"Unendurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... loneliness had been terrible, unendurable. Now he was becoming accustomed to it. At least, he no longer feared that he was going mad. ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... that the suffering from this change of habit became most unendurable. While the day-light lasted it was possible to go out-of-doors, to sit in the sunlight, to walk, to do something to divert attention from the exhausted and shattered body; but when darkness fell, and these resources failed, nothing remained except ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... ran over Gilbert as he looked at her. Agony and joy clashed in his heart. He had suffered, gone sleepless, worn himself out by hard, grim exercise in order, who knew how many times, to master his almost unendurable passion. He had killed long nights, the very thought of which made him shudder, by reading books of which he never took in a word. He had stood up in the dark, unmanned, and cursed himself and her and life. He had denounced her to himself and once to her as a flapper, a fool-girl, an ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Presidential election. This was found to be necessary by the circumstances of the contest between John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr. It was then found that the complications in the method of election created by the original clause were all but unendurable, and ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... in the seminary while I was studying philosophy. It is a dreadful condition, Mr. Savva. I have grown somewhat accustomed to it now, but at first it was unendurable. I tried to hang myself once, and they cut me down. Then I tried a second time, and they cut me down again. Then they turned me out of the seminary. "Go hang yourself in some other place, you madman," they said. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... hideousness of the spectacle about them was, at least by flashes, fully realized by the best of the men of that time, and that the lives of some of the more sensitive and generous hearted of them were rendered wellnigh unendurable by the intensity of ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... my fate to be always misunderstood. My sudden flight from the rectory meant no disrespect to my father. I left as I did, because I was quite incapable of facing the woman whom I had once dearly loved—thinking of her as I think now. It is so unendurable to feel that your confidence is lost in a person whom you once trusted without limit, and to go on meeting that person every hour in the day with a smooth face, as if nothing had happened! The impulse to escape more meetings (when I discovered that ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... term for the embracing, the prancing, the Carmagnole-like ecstasy of the half-clad madmen running amuck in the almost unendurable joy of liberation. Barney knew that this condition of things would never do. All who bore commissions in the army were selected from the men. The highest in rank, who proved to be a colonel, was invested ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and Kenny found his new inscrutable trick of silence unendurable. One singular fact loomed out above all others. Adam shamelessly accepted the word miser with a gloating chuckle. He seemed to like it. For Kenny, generous to a fault and prodigal with money, the word ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... precludes the possibility of its being a sphere for European colonization. With the exception of the hill districts, the intense heat during the greater part of the year makes out-door occupation trying even to the native, and well-nigh unendurable for Europeans—a heat uncompensated by the coolness of the night, for in the North-West, at least, the stifling closeness of the night is more trying than the heat of the day. If this heat lasted for only ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in the opinion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... traveller may always be sure, if a country is abused in France, it possesses attractions for him, and vice versa; for the "toute beaute" of a French amateur is invariably a piece of formality or common-place, unendurable to the lovers of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... that day in frightful anxiety. One moment he was fingering Drusus's money bags; the next haunted by the murdered man's ghost. When he called on Cornelia, her slaves said she had a headache and would receive no one. Pratinas held aloof. No news all day—the suspense became unendurable. He lived through the following night harassed by waking visions of every conceivable calamity; but toward morning fell asleep, and as was his wont, awoke late. The first friend he met on the street was Calvus, the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... employment. He cannot endure silence or solitude. When he stands still, he seems to hear the throbbings of his own conscience terrible as the ticking of the clock in the chamber of death. To be alone is unendurable, because it is to be with God. To escape from this fiery furnace, he hastens to plough in his field or sell in his shop. In such a case, the worldliness, even when it runs to the greatest excess, is not the primary passion, but a secondary ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... on his back. The ammonia was still in his eyes, and he could not open them. The agony was terrible, almost unendurable. With her hand under his arm he struggled to his feet. He felt her lead him somewhere, and suddenly he was pushed into a chair. She left him alone for a little while, but presently came back and began to tie his feet together. It was ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... the hours dragged on I began to grow dead tired. The awful noise and confusion, the terrific heat, the foul smell of the glue, and the agony of breaking ankles and blistered hands seemed almost unendurable. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... linger, afraid of having to talk to her. He felt as if the least thing she said would be charged with some unendurable emotion and that at any minute he might be called on to respond. To be sure this was not like what he knew of Maisie; but, everything having changed for him, he felt that at any minute Maisie might begin to be ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... his head seemed to tighten like a metal band, though his lungs stabbed within him as he breathed, though the pain in his feet was unendurable, Eric wrenched again and again at the handle, but the door would not budge. He called, but there was no answer. Almost delirious with baffled rage and excruciating suffering, the boy hurled himself against ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... with us and can do everywhere a great work in this. Women are on our National Committee and doing a great deal of its organization. Our men in the trenches, in the air, at sea, endure for us what we would have said before the war was humanly unendurable. They pay for our freedom with a great price—and we send them out to pay it—in death, disablement, suffering and sacrifice. To fail in our duty behind them would ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... probably have been severely frost-bitten. In other respects we did not suffer the least inconvenience from the cold—on the contrary, found the temperature agreeable; and I am convinced that 10 deg., 20 deg., or even 30 deg. lower would not have been unendurable. It is strange how one's sensations alter. When at home, I find it unpleasant if I only go out-of-doors when there are some 20 degrees of cold, even in calm weather. But here I don't find it any colder when I turn out in ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... to Sheepshead Bay. Colonel Bill alone remained behind. As the days passed and he made no preparation to depart, old Elias's irritation grew apace, and the lives of the stable-boys under the increasing rigor of his rule became almost unendurable. The Colonel, however, saw very little of Elias or the stable-boys. Even his beloved horses no longer interested him. He passed the days walking the streets of Lexington, hoping by some chance to meet Miss Braxton, and it was ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... the Captain, "to send two unendurable and inconceivable bores to intercept me with rubbish about which I neither know nor care any more than ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... in which one feels his own peculiar sorrow as the most unendurable of all. Perhaps it is—but one must abandon that point of view. "That way madness lies." His life may be desolate, but he must not allow himself to meditate on that conviction. It is moral as well as mental disaster, and as life is a divine ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... while ours was but small and weak, but we were in the right—fighting against dreadful wrongs done to our sailors—and God helped us to drive away our haughty, powerful foe, and deliver our brave tars from her unendurable oppression." ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... son is a tell-tale, Mr. Grace, and allow me to say that this is none of his business. When I am insulted, I resent it." To be chaffed by his own uncle when under sentence of a court-martial had not been agreeable, but this admonition was unendurable. He entered the shop. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... floor was usually sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more than one room under a single roof. On the other hand, the dyed patterns on the reed wainscoting, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... nature of a sensitive man the bare idea of delay, under these circumstances, was unendurable. Hugh called the first cab that passed him, and drove ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... place the purely sentimental argument, repulsion against the hard, unrelieved labor, the abuse, the lack of opportunity for enjoyment or recreation of the children of the factory districts; the feeling that in wealthy, humane, Christian England, it was unendurable that women and little children should work longer hours, be condemned to greater hardships, and more completely cut off from the enjoyments of life than were the slaves of tropical countries. This is the argument of Mrs. Browning's Cry of ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... dislike any one colour, and then is obliged to live in its neighbourhood, she will find herself dwelling with an enemy. We all know that there are colours of which a little is enjoyable when a mass would be unendurable. Predominant scarlet would be like close companionship with a brass band, but a note of scarlet is one of the most valuable of sensations. The gray compounded of black and white would be a wet blanket to all bubble of wit or spring of fancy, but the shadows of rose colour are gray, pink-tinted ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... cattle, at their nightly rounds of inspection, before going to bed, would kill, with their clubs, three or four, in the barns and stables, every evening. But still the rats increased, and they became unendurable. They got into the grain-mows, where they burrowed, and brought forth with a fecundity second only to the frogs of Egypt. They gnawed into the granaries. They dug into the dairy. They entered the meat barrels. They carried off the eggs from ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... and left me some property which I sold to invest in an annuity, and thus have just enough to live on quietly, apart from what I may earn. Under such strange conditions it might be asked whether life was not unendurable. Frankly speaking, I cannot say that I find it so. I have in London a few bachelor friends who go with me to theaters, etc. In the suburbs I have about half a dozen family friends. Here I meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. I am passionately fond of music, have an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... immediately afterward, we leave England for any foreign place which you prefer. Some of my friends, and (perhaps) some of your friends, will certainly misinterpret our motives, if we stay in our own country, in a manner which would be unendurable to ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... limitations of the intellect, and is thus the representative of the human mind with its unattainable goal: knowledge of the secret of being, the erotic has gone a step further. He has found the boundary in the very perfection of his personality and, to him, the barrier is unendurable. In the rare love of the rare personality is discovered the eternal separateness of the ego; only the destruction of its origin, the annihilation of itself, might, perhaps, throw down the barrier which separates the lovers. Inevitably there arises in the soul the desire ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... sitting room with only the reddish illumination of one lamp was almost unendurable. Her grandfather sat with broad wasted hands gripping his shrunken knees, his eyes gazing stonily out above a nose netted with fine blue veins and harsh mouth almost concealed by the curtain of beard. Edward ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ant's passionate outburst to the thistle, and the thistle's reply, instead of a Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth couplet. Long, lance-shaped, deeply cleft, sharply pointed, and prickly dark green leaves make the ascent almost unendurable; nevertheless, the ant bravely mounts to where the bristle-pointed, overlapping scales of the deep green cup hold the luscious flowers. Now his feet becoming entangled in the cottony fibres wound about the scaly armor, and a bristling bodyguard thrusting spears at ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... patience had been taxed to the uttermost that day, but Townshead, who had spent most of it in querulous reproaches, had gone out, and his daughter was thankful to be alone at last, for the effort to retain a show of composure had become almost unendurable. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... implacable light is divided and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue that fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with which the mountains burn as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring. And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of His own majesty to men, upon the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... 493 the misery of the besieged city became unendurable, and Odovacar, with infinite reluctance, began to negotiate for its surrender. His son Thelane was handed over as a hostage for his fidelity, and the parleying between the two rival chiefs began on the 25th of February. On the following day Theodoric and his Ostrogoths entered Classis, the great ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... what would all the world be to him if his wife were talked about commonly in connection with another man? That she should not absolutely be a castaway would not save him from a perpetual agony which he would find to be altogether unendurable. He was, he was sure, quite right as to that theory about Caesar's wife, even though, from the unfortunate position of circumstances, he could not dilate upon it at the present moment. "I think," he said, after a pause, "that ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... have done that much longer,' he exclaimed, energetically, as he began to walk up and down the room. 'I could not bear it. And the shadow which for years has been with me night and day, counselling me for bad, was growing so black, and huge, and unendurable that I must have confessed or died. But it is gone now, or will be when I ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... 1812 these unendurable insults to our flag were not repeated by Great Britain, but her Government steadily refused to make any formal renunciation of her right to repeat them, so that our immunity from like insults did not rest upon any better foundation than that which might be ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a red-hot vice. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,—my own, I fancy,—and a canteen of water, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... one put into my keeping. At Paris the original one was returned! And this is a history of my passport between London and Paris, a distance traversed in a few hours. If such are the practices between two of the greatest and most civilized towns on the face of the earth, how unendurable must they be ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... man or woman left within the city, for upon all came unendurable grief. And near the gates they met Priam bringing home the dead. First bewailed him his dear wife and lady mother, as they cast them on the fair-wheeled wain and touched his head; and around them stood the throng and wept. So all ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... well, but I will thank you to spare me your sermons.' What can I do, sir? I have called more than once of late, and Mr. Case hath told me his lady was unable to see me." In fact Madame Bernstein told my wife, whom she never refused, as I said, that the poor chaplain's ton was unendurable, and as for his theology, "Haven't I been a Bishop's wife?" says she, "and do I want this ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in midwinter made a tour of two hundred miles through the Park. Nevertheless, they almost lost their lives in the attempt. At one point, ten thousand feet above the sea, a fearful blizzard overtook them. The cold and wind seemed unendurable, even for an hour, but they endured them for three days. A sharp sleet cut their faces like a rain of needles, and made it perilous to look ahead. Almost dead from sheer exhaustion, they were unable to lie down for fear of freezing; chilled to the bone, they ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... black and so heavy that it moved near the ground, hiding houses, people, and every object, just as night does. The fervor of a July day, increased by the heat of the burning parts of the city, became unendurable. Smoke pained the eyes; breath failed in men's breasts. Even the inhabitants who, hoping that the fire would not cross the river, had remained in their houses so far, began to leave them, and the throng increased hourly. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... course up into the mountains, began about three or four miles short of the inner extremity of Volcano Bay; and second, because within a mile or two of that extremity the water of the bay sometimes actually boiled, and the heat would there be quite unendurable." ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... the murdered Frank by accident came to life again. 'He leaped up, and with a hoarse laugh gave me a severe blow in the face.' This was too much. To have your grief flapped back in your face like a wet sheet is bad, but also and at the same time to have your claret uncorked is unendurable. The 'Ancient Mariner,' then about seven years old, could not stand this. 'With his cross-bow'—no, stop! what are we saying? Nothing better than a kitchen knife was at hand—and 'this,' says Samuel, 'I seized, and was running at him, when ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... tried to make jackets out of the watch coats. Then this ingenious gentleman, who had nothing to wear and was glad of it on account of the heat, which kept him from wearing anything but a shirt, and rendered watch coats unendurable, actually made himself a coat, waistcoat, breeches, cap and umbrella of skins with the hair on and wore them in great comfort! Page 175 he goes hunting, wearing this suit, belted by two heavy skin belts, carrying hatchet, ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... of the House of Commons, that he was not well. "I eat too much, Speaker," he said, "I drink too much, and I sleep too little." It is even said that he felt the final breach with Fox as a relief from unendurable suspense; and he quoted the lines about Aeneas, after he had finally resolved to quit Dido and the Carthaginian shore, at last being able to snatch slumber in his ship's tall stern. There can be no doubt how severe had been the tension. Yet the performance ...
— Burke • John Morley
... gladiatorial shows. One of these slaves, Spartacus, once a Thracian captain of banditti, escaped with seventy comrades to the crater of Vesuvius, and organized an insurrection, and he was soon at the head of one hundred thousand of those wretched captives whose condition was unendurable. Italy was ravaged from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. No Roman general, then in Italy, was equal to the task of subduing them. But, in the second year of the war, Crassus, who was a great proprietor of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... clans, as of old, were impatient of all regular authority; each tribe tended towards an isolated autonomy, a state of affairs which merited reprisals from the natives and encouraged hatred of the intruders, and it was only when the Canaanite oppression became unendurable that those who suffered most from it united themselves to make a common effort, and rallied for a moment round the chief who was ready to lead them. Many of these liberators must have acquired an ephemeral popularity, and then have sunk ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... whoever the prisoner may be, she will free him. These twenty bars are as great music as anything in the world: they even leave Senta's declaration in the "Dutchman" far behind; they are at once triumphant and charged with a pathos nearly unendurable in its intensity. The scene ends with a strange hushed unison passage like some unearthly chant: it is the lull before the breaking of the storm. The entry of Pizarro and the pistol business are by no means done as Wagner or Mozart would have done them. The ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... impenetrable character of Foedora. Alternate hope and despair had swayed my opinions; for me she was sometimes the tenderest, sometimes the most unfeeling of women. But these transitions from joy to sadness became unendurable; I sought to end the horrible conflict within me by extinguishing love. By the light of warning gleams my soul sometimes recognized the gulfs that lay between us. The countess confirmed all my fears; ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... impervious to the unendurable heat, and these, moving together, one behind the other, one beside the other, one atop the other, formed a living wall between Sarka and Jaska and the rim of the flaming blue abyss, to protect them from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... little time, if he had nothing better on hand, as his guest. Perhaps no offense was intended, but the reply enraged Jack. There was in the tone of the letter and in the manner of the invitation a note of patronage that was unendurable. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... steerage, below, to the first cabin or upper deck, the passengers had occupied every kind of quarters; the sea was smooth, so that few were seasick, but the sun beat down from directly overhead, out of a sky almost cloudless, and even under the awnings the heat and moisture were well-nigh unendurable. The gold seekers who clung to their heavy boots and trousers and ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... which filled his heart were well-nigh unendurable! Oh, if he could but manage to keep his self-control for an hour or two! If he could but hold out until he was alone; for at times it seemed as though he must betray himself—there, in that public assembly—by crying aloud in his anguish, or even by ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... love be taken for homage at the altar of importance. How often has not a mistress found that after nursing a servant through an illness, perhaps an old servant even, she has had to part with her for unendurable arrogance and insubordination? But present sickness is a wonderful antidote to vanity, and nourisher of the gentle primeval simplicities of human nature. So long as a man feels himself a poor creature, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... steps to arrest emigration—that they next to the British Government were responsible for the depopulation of the country; that they failed to encourage Irish trade and manufactures and that they "made life dull and unendurable for the people." And so on and so forth it continued its criticisms with remarkable candour ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... had, to use his own expression, "taken it out of him." He tried to arouse himself by directing his mind to the ingots the Chinamen had spoken of, but it would not rest there; it came back headlong to the thought of sweet water rippling in the river, and to the almost unendurable dryness of his lips and throat. The rhythmic wash of the sea upon the reef was becoming audible now, and it had a pleasant sound in his ears; the water washed along the side of the canoe, and the paddle dripped between each stroke. Presently ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... with the service of the enemy had become unendurable. She had not seen or heard from him since the effort to find him that night. He was at his desk at work ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... almost crushed by terror and disappointment. To have been thus close to safety and then to have all hope snatched away by a cruel stroke of fate seemed unendurable. The man was disappointed, too, but more was he angry. He noted the remnants of the uniforms upon the blacks and immediately he demanded to know where ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tell you,"' said John Carker, reading the letter, '"why your name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remote a connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears it, would be unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all engagements between us, from this date, and to request that no renewal of any communication with me, or my establishment, be ever attempted by you."—Enclosed is an equivalent in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... state of revolt against the conditions of her life, was stimulated to carry out the ideas nebulously forming in her alert brain. She felt that the present manner of living must soon prove unendurable to her. It was essential that a change should be made, and that speedily, for she was aware of the limitations to her own patience. Her temperament was not one to let her sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the ruins of romance. Rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... Common—a house that they had taken. When I got two months' leave I invited myself there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably depressing." He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward earnestly, and dropped his voice. "Mr. Carrados, it is my absolute conviction ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... original one. I was left with myself to discover myself amid the multitudinous other and far greater mysteries. I was never the victim of fear of goblins and ghosts because I was never taught them. I was merely taught by nature to follow, as if led by a rare and tender hand, the then almost unendurable beauty that lay on every side of me. It was pain then, to follow beauty, because I didn't understand beauty; it must always, I think, be distressing to follow anything ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... beating heart she had seen the King, Von Ritz and the escort ride up to the entrance and disappear. She had waited—waited—waited, her nerves set for the climax, until the continued silence seemed an unendurable shock. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... unendurable thoughts raced through the commander as he lay there limply. He knew his predicament. He wanted desperately to rise, to rush to the control room. Time and time again in those first few moments of impotence he strove mightily to pull his limbs back to life. But his greatest ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... lain their lives down for him at any time, but that wouldn't do any good. The lowest, most ignorant laborer in their employ had power in this matter, but they had none. They had intellectual power enough, which, added to their utter helplessness, only made their burden more unendurable; for they comprehended to the full the knowledge of what was past, and what must come in the future unless help came quickly. They had the strength of devotion, the strength ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... positions in his mind so that he could have reached them with his eyes shut. At the end of the third hour he had made his way half through the rope. It took him two hours more to weaken one half of the remainder. The pain was becoming unendurable. He quivered from head to foot each time he moved his jaw, for his lips were torn to the quick. His tongue was shredded; his chest damp with blood. Finally he ceased. Then carefully, very carefully, threw back his shoulders so as to bring a strain to the rope. He felt it pull ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... declares that he has read, in some other account, of a dreadful, unendurable face that used to stare at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... complete without music. Even a large piano which has seen its best days does not seem to be altogether a cumberer of the ground where another equally bulky piece of furniture would be unendurable. But unless some member of the family has decided musical ability, the best use of a piano or organ in a home is to sustain the uncertain voices in singing. Home singing is almost a necessity even where no one sings very well. I should not wish to encourage the unmusical ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... go! Let her go, you fool, you FOOL—!' cried Ursula at the top of her voice, completely outside herself. And Gudrun hated her bitterly for being outside herself. It was unendurable that Ursula's voice ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... us altogether from our seats; the brakes do not work; the traces get unhitched; an immense whip is flourished and cracked; the horses become unmanageable; frightened women in a high key scream "Mercy!" and the ride becomes not only dangerous but unendurable. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... red spot in each cheek. He wondered more before they reached home, for his cousin laughed and sung in childlike glee, and was sad and silent by turns. Her restlessness could not wait until the Sabbath. The excitement and suspense were unendurable. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... surrounded by a throng of sympathizing, interested passengers, whose tender tones and gentle touch was as a cool, refreshing draught to parched lips, a sweet morsel to the tongue, for human hearts ever hunger and thirst for affection. How utterly unendurable would be this life, with its desert wastes and hot siroccos, but for the sweet, verdant spots dotting the sandy sea, whence spring the "fountains of perpetual peace" ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... accept a situation which would rouse any continental gendarme to heroic indignation. Mayors, Aldermen, and Justices of the Peace are comic, and take it not quite so well. Beadles were so wholly dedicated to the purposes of comedy that I suppose they found their position unendurable and went to earth; at any rate it is very difficult to catch ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... force of arms. Nature has endowed me with military talent. None, I presume, excels me in that respect. You, however, had no praise to bestow on me. Rather was I frequently reprimanded when I served in the capital, so that my shame was unendurable, whereas your sympathy would have delighted me. While Masakado was still a youth he served Tadahira, the prime minister, for tens of years, and when Tadahira became regent, Masakado never entertained his present project. I have no ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... charge of the ducal physicians and servants, who reported to their employer every careless word. Removed from Belriguarda, he was ordered to be confined in the Ferrarese convent of San Francisco; and two friars were appointed to watch over him continually. Such a life was unendurable to the proud poet, who disliked the nauseous medicines of the convent as much as its restraint; and taking advantage of a festa, when his keepers were unusually negligent, he made his escape by a window. In the disguise ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... him. "The hope had gone from my life. I had no ballast, nothing to steady me in the tempest. My hope had been all in the present, and it perished with her. I cared for nothing, my little children were a misery to me, the old home was unendurable. I got leave of absence from my employers, and came up here—desperate. I dashed into every sort of dissipation and extravagance; I tried one excitement after another, if only I could drown every memory I had. I abandoned myself to so-called 'friends' of the worst sort, who degraded ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... slid it unaided down the stairs. Back again in the bedroom, she carelessly glanced at the money in her purse, and then put on her things for the journey. Waiting, she stood at the window to look for the postman. Presently she saw him in the distance; he approached quickly, but spent an unendurable minute out of sight in the shop next door. When he emerged Hilda was in anguish. Had he a letter for her? Had he not? He seemed to waver at the gateway, and to decide to enter.... She heard the double blow of his drumstick baton.... ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... answered Boisberthelot. "Nevertheless, it is unendurable to be under the command of a Coquereau, a Jean-Jean, a Moulin, a ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... said Jasper, 'I can't have this; Dora's conceit, please to remember, is, to begin with, only a little less than my own, and you will make her unendurable. Her tale is well enough in its way, but then its way is a very ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the distance by river, if time permitted I had rather adventure next time upon the Nile than ever go by train over that line again. I confess I have made the journey by rail frequently but it becomes really more unendurable each trip. Of course I laid in stores of liquids and solids for the voyage. I ought to have known better, but one thinks nothing of the toothache when it is past. The mineral waters became too hot to drink, and not quite ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... attribute our loss. This animal abounded in the basement where the tank is, and whether through jealousy of the fame of the new-comers, or through some settled antipathy between flesh and fish, or simply through his natural beastliness, he communicated effluvia to the atmosphere that were perfectly unendurable by whale, which promptly expired from want of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... stern in their dealings with sectaries, it should be remembered that the Colony was in fact the private property of the Massachusetts Company, that unity was essential to its success, and that John of Leyden had taught them how unendurable by the nostrils of honest men is the corruption of the right of private judgment in the evil and selfish hearts of men when no thorough mental training has developed the understanding and given the judgment its needful means of comparison and correction. They knew that liberty in the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... government which he assailed. He pursued the government with his irony and abuse, not because they fell beneath him in point of honour or principle, but because they refused him their confidence as Lord Chancellor, when his indiscretions and bullying rendered him alike odious to the court and unendurable to the cabinet. His lordship might fairly be considered as much the "standing counsel" for the rebellious Canadians in the lords, as Mr. Roebuck was in the commons. Nevertheless, the denunciations of the government by the eccentric peer were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... chamber, harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the inexorable logic of fact and reason. "But are not your officials uncompromisingly opposed to the freedom of the Press?" said one who conversed with me on the varying phases of the two countries, and knowing that in his eyes this would constitute an unendurable offence, I at once appeased his mind. "By no means," I replied; "if anything, the exact contrary is the case. As a matter of reality, of course, there is no Press now, the all-seeing Board of Censors having wisely determined ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... cruelty of husbands. She had been told over and over again, in the days before her marriage, that Burgo would ill-use her if he became her husband. The Marquis of Auld Reekie had gone so far as to suggest that Burgo might probably beat her. But what hard treatment, even what beating, could be so unendurable as this total want of sympathy, as this deadness in life, which her present lot entailed upon her? As for that matter of beating, she ridiculed the idea in her very soul. She sat smiling at the absurdity of the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... a sermon which in matter and style were really excellent made, to some hearers at least, almost unendurable by the accident that the preacher had got the habit of (needlessly) clearing his throat at the end of almost ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... when his feeling of restlessness became quite unendurable, the ex-ambassador would wander round Fort Gayole and on some pretext or other demand to see one or the other of his prisoners. Marguerite, however, observed complete silence in his presence: she acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of the head, and in reply to certain perfunctory ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... our commerce and people through the devastation of the island, and, most important, the need of removing at once and forever the constant menace and the burdens entailed upon our Government by the uncertainties and perils of the situation caused by the unendurable disturbance in Cuba. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... statement. War they were ready to face. But to go back to every-day life once again bowed down with the shame of a moral Majuba, to meet the eyes of the Dutch once more aflame with the light of victory, to hear their words of insolent contempt—was ignominy unspeakable and unendurable. The Uitlander Council at once cabled an emphatic message of protest[115] to Mr. Chamberlain, and every loyalist that had a friend in England telegraphed to beg him to use all his influence to prevent the surrender of the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... that, seeking solace in friendship, he contracted that bond of sentiment which lasted till death with Boselli, a singer in the service of Prince Esterhazy. This friendship, rousing jealous suspicions in the mind of Mrs. Anna, ended by rendering her unendurable. The hostile fates willed that no fruit should be borne of Haydn's marriage." [On this point Haydn once opened his heart to Griesinger, saying: "My wife was incapable of bearing children, and therefore I was less indifferent to the charms of other womankind."] "Lacking its most solid link, the marital ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... sent you a warning last week make the smells more unendurable?" asked the registrar suggestively, and the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... move you nothing? No?" he said, with the slightest taint of bitterness. "Well, well, I have found, Esther, the worst reality is never unendurable when it comes out from behind the clouds through which we at first see it darkly—never—not even the rack. I suppose it will be so with death. And by that philosophy the slavery to which we are going must afterwhile become sweet. It pleases me even ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... business was now quite well established, Darrell felt that life at The Pines was becoming unendurable. Walcott's visits were now so frequent it was impossible longer to avoid him. The latter's air of easy self-assurance, the terms of endearment which fell so flippantly from his lips, and his bold, passionate ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... went for nothing, even in the moment in which they were made. She had suffered for meddling; that was bad: it was worse to the Imp not to meddle; inactivity was the one thing unendurable. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... sidewalk to me home, and I came upon this gang of ruffians at your door. Impatient at being delayed,—for my time is much occupied,—I rebuked them for being in me way. One of them turned to me and insolently inquired, 'Do you own this street, or have you just got a lien on it?' which unendurable insult was greeted with a loud laugh from the other ruffians. I called them by some properly severe name, and raised me cane to force a passage,—and the rest you know. Now, gentlemen, is ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and was not missed, so much greater and more satisfying was the love for her boy. And now she must lose him. Two or three silent miserable days passed by while she waited for the dreadful separation, until the thought of it became unendurable and she resolved to keep her child and sacrifice everything else. Secretly she prepared for flight, getting together the few necessary things she could carry; then, with the child in her arms, she stole out one evening and began her ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... led them to a village on rising ground, a short distance from the road, and halted them there. The exhausted men threw themselves down in the shade of the houses. They had the long day yet to pass, and their thirst seemed unendurable; still, the halt was welcome, for there was not a man but felt that his strength was at an end, and that it would have been an impossibility ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... extracted from storage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served at dialed-for intervals. There was also equipment for preparing food for oneself, in one's own chosen manner—again an item to help make solitude not unendurable. ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... so indelibly upon the course of Irish politics. Swift's part in this Stygian pool of the eighteenth century is rather a difficult one to explain. He was not in any sense an Irish champion, indeed, objected to being called an Irishman at all, and regarded his life in Ireland as one of all but unendurable banishment. He was a vehement High Churchman, and looked upon the existing penal proscription under which the Catholics lay as not merely desirable, but indispensable. At the same time it would be quite untrue to suppose, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... there for a long while; the numbness became painful; the tension a dull endurance. Fatigue came, too; she rested her head wearily on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. But the tall clocks ticking slowly became unendurable—and the odour of the ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... chill in Fownes' fingers was clearly not unendurable, for in a moment he came to the table, and putting his hand over that of Janice, which held the pestle, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... be waiting for her. At these stolen meetings they were perfectly happy; for Tony said no word to her of the misery of his life—how he was always put to the hardest work and beaten on the smallest pretext, how in fact his life was made so unendurable that the idea of running away and taking to the swamps was ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... some fashion expressed what the drawing of his lips had made her feel. "Sweetheart—to-morrow!" he said, and kissed her again with a lingering persistence that to her overwrought nerves had in it something that was almost unendurable. It made her think of an epicurean tasting some favourite dish and smacking his ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the afternoon she established herself in a theater and sat contentedly hour after hour watching the endless vaudeville until the usual time for returning home. At the end of each week she gave her parents her usual wage, but when her thirty dollars was exhausted it seemed unendurable that she should return to the monotony of the factory. In the light of her newly acquired experience she had learned that possibility which the city ever holds open to the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... not sleep all that night, so great was my anxiety. It was hard to part with the watch. I put it on the table at my bedside, and it ticked so pleasantly! But then to feel that David despised me—and there was no doubt that he did—was unendurable. By morning I had come to a determination. It made me cry, but I went to sleep as soon as I had made it, and when I awoke I put on my clothes quickly and ran out in the street. I had determined to give my watch to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... smoke, sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... Sweeney Todd; or, The Barber of Fleet Street, would probably find no defender; whilst a historical drama I once saw in the South of France, where the hero was put upon the rack in front of the footlights and squirmed and screamed, was quite unendurable; and this is rather a pity, since there is a very powerful dramatic scene in Balzac's Notes sur Catherine de Medicis, which in consequence of this objection should not be used. There is a mitigated form of the torture business in La Tosca that caused great discussion. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... The sense of my obligation to him—the enemy of my race—is almost unendurable. Ah, but for you I should long since have braved the scaffold and ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... Belgium or any part of the Rhenish Provinces in case of the aggrandisement of Prussia has been denied by him, and is not in itself probable. But there are understandings which prove to be understandings on one side only; politeness may be misinterpreted; and the world would have found Count Bismarck unendurable if at every friendly meeting he had been guilty of the frankness with which he informed the Austrian Government that its centre of action must be transferred from Vienna to Pesth. That Napoleon was now scheming for an extension of France on the north-east ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... this city by the ferocious fleas, which seemed to render life almost unendurable in hovel and palace. I could get no rest day or night in many parts of the state, on account of the savage attacks of these unspeakable, insatiate biters, more terrible than an army with ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... had come to impose upon such tempers as Luther's an unendurable amount of strain; it was too complex, too demanding, and it failed to carry with it necessary elements of mental and spiritual consent. (St. Paul had the same experience with his own Judaism.) What Luther sought was a peace-bringing rightness with God. He was typically and creatively ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... you are right: it is difficult to trust oneself, much less any one else. At any rate," she said, with a bitter smile, "you have given me Bellamy, a start in society, and a sapphire necklace. In twenty years, I hope, if the fates are kind, to have lost Bellamy on the road—he is really unendurable—to rule society, and to have as many sapphire necklaces and other fine things as I care for. In enumerating my qualities, you ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... accomplished the cruel task imposed upon them. And this last, the thirteenth year, was exceedingly hard for them to pass. Yet unrecognised by any one they have passed it, as known to you, suffering unendurable hardships of various kinds. This is known to you all. These illustrious men have spent the thirteenth year, employed in menial service of others. This being so, it is for you to consider what will be for the good of both Yudhishthira and Duryodhana, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... confinement on the consul's premises, or perhaps mulcted to a small amount; and with this administration of justice, he and his country must be content. Who does not see that such an abdication of authority on our part would lead to the perpetration of wrongs that would soon become unendurable, even if we were first to become a broken spirited people? And, considering the arrogance and recklessness of many foreigners in China, and the pusillanimous character of the natives, what can be expected but contempt and aggression on one side, and mistrust ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... cure. She felt that the mere sight of his handwriting on an envelope addressed to herself would transport her back to that hour in Dolores, and if she could correspond with him life would no longer be unendurable. But although he had casually alluded to his club in New York she could not recall the name, if he ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... churchgoing—whatever could show itself on the frosted glass of her camera obscura—make an interest of motion and colour in her darkened chamber. Without these, her bosom's mistress would have found life unendurable, for not yet had she ascended her throne, but lay on the floor of her nursery, surrounded with ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... persuaded her? Was it Ulick Dean? Were these two in America together? The thought of Evelyn in New York with Ulick Dean, going to the theatre with her, Ulick sitting in the stalls, listening, just as he, Owen, had listened to her, became unendurable; he must have news of her; only from her father could he get reliable news. So he went to Dulwich, uncertain if he should send in his card begging for an interview, or if he should just push past the servant into the music-room, always supposing ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore |
