"Discomfort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the direction of the bench, taking care to approach it from behind, so as to be spared the discomfort of a ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... scrape a hollow in the ground, of the shape shown in fig. 2 (next page), before spreading their sleeping-rugs. It is disagreeable enough to lie on a perfectly level surface, like that of a floor, but the acme of discomfort is to lie upon a convexity. Persons who have omitted to make a shapely lair for themselves, should at least scrape a hollow in the ground, just where the hip-bone would ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the door, overcome by a singular feeling of discomfort. When his nephews had vigorously shaken hands with him, he sat down near the window apart from them, as if he felt out ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... from her great height she was almost certain to spill food on the table before she got a dish set down before them; and that she kept bouncing in and out of the dining room to ask them if they were ready for dessert; she managed to get through the meal without making Mr. Day and Janice any great discomfort. ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... candle lighted, I resigned myself to a ghastly night. I don't like discomfort, though I can put up with it when I must. The bed looked as hard as nails; the bowl made cleanliness a duty, not a pleasure. And to think that I might have been sleeping ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... you all discomfort," he said, with a shake of the head, and his slow French gave his words more meaning than they perhaps deserved. "I regret this. It is hard for me to bear, for it is new to me to be a burden. But what can I do? I cannot go away. I am not ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the full, formal uniform. A less strong-willed woman might have appeared wilted after a day's work. Ann's face was expressionless, a block of cold ivory. Only a faint mist of perspiration on her upper lip betrayed her acute discomfort. ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... the butcher and drover who have sometimes a herd of troublesome cattle to handle, and he is well suited to rough and rocky ground, active in movement, and as sure-footed as the wild goat. He can endure cold and wet without discomfort, and can live on the Highland hills when others less sturdy would succumb. In the standard adopted for judging the breed, many points are given for good legs and feet, bone, body, and coat, while head and ears are not of great importance. Movement, size, and general appearance have much weight. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... as William was trying to treat her with silent scorn, for nothing is more irksome to the muscles of the face than silent scorn, when there is no means of showing it except by the expression. On the other hand, Jane's inscrutability gave her no discomfort whatever. In fact, inscrutability is about the most comfortable expression that a person can wear, though the truth is that just now Jane was not really inscrutable ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... the house. It was a tumble-down place; the door was heavily studded with nails, and gave a most respectable air to the house: the leaded windows were just over his head, and tightly closed. There was an air of mute discretion and silence about the place that roused a vague discomfort in Anthony's mind; he slipped his right hand into his belt and satisfied himself that the hilt of his knife was within reach. Overhead the hanging windows and eaves bulged out on all sides; but there was no one to be seen; it seemed ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... swallow him. It seemed to him as if they were even at his heels, and he saw the snakes and dragons all twist themselves upwards. "And as I was thus fearful the step brake beneath me, and I fell downwards." From his great discomfort and his fear of the dragons he awoke, ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... Cape Tariff saw in the distance a flag floating over the water. The Dipsey had risen to the surface some twenty miles from the Cape and now came bravely on, Captain Hubbell on deck, his silver buttons shining in the sun. The sea was rough, but everybody was willing to bear with a little discomfort in order to be able to see the point of land which was the end of the voyage on the Dipsey, to let their eyes rest as early as possible upon a wreath of smoke arising from the habitation of human beings, and to catch sight of those ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... Johnson is reported to have said,—"If the child says he looked out of this window, when he looked out of that,—whip him." Our American character is marked by a more than average delight in accurate perception, which is shown by the currency of the byword, "No mistake." But the discomfort of unpunctuality, of confusion of thought about facts, of inattention to the wants of to-morrow, is of no nation. The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey it will yield us bees. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... opinion, when it was given, was a great deal more favourable than anyone dared to hope. He thought that Nora would eventually be as well as ever again; but although he was sure that there was no permanent injury to the spine, there was a great deal of present distress and discomfort to be got through. The little girl must lie perfectly still on her back for many weeks, and it would be many a long day before the dancing, romping Nora of old ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... had a home of our own. This is a luxury that comparatively few preachers can enjoy. Moving from place to place as, for example, Methodist preachers have to do, is unfavorable to domestic happiness. How few members of our churches ever think of this, or make allowance for the discomfort frequent changes of residence impose upon the families of their preachers! To own a home and have the taste and the means to adorn it, is an educational force in any family; ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... had left the stage in 1798, was settled at Coleraine at this time, and desired to have both his daughters with him. Accordingly, Sydney gave up her employment, and tried to make herself contented at home. But the dulness and discomfort of the life were too much for her, and after a few months she took another situation as governess, this time with a Mrs. Crawford at Fort William, where she seems to have been as much petted and admired ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... he meant. It had set forth to them the truth of God's heart towards them; revealed the loving care without which he would not be God. Had they learned this lesson, they would not have needed the reminder; for their hearts would not have been so filled with discomfort as to cause them mistake his word. Had they but said with themselves that, though they had but one loaf, they had him who makes all the loaves, they would never have made the ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... it is not a thing to laugh at either; a spirit of contempt for danger is thus instilled into men's souls; shall they yield to cocks in nobility and courage? shall they let wounds or weariness or discomfort incapacitate them before there is need? But as for testing our men in arms and looking on while they gash one another, no, thank you! that would be brutality and savagery, besides the bad policy of butchering our bravest, who would serve us ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... failing of life, nor foemen's approach, No sin nor trial nor tribulation, 55 Nor the want of wealth, nor work for the pauper, No sorrow nor sleep, nor sick-bed's pain, Nor wintry winds, nor weather's raging, Fierce under the heavens; nor the hard frost Causeth discomfort with cold icicles. 60 Neither hail nor frost fall from the heavens, Nor wintry cloud nor water descendeth Stirred by the storms; but streams there flow, Wondrously welling and watering the earth, Pouring forth in pleasant fountains; 65 The winsome water from the wood's middle Each month of ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... beg for immediate bed-linen while he annexed a portion of the family woodpile, and we met outside my mistress's door. On the threshold I confidently expected her grateful ladyship to say: "What are you doing with that wood, Dane?" But she was too much crushed under her own load of cold and discomfort to object to his and wish it transferred to me. I'd knelt down to make a funeral pyre of paper roses, when in a voice low yet firm my brother ordered me to my feet. This wasn't work for girls when men were about, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... walked about three miles through the heavy rain, and sat on a backless bench in Cleveland Hall, for which I think I paid twopence. I was wet through, but I was young, and my health was flawless. Nor did I mind the discomfort a bit when Mr. Bradlaugh began his lecture. Fiery natural eloquence of that sort was a novelty in my experience. I kept myself warm with applauding, and at the finish I was pretty nearly as dry outside as inside. From that time I went to hear Mr. Bradlaugh whenever I had ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... will be repaid with hunger and thirst, and discomfort, and blows, and goadings, and curses, and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the poison taken into his system were never eradicated in the life-time of my grandfather, a 'breaking out,' or rash, appearing every spring, greatly to his annoyance and discomfort." ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... he invited them to accompany him to the theatre at his expense. But he never derived from these acts of liberality the same degree of satisfaction as from this timely gift to Tom Wilkins. He felt that his money was well bestowed, and would save an entire family from privation and discomfort. Five dollars would, to be sure, make something of a difference in the mount of his savings. It was more than he was able to save up in a week. But Dick felt fully repaid for what he had done, and he felt prepared to give as much more, if Tom's mother should continue to be sick, and should appear ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter. You see numberless traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort. The disorder is catching; and do what you will you cannot resist the general infection. You struggle against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise a simper or a forced laugh: intellect and feeling ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... was a profound believer in William Godwin's Political Justice, rejected the institution of marriage as being fundamentally irrational and wrongful. But he saw that he could not in this instance apply his own pet theories without involving in discredit and discomfort the woman whose love had been bestowed upon him. Either his opinion or her happiness must be sacrificed to what he deemed a prejudice of society: he decided rather to ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... challenged and beset. He turned to it as stimulant in moments of depression and of dismay, in hours of intense and miserable loathing of some conditions of his early life in the ranks, and later in hours when fatigue and bodily discomfort reached degrees he had not believed it possible to endure—and go on with. He turned to it as stimulant and it never failed of its stimulation. "I'm in it. What does this matter? This is the war. It's the war. Those infernal devils.... ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... determined soever we might be to adhere to the traveller's first principle of making the best of everything. We left the station about dusk, upon a night in which the elements seemed to have combined to cause us as much discomfort as possible, and the violence of the storm about midnight compelled us to take shelter in every tope of trees we came to, or, as it appeared to me, wherever the bearers thought we stood a good chance of being ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... Already the journey had been long and tiresomely uneventful, and Sunny Oak particularly reveled in an impotent peevishness which held him intensely sulky. The widower, too, was feeling anything but amiable. What with his recent futile work on a claim which was the ridicule of the camp, and now the discomfort of a dreary journey, his feelings towards Wild Bill were none too cordial. Perhaps Toby was the most cheerful of the three. The matters of the Trust had been a pleasant break in the daily routine of dispossessing himself of remittances from his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... he would remove this feeling in either case, in the one he must change his patient's consciousness of dis-ease and suffering to a consciousness of ease and loss of suffering; while in the other he must change the patient's sense of sinning at ease to a sense of [20] discomfort in ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... and prudent. Add to this that the country is densely covered with forest and jungle, with trees a hundred feet high, from which here and there the branches had to be cleared to obtain a sight of the signal stations. The triangulation was carried on amidst privations, discomfort, and pestilence, which frequently prostrated the whole party, and forced their attendants to desert them rather than encounter such hardships and peril. The materials collected by the colleagues of General Fraser under these discouragements ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... by-and-by I began to see that Babette was egging on Karl to make more open love to me, and, as she once said, to get done with it, and take me off to a home of my own. My father was growing old, and did not perceive all my daily discomfort. The more Karl advanced, the more I disliked him. He was good in the main, but I had no notion of being married, and could not bear any one who ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the Des Plaines was far from unpleasant, despite the labor involved and the discomfort of the leaking canoe. The men were full of cheer and hope, some of it possibly assumed to strengthen my courage, but no less effective—Barbeau telling many an anecdote of his long service in strange places, exhibiting a sense of humor which kept ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... serve for Inconstancy, for it is always in movement, since it cannot endure the smallest discomfort. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... With a log of wood for a pillow, one might sleep as on one of the patent mattresses. The taste of the water is salty and pungent, and stings the tongue like saltpetre. We were obliged to dress in all haste, without even wiping off the detestable liquid; yet I experienced very little of that discomfort which most travellers have remarked. Where the skin had been previously bruised, there was a slight smarting sensation, and my body felt clammy and glutinous, but the bath was rather refreshing ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... it blows and rains. O my children, how my poor heart aches for you; if not in danger, yet sick, and in much discomfort. I gave a note in the old church in the afternoon, supposing the congregation on this dreadful day to be different. Mr. M—— prayed: "The Angel of thy presence be with them; give them much of the ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... abbreviate the martyrdom of Longfellow, whom I conducted every day to the Oaks, to insure pre-Raphaelite fidelity, making him sit on a huge boulder under the tree and even forgetting to carry a cushion for him, so that he sat on the bare stone until at last the discomfort was evident to me, when I folded my coat to cushion his stone seat. So kindly was his nature that he had submitted to the inconvenience with the docility and delicacy of a child, without ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Oxford man, looking about him with drooping eyelids as if he thought the desert hardly respectable, and had his doubts about the Universe. Behind them the whole party was strung along the bank in varying stages of jolting and discomfort, a brown-faced, noisy donkey-boy running after each donkey. Looking back, they could see the little lead-coloured stern-wheeler, with the gleam of Mrs. Belmont's handkerchief from the deck. Beyond ran the broad, brown river, winding down in long curves to where, five ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... other hotels—such as the Majestic. And so far he was not mistaken. Once Wilkins's had not resembled other hotels. For many years it had deliberately refused to recognize that even the nineteenth century had dawned, and its magnificent antique discomfort had been one of its main attractions to the elect. For the elect desired nothing but their own privileged society in order to be happy in a hotel. A hip-bath on a blanket in the middle of the bedroom floor richly ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... if her love for him was only just beginning—the last four months seemed cold and formal compared with these moments of warm, personal service. She brought him water for his hands, and scrubbed his face with a sponge to his intense discomfort. She was bawling downstairs to the unlucky Raddish to put the kettle on for some herb tea—since an intimate cross-examination revealed that he had not had the recommended dose—when the doctor arrived and came upstairs ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... off at score after the baby's death and the general discomfort that followed, and Mrs. Hauksbee annexed him. She took no pleasure in hiding her captives. She annexed him publicly, and saw that the public saw it. He rode with her, and walked with her, and talked with her, and picnicked with her, and tiffined at Peliti's with her, till people ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... more than a year under orders and observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of hard-wood had been burning in it for hours, the preliminary to a gigantic barbecue of fat oxen. Upon the open space in front of the guard-huts, slaves were erecting long trestle-tables to serve as the banqueting-board. The day had turned so warm that there would be no discomfort in dining out-of-doors, for all that the date was March 22d and the last snow-fall still lay a foot or more in depth in the side streets. The square itself had been thoroughly cleaned, or it would have been a veritable sea ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that he should have done anything to produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner entirely to what he had said. But Grace's manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his doings. She had not heard a single word of his regrets. Something even nearer home than her husband's blighted prospects—if blighted they were—was the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... me in, like a baby, I lay still. But it was a dismal night indeed, and it was curious to see the change it had made in the faces of all the passengers yesterday. It cannot be denied that these winter crossings are very trying and startling; while the personal discomfort of not being able to wash, and the miseries of getting up and going to bed, with what small means there are all sliding, and sloping, and slopping about, are really in their ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... heed to it, since it gave him no pain and little more than a passing discomfort. It started, in fact, as a small hard cyst low down at the back of the right thigh, incommoding him when he bent his knee. He called it "a nut in the flesh," and tried once or twice to get rid of it by ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... carried into the fore house, where we found the boatswain, Chips, and Sails as securely trussed up as ourselves. And there, still gagged and bound helplessly hand and foot, we were left to our meditations until, after a very eternity, as it seemed, of extreme discomfort, first came the daylight and finally eight bells of the morning watch, when the sliding door of the house was thrust open and one of the ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Madge. That relieves us of the discomfort of being the last car, and yet lets you have the scenery ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the consequence, and so we see them go along through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing. They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts, they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the company of schemers ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... and he considered it his duty to stop it. He fancied he took this way so as not to make hard feelings between Andrew and his father. He did not exactly wish it undone, but there was a sense of discomfort ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of discomfort possessed me. With variations of relief, this gradually increased; as if some evil thing were wandering about in my neighbourhood, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off, but still approaching. The feeling continued and deepened, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... afraid to offer you money." Here there was a playful note in her voice which the skipper detected. So she was making fun of his wealth and his pride. His dark face flushed with several disturbing emotions. To be addressed by the title of "mister" added to his discomfort. There were no misters in Chance Along—or anywhere on the coast, except the Methodist preacher in Bay Bulls, away to the north. He was skipper—or just Denny Nolan. He was skipper of Chance Along—not a preacher and not the mate of ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... discomfort brightened into a sense of relief as, looking out of the window, Katy caught sight of a face exactly opposite, which had evidently caught sight of her,—a fresh, pretty face, with light, waving hair, pink cheeks all a-dimple, and eyes which shone with laughter and ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... the others those of his wife, children, or friends. The plus sign early in the drinker's stream of experience stands for the plus value which drinking the water effects-the gratifying taste of the water and the allaying of the discomfort of thirst-real values, whose worth cannot be gainsaid. Following, in his own stream of experience, are a row of minus signs, indicating the undesirable penalties in his own life which follow-disease, pain, deprivation of other goods. No good accrues to others, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... thar ... by my house ... watchin' with me...." went on the ambushed victim in a summarizing of ostensible services, "what made ye discomfort yoreself, fer ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... great a happines. Do not prolong my life with vaine false hopes, To deepe dispaire and sorrow I am vow'd: Do not remououe me from that setled thought, With hope of friends or ayde of Ptolomey, Egipt and Libia at choyse I haue. But onely which of them Ile make my graue. 170 Tit. Tis but discomfort which misgreeues thee this, Greefe by dispaire seemes greater then it is, Bru. Tis womannish to wayle and mone our greefe, By Industrie do wise men seeke releefe, If that our casting do fall out a misse, Our cunning ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... In growing discomfort they drove homewards. The city seemed Satanic, the narrower streets oppressing like the galleries of a mine. No harm was done by the fog to trade, for it lay high, and the lighted windows of the shops were ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... hours. The above refers to cloud gas attacks. In the case of gas shell bombardments the times cannot be definitely stated, as they depend on the nature of the gas used and the severity of the bombardment. With lachrymatory gases the times after which shelters can be used without discomfort may be considerably longer ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... and she awoke rested and refreshed, in spite of the fact that her body ached at first from the discomfort of the cot. The sunlight rested in a sheet of gold on her drawn curtain, and the silence of the morning, following so unexpectedly the dismal racket of the night, seemed to fairly shock her into consciousness. Could this be Haskell? Could this indeed be the inferno into which she had ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... had undoubtedly disappeared for good and all), but which might be attended to quite as well the coming spring, when the roads would be open and the days warm. Confident of his perfect security on the peninsula, and possessed by a sneaking, but denied, abhorrence for rush and discomfort, he rejoiced at delay. So, having left his snug bed to fumble about in the dark for his clothes, and, these donned, having loosed his speech before the grateful blaze in the fireplace, he did not argue fatigue or freezing as an excuse for procrastination; he passed over these rather too briefly ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... concealment when he thought he was making some progress in freeing himself from their grasp. As soon as his wrists were ironed he realized that resistance was useless, and that it could only increase his discomfort. It was a terrible calamity to have fallen into the power of a man so brutal and unscrupulous as Captain Flanger, bent upon revenging himself for the mutilation of his most prominent facial member. He was certainly disfigured for life, though the wound made ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... against La Rochefoucauld. It encouraged Rousseau, a century later, to talk of "ce triste livre," and to declare, in the true romantic spirit, that "Bad maxims are worse than bad acts." There have always been, and always will be, people who experience a sort of malaise, an ill-defined discomfort, as though they sat in an east wind, while they read La Rochefoucauld. This is particularly true of Englishmen, who resent being told that "Our virtues are often only our vices in disguise," and who also, by the way, are constitutionally impatient ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... frequency being out of sympathy with that particular Insect Life, and, it may be conceived that, not only is there no inducement for the insect to alight on that plant, but that even in its near proximity that insect would feel discomfort or restlessness; when, however, a plant is reached which is near akin to the one required, less antipathy or unrest would be felt, and, when the true species of plant is reached, all would be harmony, pleasure, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... the raft afforded them ample matter of interest, and as they sat there, secure and without discomfort, on that solitary rock, with the ocean smiling calmly around them, the awful event, which so short a time before had cast them there, seemed almost like a dream, which is, with ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of a Supreme Court justice was not altogether one of discomfort is shown by the following alluring account of the travels of Justice Cushing on circuit: "He traveled over the whole of the Union, holding courts in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. His traveling equipage was a four-wheeled phaeton, drawn by a pair of horses, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... direction has this change gone so far with women. The wearing of earrings, finger-rings, bracelets; the elaborate dressings of the hair; the still occasional use of paint; the immense labor bestowed in making habiliments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort that will be submitted to for the sake of conformity; show how greatly, in the attiring of women, the desire of approbation overrides the desire for warmth and convenience. And similarly in their education, the immense preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... November, already the east wind had brought on its wings a smart flurry of snow, and between those four bare walls, on the uncarpeted floor where even the tall, gaunt old clothes-press seemed to shiver with discomfort, the cold was extreme. As there was no fireplace in the room they determined to set up a stove, of which the purring, droning murmur assisted to brighten their solitude ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... tenement districts of the city, with one or more, perhaps a dozen, roasted to death, or horribly burned. A few weeks, however, and even that peril became so familiar that she slept like the rest. There were too many actualities of discomfort, of misery, to harass her all day long every time her mind wandered ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... that he had drawn her from real life, after all. She had become a Marjorie Daw to him, and the notion that he must go through life cherishing a hopeless passion was distracting to him. His book was the greatest of his successes, which was an additional cause of discomfort to him, since, knowing as he now did that his study was not a faithful portrayal of the inner life of his heroine, he felt that the laurels that were being placed upon his brow had been ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... meantime, fortified himself against the terrors of death with devotions of a very different kind. How strong an impression this perilous voyage made on him, appears from the ode, "How are thy servants blest, O Lord!" which was long after published in The Spectator. After some days of discomfort and danger, Addison was glad to land at Savona, and to make his way, over mountains where no road had yet been hewn out by art, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... suspicion that somehow or another Gammon had been too much for him, and always gained his purposes without giving Quirk any handle of dissatisfaction. In fact, Quirk was thoroughly afraid of Gammon, and Gammon knew it. In the present instance, an undefinable but increasing suspicion and discomfort forced him presently back again into ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... particularly susceptible to physical discomfort, yet this afternoon she was too concerned over her problem to be more than ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... hotel was overcrowded. Later, perhaps—Now at that very moment the lobby was filled with tournament golfers who were leaving on the morning train, and Briskow knew it. He studied the speaker with an expression that caused the latter extreme discomfort; it was much the same expression he had worn the night before when he had served warning ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... England was suffering under the double discomfort of cholera and the Reform Bill. A letter from Irving to his brother shows that even in the midst of his successes the popular author was subject to moods of mental gloom, and even to business difficulties: "The restlessness and uncertainty in which I have ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... visit in the shape of shattered boats, and the ruin of all our port bulwarks forward of the deck-house. I fancy there was nothing extraordinary in the tempest; and, in a stout ship, with plenty of sea room, there is probably little real danger; but about the intense discomfort there could be no question. I speak with no undue bitterness, for of nausea, in any shape, I know of little or nothing, but—oh, mine enemy!—if I could feel certain you were well out in the Atlantic, experiencing, for just one week, the weather that fell to our lot, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder. I fancied Vere was similarly affected. If something moved under ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the soft side of a board will do for me," Jack answered, with a laugh. "I've camped out and slept on the ground often enough not to mind one night of discomfort. Don't worry, I'll ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... over the long moor of Kareby, and although the weather had been calm all day, a chill breeze came sweeping across the moor, to the discomfort of ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... face, and the clear ring of her voice, he thought how grateful he was to this chance, that not only had he become acquainted with the girl, but that he had avoided in such a glorious fashion the discomfort of a formal introduction. Also Wilhelm knew himself well, and felt sure that, badly endowed as he was for forming new acquaintances, he could never have become friends with Fraulein Ellrich apart from the accident of his fall in ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... up the receiver and looked around the room discontentedly. A stinging twinge of his ankle added to his discomfort. He gave an angry snarl and pushed the wavering curtain aside, wishing those everlasting bells would stop ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... his eyes. In a few moments he was soaked to the skin, and the buffeting of the wind made his progress slow. But he struggled on, too well pleased by the success of his evening's work to mind the discomfort. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... zone, with its luxuriant vegetation, is also prolific of insect and reptile life; and, from this very circumstance, the denizen of a hot country is often subject to a greater amount of personal discomfort than the dweller in the Arctic zone. Even the scarcity of vegetable food, and the bitter, biting frost, are far easier to endure than the plague of tipulary insects and reptiles, which ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... toward Fredericksburg to join Lee and Longstreet. When they marched toward the Second Manassas they had suffered from an almost intolerable heat and dust. Now they advanced through a winter that seemed to pour upon them every variety of discomfort. Heavy snows fell, icy rains came and fierce winds blew. The country was deserted, and the roads beneath the rain and snow and the passage of great armies disappeared. Vast muddy trenches marked where they had been, and the mud was deep and sticky, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an impulse to seek further light from him whom I now recognized as my master and guide, I had unconsciously turned about, and almost before I was aware of having done so found myself again at Moxon's door. I was drenched with rain, but felt no discomfort. Unable in my excitement to find the doorbell I instinctively tried the knob. It turned and, entering, I mounted the stairs to the room that I had so recently left. All was dark and silent; Moxon, as I had supposed, was in the adjoining room—the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the culprit of the charge she writhed under, she rushed out of a meditation compounded of mind and nerves, with derision of the world's notion of innocence and estimate of error. It was a mood lasting through her stay in London, and longer, to the discomfort of one among her friends; and it was worthy of The Anti-climax Expedition, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... far recorded in the life of our young hero took place on a day toward the middle of October, when the temperature was sufficiently mild to produce no particular discomfort in those exposed to it. We advance our story two months, and behold Phil setting out for his day's wandering on a morning in December, when the keen blasts swept through the streets, sending a shiver through the frames even of those who were well protected. How much more, then, ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... began to call, "Bella, Bella! Sweetheart, where are you? Come here! Bella, Bella! Kittie, kittie, kittie!" as they walked around the yard and then behind the house looking under every bush and shrub. And all this time the two cats sat and grinned at them and enjoyed their discomfort very much. ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... together; and if they miscarry for want of supplies in a foreign land, to those against whom their plans were laid none the less they leave renown, although they may themselves have been the main cause of their own discomfort. Thus these very Athenians rose by the defeat of the Mede, in a great measure due to accidental causes, from the mere fact that Athens had been the object of his attack; and this may very well be the case with ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... to await her turn, and following her mother out, gave Sonia an attentive, courteous bow. Sonia, in confusion, gave a hurried, frightened curtsy. There was a look of poignant discomfort in her face, as though Avdotya Romanovna's courtesy and attention were ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and shook the ill-fitting casement in its rotting frame. The clothes he had last worn were thrown carelessly about, unsmoothed, unbrushed; the scanty articles of furniture were out of their proper places; slovenly discomfort marked the death-chamber. And by the bedside stood a neighbouring clergyman, a stout, rustic, homely, thoroughly Welsh priest, who might have sat for the portrait of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... domestic arrangements they vie in discomfort and want of cleanliness, notwithstanding the post-prandial ablutions common to ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... disagreeable evening he had spent, an evening upon which he looked back already as a man looks back upon a nightmare. In his ears, as he walked, sounded the gentle and intolerable voice. Even the memory of it caused him physical discomfort. He tried to put it from him, and to consider the whole matter calmly. The Professor had offered his proof that there was some strange presence in his house. Could any reasonable man accept such proof? Father Murchison told himself that no reasonable ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that caused Balzac the most discomfort was the Countess Rosalie Rzewuska, nee Princess Lubomirska, wife of Count Wenceslas Rzewuski, Madame Hanska's uncle. She seems to have been continually hearing either that he was married, or something that was detrimental, and kept him ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... want. I want her to be uncomfortably heavy for the time, and then she will be the less likely to resent my great big Finn's introduction. It's only discomfort, you know, not pain; and we shall put it right in a couple ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... body and mind may be rife as heretofore, yet other counteractions of evil, of a penal character, which are present at other times, are away. In rude and semi-barbarous periods, at least in a climate such as our own, it is the daily, nay, the principal business of the senses, to convey feelings of discomfort to the mind, as far as they convey feelings at all. Exposure to the elements, social disorder and lawlessness, the tyranny of the powerful, and the inroads of enemies, are a stern discipline, allowing brief intervals, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the person to read the announcements. He was a nice old man, kind at heart, though formal in manner, and anxious eyes were fixed on him as he got up with a paper in his hand. That important little paper held comfort or discomfort for ever so many people. Every one bent forward to listen. It was so still all over the church that you might have heard a pin drop. The Bishop began with a little speech about the virtues of patience and contentment, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... woman a free rein, Rivers, she'll shy, sooner or later." Maclin was gaining assurance as he saw Larry's discomfort. "That's what keeps women from getting on—they shy! When all's said, a tight rein is a woman's best good, but some women have to ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... was no such nightmare awakening as with Sandy Graff; with him, were no such ugly visions and experiences; with him was no squalor and discomfort. Yet he also opened his eyes upon a room so like that upon which they had closed that at first he thought that he was still in the world. There was the same soft bed, the same warmth of ease and comfort, the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... lips. They had made him secretly uncomfortable. He had felt undressed when he was with them, and had realized that they knew of and were probably amused by his friendship for Lady Sellingworth. And he had hated their knowledge. Perhaps she had hated it too, although she had not shown a trace of discomfort. Or, perhaps, she had disliked his manner with Miss Van Tuyn, assumed to hide his own sensitiveness. And at that moment he thought of his intercourse with Miss Van Tuyn with exaggeration. It was possible that he had acted ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... only that beds thus placed were a source of discomfort, of disgust; that they prevented rest and sleep; that an insupportable heat occasioned and propagated diseases of the skin and frightful vermin; that the fever patient bedewed his neighbours with his profuse perspirations; and that in the critical moment ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... strapped himself in. He saw Aletha busy at the same task, her eyes shining. Without warning, there came a sensation of acute discomfort. It was the landing boat detaching itself from the ship and the diminishment of the ship's closely-confined artificial-gravity field. That field suddenly dropped to nothingness, and Bordman had the momentary sickish dizziness that flicked-off gravity ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... difficulty, irritation, trouble, vexation, awkwardness, discomfort, perplexity, uneasiness, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... and dejected, he cached the contents of his wagons, and with a meagre supply of food in a pack on his back, he and his wife, each carrying a child, set forth to finish the journey on foot. To add to their discomfort, they saw Indians on adjacent hills dancing and gesticulating in savage delight. In relating the above occurrence after the journey was finished, Mr. Eddy declared that no language could portray the desolation and heartsick feeling, nor the physical and mental torture which ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... hither at this present to you, not intruding ourselves by our own authority, but sent by commission, as you know, by the pope's holiness partly; partly from the king's and queen's most excellent majesties; not utterly to your discomfort, but rather to your comfort if you will yourself. For we are come not to judge you immediately, but to put you in remembrance of that which you have been partly judged of before, and shall be thoroughly ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Our Turkish officer prisoner was always put with his forty men to march in front—behind our advance guard but in front of the carts and infantry. Thus there was no risk of his escaping, because for one thing he had no saddle and rode with much discomfort and so unsafely that he preferred to march on foot more often than not; and for another, that arrangement left him never out of sight of nearly all of us. One of us daffadars would generally march beside him, and some of the Syrian ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... attention the doings of the sailors, and praying alternately to Saint Paul, Saint George, and Saint Thomas for a slant of wind which would put them along side their enemy. He was silent; but his hot heart was simmering within him. His spirit had risen even above the discomfort of the sea, and his mind was too absorbed in his mission to have a thought for that which had laid Aylward flat upon the deck. He had never doubted that Cock Badding in one way or another would accomplish his end, but when he heard his speech of despair he bounded off the bulwark ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kindly took under his protection, lived for the first week in a garden beneath some apple-trees. At first they were as merry as if it had been a picnic; but soon afterwards heavy rain caused much discomfort, for ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... married, and his wife would have complained with justice if he had gone to see the singer.' Am I right or wrong? I know; not one will remember that the other was a woman, a feeling human being; it will occur to no one that his deed on the one hand saved an hour of discomfort, and on the other wrought half a century of despair. Assa escaped his wife's scolding, but a thousand curses have fallen on him and on his house. How virtuous he felt himself when he had crushed and poisoned a passionate heart that had never ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... frail platform which floated as a speck on the shrouded ocean. The waves splashed over the spars as the breeze grew livelier and the piteous voyagers were sopping wet but the water was not chill and they slept through this discomfort. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... injury that they say has been done them in his having shut their street; and in the view that their apartments have which opens toward the cells, stables, and lodgings, which are near their house; and of the other things that they mention—so that no injury or discomfort may be caused to them in any manner. Also say that, if the warrants which they say that they possess are certified they shall be paid in the value that shall belong to them and at the proper time. And since it is the usage to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... he will perhaps think sometimes of the unhappy Edward II of England, who, before his fall, wore his beard in three corkscrew curls—and was shaved afterward by a cruel jailer who had it done with cold water! The fallen monarch wept with discomfort and indignation. 'Here at least,' he exclaimed reproachfully, 'is warm water on my cheeks, whether you will or no.' But the heartless shave proceeded. Razed away were those corkscrew curls from the royal ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... discretion to present to the rural world about him an appearance of upright behaviour. He had even found it amusing to go to church and also to occasionally make amiable calls at the vicarage. It was not difficult, at such times, to refer delicately to his regret that domestic discomfort had led him into the error of remaining much away from Stornham. He knew that he had been even rather touching in his expression of interest in the future of his son, and the necessity of the boy's being protected ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... great precision, so that it was in the nature of a moderate personal tax. No Peruvian was to be required to change his place of residence, from the climate to which he had been accustomed, to another; a fruitful source of discomfort, as well as of disease, in past times. By these various regulations, the condition of the natives, though not such as had been contemplated by the sanguine philanthropy of Las Casas, was improved far more than was ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... thirty," said Graham. And feeling that he had said the wrong thing, changed the subject quickly. Clayton did not try to turn it back into its former channel. The boy was uncomfortable, unresponsive. There was a barrier between them, of self-consciousness on his part, of evasion and discomfort on Graham's. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... she had asked me to say what I thought so beautiful it would have made her blush. She did not remark a bank of black clouds away to the eastward. I did, and was sorry to see them, for I thought how much discomfort a gale would cause her. The lank skipper saw them also, and probably hoped for an opportunity to carry his pleasant little plot into execution. I determined at once to spoil it. I had somewhat prepared Miss Carlyon, by telling her that I knew of the existence of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Ay. Pain, discomfort, fears, weariness. After working out their torment upon me, they—why then they took a turn and opened out the vista of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... stifling night on the mountains, when we were packed like sardines into a stagecoach, without a breath of air, and the passengers were cross because the baby cried, while I felt inwardly glad that one voice among us could give utterance to the general discomfort, my own part of which I could have borne if I could only have had an occasional peep out at the mountain-side. After that it was all river-voyaging, down the Monongahela into the ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... faces and figures of the two occupants as they sat in opposite corners as far apart as possible, she cold and miserable, he cold and sulky, and both silent. And, as if to mock him, the idea kept recurring to his mind how romantic and delightful, in spite of the cold and discomfort, the situation would be if she had only said Yes, instead of No, that afternoon. People have odd notions sometimes, and it actually seemed to him that his vexation with her for destroying the pleasure of the present occasion was something quite apart and in addition to his main grievance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... o'clock. Without anything to counteract sleep, the rule was to read with difficulty by nine, without much comprehension by quarter past nine, and either be asleep or go to bed by half past nine. The 3 grain dose of caffeine repeatedly obviated all this discomfort up to ten o'clock, but did not prevent the habitual, prompt, and sound sleep, from the time of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various |
