"Endurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slave-territory and 600,000 slaves to their possessions;—surely these do not seem indications of the better state of things you anticipate, except, indeed, as the straining of the chain beyond all endurable tightness significantly suggests the probability of its ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... expects to be happy with Amy Belden, let him reconsider the determination of which he speaks. Not only would he by such an action succeed in destroying the happiness of her he professes to love, but run the greater risk of effectually annulling the affection which makes the tie between them endurable." ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... never have done it if Thor hadn't been behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night—which made his situation endurable. So he changed the form of his question to—"bee in ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... poverty w as nowhere more endurable than in a country where duty towards one's neighbour, that is, one's fellow-citizen, was practised with the utmost piety, as a means of gaining the favour of God the King. (146) Thus the Hebrew citizens would nowhere be so well off as in their own country; outside its limits they ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... their weird noises, were lonely and depressing. Only her ability to sleep quickly and soundly made them endurable. The first night that she spent in her completed house behind barred windows and barricaded door was one of almost undiluted peace and happiness. The night noises seemed far removed and impersonal and the soughing of the wind in the trees was gently soothing. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the case with all healthy-minded people. We may, like Job, in moments of depression curse the day when we were born; but the curse dies on our lips. Swift, it is true, kept his birthday as a day of mourning; but no man who hates humanity can hope to find life endurable, for the measure of our sympathies is the measure of our joy ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the thermometer fell to three degrees below zero. The day was calm; the cold was very endurable in the absence of wind. Hatteras took advantage of the clearness of the air to reconnoitre the surrounding plains; he ascended one of the highest icebergs to the north, but even with his glass he could make out nothing but a series of ice-mountains ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would break the heart:—Old Michael found it so. I have convers'd with more than one who well Remember the Old Man, and what he was Years after he had heard this heavy news. His bodily frame had been from youth to age Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks He went, and ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... some years, they suddenly associated themselves with religion, when he became a fanatic. Her condition was now less endurable than before; his whims more ludicrous and exasperating. With solemnity he declared no one could in conscience visit the theatre; that it was a sin to play blind man's buff, and a heinous crime to retire to bed late. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... acceptable, even after a Southern summer heavy-sweet with magnolia and jasmine, honeysuckle and mimosa; with spirea and bridal-wreath and white-blossomed sloe trees. And the house as put to rights by Clem would be found at least endurable. It had not the solid grace nor the columned front of the houses I had somewhat hurriedly admired in the Southland some years before, but its lower rooms were wide, its windows abundant, and outwardly it had escaped the blight of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... give—they are Nature, and, of course, it goes without saying that Art can never compete with Nature in creating human pleasure. I mean no disparagement of your work, Kew, or any artist's work; but I can't endure Art except in winter, when everything (almost) must be artificial to be endurable. A winter may come in one's life—I wonder if it will?—when one would rather look at the picture of a woman than at the woman herself. Meantime I no more need pictures than I need fires; I warm both hands and heart at the fire ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... resolutely refused Gerty's offer of hospitality. Something of her mother's fierce shrinking from observation and sympathy was beginning to develop in her, and the promiscuity of small quarters and close intimacy seemed, on the whole, less endurable than the solitude of a hall bedroom in a house where she could come and go unremarked among other workers. For a while she had been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by hours ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... glad now that she had decided to meet him at his mother's, as the knowing she had pleased him would make the time of his absence more endurable, and after seeing that everything was ready for him she stepped with a comparatively light heart into her carriage, and was driven to No. —— ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... (1) To be endurable a government must be more or less permanent, must have time to initiate and, partly at least, to carry out its policy. Constantly shifting governments would be intolerable. But if the government depends on the will of a majority, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... the sovereign of a great nation longer to temporize with an insolence which at this period had exceeded all endurable limits; for not only did the Marquise assert, as she had previously done, the illegality of the King's union with his wife, but so thoroughly had her affected devotion wrought upon the minds of the priests about her that several among them were induced to support ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... going to put me in irons here in this river once. A great shame it was; but I'll tell you the story another time. There, gently now; that's it. Thank God! once more upon land. How I do hate a ship; upon my life, a sauce-boat is the only boat endurable in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... most excellent sir, nor was it a thing endurable to the descendants of the Grecians, that they should be deprived any longer of those imprescriptible rights which belong to the inheritance of their birth—rights which a barbarian of a foreign soil, an ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... was perhaps less dreadful than the first; and the third was even endurable, for Blunt dealt out some praise. The fourth day Denton chanced upon the fact that the ferret-faced man was a coward. There passed a fortnight of smouldering days and feverish instruction at night; Blunt, with many blasphemies, testified that never had he met ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... asleep she thinks of her mari d'elle, what sort of a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At one time he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a book-keeper. As an ordinary obscure individual and not the mari d'elle, he had been quite endurable: he used to go to his work and take his salary, and all his whims and projects went no further than a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder. Since he had become "the husband of a celebrity" he was completely transformed. The singer remembered that when ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... remained, I know that as your wife, I should have experienced the utmost kindness and consideration. Such kindness, however, to a nature like mine would have been only galling. Something more than cold civility is necessary in order to render endurable the daily intercourse of husband and wife. Therefore I do not choose to subject myself to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... very simple reason: because it is the only way that can render them endurable. None but a fool would cry at what cannot ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... soldier close following with his sword; the old mission-house, with its church and garrison beside it; the fierce savage lured from a roving life, and changed into a toiling peon, afterwards to revolt against a system of slavery that even religion failed to make endurable; the neophyte turning his hand against his priestly instructor, equally his oppressor; revolt followed by a deluge of blood, with ruinous devastation, until the walls of both mission and military cuartel are ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... were open; and yet, as is usually the case in a coal-district, a fine red fire illumined the chimney: the comfort which the eye derives from it renders the extra heat endurable. But the house of Wuthering Heights is so large that the inmates have plenty of space for withdrawing out of its influence; and accordingly what inmates there were had stationed themselves not far from one of the windows. ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... o'clock, Col. Comba authorized the men to sleep on deck, and there was always a rush, when the ship's bell struck the hour, for good places on the quarter-deck. The only thing that made the voyage endurable was the good weather which prevailed. This prevented seasickness, to ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... that process at a very rapid rate our olfactory nerves soon informed us; for the odour of them became perceptible as early as the fourth day, while by the end of the fortnight it was so strong as to be scarcely endurable even on the oyster bank itself, which was about a mile to leeward of the island, although, by berthing the schooner every night right up in the weather corner of the lagoon, we managed to avoid getting more than an ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... to explain his absence at her pleasure. He could ruin her ruined life by exposing her. Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob, the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again without killing her, unless this problem was settled. When he had determined on what he should do, he might get courage to look on her ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... company, many of them not of the most respectable order. Sir Walter Scott took the chair, and there was scarcely another person of any note to support him except the actors. The dinner, therefore, would have been little better than endurable, had it not been remarkable for the confession of Sir Walter Scott that he was the author of the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... political economy, and on many other social subjects. He is the founder of a society called "The St George's Guild," the purpose of which is to spread abroad sound notions of what true life and true art are, and especially to make the life of the poor more endurable ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... a little. The thought of the woman wandering in the dark and the fog and the night, was a sickness at their hearts. Was it impossible to gather such under the wings of any night-brooding hen? That Gibbie had gone through so much of the same kind of thing himself, and had found it endurable enough, did not make her case a whit the less pitiful in his eyes, and indeed it was widely, sadly different from his. Along the deserted street, which looked to Donal like a waterless canal banked by mounds of death, and lighted ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... quite attracted towards the plain little town. "Here," said I to P., "is a nook which is really out of the world. No need of a monastery, where you have such perfect seclusion, and the indispensable solace of natural society to make it endurable." Pleasant faces occasionally looked out, curiously, at the impetuous strangers: had they known our nationality, I fancy the whole population would have run together. Reaching the last house, nestled among twinkling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... you gave nobly! Do you think I have not seen in this world how women who do love will manage to confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how much alloy such pure gold as your love would have rendered endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what but this makes me confident and happy? Can I take a lesson by your fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw all the world—the worthier, better ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... back to Winiston House and took up the dreary round of life again. She might have made her lot more endurable and happier, she might have traveled, have sought society and amusement; but she had no heart for any of these things. She had spent the year and a half of her lonely married life in profound study, thinking to herself that if he should claim her he ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... dollars to raise; but there was no time for regrets. I started forth with a troubled heart, and not feeling very sanguine of success. Borrowing money is far from being pleasant employment, and is only endurable as a less evil than not meeting your obligations. For that day, I had thought my trials on this head over; but I erred. I had again to put on my armour of brass and go forth to meet coldness, rebuffs, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... native Tipperary - which must have sometimes presented itself to his mind was certainly not hopeful. To the degenerate Europeans of the present day, whose programme involves constant holidays in a mountain climate, occasional furloughs to England, and, when resident in India, a residence made endurable by imported luxuries, and by every possible precaution against heat, there is something almost incredible in this long life of exile, where the English language would not be heard for years, and where quilted curtains and wooden shutters ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... exposition of the play is quite masterly: and the scene in which the forsaken husband is seduced into consolation by the temptress of his wife is worthy of all praise for the straightforward ingenuity and the serious delicacy by which the action is rendered credible and the situation endurable. But I fear that few or none will be found to disagree with my opinion that no such approbation or tolerance can be reasonably extended so as to cover or condone the offences of either the underplot or the upshot of the play. The one is repulsive beyond redemption by elegance ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... started this hospital, and we are sadly destitute of many of the commonest necessaries of such an institution. But everything will get better in a week or so, and while I can not exactly promise you the comforts of a home, I can assure you that life will be made more endurable than it seems to be ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... but her good name? to whom he was bound by gratitude? and the hope of repairing whose good fame by making her his own was so passionate in that intense nature as to justify any and every expedient, and make the patronage of those whom he felt to be his inferiors endurable by the proudest of men? We believe that this was the truth, and that the woman was Stella. No doubt there were other motives. Coming to manhood with a haughtiness of temper that was almost savage, he had forced ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... have weight against this conclusion, is, that the revulsion of feeling in any one who had thus sinned against the truth, when once brought to acknowledge his sin, would be so terrible that life would never more be endurable, and the kindest thing God could do would be to put such a man out of being, because it had been a better thing for him never to have been born. But he who could make such a man repent, could make ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... may take of the Anglo-German Agreement. That pretty well for one night; but he's gone off now, to look up a fresh batch, which he'll unfold to-morrow. Now is the winter of our discontent, which is chilly enough; but, for my part, I often think that life would be endurable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain, or break the heart: 450 I have conversed with more than one who well Remember the old Man, and what he was Years after he had heard this heavy news. His bodily frame had been from youth to age Of an unusual strength. ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... horrid indulgences was exactly what we might suppose, that even such scenes ceased to irritate the languid appetite, and yet that without them life was not endurable. Jaded and exhausted as the sense of pleasure had become in Caligula, still it could be roused into any activity by nothing short of these murderous luxuries. Hence, it seems, that he was continually tampering ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... queen was afraid, and sat in silence, curbing her heart; but throughout Zeus' palace the gods of heaven were troubled. Then Hephaistos the famed craftsman began to make harangue among them, to do kindness to his mother, white-armed Hera: "Verily this will be a sorry matter, neither any more endurable, if ye twain thus fight for mortals' sakes, and bring wrangling among the gods; neither will there any more be joy of the goodly feast, seeing that evil triumpheth. So I give counsel to my mother, though herself is wise, to ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... "just a little agreement on his part to make life endurable for me while he continues to live. We are to sign the paper at five o'clock. Yes, you'd better run along, Braden, or you'll find yourself the centre of a perplexed crowd. Before you go, please take a last look at me ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... staffs and crutches. Some leaned upon the shoulders of others; a few—the utterly helpless—lay, like heaps of rags, upon litters. Even that community of superlative sorrow had its love-light to make life endurable and attractive. Distance softened without entirely veiling the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... ballad-movement; he tried the Shallot, with a triple rhyme and a short positive refrain, like a bell rung in an incantation, and brought up every minute by a finger pressed upon the edge. Either of these three—although the metre of the first was the only one endurable by the ear in the case of a long series of poems—either of these had, it may be positively said, a general tone more suitable to the ancient feeling, and more consistent with the duty of a modern poet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... huts of unpainted logs, clustering around a white church with five green domes. It is a monotony which nothing but the richest culture can prevent from becoming tiresome. Culture is to Nature what good manners are to man, rendering poverty of character endurable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... for a week past in this state of prostration, of disgust, of heart-rending, distressing irritation. It requires all of the old fairy's unwearying patience, the magic of the memories she evokes every moment in the day, to make life endurable to her beside that restlessness, that wicked wrath which she can hear grumbling beneath the girl's silences, and which suddenly bursts forth in a bitter word, in a pah! of disgust apropos of everything. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... taken a dislike to Miss Ladd (and time only confirmed that unfavorable impression); Brighton was always the same; the sea was always the same; the drives were always the same. Francine felt a presentiment that she should do something desperate, unless Emily joined her, and made Brighton endurable behind the horrid schoolmistress's back." Solitude in London was a privilege and a pleasure, viewed as the alternative to such companionship ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... of comfort. And this kind of love militates, not impotently, against the other; for self- interest is a persuasive counsellor, and gets a hearing when the blood is cool. Life must be more than possible, it must be endurable; man must have some leisure, some repose, before his brain-needs have a chance with those of his belly. He must have a coat to his back before he can stick a rose in its button-hole. The worst of it is, he begins - in Bethnal Green at least - with the rose-bud; and indulges, poor devil! ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... most familiar notable effect of this New York is the speedy distinction in the newcomer of those illusions and delusions about life and about human nature, about good and evil, that are for so many people the most precious and the only endurable and beautiful thing in the world. New York, destroyer of delusions and cherished hypocrisies and pretenses, therefore makes the broadly intelligent of its citizens hardy, makes the others hard—and between the hardy and hard, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to do it, for she was suffering torments from suppressed laughter. Her Uncle Robert's preternatural gravity, and Mrs Abbott's total incapacity to see the fun, were barely endurable. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... peculiarly charming quality, and her manner of reading was so absorbed and sympathetic that she never failed to interest her auditors; so that even the mechanical drudgery of correcting proof was endurable with her help. The work went on rapidly, Dorothy bending over the long printers' galleys, adding mysterious little marks here and there in the wide margins, Frances reading as expressively as though she were doing her best to entertain Beatrice Egerton, who curled herself up on the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Absence renders passion endurable. But at sight of her I loved I knew I could not endure it; and, uncertain of myself, having twice nigh failed under the overwhelming provocations of a love returned, I shrank from the coming duel 'twixt love and duty which must once more ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... great love for Frantz. Long ago she had detected it, with her coquette's eyes, bright and changing mirrors, which reflected all the thoughts of others without betraying any of her own. It may be that the thought that another woman loved her betrothed had made Frantz's love more endurable to her at first; and, just as we place statues on tombstones to make them appear less sad, Desiree's pretty, little, pale face at the threshold of that uninviting future had made it seem ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... normal attitude of these folks towards us and our institutions. We are savages, hopeless savages; but a little savagery, after all, is quite endurable. Everything is endurable if you have lots of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... inspire forcibly, to enjoy them; but, if they are offensive, our inspirations are more cautious, or we close our nostrils. This sense is likewise modified by habit; odors which, in the first instance, were very offensive, may not only become endurable, but even agreeable. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... 'Is endurable by most folk more easily than a hungry one?—True, Bailie, very true; and I believe there may even be some who would be consoled by such a reflection for the loss of the whole existing generation. But there is a sorrow which knows neither hunger nor thirst; and poor Flora'—He ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... assuage my grief by thy dear assurances. I am not happy," (and the tears flashed and fell from under her down-cast lids), "for we are inmates of a miserable prison, and there is no joy for us; but the true love I bear you will render this and every other loss endurable." ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... highest judicial post at a critical juncture, he accepted a dignity for which he had little ambition, only that he might the better serve his country. What he could not remedy he resolved to make as endurable as possible. It was not within the power of a single virtuous statesman to allay the storm and quiet the surging waters; but by good-will, perseverance, and nerve, he might steer the ship of state through many a narrow channel and by many a hidden rock. An ardent lover and earnest advocate of toleration, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... ruined—and those of Anjou were in a less oppressed condition, and in the cities trade flourished. Colbert, the comptroller-general of the finances, was so excellent a manager that the pressure of taxation was endurable in his time, and he promoted new manufactures, such as glass at Cherbourg, cloth at Abbeville, silk at Lyons; he also tried to promote commerce and colonization, and to create a navy. There was a great appearance of prosperity, and in every department ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gorge in the mountains, so well sheltered by overhanging bushes that no snow fell there. They raked up great quantities of dry leaves, after the usual fashion, and spread their blankets upon them, poor enough quarters save for the hardiest, but made endurable for them by custom and intense weariness. Both fell asleep almost at once, and both awoke about the same time far ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... made Sarina Bashkitseff's starved and drudging days endurable for her was her clear determination to escape from them by educating herself. Her fate might be expressed in Whitman's words, "Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing to the tune ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... relief, which was more warm even than the pleasure of the present moment; for having made one such mistake, how could I tell that there were not more discoveries awaiting me, that life might not prove more endurable, might not rise to something grander and more powerful? The old prejudices, the old foregone conclusion of earth that this was a world of punishment, had warped my vision and my thoughts. With so many added faculties of being, incapable of fatigue as we were, incapable of death, recovering from every ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and became less and less endurable, Chief Agueynaba resolved, out of the soreness of his heart, to test this reputed immortality of his guests. A messenger, one Salzedo, was to be sent away from San Juan on some official errand, with a little company of natives as freighters and servants. This was Agueynaba's chance. He ordered ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... He will take your paupers, your felons—your rattlesnakes; anything in the shape of a drudge, who will toil for mere subsistence, and without one of the social compensations which render toil in England almost endurable. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... patron of domestic life; nor is his mind capable of appreciating that respect for a wife which makes her an ornament of her circle. Saloons, race-courses, and nameless places, have superior attractions for him: home is become but endurable. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... unfavorable as regards a cure, but the process may usually be kept in abeyance or rendered endurable ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... wonder when I have really wanted to go to a party before. It will be something to remember next month at Newport, when we have to and don't want to. Remember your own theory that contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is my party and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty to-morrow night will consist in being nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll warrant you were adept enough at it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there are many such young valkyrs as Eric's sister ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... myself in broad daylight, on the open hillside, by imagining unintelligible sounds; and my imagination was both original and fertile in the invention of such. But my mind was too active to be often subjected to such influences. Indeed life would have been hardly endurable had these moods been of more than occasional occurrence. As I grew older, I almost outgrew them. Yet sometimes one awful dread would seize me—that, perhaps, the prophetic power manifest in the gift of second sight, which, according to the testimony of my old nurse, had ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... had nothing else to secure it. The cause of this, perhaps, was that he knew nothing about books, and was one of those jeering cynics who are so common under one guise or another. Fine cynics are endurable, and give a certain zest often to society, which might become too civil without them; but your coarse cynic is not pleasant. Mr. Copperhead's eye was as effectual in quenching emotion of any but the coarsest kind as water is against ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... efficient, taking the physician's instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse's remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... at the National Hotel, which is now quite crowded, but I have an endurable room with furniture hardly endurable, for it is hard to find, in this hotel at least, a table or a bureau that can stand on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger's washing-pan, unless the lame leg is propped up with an old shoe, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... piercing cold; and, in time, the question arose whether the stench and closeness of a riverside eating-house would not be more endurable than the cutting wind, the sleet, and the sharper pangs ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... that that is the deepest wound of all! Would he had never wedded! To mourn single is pain endurable; to see children wasting with disease, to see death invading the nuptial bed—that is ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... house, or any house, with her is no longer endurable. One of us must go. The mother should not be separated from her child. Therefore it is I whom you will never see again. Forget me, but be considerate ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... very natural, especially as England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without again ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... than large salaries," said Jane, and her face looked sadly reminiscent. After all, the distinction of being the only one who had been on the brink of preparing matrimonial breakfasts was much. She felt that it would make early rising and early work endurable to her, although she was not an active ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the summer, she will dwell upon the style of dress appropriate in the execution of such and such schemes. If you express your regret at her recent indisposition, she will describe the exquisite robes de chambre which rendered her sufferings endurable. If you mention her brother, who has lately received an appointment near the person of the emperor, she will give you a minute account of the most approved court-dresses. If you allude to the possibility ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... mother. Cadurcis, on the whole, behaved very well; he thought of Lady Annabel's injunctions, and restrained his passion. Yet he was not repaid for the sacrifice; his mother made no effort to render their joint society agreeable, or even endurable. She was rarely in an amiable mood, and generally either irritable or sullen. If the weather held up a little, and he ventured to pay a visit to Cherbury, he was sure to be welcomed back with a fit of passion; either Mrs. Cadurcis was angered for ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... in a maidenly pride, and an innocent confidence: her confidence is wholly broken-down; her pride is wounded and the agony of the wound is intolerable. We are wont to say, Margaret, that everything is endurable but a sense of guilt. If there be an exception, this is it. This wounding of the spirit ought not perhaps to be, but it is very like the sting of guilt; and a ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice, and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... cool it is growing," she said as I bent over her fingers. "I truly believe we are to have an endurable day at last." She smiled at me as I straightened up, and continued to regard me very intently, still ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... need not vex you nor myself, Emmy, writing as I do with a heavy, heavy heart, by describing gayeties in which I felt no pleasure, even when amongst them, for my Emmy was not there: splendour, prodigality, and red-hot rooms, only made endurable by perpetually fanning punkahs: pompous counsellors, authorities, and other men in office, and a glut of military uniforms: vulgar wealth, transparent match-making, and predominating dullness: along with some few of the charities and kindnesses ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in decent repair, because he drew many shillings from tourists admitted to view them. But his favourite abode was almost as ruinous as his cottages, and an artist in search of a model for the domestic interior of the Master of Ravenswood might ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... blow lasts for three days, and the cold becomes intense and piercing. While the sudden depression of the temperature is most disagreeable, and often causes great suffering, it is claimed that these "Northers" make the climate more healthy and endurable. They occur from October to May, and in addition to the destruction which, through the sudden depression of the temperature, they bring on the herds in the interior, they are often of sufficient violence to greatly injure the harbors on ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... perpetually blaming, and criticising, and mocking, and making sour faces at everything, and saying 'I will not have this!' and 'I will not have that!' and 'I will not have it so! It is folly; it is unbearable; it is wearisome; it is stupid!' precisely as if they themselves only were endurable, agreeable, and clever! No, I have learned better manners than that. It is true that I have no genius, nor learning, nor talents, as so many people in our day lay claim to, but I have learned to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... spoken dishearteningly of Bareges. With their verdict concurred also the few other accounts we had heard of it. Murray stigmatizes it as "cheerless and forbidding," "a perfect hospital," and remarks that "nothing but the hope of recovering health would render it endurable beyond an hour or two." Another marks it curtly as "a desolate village tucked into the mountain side, with avalanches above and torrents below; in summer the refuge of cripples; in winter the residence ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... thinking for a moment what a blessed thing it must be to feel good and have no weight upon you—as this lovely girl plainly did, and live like her in perfect fearlessness of whatever might be going to happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such an embodiment of it! He might even qualify for some distinction in it with such a teacher!—Second, in the way of self-satisfaction; for clearly she was not disinclined to be on terms ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the Lido, the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine, blue sky,—snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, ever suited my needs, bodily and intellectual, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... better than anything likely to happen today. It was something good in an old world we have lost. But it was something of that old world, like an old book which reads the same today; or an old friend surviving, who would help to make endurable the years to come. I need not try to remember it. I had got it, whatever it was, and that was all the assurance of its wealth I wanted. Then from the river came a call, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... fainting feeling over me, making it difficult to breathe at all. During my menstrual periods I suffered a "thousand deaths." My appetite was gone, mind and sight impaired, strength and flesh all gone. I was a pitiable object to look at, divested of all that made life endurable for me. I had baffled the skill of two physicians, and was left, after three years of agony, to die, a "hopeless ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... you see them crowding around the concert grand piano listening to the old-fashioned strains as we listen today when some musical antiquarian gives a recital of Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau on a clavecin! Still, as Mozart and Bach are endurable now, there is no warrant for any supposition that Chopin would not be tolerated a half century hence. Fancy those sprightly, spiritual, and very national dances, the mazurkas, not making an impression! Or at least two of the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... you to account. I can guess why you did not warn me in the beginning, why you did not tell me when it was too late. Would that I had gone on to the end faithful to my ideal of you! My lonely years in this old house were brightened and made endurable with the mere thought of you. But man was not made to live on shadows, and I loved again, so deeply that I dare not trust ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... speak of, and yet I cannot revert, even for a moment, to the period without a sad and depressing feeling at my heart. The wreck of fortune, the thwarting of ambition, the failure in enterprise, great though they be, are endurable evils. The never-dying hope that youth is blessed with will find its resting-place still within the breast, and the baffled and beaten will struggle on unconquered; but for the death of friends, for the loss of those in whom our dearest ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... man was the husband so long supposed to be dead. She was curious to see her pupil's surgery, of which she highly approved, though she had no words to express her indignation at the folly of traveling so soon. Indeed, nothing but the passiveness of fatigue could have made her despotism endurable to Philip; but he cared for nothing so long as he could see his father's face, and hear his voice—the full tones that his ear had yearned for among the sharp expression of the French accent—and Sir Marmaduke seemed to find the same perfect satisfaction ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... duties, sustained by no lofty aim, cheered by neither friendship nor affection; for she could not teach herself to feel anything warmer than toleration for her daily companion, Mrs. Tadman—only working laboriously because existence was more endurable to her when she was busy than when she was idle. It was scarcely strange, then, that she brooded upon the memory of that night when the nameless stranger had come to Wyncomb, and that she tried to put the fact of his coming and ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... in myself, that is, ennui. Now, the ennuye state of mind is the worst possible for a writer, because his interest in things ought always to remain keen and lively; he ought to have the intelligence of a man with the interest of a child. I believe Paris to be, on the whole, the most endurable of great cities, that in which the disagreeables of such places are most successfully palliated. For instance, I can go from here to the Louvre in magnificent avenues all the way. But, for a writer, it is not enough to find life ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... pictures must always be a blessing. Many a poor man's cheerless home would be made much more comfortable and endurable if a few shilling's worth of good pictures were posted or hung round its bare walls. If houses were universally decorated with true speaking pictures what an immense influence for good it would bring them. What intellectual and refined tastes it would create ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... settled down in their new domain; they had shelter, and plenty of food to last for some months, even on full rations. There was water in abundance to be had from the spring, and altogether their lot was far and away more satisfactory and endurable than that of the poor marooned pirate had been. Besides, there were now four of them, and they had the advantage and comfort of each other's company, while Evans had been entirely alone with only his own miserable ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... places light, its rough places plain, its hard things easy, even its saddest things endurable. His Gospel was this: God, Who made us in His own Image, loves us like a Father; and therefore, in life and in death, in time and in eternity, all is, and must ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... London, after Albinia and Lucy had made an incredible agitation over their patterns of calico and flannel. Mr. Kendal was just aware that there was a prodigious commotion, but he knew that all ladies were subject to linen-drapery epidemics, and Albinia's took a more endurable form than a pull on his purse for the sweetest silk in the world, and above all, it neither came into his study nor ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness is only to the well placed ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... my love," he replied; "I owe you too much to contradict you in aught which may render your solitary mode of life more endurable. Make of this youth what you will, and you have my full authority for doing so. But remember he is your charge, not mine—remember he hath limbs to do man's service, a soul and a tongue to worship God; breed him, therefore, to be true to his ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... of the matter was so entirely unromantic, that I scarcely wondered at Mistress Stickles for having run away from him to an adventurous moss-trooper. For nine women out of ten must have some kind of romance or other, to make their lives endurable; and when their love has lost this attractive element, this soft dew-fog (if such it be), the love itself is apt to languish; unless its bloom be well replaced by the budding hopes of children. Now Master Stickles neither had, nor ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... policy was entirely in the interest of the gentry and of the trading community which was now closely connected with them. Undoubtedly it strengthened China. The policy of nonintervention in the north was endurable even when peace with the Kitan had to be bought by the payment of an annual tribute. From 1004 onwards, 100,000 ounces of silver and 200,000 bales of silk were paid annually to the Kitan, amounting in value ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... it's incongruous—impossible. I've come to the conclusion that the only things which make London—as I've known it—endurable are unlimited credit at a good dressmaker—Oh, and one of the beautiful new motor-cars. You don't mind travelling from Dan to Beersheba if you can do it in five minutes. But when you've got to catch omnibuses or take the Tube, dressed ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... he found less difficulty. Certainly the taste was unpleasant, but, treated as medicine and gulped down quickly, it was endurable. After a day or two he even began to be critical, and on Monday evening went so far as to complain of its flatness to the wide-eyed landlord of the ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... 'William the Bold,' and ending with 'Albert the Good;' the earlier monuments dedicated to Religion, the latter to Science and Art—the first to commemorate a warrior, the latter a man of peace—the first endurable through many ages, the latter destructible ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... freely of her treasure, and of her smiles and loving words, if she might see the light of joy on the faces of men, but from pain or sadness that might not be cured she would turn away. In one thing only was sadness endurable to her and that was in her music, for when she sang or touched the harp all hearts were pierced with longing for they knew not what, and all eyes shed tears save hers alone, who looked as though she beheld, far from earth, some ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Prince by his tact brought the Croat out of his tent; he must not be allowed to go back again—let the Southern Slavs observe what each of their provinces can bring towards the common good. The Croats acknowledge that the military system of Serbia is more endurable—only one son is taken out of each family—and that whereas in Slovenia a lawsuit can be settled in fourteen days it has been wont in Croatia to take as many years. Unfortunately human nature, in Serbia, Croatia and everywhere else, finds that the bad points of other people are more worthy ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... before morning was freely discussed. The instinct of the horses could be relied on to find the way to their stable, but return would be impossible before daybreak. The brothers were so elated over holding the cattle that any personal hardship was endurable, and after a seeming age, a lull in the elements was noticeable and a star shone forth. Joel mounted his horse and rode out of the cove, into the open valley, and on returning announced that the storm had broken and that an attempt ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... of lighting destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary impression I had formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself, but for the torture of having to go to bed in it, had become quite endurable. For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by train, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... hot springs there, and during two thousand years they have poured forth a never-diminishing abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is reduced to an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. The new Friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever been invented, and with all the additions ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... when notes are to be raised or lowered a semitone; chromatic passages easy of execution on the piano are almost impracticable on the harp. The same may be said of the shake; and it is only after long and exclusive devotion to its study that the harp can become endurable in the hands of an amateur, or the means of furnishing a professional harpist with a moderate income. It is needless to point out how far, in these respects, the harp is surpassed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... hear how Gilbert Blythe was this morning?" Anne's desperation drove her to the question. Even the worst would be more endurable than this hideous suspense. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... woes. The people about me are ill, uncomfortable, wretched enough, many of them—but to-morrow or next day, they reach the place of their destination, and all will be new and delightful. To me it will be the same. I can neither escape from her, nor from myself. All is endurable where there is a limit: but I have nothing but the blackness and the fiendishness of scorn around me—mocked by her (the false one) in whom I placed my hope, and who hardens herself against me!—I believe you thought me ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... however, otherwise practical enough, involved a fallacy in its most important point. A marriage so contracted, with a woman of Sophie's character, could by no possibility turn out a happy or even endurable union. She would not be likely long to survive it; if she did, it would be to suffer a life more painful than any death; for no one depended more than Sophie upon integrity and nobility in those she loved; and the break in her family relations would be another source of agony to her, and of consequent ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... has given her heart to one of them, hies herself to the dungeon and offers him her love. She begs for his love in return and seeks in every way to win it. If he resists, she curses him, makes his lot less endurable, withholds his food or threatens him with death until he is willing to accede to her wishes. If this has come to pass she overwhelms him with caresses at the first meeting. She is eager to have them reciprocated; often the lover is not tender enough to please her, then she repeatedly begs ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Parma, and during her life the gayety and grace of French manners had rendered that court one of the most attractive in Europe. But the lovely Duchess of Parma died, and with her died all that made court life endurable. The French language was forbidden, and French customs were banished. Some said that the duke had loved his wife so deeply, that in his grief he had excluded from his court every thing suggestive of his past happiness. Others contended ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... in suspicions of his design, by several plans being found in his possession at the time he was seized upon; but as the French, except in cases of Heresy, use their prisoners with gentleness and humanity, Sir John found his confinement so endurable, that he amus'd himself in drawing rude draughts of some comedies. This circumstance raising curiosity in Paris, several of the noblesse visited him in the Bastile, when Sir John, who spoke their language with fluency ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... obedience to the dictates of common-sense," Owen said, "and dread the sharp sting of poverty. How many thousands of women like you marry every year for the same reason, to secure a home, and mere ordinary, material comforts, which after all go far to make life endurable, even if not ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... George bounded from his seat as if he had been shot, and literally tore his hair. This was worse than all that had gone before. To one of his musical inspiration, the human voice divine in conversation was, endurable, and the roar of battle might even be tolerable, but to hear a creature attempt to play one of the "songs without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... landlord and tenant from an intolerable position, he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it become general. Now, what ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... that Major Clutterbuck was much addicted to whist, with guinea points, and to billiard matches for substantial sums, but these stimulating recreations are also habitual to many men who have led eventful lives and require a strong seasoning to make ordinary existence endurable. Perhaps one reason may have been that the major's billiard play in public varied to an extraordinary degree, so that on different occasions he had appeared to be aiming at the process termed by the initiated ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... felt, as I leaned against the parapet watching for my train's smoke coming towards me, not the loss, but rather the inestimable gain which a kindly past represents. Years gone by? Nay, rather years which make endurable, which furnish and warm the present, giving it sweetness and significance. How very poor we must be in our early youth, with no possessions like these; and how rich in our later life, with many years distilled into the ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... boyhood, the aliment of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of old age." Of this theory there could be no better example than Landor's self. That life which outlasted all the friends of its zenith was made endurable by a constant devotion to the greatest works of the greatest men. Milton and Shakespeare were his constant companions, by night as well as by day. "I never tire of them," he would say; "they are always a revelation. And how grand is Milton's prose! quite as fine as his poetry!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed, till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing, and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but took care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds; preferring, to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the secret pensioner of Louis, to whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour and interests of Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight in playing the part of a tyrant himself; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "Yes, you're endurable by noon time, as a rule. When you're forty you may be tolerated after five o'clock; when you're fifty your wife and children might even venture to emerge from the ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily endurable. She answered, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... breeze drops the heat is overpowering; but although our allowance of water is very meager, at present the pangs of hunger far exceed the pain of thirst. It has often been remarked that extreme thirst is far less endurable than extreme hunger. Is it possible that still greater agonies are in store for us? I cannot, dare not, believe it. For- tunately, the broken barrel still contains a few pints of water, and the other one has not yet been opened. But I am glad to say that notwithstanding ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... must try and make London endurable for you," he remarked cheerfully. "What night will you dine and go to the theatre with me?—and how ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gully—a bird larger in proportion than the lizard itself.... It was the little sparrow the Chemist had sent in from the outside world—maddened now by thirst and hunger, which to the reptile had been much more endurable. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... Poor old god of gardens! Innocent as a clownish symbol, he is simply disgusting as an ideal of art. In the last century, they set him up in Beatrice recalls her Germany and in France as befitting an era of enlightenment, the light of which came too manifestly from the wrong quarter to be long endurable. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... be a far inheritance, for the curing of which by faith and obedience this life would not be sufficiently long, faith and obedience will yet render it endurable to the man, and overflow in help to his fellow-sufferers. The groaning body, wrapt in the garment of hope, will, with outstretched neck, look ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... of the Union, the chief cities of our Indian Empire, the provinces of France, the Prime Ministers of England, or the chief writers and artists of any given century; striking off puns, admirable, endurable, and execrable, but all irresistibly laughable, which followed each other in showers like sparks from flint. Capping verses was a game of which he never tired. "In the spring of 1829," says his cousin Mrs. Conybeare, "we were staying in Ormond Street. My chief recollection ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the nuisance of a bad cold. I am very well, without exception. The only unpleasant effect I feel from this climate is a constant tendency to slight relaxation of the throat, but this is nothing more than a trifling inconvenience, very endurable, and which probably a little more seasoning will remove.... I tell you of our health first, for at our distance from each other that is the matter of greatest moment ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... one thing, however, which made their present situation more endurable. The war in Lombardy made farther progress impossible. They could not be permitted to pass the borders into Venetia. Even if they had been perfectly well they would have been compelled to wait there for ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... whose head had sunk so low, but he could not see the gleam of happiness which lighted up her face as she said softly: "I have been so anxious that life has hardly been endurable the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Abbott's society far more endurable, when she paid her round of visits after Masters' departure, than that of the older women with their watchful or anxious eyes, and she had no suspicion that Sally had guessed her secret long since. If love had been her only affliction she would have been grateful for her society ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... and more selfishness. A girl could hardly enter a new life through a medium more trying. I am sure it would need long-tested affections and the sweetest of tempers to make it endurable." ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... election of a new one on a more popular system ought to be in contemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, one thing was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament might be brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests, and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Not only must Royalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, but also those conspicuous Presbyterian enemies of the Army who had occasioned all the recent troubles! That there might be no mistake, eleven ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... enlighten them on the slave-trade, and give them some idea of our religion. It may not be much that I can do, but I feel when doing that I am not living in vain. You remember that when, to prevent our coming to a standstill, I had to turn skipper myself, the task was endurable only because I was determined that no fellow should prove himself indispensable to our further progress. To be debarred from spending most of my time in traveling, in exploration, and continual intercourse with the natives, I always felt to be a severe privation, and if I can ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... his presence she would hardly have dared it, so great was the horror that this place had inspired within her. But to wait alone with him in that terrible empty valley was even less endurable. She went down the long, steep ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... detail, as we take the hours of the day and the days of the year, and it is very endurable. It has seemed to me sometimes that those whom we call fortunate are the least happy, and that the hard lot is often lifted into the sphere of blessedness. Consider Mr. and Mrs. Moxon; they appear to have nothing to be thankful for, and yet ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to marry or not to marry is a question which in very many cases amounts to this: Are the cares of love more endurable than the anxieties ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... life will pass, but I certainly do feel confidence in Him who has upheld me hitherto. Solitude may be cheered, and made endurable beyond what I can believe. The great trial is when evening closes and night approaches. At that hour, we used to assemble in the dining-room—we used to talk. Now I sit by myself—necessarily I am silent. I cannot help thinking of their ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... before the eyes rendering the paper scarce visible as he wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on the pen. What man among us has not had nights and hours like these? But to the manly heart—severe as these pangs are, they are endurable: long as the night seems, the dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the fever abates, and rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the past misery with feelings that are ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and to what had taken place the day her father was taken ill, he saw a puzzled, bewildered look in her face, as though she had no idea of what he was saying, and he was seized by a fear almost too ghastly to be endurable. ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... not bright and fresh with cleanliness. Tables littered with books, chairs and sofas strewn with gloves and ribbons, and even a floor encumbered with a prostrate doll or two, are cheerful; a trail of leaves and mosses from a basket of woodland treasures is endurable dirt. But dust in the corners which shows the dirt to be chronic and not accidental, unwashed windows, dingy mirrors, etc., etc., have no redeeming quality. It is a good thing for the mother of the family to love order, but there is ample scope for that in keeping every closet and drawer ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... around thee were left vacant on thy coming? When all those Consulars, whom thou so frequently hadst designated unto slaughter, as soon as thou didst take thy seat, left all that portion of the benches bare and vacant? With what spirit, in one word, can thou deem this endurable? By Hercules! did my slaves so dread me, as all thy fellow citizens dread thee, I should conceive it time for leaving my own house—dost thou not hold it time to leave this city?—And if I felt myself without just cause suspected, and odious to my countrymen, I should choose rather ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... troops, and above all the officers, began to grow weary of their sojourn at Boulogne, a town less likely, perhaps, than any other to render such an inactive existence endurable. They did not murmur, however, because never where the First Consul was did murmuring find a place; but they fumed nevertheless under their breath at seeing themselves held in camp or in fort, with ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... of it all was broken, broken beyond repair. The wide expanses of the northland had become a desert in which life was no longer endurable. The wind-swept crests, the undulating, barren plains no longer spoke of a boundless freedom and the elemental battle. These things had become something to forget in the absorbing claim of a life to come, wherein the harshness of battle had no place. The darkling woods, scarce trodden ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... with their axe, they found the interior to be dry punk, which at once suggested the exhilarating thought of a fire, and soon a delightful heat from the burning drywood permeated their snow cave, the smoke being more endurable than the previous cold. All at once they heard a strange snorting and scratching above in the tree with whines which drove the dog wild with excitement, then, with burning embers and suffocating smoke, down came a huge animal, well-nigh breaking the necks ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Precision, the depth which necessarily means a graceful form is absent? As when we say a woman has beautiful eyes we indirectly acknowledge her want of universal beauty. Certainly a man of elegant manners is admired not for himself, but what he represents. Indeed, all society is only thus endurable. Nature, and to me particularly the ocean, makes no such partial impression; and therefore the poet who sits nearest to the great heart sings rather the sense of vague beauty and aspiration, of tender remembrance and gentle hope, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... the question has now become ridiculous. We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life is still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do whatever ...
— The Republic • Plato
... ended thus. It sounds almost trivial to say that in the midst of trials of body, mind and soul Spangenberg occupied himself with making buttons, but no doubt the homely, useful labor did its part toward rendering endurable ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... dead rat in the wainscot of the ship. My nose being somewhat fastidious as yet, I moved to the other side of the cabin. But four kegs of strong-smelling butter sent me quickly out of that. I then tried a bunk next to the German Jews, but I found proximity to them was the least endurable of all; and so, after many changes, I at last came back and slept contentedly beside my unseen and most ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... thought about it the less endurable it became to have her dependent upon the Grignons. My business affairs with Pierre Grignon made it possible to transfer her obligations to my account. The hospitable man and his wife objected, but when they saw how I took it to heart, gave me my way. I told them I wished her ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... now in his grasp. He felt it. And with that in his mind he waited, strong as steel in his conviction, capable of withstanding any strain endurable ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... something at his back, even though that something were a gallows-tree. He had no great faith in the superstitions of the age, still such of them as occurred to him did not serve to lighten the time, or to render his situation the more endurable. He remembered how witches were said to repair at that ghostly hour to churchyards and gibbets, and such-like dismal spots, to pluck the bleeding mandrake or scrape the flesh from dead men's bones, as choice ingredients for their spells; how, stealing by night to lonely places, they dug graves ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... of life is not dependent upon comfort, nor yet upon safety. The essential matter is that the heart be engaged. Then, though we be toiling up the Matterhorn, or swept along in the rush of a bayonet charge, we may still find existence not only endurable, but in the highest degree exhilarating. On the other hand, if there is no longer anything we care for; if enthusiasm is dead, and hope also, then, though we have all that money can buy, suicide is perhaps the only fitting action that ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... of experience, not years," he said. "You have lived for twenty years in a very delightful spot no doubt, but away from everything which makes life endurable, possible even, for the child of the cities. I have lived for twenty-one years mostly in Paris. ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
