"Incurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curious instances of this long struggle: there are several now before the writer, in which punishments succeed each other with a frequency so terrible, that the mind is only relieved by the belief that sensibility is destroyed by incurable misery. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... gives Nelvil an opportunity of picking it up—form a similar prelude to a long series of extravagances. The culmination of them is that altogether possible-improbable visit to England, which might have put everything right and does put everything wrong, and the incurable staginess which makes her, as above related, refuse to see Oswald and Lucile together till she is actually in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... never have been adequate for me; I am afraid I have an incurable habit of rebelling against the orthodox dogma beloved of clergymen, but Clare is more docile, less 'tameless and ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... strange dawn as of grey and pale silver. And of this ultimate resignation or certainty it is even less possible to write; it is something stranger than hell itself; it is perhaps the last of the secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some incurable anguish there will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment. It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the future; this is complete and of the present. It ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... temperature from 96 degrees to 98.4 degrees. Subnormal bodily temperature has not received the attention which it deserves. It is usually one of the forerunners, or prodromata as they are called, of the onset of incurable diseases like cancer, Bright's disease or apoplexy. The commonly accepted view that the heat of the body depends upon the food, and that people eat blubber in the Arctic and Antarctic regions to keep the bodily heat up, is one of the ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... hung under the house or at any opening in the wall. The priest, also, frequently carries a sharpened s s reed in the hope of encountering some overbold demon. Although the wound inflicted by the reed does not kill the demon, yet it is very slow to heal and is said to be at times incurable. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... advantage for an enemy to take. Of course it was dark; we found, however, that he was not dangerously wounded. That man whose bullet I drew you yesterday had his thigh bone smashed, poor fellow! Did you see that some officers who were prisoners had been exchanged by Germany (the incurable ones)? The two seniors mentioned I knew. One was Major Davey of the Middlesex Regt., whose brother lives in Newark. The other is Major Chichester, with whom I used to hunt in Dover. Did you see French's last despatches? I heard from Aden last night. The Colonel next junior to me out ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... a grown-up man or woman, must be taught and punished, until by punishment he becomes better, and he who rebels against instruction and punishment is either exiled or condemned to death under the idea that he is incurable—if what I am saying be true, good men have their sons taught other things and not this, do consider how extraordinary their conduct would appear to be. For we have shown that they think virtue capable of being taught and cultivated both in private ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... "She was considered incurable. I know nothing about the rest of it. Nat was telling me yesterday. Now he is probably infatuated also, and, sooner or later, Eloise is sure ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... makeshift existence was impossible. In his childlike, impulsive fashion he had not thought of the future when he adopted Jean. Aristide always regarded the fortune of the moment as if it would last forever. Past deceptions never affected his incurable optimism. Now Jean and he must part. Aristide felt that the end of the world had come. His pacing to and fro awoke the child, who demanded, in his own way, the soothing rocking of his father's arms. There he bubbled and "goo'd" till Aristide's heart ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... cattle which had been stung by adders, by charming them, while, on the other hand, my father believed that she had, at Richard Tresidder's bidding, ill-wished his cows. She had on several occasions cured terrible diseases which the doctor from Falmouth said were incurable, and I have heard it said that when Mr. John Wesley visited Cornwall, and was told about her, the great man looked very grave, and expressed a belief in her power. This being so, it is no wonder I did not like ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... have my unhappy days Been lengthen'd to this sad one? Oh! dishonour And deathless infamy is fallen upon me. Was it my fault? Am I a traitor? No. But then, my only child, my daughter wedded; There my best blood runs foul, and a disease Incurable ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... objects both with life and purposiveness. Moral attributes, however, whether good or bad, presuppose conscious choice, a faculty of weighing and if necessary repelling motives; and with such a faculty we have no reason for crediting animals. No doubt, our incurable habit of reading the facts of our own moral nature into the actions of beasts and birds accounts for the vogue alike of Aesop's Fables and of such works as the Jungle Books; but what strikes us as cruelty in the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... well as race. The gipsies do not assimilate with the thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble: they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, be it Catholic or Protestant. Notwithstanding that, the gipsy has an incurable habit of pilfering here as elsewhere; yet they can be trusted as messengers and carriers—indeed I do not know what people would do without them, for they are as good as a general "parcels-delivery company" any day; and certainly they are ubiquitous, for never is a door ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... with a trembling hand the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Juno, as in the Aeneid, delegated the work of vengeance to Alecto. The Queen was calm and gentle; but Madame Schwellenberg raved like a maniac in the incurable ward of Bedlam! Such insolence! Such ingratitude! Such folly! Would Miss Burney bring utter destruction on herself and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable advantage of royal protection? Would she part with privileges which, once relinquished, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... double cataract. It was not incurable; if he were operated upon he might recover his sight. The operation had not yet been attempted because his health would not allow it.... He was suffering from bronchial trouble, and if the operation was ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... the surface often misled the eye as to the depths. It was rather that something yet held back the faculties from their growth than that the faculties themselves were wanting. Her weakness was more of the nature of the infant's than of one afflicted with incurable imbecility. For instance, she managed the little household with skill and prudence; she could calculate in her head, as rapidly as Vaudemont himself, the arithmetic necessary to her simple duties; she knew the value of money, which ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... assert, on account of deficient experience, that this treatment will always prove satisfactory. Such cases hardly ever arise under hom[oe]opathic treatment; and if they come to us out of the hands of all[oe]opathic practitioners, they generally prove incurable. ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... folly, than an attempt to correct the natural infirmities of those we love. The finest composition of human nature, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it; and this, I am afraid, in either case, is equally incurable; though, nevertheless, the pattern may ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... howl about us; the sorrows of happiness are the worst to bear, and the wise soon learn that there is nothing to dream of but the end of desire. God is the one ideal, the Church the one shelter, from the incurable misery of life. The life of the cloister is far from the meanness of life. And oh! the voices of chanting boys, the cloud of incense, and the Latin hymn afloat on ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... new territory. All this time his intellect was cool and clear, except when under the influence of drink, and he was always ready with the most plausible explanations of his conduct. At last, however, delusions began to appear, and unquestionable and incurable insanity was established. The philosophy of our times utterly fails to account for a phenomenon like this. Had the hand of the law been laid upon him for his offences, he would have been regarded as one of those examples of depravity which deserve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... sense of imperfection. Extraordinary fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of nature, and great command of technical resources are here (as elsewhere in Ferrari's frescos) neutralized by an incurable defect of the combining and harmonizing faculty so essential to a masterpiece. There is stuff enough of thought and vigor and imagination to make a dozen artists. And yet we turn away disappointed from the crowded, dazzling, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... will be of much more consequence to them than a King of Poland. We must take care, however, that neither this, nor any other objection to the new form, produces a schism in our Union. That would be an incurable evil, because near friends falling out, never re-unite cordially; whereas, all of us going together, we shall be sure to cure the evils of our new Constitution, before they do great harm. The box of books I had taken the liberty to address to you, is but just gone ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... attractiveness, a courtesy, which made Marius doubt whether that famed Greek "blitheness," or gaiety, or grace, in the handling of life, had been, after all, an unrivalled success. Contrasting with the incurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher Roman life, of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil, the new creation he now looked on—as it were a picture beyond the craft ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... second part is concerned, we have many examples of cure, through a moderate fit of anger, of inveterate dyspepsia; and through fright,—as in the case of a fire—of rheumatic pains and lameness apparently incurable. But even dysentery has sometimes resolved an internal stoppage, and the itch has been a cure for melancholy madness and insanity: is the itch, for this, less a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Duke and, rising, took her hand in a paternal fashion, "did you think that, at this late day, the disease of matrimony was still incurable? Nay, we progress, madame. You shall have grounds for a separation—sufficient, unimpeachable grounds. You shall have your choice of desertion, infidelity, cruelty in the presence of witnesses—oh, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... open spaces; they exist to testify to the incurable interest of humanity in the Unknown and the Misunderstood. Even 'Arry is capable of five minutes' attention to speculative theology, if 'Arriet ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... as it was interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most active sympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as few comparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic, half-humorous side of that incurable ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... fellow-countrymen. He met atrocity with atrocity. He believed it to be his mission to avenge the burning of British seamen and the Spanish and Popish attempts on the life of his virgin sovereign. That he knew her to be an audacious flirt, an insufferable miser, and an incurable political intriguer whose tortuous moves had to be watched as vigilantly as Philip's assassins and English traitors, is apparent from reliable records. His mind was saturated with the belief in his own high destiny, as the chosen ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... power," replied Archer; "they've got such an incurable trick of talking equine scandal, and taking away the characters of their 165neighbours' horses, that nobody can stop them unless it ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... possible that the boy will protract his unfortunate life a full year after his mind has entirely passed away, and nothing is left of him but his body. The boy, if you can regard such a poor creature as a human being, is suffering from an incurable form of scrofula, which will by and by consume his limbs, and convert him into an idiot; he is now deaf; he will be a mere stupid beast. If it were permitted to substitute the hand of science in place of the hand of God, I ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the night of St. Bartholomew, a year after her son had chastised the Moslems at Lepanto, dealt the French heretics a deep, almost incurable wound, and in the Netherlands there were not gallows enough to hang ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Schooling, who must have been a goose, had told him that Mrs. Berrington, though transplanted, was the finest flower of a rich, ripe society and as clever and virtuous as she was beautiful. Meanwhile Laura knew what Selina thought of Fanny Schooling and her incurable provinciality. 'Now was that a good example of London talk—what I heard (I only heard a little of it, but the conversation was more general before you came in) in your sister's drawing-room? I don't mean literary, intellectual talk—I suppose there are special places to hear that; ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... gentlemen of the jury were husbands and fathers, as they were fathers and not husbands, as they were neither one nor the other, but hoped to be both—they would that day hurl such a thunderbolt at the pocket of the defendant—they would so thrice-gild the incurable ulcers of the plaintiff, that all the household gods of the United Empire would hymn them to their mighty rest, and Hymen himself keep continual carnival at their amaranthine hearths. "Gentlemen of the jury (said the learned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... like a fakir, wholly wrapped in a cloud of his own imaginings, and nothing ever happened to disappoint his expectations, to jar upon his prejudices, and to convict him of error; if he never held converse with anyone who took a different view and controverted him, his dogmatism would be lifelong and incurable. But as he lives socially, he has in practice to outgrow it, and this lands him in a serious theoretical dilemma. He has to learn to live with others who differ from him in their dogmatizing. Social life plainly would become impossible if all rigidly insisted on the absolute rightness ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... incurable individualist who found himself sufficient unto himself. He was different from his neighbors in that he was always thinking, asking questions and pondering over his conclusions. He had convinced himself that each ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... Marietta did not find eighty comfortable cabins waiting for them, and they did not hire hunters to provide their food, or begin by giving balls. The able and educated men among the French colonists seem to have cowered under their disasters like the rest; and some were incurable dreamers. One of the best of them used afterwards to tell how he was descending the Ohio with two philosophers who believed so firmly in the natural innocence and goodness of men, that they invited some Indians aboard their boat and were at once tomahawked. Their skeptical companion shot ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... throte choke vp and die. But he that differreth to rydde him selfe in this sorte: It is laweful for another (aftre a warninge) to doe it. And it is there compted a friendly benefaicte. Men also diseased of feures, oranye other incurable malady, they doe in lyke maner dispatche: iudginge it of all griefes the woorste, for that manne to liue, that canne nowe nothinge doe, why he shoulde desyre to lyue. Herodote writeth, that the Troglodites myne them selues caues ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... extremely practical statesman Nicolo Machiavelli had in mind when he wrote that, "Dangers that are seen afar off are easily prevented; but protracting till they are near at hand, the remedies grow unseasonable and the malady incurable." ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... professed, inveterate, and incurable snuff-taker, at a moderate computation, takes one pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch, with the agreeable ceremony of blowing and wiping the nose, and other incidental circumstances, consumes a minute and a half. One minute and a half out of every ten, allowing sixteen hours and a half to a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... when touched by ridicule or ingratitude. There are many Davids and Jonathans in the sagebrush country. David may have flocks and herds, and Jonathan may have naught but the care of them. David may possess lands and water-rights, and Jonathan nothing more than a pick, a shovel, a pan, and an incurable itch for placering. A Westerner likes a man for what he is and not because of his vocation. He usually proceeds cautiously in the matter of friendship, but sudden and instinctive friendships are not infrequent. It so happened that John Corliss had taken a liking to the Hobo, Sundown Slim. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... it was the famine; it was the Austrian Committee; it was the Diamond Necklace, and the humiliating memories of the Seven Years' War; it was the pride of nobles or the intolerance of priests; it was philosophy; it was freemasonry; it was Mr. Pitt; it was the incurable levity and violence of the national character; it was the issue of that struggle between classes that constitutes the unity of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of the Catholics in the regions where it flourished would have placed the Protestants at their mercy. In Ulster both the contending organizations necessarily acquired a religious form and necessarily retained it. But at bottom bad laws, not bigotry, were the cause. There was nothing incurable, or even unique, about the disorders. Analogous phenomena have appeared elsewhere, for example, in Australia, between the original squatters on large ranches and new and more energetic colonists in search of land for ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... idea of the different elements that make music something more than a sweetish impotence. They are vastly different from the horrible trash children are usually brought up on, especially in our American schools, to the almost incurable perversion of their musical tastes. They are also so full of refinement, and of that humor without which children cannot long be held, that they are of complete interest also to "grown-ups," to whom alone the real artistic value ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... departure was that, after the blind man had been told of the impossibility of anything being done for his eyes, he was informed of the proposed marriage. The trip had already cost him one daughter, he had found that his blindness was incurable, and now his only remaining daughter, who had for seventeen years been like his own child, was planning to leave him. He would have to return to Hongkong hopeless and accompanied only by a wife he had never seen, one who really was merely a servant. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... story: when I was taken from the castle into the town, with M. de Martigues, there was one of M. de Savoie's gentlemen, who asked me if M. de Martigues's wound could be cured. I told him no, that it was incurable: and off he went to tell M. le Due de Savoie. I bethought myself they would send physicians and surgeons to dress M. de Martigues; and I argued within myself if I ought to play the simpleton, and not let myself be known for a surgeon, lest they should keep ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... wrong, to secure the best of any bargain into which a poor Gentile may enter with them. Those whom the commercial standing of the Jews, here and elsewhere, has not yet cured of this slanderous prejudice will not be converted by my pleading. Envy is an incurable disease; jealousy makes blind, and the common saying is surely true, that none are so blind as those who will not see. But neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss over our real failings and shortcomings. Those ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... Josephine, who considered Napoleon's own brothers as her enemies, and was anxious, not without reason, to have some additional support in the family. Her influence, from this time, appears to have remained unshaken; though her extravagance and incurable habit of contracting debts gave rise to many unpleasing scenes between her and the most ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... she thought only of her own happiness, only of herself and her own sorrows. And it was a very severe, very incurable sorrow that visited her—a sorrow that often brought tears of anger into her eyes and curses upon her lips. Elizabeth was jealous—jealous not of this or that woman, but of the whole sex. She glowingly desired ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... by a glance, for she saw his eye was unconsciously directed towards Mr. Monday and Mr. Dodge, for both of whom she knew her kinsman entertained an incurable dislike. His words, however, explained the catastrophe, and most of the men hastened on deck to assure themselves of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... quite a long time since she had been to see them. She clearly remembered the last occasion—it was the day after Christmas. It was then that she had found Herr Rupius alone and that he had told her that his affliction was incurable. She also remembered distinctly why she had not called upon him since that day: although she did not admit it to herself, she had a kind of fear of entering that house which she had then left with her mind in a ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... knowledge, and worked my hardest at my art, for outside my art there was naught to be done. At last I discovered a cure for phthisis, which is also known as Phthoe, a disease for many centuries deemed incurable, and I healed many who are alive to this day as easily as I have cured the Gallicus morbus. I also discovered a cure for intercutaneous water in many who still survive. But in the matter of invention, Reason will be the leader, but Experiment ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... With this end in view, he arranged an exact reproduction of the parting scenes of 1812, on an estate of his at Saint-Germain. The mad-woman recognized him indeed, but she died immediately. Having gained the promotion of general, Sucy committed suicide, the prey of incurable despair. [Farewell.] ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... station did not look in any way different from those he had known long ago in his childhood, before there were factory performances and improvements. As a doctor accustomed to judging correctly of chronic complaints, the radical cause of which was incomprehensible and incurable, he looked upon factories as something baffling, the cause of which also was obscure and not removable, and all the improvements in the life of the factory hands he looked upon not as superfluous, but as comparable with the ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... become entirely unbearable, in 1808 I requested of his Majesty a month's leave of absence in order to be cured, Dr. Boyer having told me that a month was the shortest time absolutely necessary for my restoration, and that without it my disease would become incurable. I went to Saint-Cloud to visit my wife's family, where Yvan, surgeon of the Emperor, came to see me every day. Hardly a week had passed, when he told me that his Majesty thought I ought to be entirely ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... insubordination was a more heinous sin than dishonesty, and political offences were regarded as the blackest of all. The gendarmerie officers shut their eyes, therefore, to the prevailing abuses, which were believed to be incurable, and directed their attention to real or imaginary political delinquencies. Oppression and extortion remained unnoticed, whilst an incautious word or a foolish joke at the expense of the Government was too often magnified into an ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... other witnesses scattered and perhaps drowned at sea; the natural prejudice against a Frenchman and a runaway prisoner: this makes a serious total for your lawyer to consider, and is by no means lessened by the incurable folly and levity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... incongruous aspects of the man. In his life he was, to a great extent, Bysshe; in his poetry he was Shelley. Shelley wrote The Skylark and Pan and The West Wind. It was Bysshe who imagined that a fat old woman in a train had infected him with incurable elephantiasis. Mr. Ingpen quotes Peacock's account of this ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... and for the man who died by his own hand five days after her death, because he could stay no longer in a world where such crimes were possible, had lived in the full perfection of domestic sympathy. But, if she carried with her an incurable wound, one cannot help regretting that her Spartan courage had not led her to wear the mantle of silence to the end. Posterity is curious rather than sympathetic, and the world is neither wiser nor better for these needless ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Tired, perhaps, and worn out a bit, but ill? No need for Inger to start worrying and making a fool of him; he was sound and well enough; ate, slept, and worked; his health was simply terrific, it was incurable! Once, felling a tree, the thing had come down on top of him, and broken his ear; but he made light of it. He set the ear in place again, and kept it there by wearing his cap drawn over it night and day, and it grew together again that way. For internal complaints, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... troops of the allies, easily known by the barbarous shape of their helmets, like mitres cut off, or else surmounted with a crescent stuck on a point. Their broad-bladed swords, their saw-edged axes, must have inflicted incurable wounds. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... to the subject. This train-fever is, of course, only a symptom. It proceeds from that apprehensiveness of mind that is so common and incurable an affliction. The complaint has been very well satirised by one who suffered from it. "I have had many and severe troubles in my life," he said, "but most of them never happened." That is it. We people who worry about the trains and similar things live in a world of imaginative disaster. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... No tenderness of affection, no length of association, no faithfulness of service, could stand for an instant against a single one of the many blows that his morbid self-love had received. For self-love like his is an incurable disease of sensibility, a spreading canker which poisons the whole character, as an unsound spot in the flesh poisons the whole body. To those who have not come in close contact with this form of morbidity, it may seem impossible that William Pressley's ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... with the ends of wires which they were frantically attempting to peg into the holes of the primitive switchboard and so establish "connections." When not knocking down and fighting each other, these boys were swearing into transmitters at the customers; and it is said that the incurable profanity of these early "telephone boys" had much to do with their supersession by girls. In the early days of the telephone, each instrument had to carry its own battery, usually installed in a little box under the transmitter. The early telephone ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... of dropsy. This," taking up a green vial, "contains the quintessence of mandrakes distilled in the alembic when Scorpio rules the hour. Whoever takes this liquid"—La Corriveau shook it up lovingly—"dies of torments incurable as the foul disease of lust which it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... dialect. He was a quick, clever lad, and the culture bestowed in a genteel academy was too narrow for him. He read a great deal of romance, and still more poetry. He neglected his school lessons, and he was dismissed after a few years as an incurable scamp. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... is something that excels follows interrupts precedes yields 71 72 Ceaseless means boisterous diminished discontented ended incessant 72 73 Emphatic means forcible frantic incurable pernicious reluctant 73 74 To subvert means to overturn shorten sling sojourn spurn 74 75 To be infamous is to be doubtful polished shameful ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... disgraced!" As he said this Trevelyan got up, and walked about the room, tearing his hair with his hands. He was in truth a wretched man, from whose mind all expectation of happiness was banished, who regarded his own position as one of incurable ignominy, looking upon himself as one who had been made unfit for society by no fault of his own. What was he to do with the wretched woman who could be kept from the evil of her pernicious vanity by no gentle custody, whom no most distant retirement would make safe from the effects ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... means to an end, and the end had proved to be the rearing of an apparently impassable wall of bitter antagonism between master and men. And the secret of the money's origin and acquisition, which was to have been so easily cast aside and ignored, had become a soul-sickness incurable and even contagious. Griswold was beginning to suspect that it had attacked Margery Grierson; that it had subconsciously, if not otherwise, thrust itself into Charlotte Farnham's life; and the night of horror so lately past had shown him into what depths it could plunge its wretched guardian ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... faith, of simple, steadfast love. No cynic or pessimist can be really happy. A cynic is a man who is morally near-sighted,—and brags about it. He sees the evil in his own heart, and thinks he sees the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse the sun. An incurable cynic is an individual who should long for death,—for life cannot bring him happiness, death might. The keynote of Bismarck's lack of happiness was his ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... a red-tongued, foolish breathless, intent little dog with black eyes and a great smile and woolly paws—which noise, conceived and executed by The Lobster, sent The Enormous Room into an absolute and incurable hysteria. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... playful—and scratching—family. Father and daughter." And here is another. "The agreeable (and wicked) young-mature man, and his devoted sister." What next was set down he had himself partly seen; and, by enquiry at the hospital named, had ascertained the truth of the rest. "The two people in the Incurable Hospital.—The poor incurable girl lying on a water-bed, and the incurable man who has a strange flirtation with her; comes and makes confidences to her; snips and arranges her plants; and rehearses to her the comic songs(!) by writing which he ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... its stages; to "Syrup of Figs", which is not a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna; to Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, of which the principal medical constituent is alcohol; and, finally, to Dr. Bye's Oil Cure for cancer, a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates suffering from an incurable malady. All of these, with other matter, which for the sake of decency I do not care to detail in these columns, appear in recent issues of the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... venture to affirm, that, if the total numbers of our nobility and their nearest connexions were summed; and if from that sum were subtracted all officers, being brothers, sons, nephews, of British peers, who laid down their lives, or suffered incurable wounds in the naval or military service of their country, the proportion will be found greater than that upon the aggregate remainder belonging to the rest of the nation. Life is the same blessing for all ranks alike. But certainly, though for all it is intrinsically the same priceless jewel, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... two kinds of love," answered Maltravers,—"love and self-love; the wounds of the last are often most incurable in those who appear least vulnerable to the first. Ah, Lady Florence, were I privileged to play the monitor, I would venture on one warning, however much ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be established . . . and never be redressed, neither shall there for ever be an end of this controversy in England," wrote Knox's party to the Senate of Frankfort. The religious disruption in England was, in fact, incurable, but so it would have been had the Knoxians prevailed in Frankfort. The difference between the Churchman and the Dissenter goes to the root of the English character; no temporary triumph of either side could have brought ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... in stronger colours the lofty and determined zeal of his character. He had already written much; his fame stood upon a firm basis; domestic wants no longer called upon him for incessant effort; and his frame was pining under the slow canker of an incurable malady. Yet he never loitered, never rested; his fervid spirit, which had vanquished opposition and oppression in his youth; which had struggled against harassing uncertainties, and passed unsullied through many temptations, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... an incurable and intolerable disease, which began with an ulcer in his secret parts and a fistula in ano, that spread progressively to his inmost bowels, and baffled all the skill of physicians and surgeons. Untried medicines of some daring professors ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... instances of possession. But the demon Asmodeus, who beset Sara, the daughter of Raguel,[244] and who killed her first seven husbands; those spoken of in the Gospel, who were simply struck with maladies or incommodities which were thought to be incurable; those whom the Scripture sometimes calls lunatics, who foamed at the mouth, who were convulsed, who fled the presence of mankind, who were violent and dangerous, so that they were obliged to be chained to prevent them from ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... yours in order? See now what tricks you have played me—only think! But I am myself to blame, for being too tender-hearted, instead of having given you a good beating at first; and now I perceive that a pitiful doctor only makes the wound incurable. But you'll go on with your pranks until at last we come to a serious falling-out, and then there will be a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... inseparably connected with each other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots-in on him dull incurable misery: the Nessus'-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin! In this manner he had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... no clinical manifestations have yet asserted themselves. There is another valuable blood test worked out by Noguchi. With these two tests we are now able to diagnose the disease, almost absolutely, and follow up the treatment till cure is complete, except in some of the incurable brain and ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... have elapsed since the death of Sir Richard Burton and twelve since the appearance of the biography of Lady Burton. A deeply pathetic interest attaches itself to that book. Lady Burton was stricken down with an incurable disease. Death with its icy breath hung over her as her pen flew along the paper, and the questions constantly on her lips were "Shall I live to complete my task? Shall I live to tell the world how great and noble a man my husband was, and to refute the calumnies that his enemies have ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... parliament to dissolution. It was a "parliamentary republic," as Thiers styled it. But if, on June 13, the bourgeoisie secured its omnipotence within the parliament building, did it not also strike the parliament itself, as against the Executive and the people, with incurable weakness by excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies, without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it abolished its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating regulation, that it subjected the Mountain ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... creations which belong to the realm of the imagination alone. The imputation that the sayings of his fallen fiends were the cherished sentiments of the poet himself, may have been one cause of his contempt for the average intelligence of his countrymen, and for their inveterate and incurable prejudices. Nothing in Dante is more intense and concentrated in language than the malediction of Eve upon ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... wife died about fourteen years after her marriage, and, I am glad to say, he was with her during her last illness, but afterwards he returned to his old life in London, and went very much into society. Finally his health failed; and when he discovered that his malady, although a slow, was an incurable one, his habits and disposition changed, and he grew morbid, I think—possibly from brooding too much ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... fingers write, and which I express with incredible pleasure, and repeat again and again, speak from the bottom of my heart, and from the incurable wound which you have made in it; a wound which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding the cruel torments I endure for your absence. I would reckon all that opposes our love nothing, were I only allowed to see you sometimes with freedom; I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... has vociferated a thousand other praises of the said demon, which bear witness to the vehement sorcery practised upon him, and prove, moreover, the abominable, unalterable, and incurable life and the fraudulent witcheries to which he is at present subject, concerning which our lord the archbishop will judge, in order to save by exorcisms and penitences this young soul from the snares of hell, if the devil has not gained too ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... said to be "such" with reference to their proper causes, not with reference to what belongs to them from their first and universal causes; thus we call a disease incurable, not that it cannot be cured by God, but that it cannot be cured by the proper principles of the subject. Therefore a creature is said to be not assumable, not as if we withdrew anything from the power of God, but in order to show the condition ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... thought me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea, and shook off my low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks, and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas he was being consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was more fit for a hospital than ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... eyebrows, and with an inward gaze which when disengaged and arriving at one seemed to issue from an obscure dream of books, from the limbo of meditation, showed himself extremely gracious to him. Renouard guessed in him a man whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to the events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... reflect, that to gain admission into the hearts of men, they must make themselves their equals; so that with this pretended superiority of enlightened understanding, which they look on as an essential property of the rank they hold, the most part of them live groveling in a proud and incurable ignorance of all that it would be the most important for them to know, and never enjoy the ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... lived she remained attractive and pretty. I have never beheld more profound, tender, and melancholy eyes. I adored her, and she loved me.... But our life was not cheerful; it seemed as though some mysterious, incurable and undeserved sorrow were constantly sapping the root of her existence. This sorrow could not be explained by grief for my father alone, great as that was, passionately as my mother had loved him, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to earn it. Instead of being what we are now, the cheapest and nastiest of the animals, we shall be the costliest, most fastidious, and best bred. In short, there is no end to the astonishing things that may happen when the curse of Adam becomes first a blessing and then an incurable habit. And in that day we must not grudge children ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Baccio Valori on September 29(142): "Michael Angelo will not live long unless some measures are taken for his benefit. He works very hard, eats little and poorly, and sleeps less. In fact, he is afflicted with two kinds of disorder: the one in his head, the other in his heart. Neither is incurable, since he has a robust constitution; but, for the good of his head, he ought to be restrained by our Lord the Pope from working through the winter in the sacristy, the air of which is bad for him;(143) and for his heart, the best remedy would be if his Holiness could accommodate matters with ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... great a pang as the death of a friend in later years? Who can explain why certain young temperaments are liable to terrible emotions for the slightest cause, and may eventually become morbid and incurable? ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... ministry. Wherever you find him, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running on the structure of bodies, the means of their conservation and growth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and antagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and incurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in general; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of their compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... that he would be a father to her son; meaning only that the good king would befriend the fortunes of Bertram. Lafeu told the countess that the king had fallen into a sad malady, which was pronounced by his physicians to be incurable. The lady expressed great sorrow on hearing this account of the king's ill health, and said she wished the father of Helena (a young gentlewoman who was present in attendance upon her) were living that she doubted not he could have cured his Majesty ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to sell anything or to borrow more. Hence the mutual dealings of the two classes were ofttimes marked by deceit and ofttimes by treachery, so that there was fear of the matter progressing till it became an incurable evil. Certain modifications in regard to interest had been made even before this by some of the tribunes, but since even so payment was not secured, but the one class kept forfeiting its securities and the other demanding the principal in money, Caesar now ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... all the credit and popularity of a reform. The very idea of purity and disinterestedness in politics falls into disrepute, and is considered as a vision of hot and inexperienced men; and thus disorders become incurable, not by the virulence of their own quality, but by the unapt and violent nature ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... his argument, "positively nothing, and I am sure you are exaggerating your fears. Yet I am bound to tell you that, even if all you say should happen, it seems to me that to allow what can strictly be considered only as a temporary fit of insanity, would prove a less evil than to render incurable a disease of the mind which reason would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... purpose, taking no more notice of his Patients misery, and the peril of his wounds, then if it did not concern him. But if at last he doth come, it is when the wound's festered, the Ague in the blood, or that the body is incurable. So far was he concern'd in looking after that Love-apple, or Night-shadow, for the cure of ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... "He possesses great courage, incredible cunning, superhuman wisdom, the most acute penetration, consummate prudence, an incomparable skill in veiling the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred towards the human race, implacable and incurable." Milton merely responded to the popular sentiment in making Satan a character of lofty dignity, and in placing him on an elevation not "less than archangel ruined." Hallywell, in his work on witchcraft, declares that "that mighty angel of darkness ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... has written, not only as a garment spotted by the flesh which his spirit wears, but he thinks of it too as inhering in himself, as a leprosy and disease of his own personal nature. He thinks of it as being, like that, incurable, fatal, twin sister to and precursor of death; and he thinks of it as capable of being cleansed only by a sacerdotal act, only by the great High Priest and by His finger being laid upon it. And we know who it was that—when the leper, whom no man in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... incurable disease;" and then seriously—"I think if Jesus were here he would put his hands on auntie ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... pretensions, in the small Eastern village where she was born. To all that to her guests made the unique charm of her present home she had grown callous, if she had ever felt it at all, while dwelling with an incurable regret upon the neatly painted houses and fenced door-yards, the gatherings of women in their best clothes in primly furnished parlors on summer afternoons, the church-going, the passing in the street, and, more than ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... habitually supreme, and of all the world in so far as these propensities happen to influence them. Pascal, on the one hand, leaving the affections and inclinations of a man very much on one side, had directed all his efforts to showing the pitiful feebleness and incurable helplessness of man in the sphere of the understanding. Vauvenargues is thus confronted by two sinister pictures of humanity—the one of its moral meanness and littleness, the other of its intellectual poverty and impotency. He turned away from both of them, and found ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... I have for a long time suspected myself doomed. I have a complaint that is incurable. Therefore I wonder if you would do me one small favour. Will you keep this letter until I am dead, and afterwards open it and act upon its instructions? They may seem strange to you, but you will ascertain the truth. When you do know the truth, recollect that though dead ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... deposited the remains of JANE BELL[a], wife of JOHN BELL, esq. who, in the fifty-third year of her age, surrounded with many worldly blessings, heard, with fortitude and composure truly great, the horrible malady, which had, for some time, begun to afflict her, pronounced incurable; and for more than three years, endured with patience, and concealed with decency, the daily tortures of gradual death; continued to divide the hours not allotted to devotion, between the cares of her family, and the converse of her friends; rewarded ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of knowledge to lay in a stock, And not remain in ignorance incurable;— To study Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Locke, And other fabrics that ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits, inasmuch that were I to name ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... indisposition) should be closely watched, and timely applications and remedies be administered; especially in the pleurisies, and all inflammatory disorders accompanied with pain, when a few days' neglect, or want of bleeding might render the ailment incurable. In such cases sweeten'd teas, broths and (according to the nature of the complaint, and the doctor's prescription) sometimes a little wine, may be necessary to nourish and restore the patient; and these ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... of Portugal, had invaded the Territories of Muly Moluc, Emperor of Morocco, in order to dethrone him, and set his Crown upon the Head of his Nephew, Moluc was wearing away with a Distemper which he himself knew was incurable. However, he prepared for the Reception of so formidable an Enemy. He was indeed so far spent with his Sickness, that he did not expect to live out the whole Day, when the last decisive Battel was given; but knowing the fatal Consequences that would happen to his Children and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... suffering from a slow but incurable disease, had the remains of much natural ability and acuteness. He was well content with Tressady as a son-in-law; though in the few interviews that Tressady was able to have with him on the question of settlements the young man took pains ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... point of leaving home—it may be for ever. The Disposer of all things knows that. The disease, as you know, is thought to be incurable. If so, I shall die where no one shall find me. If health returns I shall come back. It will be of no use to search for me; but I think that will not be attempted. Indeed, I know that my father would be compelled to banish me if I wished to remain at home. It is partly to spare him ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... miracles, restoring sight to the blind, walking to the lame, hearing to the deaf, language to the dumb. Afterwards, cleansing the lepers, making the paralytic sound, healing the dropsy, and all kinds of incurable diseases; restoring the dead to life; in a wonderful manner commanding the devils and all the elements: he also put forth his hand to unwonted and unheard-of signs of his own power; for persons deprived of their eyes merited ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... though safer to follow than many prescriptions, it will not always succeed. The power of mind over body is no doubt great, but it may be strained until the physical power breaks down altogether. It is related of Muley Moluc, the Moorish leader, that, when lying ill, almost worn out by an incurable disease, a battle took place between his troops and the Portuguese; when, starting from his litter at the great crisis of the fight, he rallied his army, led them to victory, and instantly ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles |
