)
  • The training of an apprentice geisha is an arduous path.†   (source)
  • Dworakowski had destroyed the structure of self-deception I had so arduously maintained.†   (source)
  • Gogol goes for runs around the lake with Gerald, arduous laps along steep hilly dirt roads, so infrequently traveled that they can occupy the dead center.†   (source)
  • Then we all returned to Hawaii, while I prepared for another arduous journey, the one I had promised myself, promised my departed brothers in my prayers, and promised the families, whenever I could.†   (source)
  • But at five, he was well past his puppyhood, when even a butterfly had been enough to set off an arduous chase through the woods and meadows behind the house and barn.†   (source)
  • It was an arduous but fruitless effort.†   (source)
  • It had been a long, arduous, and, at times, emotional journey.†   (source)
  • The first Everesters were obliged to trek 400 arduous miles from Darjeeling across the Tibetan plateau simply to reach the foot of the mountain.†   (source)
  • Patients from the countryside, from the mountains, who made the arduous trip to Lexington, short on money, long on hope.†   (source)
  • It was not, in the end, too arduous a descent.†   (source)
  • After a long and arduous organizing drive, workers at the Monfort beef plant voted to join the UFCW in 1992.†   (source)
  • Even this simple conversation seemed impossibly arduous.†   (source)
  • She and Sister Anjali were the first novitiates of the Carmelite Order of Madras to also go through the arduous nursing diploma course at the Government General Hospital, Madras.†   (source)
  • And there's one other thing: Zayd likes the way Cedric reserves friendship until it is arduously won.†   (source)
  • If it was a man, it was an Indian, he imagined, and he raced back to the herd and got the Captain, who had been shoeing the mare—always an arduous task.†   (source)
  • It was only a couple of stories below the Glade proper, but the Glade occupants were manipulated into thinking the trip up was an impossibly long and arduous journey.†   (source)
  • In addition, another 3,000 British troops and more than 8,000 Hessians had arrived after an arduous three months at sea.†   (source)
  • She swallowed dryly several times during the arduous trek up the stairs to her apartment, but she was sleeping soundly again by the time Nately undressed her and put her to bed.†   (source)
  • The journey back to Rowan was long, with many river crossings and slow, arduous climbs through the mountain passes that walled the land's interior from the coast.†   (source)
  • The leg I'd run had been arduous and long, but there were still others—more questions and answers—more key witnesses, many more hours to Gail's day.†   (source)
  • "With his typical understatement, Mortenson doesn't say much about the twenty-four hours it took to haul himself up to reach Fine other than to comment that it was "fairly arduous."†   (source)
  • —THICH NHAT HANH Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.†   (source)
  • So much maturity had been expected of them on the field and on such an arduous journey that it was easy to forget that they were just children.†   (source)
  • Honga was first, a long and arduous climb and the most frightening, because from a certain cliff near the summit on stormy days Deo really feared he would be blown off and come to rest like the blackened and now rusting skeleton of the automobile that lay on a grassy slope down below.†   (source)
  • When she closed the door he arduously sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.†   (source)
  • It was possible as well that the Austrians would make the arduous climb up the other side, undetected, and abseil down to his post in utter silence.†   (source)
  • Back in London, in an anonymous office building just off Baker Street, the group spent arduous days practising codes and cryptography.†   (source)
  • Superficially, our system is only slightly different; we have democracy unlimited by race, color, creed, birth, wealth, sex, or conviction, and anyone may win sovereign power by a usually short and not too arduous term of service — nothing more than a light workout to our cave-man ancestors.†   (source)
  • When I could no longer type with my hands, I knew I could give up writing entirely or go through the arduous process of learning how to use voice recognition software.†   (source)
  • The white rectangle moved with the busy arduous ants.†   (source)
  • The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous.†   (source)
  • Ralph read, an arduous process.†   (source)
  • When it rained, it was even more arduous because the hillside was slick and muddy.†   (source)
  • I can think of no reason to let go of the hold we now have on this arduous an enterprise.†   (source)
  • His body was a work of art forged through arduous repetitive hours with weights.†   (source)
  • I don't suppose your duties would be very arduous, but you would be a help to him in dealing with the dockyard.†   (source)
  • It was arduous work and neither of them knew the technique.†   (source)
  • Others I intuitively judged to lack the necessary temperament for the arduous task at hand.   (source)
    arduous = difficult - requiring much energy and effort
  • Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing.   (source)
  • But also in the littler things, having a partner lightened the load, could even make the arduous task of filling my family's table enjoyable.   (source)
    arduous = difficult
  • The work was extraordinarily arduous and often dangerous, and shifts went on day and night, some for eighteen hours.   (source)
    arduous = difficult - requiring hard labor
  • The constant heat drained her strength and made even the smallest task arduous.†   (source)
  • Trying to get somebody to post bail became an arduous task.†   (source)
  • They scouted the trail for Brom, which proved to be more arduous than Eragon expected.†   (source)
  • The study of sorcery, if properly conducted, is long and arduous and should be approached with care.†   (source)
  • The task of the President is very arduous, very perplexing, and very hazardous.†   (source)
  • Travel was slow and arduous everywhere, the roads appallingly bad and worst in the South.†   (source)
  • He had not anticipated how arduous it would be.†   (source)
  • ABIGAIL REACHED Washington on November 16, at the end of an extremely arduous journey.†   (source)
  • The task of the President is very arduous, very perplexing, and very hazardous.†   (source)
  • She was entirely understanding of John's "arduous task.†   (source)
  • In the prow, with a glow of satisfaction in his eyes, Jose Arcadio Segundo was directing the arduous maneuver.†   (source)
  • Until that summer, my long apprenticeship to maturity struck me as arduous and humiliating; Randy White had confiscated my fake draft card, and I wasn't yet old enough to buy beer—I wasn't independent enough to merit my own place to live, I wasn't earning enough to afford my own car, and I wasn't something enough to persuade a woman to bestow her sexual favors upon me.†   (source)
  • All that remained at that time of Jose Arcadio Buendia's ancient village were the dusty almond trees, destined to resist the most arduous of circumstances, and the river of clear water whose prehistoric stones had been pulverized by the frantic hammers of Jose Arcadio Segundo when he set about opening the channel in order to establish a boat line.†   (source)
  • It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love.†   (source)
  • With Wang carrying the dehydrated Follower and King Wen carrying the sandglass, the two continued their arduous journey.†   (source)
  • On the other hand, she felt a very strong attraction to the river, she wanted to see the alligators sunning themselves on the sandy banks, she wanted to be awakened in the middle of the night by the woman's cry of the manatees, but the idea of so arduous a journey at her age, and a lone widow besides, seemed unrealistic to her.†   (source)
  • She kept on thinking about him during the arduous muleback crossing of the hallucinating plateau where Aureliano Segundo had become lost when he was looking for the most beautiful woman who had ever appeared on the face of the earth, and when they went over the mountains along Indian trails and entered the gloomy city in whose stone alleys the funereal bronze bells of thirty-two churches tolled.†   (source)
  • Florentino Ariza, because he was so quiet and elusive, also earned the esteem of the owner, and during the most arduous period of his grief he would lock himself in the suffocating little rooms to read verses and tearful serialized love stories, and his reveries left nests of dark swallows on the balconies and the sound of kisses and the beating of wings in the stillness of siesta.†   (source)
  • It is possible to reduce the undesirable side effects by certain spells, but it is a long and arduous process.†   (source)
  • She had never aspired to master the Drum Dance, nor participate in the arduous Calling of Names, nor—and this most particularly—best anyone in the Trial of the Long Knives.†   (source)
  • Sukeena met me later in the day and together we began the arduous task of unpacking my twelve steamers.†   (source)
  • It was arduous, thankless work.†   (source)
  • "I'm going to build you a school," he said, not yet realizing that with those words, the path of his life had just detoured down another trail, a route far more serpentine and arduous than the wrong turns he'd taken since retreating from K2.†   (source)
  • The war was a longer, far more arduous, and more painful struggle than later generations would understand or sufficiently appreciate.†   (source)
  • Grudgingly, I'd come to admire the long, arduous American system of surgical training; it was easier to admire when you were about done with it.†   (source)
  • FAST RIDERS CARRIED THE NEWS to Providence and Newport, Hartford and New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, then on to Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, 1, Too arduous miles from Boston.†   (source)
  • It was arduous work, and although Eragon gave her as much of his strength as he dared, by afternoon her exhaustion was profound.†   (source)
  • He found a cook tent and ate a large lunch, which he needed after casting so many arduous spells, then headed toward the area where the villagers from Carvahall were staying.†   (source)
  • In addition to the burden of constant companionship, Eragon had spent all the months since he had left Palancar Valley engaged in arduous training, breaking only for travel or to take part in the tumult of battle.†   (source)
  • In private correspondence with James Warren, at the time of Franklin's arduous mission to Montreal in 1776, Adams had written : Franklin's character you know.†   (source)
  • In the hope that the Canadians could be persuaded to join the American cause as "the 14th colony," Congress organized a diplomatic expedition to Montreal with Benjamin Franklin at its head, and despite his age and poor health, Franklin departed on what was to be an exceedingly arduous and futile mission.†   (source)
  • My friend, it is not an arduous task that I bequeath, for our order knows only silken bonds.†   (source)
  • Flopped on chairs, they contemplated now the magnificent conquest over taps and bath; now the more arduous, more partial triumph over long rows of books, black as ravens once, now white-stained, breeding pale mushrooms and secreting furtive spiders.†   (source)
  • Life for both sexes—and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle.†   (source)
  • Why should it be very arduous, in a mountain full of timber, to feed a fire so small that its whereabouts had been concealed for centuries?†   (source)
  • His name was Mr. McKissem, and she had screwed up enough courage, after an arduous siege, to refuse him, upon the private grounds of insanity.†   (source)
  • But the next stage, though occasionally exciting, was less arduous than he had been prepared for, and a relief from the lung-bursting strain of the ascent.†   (source)
  • But now, he turned against the stream in which he had drifted so short a while before, and began swimming arduously back against the current.†   (source)
  • but because it would be the most unfortunate thing for all concerned that could occur; and though you could no more have proved vice or virtue or courage or cowardice to him without showing him the moving people than you could have proved death to him without showing him a corpse, he did believe in misfortune because of that rigorous and arduous dusty eunuch's training which taught to leave man's good luck and joys to God, who would in return surrender all his miseries and follies and misfortunes to the lice and fleas of Coke and Littleton.†   (source)
  • She is like someone who has performed an arduous journey on the strength of a promise and who now ceases completely and waits.†   (source)
  • Finally I devised a method of kneeling that was not really kneeling; I learned, through arduous repetition, how to balance myself on the toes of my shoes and rest my head against a wall in some convenient corner.†   (source)
  • They said nothing more to each other, but he was pleased, and the incessant bending and stooping seemed less arduous, and working on until the moon rose above a bank of purple clouds, they finished the field and went home.†   (source)
  • They have their homes in the valley, and they don't care for leaving them to make long and arduous trips outside.†   (source)
  • He pictured the long, arduous journey, and that eventual moment of arrival at some planter's bungalow in Sikkim or Baltistan—a moment which ought, he felt, to be deliriously cheerful, but which would probably be slightly disappointing.†   (source)
  • The discerning eye of a rider saw the signs of a long, arduous trip.†   (source)
  • Then Shefford divined why the Navajo had made that arduous climb.†   (source)
  • They were arduous, for he had to attend on an average three confinements a day.†   (source)
  • Her guests reported an arduous ride down the mountain, with only one incident to lend excitement.†   (source)
  • What had he taken this arduous climb for?†   (source)
  • The rest of us must be contented with a fair, but a less arduous, goal.†   (source)
  • As he progressed the work grew more arduous.†   (source)
  • Both animals bore evidence of long, arduous travel.†   (source)
  • Even so, I had just returned from an arduous journey, exhausted and badly needing a rest.†   (source)
  • Here I must for the present break off my arduous work of educating the Press.†   (source)
  • It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative.†   (source)
  • There was no point in dampening the energy they were putting into our arduous rescue work.†   (source)
  • This new route, very steep and hence very arduous, quickly took us close to the surface of the sea.†   (source)
  • You don't know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.†   (source)
  • He anticipated an arduous and perplexing job, yet felt fully capable of accomplishing it and winning his bet with Burn.†   (source)
  • Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work at £2 a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground, and sitting still.†   (source)
  • Travel was arduous.†   (source)
  • They then crossed the bridge and, taking the more arduous descent on the other side, reemerged into view across the rapids, which were spanned at this point by a second bridge.†   (source)
  • Burke had exhausted all his eloquence in trying to induce the British Government to fight the revolutionary government of France, but Mr. Pitt, with characteristic prudence, did not feel that this country was fit yet to embark on another arduous and costly war.†   (source)
  • Climbing was arduous enough, yet the hardest and most perilous toil began when a wild steer was cornered.†   (source)
  • But having placed him comfortably in a small official position which was not arduous, the Griffiths now proceeded to dismiss him from their minds.†   (source)
  • Archie Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk.†   (source)
  • Little arduous as his professional duties were, he would have been convicted of frivolity by the whole Mingott clan if he had suggested asking for a holiday in mid-winter; and he accepted May's departure with the resignation which he perceived would have to be one of the principal constituents of married life.†   (source)
  • Unlike no few of England's renowned sailors, long and arduous service with signal devotion to it, had not resulted in absorbing and salting the entire man.†   (source)
  • In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges.†   (source)
  • Also, for the purpose of her cure, he had for many years pretended to a rigid domesticity from which he was drifting away, and this pretense became more arduous in this effortless immobility, in which he was inevitably subjected to microscopic examination.†   (source)
  • There was nothing especially arduous in this round of religious obligations; but it stood for a fraction of that great bulk of boredom which loomed across her path.†   (source)
  • No regret, no desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the arduous merriment of the Bunch, was so great as his feeling of social inferiority when he failed to keep up.†   (source)
  • The astounded world, the astounded and profane Clif Clawson, had the spectacle of Martin in shiny pressed clothes, a painful linen collar, and an arduously tied scarf, accompanying Mrs. Fox and the chastely chattering Madeline to the Mohalis Methodist Church, to hear the Reverend Dr. Myron Schwab discourse on "The One Way to Righteousness."†   (source)
  • This occupation he seemed to think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men.†   (source)
  • The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips of weathered rock and the steep bench of stone and the worn steps all were arduous work for Bess in the climbing.†   (source)
  • Her hope was strong that the arduous toil of hunting and skinning buffalo would continue to leave Jett little time in camp, and none to molest her with evil intentions.†   (source)
  • The royal governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of them was to introduce boastful rhapsodies into every arduous discussion, when, getting gradually excited, he would end by flying off his perch with a kriss in his hand.†   (source)
  • Therefore the civil official who came on board to make a preliminary investigation into the capture, investigated arduously all day long, and only went ashore after dark, muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to let Brown's little all clink in its bag.†   (source)
  • I await the expression of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom (were it possible) to divert by a more arduous labor than usual.†   (source)
  • Still, neither party resorted to their greatest exertions from the outset, both knowing that the chase was likely to be arduous and long.†   (source)
  • The present one had been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy—that is had been rapid—only because he had made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make.†   (source)
  • This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.†   (source)
  • They were singing discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were drunk and on a spree.†   (source)
  • It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty.†   (source)
  • A secret hoard of indifference—like a thick cake a fond old nurse might have slipped into his first school outfit—came to his aid and helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for aught but that arduous game.†   (source)
  • Actuated by no personal motives, but moved only by high and great constitutional considerations; which I will not attempt to explain, for they are really beneath the comprehension of those who have not made themselves masters, as I have, of the intricate and arduous study of politics; I would rather keep my seat, and intend doing so.†   (source)
  • They were allowed, on my representation, to rest from their arduous labours, and soon afterwards—as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for their country's service—as I verily believe it was—withdrew to a better world.†   (source)
  • Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal perfection.†   (source)
  • But good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, or else, spread over sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary.†   (source)
  • Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize.†   (source)
  • As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in.†   (source)
  • As the natural and instinctive taste which all men feel for being well off is thus satisfied without trouble and without apprehension, their faculties are turned elsewhere, and cling to more arduous and more lofty undertakings, which excite and engross their minds.†   (source)
  • "Rebecca," said Ivanhoe, "thou hast painted a hero; surely they rest but to refresh their force, or to provide the means of crossing the moat—Under such a leader as thou hast spoken this knight to be, there are no craven fears, no cold-blooded delays, no yielding up a gallant emprize; since the difficulties which render it arduous render it also glorious.†   (source)
  • Their legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian exercises and the walking of matches.†   (source)
  • Another low, deriding laugh passed among the young men, announcing, in a manner sufficiently intelligible, their readiness to undertake a task even more arduous.†   (source)
  • He was alone, if the solitary sentinel who paced the mound be excepted; for the artillerists had hastened also to profit by the temporary suspension of their arduous duties.†   (source)
  • The way was growing more and more arduous, the ascent steeper and steeper; the loose fragments of rock trembled beneath us, and the utmost care was needed to avoid dangerous falls.†   (source)
  • Indeed he was, but my pleasure was qualified by a sense of the arduous task it would be to put such a craft together so as to be fit for sea.†   (source)
  • The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed.†   (source)
  • 'Tis most gratifying to one in my most arduous position to find that my maternal cares have elicited a responsive affection; and to recognize in the amiable Mrs. Bute Crawley my excellent pupil of former years, the sprightly and accomplished Miss Martha MacTavish.†   (source)
  • The gentleman who might have been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was perhaps conscious of the difficulties of his function, it being in its way as arduous to converse with the very meek as with the very mighty.†   (source)
  • Doctor Battius, who found it quite as arduous a task to maintain any of his favourite positions with so irregular an antagonist, as he would have found it difficult to keep his feet within the hug of a western wrestler, hemmed aloud, and profited by the new opening the trapper had made, to shift the grounds of the discussion— "By Old and New World, my excellent associate," he said, "it is no†   (source)
  • "Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he is so devoted to his profession as Mr. Lydgate is," said Rosamond, who was standing, and moved easily away at the end of this correct little speech.†   (source)
  • The rich have many other passions besides that of riches to satisfy; and, besides, the long and arduous enjoyment of a great fortune sometimes makes them in the end insensible to its charms.†   (source)
  • It appeared, on further questioning—for it was only by a very long and arduous process that all this could be got out of Newman Noggs—that Newman, in explanation of his shabby appearance, had represented himself as being, for certain wise and indispensable purposes connected with that intrigue, in disguise; and, being questioned how he had come to exceed his commission so far as to procure an interview, he responded, that the lady appearing willing to grant it, he considered himself bound, both in duty and gallantry, to avail himself of such a golden means of enabling Nicholas to prosecute his addresses.†   (source)
  • The influence which the talents and the character of a single individual may exercise upon the fate of a whole people, in critical circumstances or arduous times, is well known: a law preventing the re-election of the chief magistrate would deprive the citizens of the surest pledge of the prosperity and the security of the commonwealth; and, by a singular inconsistency, a man would be excluded from the government at the very time when he had shown his ability in conducting its affairs.†   (source)
  • The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris.†   (source)
  • I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation — of which the smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon — combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account, may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral pyre.†   (source)
  • 'That I can well believe,' returned his mother, 'only, to hear your talk this morning, one would have thought your discovery of clay the result of very arduous search indeed.'†   (source)
  • The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as anatomy would allow.†   (source)
  • Here the struggle was protracted, arduous and seemingly of doubtful issue; the Delawares, though none of them fell, beginning to bleed freely, in consequence of the disadvantage at which they were held.†   (source)
  • Then, he would have to copy the question, and as much as I remembered of the answer (including a little compliment about independence and good sense); and to send the manuscript in a frank to the local paper, with perhaps half-a-dozen lines of leader, to the effect, that I was always to be found in my place in parliament, and never shrunk from the responsible and arduous duties, and so forth.†   (source)
  • It is difficult to point out with certainty the means of arousing a sleeping population, and of giving it passions and knowledge which it does not possess; it is, I am well aware, an arduous task to persuade men to busy themselves about their own affairs; and it would frequently be easier to interest them in the punctilios of court etiquette than in the repairs of their common dwelling.†   (source)
  • But if, whilst the ranks of society are becoming more equal, the education of the people remains incomplete, or their spirit the reverse of bold—if commerce and industry, checked in their growth, afford only slow and arduous means of making a fortune—the various members of the community, despairing of ameliorating their own condition, rush to the head of the State and demand its assistance.†   (source)
  • He for his part had tossed away all cheap inventions where ignorance finds itself able and at ease: he was enamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and transition which determine the growth of happy or unhappy consciousness.†   (source)
  • The poor fellow appeared relieved from a state of great embarrassment; for, pursuing the direction of the voice—a task that to him was not much less arduous that it would have been to have gone up in the face of a battery—he soon discovered the hidden songster.†   (source)
  • These observations explain why the supreme power is always stronger, and private individuals weaker, amongst a democratic people which has passed through a long and arduous struggle to reach a state of equality than amongst a democratic community in which the citizens have been equal from the first.†   (source)
  • In this delicate and arduous situation, the crafty native had neglected no means of increasing his influence; and one of the happiest of his expedients had been the success with which he had cultivated the favor of their powerful and dangerous neighbors.†   (source)
  • He was at a starting-point which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swims and makes his point or else is carried headlong.†   (source)
  • It was an arduous climb over sharp lava and pumice stones in the midst of air often reeking with sulfurous fumes from the smoke holes.†   (source)
  • When she had made Nicholas thoroughly comfortable with these and other inspiriting remarks, she would discourse at length on the arduous duties she had performed that day; and, sometimes, be moved to tears in wondering how, if anything were to happen to herself, the family would ever get on without her.†   (source)
  • For two hours we were sometimes led over plains of sand, sometimes over prairies of seaweed that were quite arduous to cross.†   (source)
  • Having broken or relaxed the bonds of filial obedience, they have then to emancipate themselves by a final effort from the sway of custom and the tyranny of opinion; and when at length they have succeeded in this arduous task, they stand estranged from their natural friends and kinsmen: the prejudice they have crossed separates them from all, and places them in a situation which soon breaks their courage and sours their hearts.†   (source)
  • The Nautilus was built to rest on the ocean floor, and I don't need to undertake the arduous labors, the maneuvers d'Urville had to attempt in order to float off his sloops of war.†   (source)
  • If this measure proved fruitless, it could arouse the captain's suspicions, make our circumstances even more arduous, and jeopardize the Canadian's plans.†   (source)
  • Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?†   (source)
  • It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.†   (source)
  • The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion.†   (source)
  • Therefore, this was how we were, in the office, the stout doctor explaining his injection for our lay understanding, fat-faced, dry, unarduous, heavy of breath, his arms hairy, the office stinking of cigars and of his sedentary career in old black leather.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unarduous means not and reverses the meaning of arduous. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • You can see", he said to the chief clerk, "that I'm not stubborn and like I like to do my job; being a commercial traveller is arduous but without travelling I couldn't earn my living.†   (source)
  • From the cursory view here taken, it must clearly appear to have been an arduous part.†   (source)
  • To you who are the sons and brothers of the departed, I see that the struggle to emulate them will be an arduous one.†   (source)
  • They took leave of all, and of the good Maritornes, who, sinner as she was, promised to pray a rosary of prayers that God might grant them success in such an arduous and Christian undertaking as that they had in hand.†   (source)
  • Come all these, and more, if possible; for arduous is the task I have undertaken; and, without all your assistance, will, I find, be too heavy for me to support.†   (source)
  • This convention composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men, undertook the arduous task.†   (source)
  • The reader, if he considers that this fellow was already obnoxious to Mr Western, and if he considers farther the weighty business by which that gentleman's displeasure had been incurred, will perhaps condemn this as a foolish and desperate undertaking; but if he should totally condemn young Jones on that account, he will greatly applaud him for strengthening himself with all imaginable interest on so arduous an occasion.†   (source)
  • can it be, most serene Casildea de Vandalia, that thou wilt suffer this thy captive knight to waste away and perish in ceaseless wanderings and rude and arduous toils?†   (source)
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