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• s  characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort

• The toilsome chore of untaming their pampered playmate gives the movie tension, much of it spelled out in pictures more than equal to the rich lion lore contained in the book.
• But toilsome Chinese efforts, both before and since, have availed less in relieving droughts than have their partially successful flood control methods (success being measured .
• Extracting palm kernels, picking kola nuts, pressing out palm oil and tending ginger plants are still the toilsome daily occupations of some 200,000 slaves who were legally made .

• arduous
• backbreaking
• grueling
• gruelling
• hard
• heavy
• laborious
• operose
• punishing

Quotes

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• Alexis de Tocqueville in Huffington Post (blog)
  One hundred fifty years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French historian and author of Democracy in America, wrote , "I (fear) that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble,...
• Mary Baker Eddy in Christian Science Monitor
  Explaining the power of prayer to heal, Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, wrote: "There is nothing difficult nor toilsome in this task, when the way is pointed out; but self-denial, sincerity, Christianity, and persistence alone win...
• Nathaniel Hawthorne in NPR
  Never afterwards did it quit her bosom,Hawthorne writes. "But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and...