A task, or work, without a blemish. [ Motto ]
I will this dreary blank of absence make,
A noble task-time, and will therein strive
To follow excellence, and to overtake
More good than I have won since yet I live. [ Francis Kemble ]
A heavier task could not have been imposed,
Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable. [ William Shakespeare ]
Light is the task when many share the toil. [ Homer ]
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought.
To teach the young idea how to shoot. [ James Thomson ]
Let each task present its petty good to thee. [ Robert Browning ]
A man's task is always light if his heart is light. [ Lew Wallace ]
The wind, a sightless laborer, whistles at his task. [ Wordsworth ]
No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
The proper task of literature lies in the domain of belief. [ Carlyle ]
To great evils one must oppose great virtues; and also to small, which is the harder task of the two. [ Carlyle ]
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. [ Sam'l Johnson ]
A double task to paint the finest features of the mind, and to most subtle and mysterious things give color, strength, and motion. [ Akenside ]
With temperance, health, cheerfulness, friends, a chosen task, one pays the cheapest fees for living, and may well dispense with other physicians. [ A. B. Alcott ]
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. [ Charles Lamb ]
Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand. [ Sterne ]
There is power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements hold him to his task; what has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in use. [ R. W. Emerson ]
Let a woman once give you a task, and you are hers, heart and soul; all your care and trouble lend new charms to her for whose sake they are taken. To rescue, to revenge, to instruct, or protect a woman is all the same as to love her. [ Richter ]
As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Let your pen fail, begin to trifle with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary for your task. [ G. H. Lewes ]
Bear your burden manfully. Boys at school, young men who have exchanged boyish liberty for serious business - all who have got a task to do, a work to finish - bear the burden till God gives the signal for repose - till the work is done, and the holiday is fairly earned. [ James Hamilton ]
Addison acknowledged that he would rather inform than divert his reader; but he recollected that a man must be familiar with wisdom before he willingly enters on Seneca and Epictetus. Fiction allures him to the severe task by a gayer preface. Embellished truths are the illuminated alphabet of larger children. [ Willmott ]
Two grand tasks have been assigned to the English people--the grand Industrial task of conquering some half, or more, of the terraqueous planet for the use of man; then, secondly, the grand Constitutional task of sharing, in some pacific endurable manner, the fruit of said conquest, and showing all people how it might be done. [ Carlyle ]
Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it. [ Hazlitt ]
To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little, and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation; above all, on the same condition, to keep friends with himself: here is a task for all a man has of fortitude and delicacy. [ Robert Louis Stevenson ]
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]