"Tolerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... o' pum-take," rejoined Totty, who seemed to be provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable completeness on ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... at least, protect myself," replied Wild, with, provoking calmness. "I am accounted a fair shot, as well as a tolerable swordsman, and I will give proof of my skill in both lines, should occasion require it. I have had a good many desperate engagements in my time, and have generally come off victorious. I bear the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... is of importance. You may not be aware that the deduction of a man's age from his writing is one which has been brought to considerable accuracy by experts. In normal cases one can place a man in his true decade with tolerable confidence. I say normal cases, because ill-health and physical weakness reproduce the signs of old age, even when the invalid is a youth. In this case, looking at the bold, strong hand of the one, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... blankets; the few cheap ornaments and photographs were gone; the rude poverty of the bare boards and scant pallet looked up at them unrelieved by the bright face and gracious youth that had once made them tolerable. In the grim irony of that exposure, their own penury was doubly conscious. The little knapsack, the tea-cup and coffee-pot that had hung near his bed, were gone also. The most indignant protest, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... uncle were kind and human, and I endeavoured to my utmost to repay them by working my hardest. My few hours of leisure were sweet, and when I spent them with Wollaston and Theresa, were interesting. I often asked myself why I found this mode of existence more tolerable than any other I had hitherto enjoyed. I had, it is true, an hour or two's unspeakable peace in the early morning, but, as I have said, at nine my toil commenced, and, with a very brief interval for meals, lasted till seven. After seven I was too tired to do anything by myself, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... village in the vicinity of the Castle was the vicarage of the Reverend Doctor Folliott, a gentleman endowed with a tolerable stock of learning, an interminable swallow, and an indefatigable pair of lungs. His pre-eminence in the latter faculty gave occasion to some etymologists to ring changes on his name, and to decide ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... in the hall of the Metropolitan, like a client in some patrician antechamber, they did accord me a tolerable room ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Galland turns it into terre a decrasser and his English translators into "scouring sand which women use in baths." This argillaceous earth mixed with mustard oil is locally used for clay and when rose-leaves and perfumes are used, it makes a tolerable wash-ball. See "Scinde or The Unhappy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... do the work of a man. Often the share would go the entire "round" without striking a root or a pebble as big as a walnut, the steel running steadily with a crisp craunching ripping sound which I rather liked to hear. In truth work would have been quite tolerable had it not been so long drawn out. Ten hours of it even on a fine day made about twice too many ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... feathers, pleasant in taste, and have a good outside, like hypocrites, white in plumes, and soft, their flesh is hard, black, unwholesome, dangerous, melancholy meat; Gravant et putrefaciant stomachum, saith Isaac, part. 5. de vol., their young ones are more tolerable, but young ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... is only rendered tolerable by the opportunity people have to enjoy things which would be beyond their reach at home without fortunes. All residences have grounds connected with them, more or less extensive, and laid out in fine gardens. Lawn-tennis and croquet grounds are the rule. Horses and carriages, or at least a vehicle ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... and hoped, and set herself, meanwhile, all the more vigorously because of that hope, to "improve her mind." She picked up French wonderfully fast, having a tolerable foundation to go upon and a very quick ear, and she read and practised daily; beside learning various secrets of housekeeping, and attending her mother with the tenderest care. But it was very lonely. Lucia had never known what loneliness meant until those days when she sat by the window ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... yet arranged his ideas as what was to be done. "I must, first of all," he thought, "see the fellow's face. A man seen is a man judged." D'Artagnan increased his pace, and, which was not very difficult, by the by, soon got in advance of the soldier. Not only did he observe that his face showed a tolerable amount of intelligence and resolution, but he noticed also that his nose was a little red. "He has a weakness for brandy, I see," said D'Artagnan to himself. At the same moment that he remarked his red nose, he saw that the soldier had a white ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... face with the alternative presented by his practical wife, succumbed with tolerable grace. In truth, having had his grumble out, he was not so very averse to the arrangement. He was much like old Gruff, their watch-dog, that was a redoubtable growler, but had never been known to bite any one. He therefore installed himself as his wife's out-of-door ally and assistant commissary, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... too, for America!" said Mr. Follingsbee, gazing round, and settling his collar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the class of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, "so-so," or "tolerable," or "pretty fair,"—a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dear fellow,' cried the other; 'they are next to nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... arrival gave peculiar pleasure to its tenants, the dog and cat, the former of whom met them with lively demonstrations of joy. The pair had apparently lived in harmony, and found means of subsistence, as they are reported to have been in tolerable condition. ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... will cost might be expended to equal advantage anywhere else in London. However, a lady's dress may be worn again, and men may hire a court-suit for the day at a very small cost. Your tailor, if you get a good deal of him, will patch you up something tolerable for very little; so that sartorial expenses are comparatively light. One can get for the afternoon a two-horse brougham, with a coachman and footman, for a sum less than ten dollars. Still, going to court costs something, and its only possible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... least one would have said half a century ago. But, while books are in the most instances cheaper, binding, from causes which I do not understand, is dearer, at least in England, than it was in my early years, so that few can afford it.[11] We have, however, the tolerable and very useful expedient of cloth binding (now in some danger, I fear, of losing its modesty through flaring ornamentation) to console us. Well, then, bound or not, the book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... "it is much better than candle—a little difficult to masticate perhaps, but, if I do say it myself, quite a tolerable flavour. If I only hadn't used that abominable French polish this morning. What ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... no equipment in the author. Writing a play, for instance, presupposes some acquaintance with a few plays already written. No one can succeed as a novelist without a fair knowledge of the technique of millinery or a tolerable mastery of stock exchange slang. The writer of scientific articles for the magazines must have fancy, and the writer of advertisements must have poetry and wit. But to produce a book of epigrams on Woman requires ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... family, whose youth had fallen in the time when electricity occupied all minds, often told us how, when a child, he had desired to possess such a machine: he got together the principal requisites, and, by the aid of an old spinning-wheel and some medicine bottles, had produced tolerable results. As he readily and frequently repeated the story, and imparted to us some general information on electricity, we children found the thing very plausible, and long tormented ourselves with an old spinning-wheel and some medicine bottles, without producing ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... miles; and till the platoon comes to a piece of wood, the lieutenant will have a tolerable road, and through the forest, which is over a half ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... found it agreeably useful to have any one in the house who was so well acquainted with their ways and habits; so ready to talk, when a little trickle of conversation was required; so willing to listen, and to listen with tolerable intelligence, if the subjects spoken about did not refer to serious solid literature, or science, or politics, or social economy. About novels and poetry, travels and gossip, personal details, or anecdotes of any ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... letters this week to my dear friends in America. Found that a recollection of former enjoyments in my own native country, made my situation here appear less tolerable. The thought that I had parents, sisters, and beloved friends still in existence, and at such a distance that it was impossible to obtain one look or exchange a word, was truly painful. While they are still in possession ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... gravel walk 'round the centre bed is pretty tolerable weedy, and if you and Evaline'll weed it out nice and clean, you may have all the flowers you want ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... he exclaimed. "We have made a tolerable haul this time—twenty prisoners in all, among them the priest of the band. Our colonel has just arrived, so I am in luck; he will be delighted. See the prisoners are being brought up to him now; but you had better remount and present yours ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... ought to go to studying solid branches," and she laughed lightly. "I've begun wrong end first, with the accomplishments. But I had to talk German, for mamma wouldn't bother. And as she had not forgotten all her French, she went at that with me, and so I am a tolerable scholar. But I dare say Hanny could twist me all up with mathematics. I only know enough to count change. Still, I am quite an expert in foreign money. And, Hanny, were my sentences fearfully and wonderfully constructed, and did I ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... daughter-in-law is inclined not to like; especially when she wears the crown and wishes to retain it, which Catherine had imprudently made but too well known. Her former position, when Diane de Poitiers had ruled Henri II., was more tolerable than this; then at least she received the external honors that were due to a queen, and the homage of the court. But now the duke and the cardinal, who had none but their own minions about them, seemed to take pleasure in abasing her. Catherine, hemmed in on all sides by their courtiers, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... brewed his own beer); a veterinary surgeon, a hardware shop, and two capacious inns. Round and about it were a number of pleasant gentlemen's seats, whose owners went frequently to London town in their coaches along the very tolerable high-road. The church was big enough to hold the whole population, were people minded to go to church, and indeed a large proportion did go, and all who married were married in it, and everybody, to begin with, was christened at its font and buried at last in its yew-shaded graveyard. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... had a grievance took strong hold of Prescott, and it was inflamed at the new mention of the Secretary's name. If it were any other it might be more tolerable, but Mr. Sefton was a crafty and dangerous man, perhaps unscrupulous too. He remembered that light remark of the bystander coupling the name of the Secretary and Lucia Catherwood, and at the recollection the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the dwelling-houses of men and women. Yet their owners are very wealthy. To them nothing is denied that money can buy, and it is thus that they prefer to express themselves and their ambitions. What, then, is tolerable in Chicago? Lincoln Park, which the smoke and fog of the city have not obscured, and the grandiose lake, whose fresh splendour no villainy of man can ever deface. And at one moment of the day, when a dark cloud ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... bounded up, exclaiming, "I see the boat, I see the boat coming round the rock!" and the moment after, a tolerable-sized fishing boat was seen rounding the little point that we have mentioned; and the two cousins, with the boy, descended to the water's edge. During the few minutes that elapsed before the boat came up to the little landing-place where they stood, the cousins shook hands together, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the title of "Latin in sport made learning in earnest"— which would give a tolerable idea of the nature of our undertaking. The doctrine, it is true, may bear the same relation to the lighter matter, that the bread in Falstaff's private account did to the liquor; though if we have given our reader "a deal of sack," we wish ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... were a God, and the world were governed with stern justice, tempered to our feeble intelligence, existence might become tolerable, but as it is, with a so-called God "ruling above," the earth is an abominable place and life a long series of terrifying torments. If I were to advocate a belief, or faith, in a God, I would seek the embodiment of those things diametrically opposite to the ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... the stout and comfortable Flemming, suspect what regrets and what philosophies were disputing possession of his interior. For my external arrangements, I flatter myself that I have shaped them in tolerable taste. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... difficult to drive the horses, so that, as a rule, it was nine o'clock before they were able to strike camp. The ridge, still favouring the direction of west and north-west, on the third day they arrived at a tract of land, hilly, but with tolerable grass on it. Here they found traces of a former white visitant in the shape of a marked-tree line. Two miles from this point, they met with a belt of brushwood so dense that for the first time they were forced to alter their course; but the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Mr. Higgins sympathetically. "I want to know! Well, now, that's too bad! Lookin' for quiet, be you? Well, I reckon mabbe folks don't scurry around here quite so lively as they do in some of the bigger towns like Noo York, but there's a tolerable lot goin' on most every week, church festivals, an' spellin' bees, an' such. Folks here is right hospitable, but you ain't in no way obliged to join in if you don't feel up to it. I'll explain matters to 'em, an'—" Hiram Higgins stopped, excitedly gathered reins and whip into ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... attend the service of the Boy Bishop. He was one of the choristers of the cathedral, one of whom every year was selected for this office. He was habited in a bishop's full dress, though it cannot be said that he looked altogether as dignified as might have been desired. Still he managed to ape with tolerable accuracy the movements and mode of proceeding of a full-grown bishop. One thing might truly be said, that had he played many strange antics, he would scarcely have out-done Bishop Bonner, albeit such a remark would have been dangerous to make at that time. The boys of the school were ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... daily survey, educated by the restorations of a Lanciani, enables us to piece together these encumbering ruins, until with tolerable clearness we can follow Horace in his walk along the Via Sacra towards Caesar's gardens, and can fairly reconstruct the objects which must have met his view. Everywhere is haunted ground: there is the bronze ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... go ahead, but it was with such a snail's pace that it would have puzzled a man of tolerable eyesight to have determined whether the horse was moving or standing still. To make it still more interesting, it commenced raining furiously. As they had left Brussels in a coach, and the morning had promised a pleasant day, they had ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... in destiny. He can drive four-in-hand, swim for any number of hours without tiring, ride—well, as an Italian cavalry officer can ride, and that is not badly. His accomplishments? He can speak French—abominably, and pick out all imaginable tunes on the piano, putting instinctively quite tolerable basses. I don't think he ever reads anything, except the Giorno and the Mattino. He doesn't care for politics, and likes cards, but apparently not too much. They're no craze with him. He knows Naples inside out, and is as frank as a child ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... There is always something pathetic to me in the fables historians invent to excuse or palliate, or, perhaps it would be juster to say, make tolerable, the stained pages of the past. It is brought doubly nearer and distinct by this miserable war, and the strange fate that has fallen upon us—to be the guests of a family whose hopes are fixed upon what would make us miserable ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... external labour, drawing its pattern, its motive, its law, and the power for its discharge, from communion with Him, is no more task-work nor slavery; and even 'the rough places will be made smooth, and the crooked things will be made straight,' and distasteful work will be made at least tolerable, and hard burdens will be lightened, and the things that are 'seen and temporal' will shimmer into transparency, through which will shine out the things ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Genesiacal cosmogony, that now the literal six-day theory would be very unsafe, forbids us to judge any present interpretation of other parts by the number, noise, or notoriety of its adherents. The universality of the Deluge is by no means the only tolerable interpretation now; though the doctrine of a partial deluge would have been most unsafe a century ago. All this does not mean giving up the inspiration of the record, but determining gradually what is meant by inspiration ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... consented, and the machine succeeded in cutting the corn—leaving a tolerable stubble, but not so short and regular ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... of any formal public character in the movement and the brief notice, foreign exhibitors came forward in tolerable force. They could not expect to address through this display each other's commercial constituencies, as very few visitors would traverse the Atlantic: they could reach only the people of the United States. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... read and spell some, and could write his own name. He now had a great thirst for mathematics, which he studied faithfully the second year; at the close of which, by his attentiveness, he could cipher with tolerable facility. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... may touch our famished lips once and again before we perish, one thing they cannot do—one thing Beauty herself, the most sacred of all such quests, cannot do—and that is to make the arid intervals of our ordinary life tolerable, when we have to return to the common world, and the people and things that stand gaping in that world, like ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... into minute patches of corn, and bearing a dense population. The herring fishing had failed for the two seasons before, and the poor cottars were, in consequence, in arrears with their rent; but the crops had been tolerable; and though their stores of meal and potatoes were all exhausted at the time of our coming among them (the month of June), and though no part of the growing crop was yet fit for use, the white fishing was abundant, and a training of hardship had enabled them to subsist on fish exclusively. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Lander, "were following each other up the river in tolerable order, each of them displaying three flags. In the first was King Boy, standing erect and conspicuous, his headdress of feathers waving with the movements of his body, which had been chalked in various fantastic figures, rendered more distinct by its natural ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... is more tolerable to these carpet-warriors. There reigns over Barbusse's book a specious impersonality. Despite the multitude and the sharp outline of the figures on his stage, not one of them has a commanding role. We see no hero of romance. Consequently, the reader feels less intimately associated with ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... gentleman being by this time rather giddy and perplexed in his ideas (for this was one of the operations of the tobacco on his nervous system), took the opportunity of slinking away into the open air, where, in course of time, he recovered sufficiently to return with a countenance of tolerable composure. He was soon led on by the malicious dwarf to smoke himself into a relapse, and in that state stumbled upon a settee where he ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... tolerable. I took him over to our Uncle Joe's, you know, and the women folks over there will give him the ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... luxurious food as human flesh.... The natives are clever enough at concealing the existence of cannibalism when they find that it shocks the white men. An European cotton grower, who had tried unsuccessfully to introduce the culture of cotton into Fiji, found, after a tolerable long residence, that four or five human beings were killed and eaten weekly. There was plenty of food in the place, pigs were numerous, and fish, fruit and vegetables abundant. But the people ate human bodies as often as they could get them, not from any superstitious ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... was burned out, and that question was settled. It was a terrible thing, but desperate diseases require desperate remedies; and I felt it more tolerable to have the house in ruins than to have her living there while I ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... their poverty; I should remove from them the scorn and opprobrium which are harder to bear than poverty. I should make them love peace and equality, which often remove poverty, and always make it tolerable. When they saw that I was in no way better off than themselves, and that yet I was content with my lot, they would learn to put up with their fate and to be content like me. In my sermons I would lay more stress on the spirit of the gospel than on the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... that. Maisie was the kind of woman who could bury twenty husbands and go out next morning to meet the twenty-first. What was far more amazing, she could do it without frivolity or loss of self-respect. She lived a day at a time. She made you feel, the moment you met her, that that was the only tolerable way of living. The excuse for her philosophy was its success. She was an expert in happiness—so expert that she could communicate her secret without waste of words. Probably for most men words were not necessary; for them their happiness ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... that intervened between Mr. Bouncer's breakfast party and the Grind, Mr. Verdant Green got himself into training for his first appearance as a steeple-chase rider, by practising a variety of equestrian feats over leaping-bars and gorse stuck hurdles; in which he acquitted himself with tolerable success, and came off with fewer bruises than might have been expected. At this period of his career, too, he strengthened his bodily powers by practising himself in those varieties of the "manly exercises" that ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... sinners, and doing all they can to build up the cause. I can scarcely account for it. I never felt more deeply humbled than since I came here. I have indeed resolved to give my whole soul, body and spirit, to God and to His Church anew, but I have had scarcely a tolerable time in preaching. Yet the Divine blessing has specially accompanied the Word. On Wednesday night last the fallow ground of the hearts of professors seemed to be completely broken up. On Thursday night I was in the country, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the lecturer suggested that the ill-success of dress reformers hitherto had been the too-radical changes they sought to introduce. We could be artistic without being archaic. Most men were satisfied without clothes fairly in fashion, a tolerable fit, and any unobtrusive color their tailor pleased. He would suggest that any reformation should begin ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... For a time, indeed, it seemed as if he could only survive his fall by a few weeks or months, and as if his work were to finish when he left his country for the last time. But his indomitable energy, and the brave spirit that sustained him, brought back first a tolerable measure of good health; then serenity of mind; and, lastly, that industry which opened to him, in the reading and in the making of books, a new world from which all the sordid pettiness, and the infinite annoyances, of the political arena were banished. There is but little ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... it would be much jollier for Jimmy to have you there for his holidays. I depend upon you to make things tolerable for Jimmy. You know how few people there are near us who would trouble themselves about a boy. You will be my stand-by with ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... The line was to be advanced a mile on both sides of the Omignon. The Battalion's objective was a line of trenches recently dug by the enemy and running between Le Vergier and the river. To capture them Brown's company, which hitherto had stayed in reserve at Soyecourt in tolerable accommodation, was selected. B and D Companies were ordered to keep close behind A to support the attack, while C remained to ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Clara had been taught to read and write in the public schools of the city, and but little more. In later years she had occasionally found opportunity to attend some of the night schools established for those whose only leisure came after the busy day was over, and so had learned to use her pen with tolerable correctness. In waiting upon the educated people who frequented the shop she had caught, with the aptness of an American girl, a very fair power of expressing herself in speech. Writing a letter, however, was a formidable affair, in which she had scarcely any experience. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... now on fifteen hundred livres—per year; and this sum must support six individuals—the father and mother, with four children! It does so, indeed, by an arrangement of only one poor meal in the day; a dinner four times, and a supper three times, in the week. They endure their distress with tolerable cheerfulness, though in the same street, where they occupy the garrets of a house, resides, in an elegant hotel, a man who was once their groom, but who is now a tribune, and has within these last twelve years, as a conventional deputy, amassed, in his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... some unfortunate New-Yorkers as John St. Hugh Mills, has written half a dozen tolerable novels since he went home, and he is now publishing, in the United Service Magazine, a series of papers illustrative of his American travels, in which he illustrates his knowledge and veracity by certain anecdotes, which are described as having occurred ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the coast is dreary and comparatively monotonous; but we have a tolerable view of some of the smaller chines, and also of the fine range of downs that stretch from the centre of the island to its western extremity. Almost the whole extent of Freshwater Cliffs meets the eye at once: but there is no great difficulty in recognizing the ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... just takes a bit of a nap at midnight. Here Wilson went ashore, more dead than alive, and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant, who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless looked pleasant to our ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... spring o' the year, and the shad begun to swim up stream, when I joined Sam Olmstead's company, and took a share in his fishing. Well, things went on pretty well for a while, it was fisherman's luck, fish one day, and none the next, and we was, on the whole, tolerable satisfied, seeing there was no use to be anything else, though towards the end, it's a fact, there wasn't many schools come along. We had built a sort o' hut of boards by the side of the river where we kept the nets, and where some on us slept to ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... 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 into his ears, and writhe and shiver ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... in from the upper air, the place would have seemed in pitchy darkness, but the convict eye, accustomed to the sinister twilight, was enabled to discern surrounding objects with tolerable distinctness. The prison was about fifty feet long and fifty feet wide, and ran the full height of the 'tween decks, viz., about five feet ten inches high. The barricade was loop-holed here and there, and the planks were in some places wide enough to admit a musket barrel. On the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... am safely arrived, with all my family, in good health, at Peterwaradin; having suffered so little from the rigour of the season, (against which we were well provided by furs) and found such tolerable accommodation every where, by the care of sending before, that I can hardly forbear laughing, when I recollect all the frightful ideas that were given me of this journey. These, I see, were wholly owing to the tenderness of my Vienna friends, and their desire of keeping me with ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... and the jackdaws roosted within its windows and belfry. Two ranges of broken columns told of the bygone glories of the aisles; and the beautiful side chapels having escaped injury better than other parts of the fabric, remained in tolerable preservation. But the choir and high altar were stripped of all their rich carving and ornaments, and the rain descended through the open rood-loft upon the now grass-grown graves of the abbots in the presbytery. Here and there the ramified mullions still ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to criticise the Public Taste, in what are generally supposed to be Works of mere Amusement; or modest to direct its Judgment, in what is offered for its Entertainment; I would beg leave to introduce the following Sheets with a few cursory Remarks, that may lead the common Reader into some tolerable conception of the nature of this Work, and ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... success and discouragement, and of the weight of the moral factor in everything they do. Man is a beast of burden; he will fail utterly in the crisis of battle if there is no respect for his aching back. He is also one of a great brotherhood whose mighty fellowship can make the worst misery tolerable, and can provide him with undreamed strength and courage. These are among the things that need to be studied and understood; they are the main score. It is only when an officer can stand and say that he is first of all a student of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... peeping into this courtyard and that, and listening to the interminable tales of guide or custodian. If we study the Casa Nuova intelligently, lovingly and minutely, it will not be long before we obtain a tolerable grasp of Roman life and manners, which will prove of immense service and of genuine delight. What then is it, the question will be asked, that makes the House of the Vettii so valuable as an example of antique architecture ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... He was one of the servants of Sir Nicholas' younger brother, who lived in town, and had been sent down to Great Keynes immediately after the execution that had taken place that morning. He was a man of tolerable education, and told his ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... half an hour submitted the following note to the doctor's inspection. It had cost him considerable thought to determine how to express himself, but he succeeded at last to his tolerable satisfaction. ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... on 'And the bride in something or other is doing something I can't recollect.' Well, what I mean is, now it's my wedding-morning! Rummy, when you come to think of it, what? Well, as it's getting tolerable late, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, and, to some extent, the moral history of its population. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... wished, that they who value themselves upon that conceited Title were a little better instructed in what it ought to stand for; and that they would not perswade themselves a Man is really and truly a Free-thinker in any tolerable Sense, meerly by virtue of his being an Atheist, or an Infidel of any other Distinction. It may be doubted, with good Reason, whether there ever was in Nature a more abject, slavish, and bigotted Generation than the Tribe of Beaux Esprits, at present so prevailing in this Island. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... it a little in repair while I stay?" inquired Eustace. "I am a very good mason, and a tolerable carpenter. I built a shed last year for the old poney. Isabel, you can glaze the windows, and white-wash. I think, between us, we might put it into ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... dependent, of course, on the state of the roads, which can be very bad—inconceivably bad. For the sake of the excursion I took a place in the postwagen one day as far as Sinia, where there is a modern hotel and very tolerable quarters. The scenery of the pass is very romantic. In places the road winds round the face of the precipice, and far below is a deep sunless glen, through which the mountain torrent rushes noisily over its rocky bed; at other times you skirt ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... be but moderately attained. What I mean is this:—let all the objects of the understanding in civil life or in science be represented by the letters of the alphabet; in Grecian life each man would separately go through all the letters in a tolerable way; whereas at present each letter is served by a distinct body of men. Consequently the Grecian individual is superior to the modern; but the Grecian whole is inferior: for the whole is made up of the individuals; and the Grecian individual repeats ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Trout can be seen in the sparkling stream; and we watched a boy with a hook at the end of a reel of black silk, hanging over the bridge, with a piece of kneaded bread for bait. With this simple tackle he contrived to hook a trout of tolerable size, and let it run out the length of his silk line till he had tired it out and landed it. The scenery of the river below Quimper, flowing through a bed of granite blocks, is, we were told, lovely, but we had no ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... discounted in advance; but is actually creative, fashioning and perfecting a good that has never been. And the moment evil is conceived as the necessary but diminishing complement to partial success, the sting of it is gone. Evil as a temporary and accidental necessity is tolerable; but not so an evil which is absolutely necessary, and which must be construed ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... population embraces.' * * * 'If, then, they are a useless and dangerous species of population, we would ask, is it generous in our southern friends to burthen us with them? Knowing themselves the evils of slavery, can they wish to impose upon us an evil scarcely less tolerable? We think it a mistaken philanthropy, which would liberate the slave, unfitted by education and habit for freedom, and cast him upon a merciless and despising world, where his only fortune must be poverty, his only distinction degradation, and his only comfort insensibility.' * * * 'I will look no ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... only 25% of the work force. The economy registered 3.9% GDP growth in 1994, the best rate for six years, but slipped back to 2.7% in 1995. Exports and manufacturing output have been the primary engines of growth. Unemployment is gradually falling. Inflation is at a tolerable 3%. A major economic policy question for the UK in the 1990s is the terms on which it participates in the financial and economic ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was only a week. On Monday, a week had seemed to be an interminable period of time, but on Friday, it had resumed the normal aspect of a week, a thing with a definite and reachable end. It was odd to observe how, as the week drew to its close, the intolerable things became tolerable. Miss Gebbie seemed to be a little less inhuman on Friday than she had been on Monday, and Lizzie Turley marvellously recovered her power to add two and one together and get the correct result. Beyond all doubt, he was in love. There could not be any other explanation ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... There remain many ways in which arguments fall short of a tolerable standard of proof, though they cannot be exhibited as definite breaches of logical principles. Logicians, therefore, might be excused from discussing them; but out of the abundance of their pity for human infirmity they usually describe and label the chief classes of ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... was not long before he reached a row of small three-story houses, with their lower parts cased in stucco, but the rest allowed to remain in the original yellow-brown brick, which time had mellowed to a pleasant warm tone. 'Malakoff Terrace,' as the place had been christened (and the title was a tolerable index of its date), was rather less depressing in appearance than many of its more modern neighbours, with their dismal monotony and pretentiousness. It faced a well-kept enclosure, with trim lawns and beds, and across the compact laurel ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... was not a good artist; indeed he was nothing but a humpbacked and very sensitive little squire with about 3000 a year of his own and great liking for intricate amusements. He was a pretty good mathematician and a tolerable fisherman. He knew an enormous amount about the Mohammedan conquest of Spain, and he is, I believe, writing a book upon that subject. I hope he will, for nearly all history wants to be rewritten. Anyhow, he, as I have just said, did ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... and it was therefore best to look out and keep free of them. About three o'clock we caught sight of the main land of Cape Cod, to which we sailed northerly. We arrived inside the cape about six o'clock, with a tolerable breeze from the west, and at the same time saw vessels to the leeward of us which had an east wind, from which circumstance we supposed we were in a whirlwind. These two contrary winds striking against each other, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... promising to return in the evening to witness a war dance, we proceeded on a stroll, accompanied by the chiefs eldest son, who acted as our guide, and followed by a large party of the natives. We first examined the forts: these were in a tolerable state of efficiency, but their gunpowder was coarse and bad. We next went over the naval arsenal, for being then at peace with every body, their prahus were hauled up under cover of sheds. One of them was a fine boat, about ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw. It is a strange life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat, and not too heavy a dose of marching. So severe a time as we had is terribly physical, and benumbs the brain somewhat. The campaign was short, but the utmost was crowded into those ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... meanwhile had lain himself down to take his rest in tolerable good-humour with himself and the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... again. Again the courteous, kindly criticism. And so on, through the entire act. By the end of it, Mildred's nerves were unstrung. She saw the whole game, and realized how helpless she was. Before the end of that rehearsal, Mildred had slipped back from promising professional into clumsy amateur, tolerable only because of the beautiful freshness of her voice—and it was a question whether voice alone would save her. Yet no one but Mildred herself suspected that Ransdell had done it, had revenged himself, had served notice on her that since she felt strong enough to stand alone ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... them, and the very misery of his nights made his days more tolerable by giving them an increasing purpose. A pogrom against the kifs. He sought out their holes by patiently following one bearing a bit of food, and he poured gasoline into the hole and the earth around it, taking satisfaction in the thought of the writhings ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... are superior to ancient languages is freedom from tautology. No English style is thought tolerable in which, except for the sake of emphasis, the same words are repeated at short intervals. Of course the length of the interval must depend on the character of the word. Striking words and expressions ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... faith was also Christian (see p. 342). For like reason the Vandal king Genseric yielded to the prayers of Pope Leo the Great, and promised to leave to the inhabitants of the Imperial City their lives (see p. 346). The more tolerable fate of Italy, Spain, and Gaul, as compared with the hard fate of Britain, is owing, in part at least, to the fact that the tribes which overran those countries had become, in the main, converts to Christianity before they crossed the boundaries of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... made her entree into the dressing-room through crowds of admiring spectators yesterday afternoon, and we all drank tea together for the first time these five weeks. She has had a tolerable night, and bids fair for a continuance in the same brilliant course of action ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the reader will pardon an uncouth and newly-coined word. There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representation of objects, and there ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... eyes and lips few men would find distasteful. To Lawrence she had nothing to say. She knew that he knew that she had nothing worth saying. She resented his penetration; she resented his pity; and pity was the only light in which he found the thought of her tolerable. He had thought to show her through his eyes widening vistas of beauty and grandeur; and instead he caught glimpses through hers of awful heights and depths of vacancy, peopled only by thinly veiled phantoms ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... and hosts of others who are complaining. A daily dose of the saw-horse or wash-tub isn't bad for weak lungs and bodies, or for strong ones who wish to continue thus. Take a thoroughly well person, accustomed to an active, out-of-door life, shut them up and confine them to a bed, and a tolerable invalid will soon be the result. The converse of this holds good, namely, take an invalid who is able to walk about the house, but feeble in spirit and body, if exercised daily out of doors, a gradual return to health ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... by their plebeian occupants, except such as were rented as lodgings to visitors and men of means. These people of business were rarely ambitious of social distinction, for that was beyond their reach; but they lived comfortably, dined on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sunday, with tolerable sherry or port to wash it down, went to church or chapel regularly in silk or broadcloth, were good citizens, had a horror of bailiffs, could converse on what was going on in trade and even in politics to a limited extent, and generally advocated progressive and liberal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... erred, Mr. Oaklands; we are the other pupils; and in answer to your obliging inquiries, I have much pleasure in informing you that we are all in perfect health and very tolerable spirits; and now, sir, in return for your kind condescension, allow me, in the absence of my superiors, to express a hope that you ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the portrait. Sometimes this laborer's work was tolerable, when he was painting beautiful women and men whose faces had the light of intelligence. But the vulgar politicians, the rich men that looked like porters, the stout dames with dead faces that he had to paint! ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and hardships of a most harassing retreat, never failed to repel attacks on its rear, where Paget handled the cavalry of the rear-guard with signal ability, especially in a spirited action near Benevente. In spite of some excesses, tolerable order was maintained until the British force, still 25,000 strong, reached Astorga, and was joined by some 10,000 Spaniards under Romana. Thenceforward, all sense of discipline was abandoned by so many regiments that Moore described the conduct of his whole army ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... sun rose clear and continued so until twelve o'clock, when the captain got an observation. This was very well for Cape Horn, and we thought it a little remarkable that, as we had not had one unpleasant Sunday during the whole voyage, the only tolerable day here should be a Sunday. We got time to clear up the steerage and forecastle, and set things to rights, and to overhaul our wet clothes a little. But this did not last very long. Between five and six—the sun ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... it may easily be imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished me not a little, as well they might; for they proved to be ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... evening Samuel Rosewarne passed down the streets of Plymouth and unlatched the door of a dingy house which, empty of human love, of childhood, of friendship, was yet his home and the tolerable refuge of his soul. He no longer feared himself. He could face the future. He could live ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a note in a handwriting which he did not know: it was that of Mr. Bows, indeed, saying that Mr. Arthur Pendennis had had a tolerable night; and that as Dr. Goodenough had stated that the Major desired to be informed of his nephew's health, he, R. B., had sent him the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well, dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's determination to make it a chateau. It is a square white building, with two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. Between ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... all these conflicting data the circumstance that Great Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken[256] to support Japan's demands at the Conference, and that Italy had promised to raise no objection, we shall have a tolerable notion of the various factors of the Chino-Japanese dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty and on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the many illustrations of the incompatibility of the Treaty and the Covenant, the respective scopes of which ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... some sheltered country districts, inhabited exclusively by Germans (such as the lowlands near Danzig, the villages under the mild rule of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the prosperous German places of the Catholic Ermeland), were left in tolerable condition. Other towns lay in ruins, as did most of the farmsteads of the open country. The Prussians found Bromberg, a German colonial city, in ruins; and it is even yet impossible to determine exactly how the city came into that condition. In fact, the vicissitudes which ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... With tolerable accuracy he gave the details of his first interview with Diane, three years previous. Long before he finished, Lucilla was weeping silently, while Derek stood like a man turned to stone. Even the banker's own face took ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... leaving a military academy, he entered the army as a sub-lieutenant, knowing, as he tells us, a little Latin, and no Greek, but possessing, with very tolerable acquirements in the mathematics, a fair share of the scattered erudition won by readings ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... are other religious books that are tolerable as to style, but which display no power or prominence of thought, no living vigor of expression; they are flat and dry as a plain of sand. They tease you with the thousandth repetition of common-places, causing a feeling of unspeakable weariness. Though the author ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... traditionary in their country. Sometimes they laid the foundation of their tale in real fact. Even after all their borrowing from so many funds, they are still far from opulent. How few stories has Boccace which are tolerable, and how much fewer are there which you would desire to read twice! But this general difficulty is greatly increased, when we come to the drama. Here a fable is essential,—a fable which is to be conducted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cannot but know that there was not any one Syrian city which did not slay their Jewish inhabitants, and were not more bitter enemies to us than were the Romans themselves; nay, even those of Damascus, [16] when they were able to allege no tolerable pretense against us, filled their city with the most barbarous slaughters of our people, and cut the throats of eighteen thousand Jews, with their wives and children. And as to the multitude of those that were slain in ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... think of devoting less than twenty years to an epic poem. Ten years to collect materials and warm my mind with universal science. I would be a tolerable Mathematician. I would thoroughly understand Mechanics; Hydrostatics; Optics, and Astronomy; Botany; Metallurgy; Fossilism; Chemistry; Geology; Anatomy; Medicine; then the mind of man; then the minds of men, in all Travels, Voyages, and Histories. So I would ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... as we rode up the stately avenue of cypresses, between vineyards and almond trees in blossom, servants advanced to take our horses, and the abbot shouted, "Welcome," from the top of the steps. We were ushered into a clean room, furnished with a tolerable library of orthodox volumes. A boy of fifteen, with a face like the young Raphael, brought us glasses of a rich, dark wine, something like port, some jelly and coffee. The size and substantial character of this monastery ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... out of the money he received some months since he did receive 18d. too much, and did now come and give it me, which was very pretty. So home, and there found Mr. Andrews and his lady, a well-bred and a tolerable pretty woman, and by and by Mr. Hill and to singing, and then to supper, then to sing again, and so good night. To prayers and tonight [bed]. It is a little strange how these Psalms of Ravenscroft after 2 or 3 times singing prove but the same again, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... nearly 40,000 at the present date; and the capital invested, which in 1823 was only 500,000l., is now nearly 2,700,000l. I do not wish to weary my readers with statistics, and therefore trust I have said enough to convey a tolerable impression of the go-aheadism of these hardy and energetic descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers; and, for the same reasons, I have not made any observations upon their valuable libraries, hospitals, houses of industry, reformation, &c., the former of which are so ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Heaven made us at birth; to present ourselves to the eyes of the world with a stolen title; to wish to give a false impression. I was born of parents who, without doubt, held honorable positions. I have six years of service in the army, and I find myself established well enough to maintain a tolerable rank in the world; but despite all that I certainly have no wish to give myself a name to which others in my place might believe they could pretend, and I will tell you frankly that I am ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... the holy man sent back word that he allowed himself nothing but roots and herbs, cooked with water. I took my meal, therefore, alone, but prolonged it as much as possible, and sought to cheer my drooping spirits by the wine of Poitou, which I found very tolerable. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... eyes will grow dim, your appetite will wane, your complexion will suffer, that tolerable share of good looks which a casual Providence has bestowed ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... frogs, and other ornaments made of gold. Those who had cast these figures lived at Cauchieto, a place nearer the Rio de la Hacha. I have seen ornaments resembling those described by Peter Martyr of Anghiera (which indicate tolerable skill in goldsmiths' work), among the remains of the ancient inhabitants of Cundinamarca. The same art appears to have been practised in places along the coasts, and also farther to the south, among the mountains ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... staid and dined with Mrs. Jervis, with some tolerable ease of mind, in hopes to hear from his beloved daughter in a few days; and then accepting the present, returned for his own house, and resolved to ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... last glance of tolerable satisfaction at his looking-glass, while he combed his moustache and imperial, quitted his chamber, to go and join Angela in the women's workroom. The corridor, along which he had to pass, was broad, well-lighted from above, floored with pine, and extremely clean. Notwithstanding ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... indeed, our decent respect for the dead, which leads us to postpone interment as long as possible, is a tolerable security against being buried alive. The coffin is seldom closed upon the remains, before decomposition has already commenced. That is death's certain seal; nor, in the present state of our knowledge, special cases of course ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... have not taken his character sufficiently into consideration. If I were in your place I should be afraid that Everard would not allow my nature free scope, or take an interest in my mental development, and that the sacrifices which make domestic life tolerable might have to be all on my side. He is absolutely unworthy of you, and his nose is quite thick. I daresay you have not remarked it, but I did at once. And in my opinion he ought for his own good to have been made to realise it. Even ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... is there to be wondered at? Who would make such a commotion about a merry game? Come," continued she, "let us play at ball." And jumping up, she picked a ripe pomegranate from a neighbouring tree, placed herself at a tolerable distance from him at a shrub, and threw him the apple for a ball. Jussuf had been very fond of playing at ball in his younger days, and still possessed some skill, so that ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... dear little lady to take care of you and your house. Such a delightful vision makes me quite envious. This is a curious life for a regular shore-going person such as myself; the worst part of it is its extreme length. There is certainly a great deal of high enjoyment, and on the contrary a tolerable share of vexation of spirit. Everything, however, shall bend to the pleasure of grubbing up old bones, and captivating new animals. By the way, you rank my Natural History labours far too high. I am nothing more than a lions' provider: I do not feel at all sure that they ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... personage. Yet he held no public office, nor were his daily walks the walks of philanthropic labor for the common good. In fact Semple & West's was merely a brokerage establishment, which was understood to be cleaning up a tolerable lot of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fable, and dwell so entirely in an unmoral atmosphere, it appears as absurd to blame it as the murders in a pantomime. To be sure there is something about murder, some inherent grace or refinement perhaps, that makes its actual representation upon the stage more tolerable than the most diffident suggestion of adultery. Not that "La Belle Helene" is open to the reproach of over-delicacy in this scene, or any other, for the matter of that, though there is a strain of real poetry in the conception of this whole episode of Helen's intention ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... it must be confess'd, MY LORD, it may be some degree of Persecution to a Patron; Dedicators, as Moliere observes, being a Species of Impertinents, troublesome enough. Yet the Translator of this Piece hopes he may be rank'd among the more tolerable ones, in presuming to inscribe to Your LORDSHIP the Facheux of Moliere done into English; assuring himself that Your LORDSHIP will not think any thing this Author has writ unworthy of your Patronage; nor discourage even a weaker ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously cultivated at all English seats of learning. Everybody who had been at a public school had written Latin verses; many had written such verses with tolerable success, and were quite able to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Green were applauded by hundreds, to whom the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at this resting place was poor and someone quoted the proverb, "Even the devil was once eighteen and bad tea has its tolerable first cup." On going to the village office I found that for a population of 2,000 there were, in addition to the village shrine, sixteen other shrines and three Buddhist temples. Against fire there were four fire pumps and 155 "fire defenders." ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... answered the advertisements, scores of them, more than a hundred, before she saw through the trick and gave up. She found that throughout New York all the attractive or even tolerable places were filled by girls helped by their families or in other ways, girls working at less than living wages because they did not have to rely upon their wages for their support. And those help wanted advertisements were simply appeals for more girls of that sort—for cheaper girls; or they were ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Mr. Grant to the library, which consisted of a tolerable collection; but the Doctor thought it rather a lady's library, with some Latin books in it by chance, than the library of a clergyman. It had only two of the Latin fathers, and one of the Greek fathers in Latin. I doubted whether Dr. Johnson would be present at a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... bitterly complained of having been deluded at home by highly-coloured reports of the productiveness of a country where grain will not ripen, and which has not yet been found capable of producing a tolerable potato. Of the remainder of the place little can be said. There are two good stores where we procured nearly everything we wanted at very moderate prices: beef of very fair quality is sold at 2 pence ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... vilify. Nathan said unto David: 'Thou art the man.' This poor wretch will rise up in the judgment and cry aloud against us as her unnatural sisters who stood upon her and trampled her in the mud and mire. As inferior and morally low as we may deem her, it may be more tolerable for her in the judgment than for us. I wonder sometimes how the black woman could even look with favor upon the man who to her has been and is a sneaking coward, as well as a hypocrite in conduct toward the women of his own race. To us he abuses the Negro women, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... The sermons of the elder Godwin were recognised by the orthodoxy of their sentiment, and the dinginess of their colour, and were much relished; and so long as the stock lasted, the future author of "Caleb Williams" commanded a tolerable audience; but so soon as he had read them all, and resumed his own lucubrations, his hearers melted away, and he moved off to become a literateur in London. Perhaps Churchill, in like manner, may have found that general audiences like plain sense better than poetry. That he had ever much real piety ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... expected, nothing had been prepared for his reception. No lodgings had been provided for his men, no place of security for his stores, no horses, no carriages, [628] His troops had to undergo the hardships of a long march through a desert before they arrived at Dublin. At Dublin, indeed, they found tolerable accommodation. They were billeted on Protestants, lived at free quarter, had plenty of bread, and threepence a day. Lauzun was appointed Commander in Chief of the Irish army, and took up his residence in the Castle, [629] His salary was the same with that of the Lord Lieutenant, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all of my pranks—of all the parts I have played in life. I have never been a murderer, or a burglar, or a highway robber, or what the law calls a thief. I can only say, as I said before, I have lived upon my wits, and they have been a tolerable capital on the whole. I have been an actor, a money-lender, a physician, a professor of animal magnetism (that was lucrative till it went out of fashion, perhaps it will come in again); I have been a lawyer, a house- agent, a dealer ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was at present living somewhat incommodiously, owing partly to the stagnation caused by her recent bereavement, and partly to the necessity for overhauling the De Stancy lumber piled in those vast and gloomy chambers before they could be made tolerable ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the town should be occupied. Banks believed that the opportunity was favourable. "The roads to Winchester," he wrote, "are turnpikes and in tolerable condition. The enemy is weak, demoralised, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and with numerous illustrative "cuts" beautifully engraved (for the most part by English engravers, such as Orrin Smith, the Williamses, etc.), excellently drawn and composed by French artists from Gros downwards, but costumed in what is now perhaps the least tolerable style of dress even to the most catholic taste—that of the Empire in France and the Regency in England—and most comically "thought."[14] At first sight this might seem to be a disadvantage, as calling attention ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... German submarines from crossing the Atlantic. Ludendorff was not so blind, and had he been a patriotic statesman instead of a Junker general he would have sought to make terms while he might do so with advantage. But it is the nemesis of militarism that it never can make a peace which is tolerable to its enemies, and Ludendorff had no choice but to persist with an offensive which had become a desperate gamble. His efforts since the end of May had profited him little; he had used up most of the divisions intended for a final resumption of his attack on the Franco-British liaison; and after ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... class of men who are prejudicial to the state, yet are necessary to and we can only hope to reduce their power within tolerable limits. At present, their excesses and irregularities are intolerable; and it is impossible that they should further increase their wealth and their power without ruining the state, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... themselves,—at that moment, he perceives two or three of the persons he had particularly in view begin an active whispering, prolonged with the accompaniment of the appropriate vulgar smiles. They may possibly relapse at length, through sheer dulness, into tolerable decorum; and the instructor, not quite losing sight of them, tries yet again, to impel some serious ideas through the obtuseness of their mental being. But he can clearly perceive, after the animal spirits have thus been ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the dead Turks of his overcoat. The others did the same, and within an incredibly short time all three were wearing dead men's clothes. The coats sat oddly on their long frames, but fortunately there was as yet very little light, and in the gray gloom they presented a tolerable resemblance to the late tenants ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... myself, in some measure, from the commerce and society of men, which is so agreeable; and that I must torture my brains with subtilities and sophistries, at the very time that I cannot satisfy myself concerning the reasonableness of so painful an application, nor have any tolerable prospect of arriving by its means at truth and certainty. Under what obligation do I lie of making such an abuse of time? And to what end can it serve either for the service of mankind, or for my own private interest? No: If I must be a fool, as all those who reason or believe ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of building on its native soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared with the better known systems of European architecture in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... use in a military movement—as lead, arms, canvas, tools, money, ships' stores, breadstuffs, types for proclamations and even some small cannon. From three to five thousand men it was calculated, could be well-equipped and could maintain themselves for three months within this district, with tolerable prudence and exertion. Before the time expired we hoped to receive help and officers from abroad, and afterwards to be able ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... went off with tolerable success, although Panshine made several mistakes. What he had written himself, and what he had learnt by heart, he played very well, but he could not play at sight correctly. Accordingly the second part of the sonata—tolerably quick allegro—would not do at all. At the twentieth ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... extravagant expressions of welcome, and many assurances of the pleasure which it would afford Lady Lovat to see her. His Lordship then retired, and hastening to his wife, who was secluded without even tolerable clothes, and almost in a state of starvation, placed a costly dress before her, and desired her to attire herself, and to appear before her friend. His commands were obeyed; he watched his prisoner and her visitor so closely, that no information could ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... mechanism of this deplorable piece is more grossly disgusting—I mean aesthetically, not morally—than anything to be found elsewhere in the too voluminous library of impure literature. The idea would seem to have been borrowed from one of the old Fabliaux.[53] But what is tolerable in the quaint and naif verse of the twelfth or thirteenth century, becomes shocking when deliberately rendered by a grave man into bald unblushing prose of the eighteenth. The humour, the rich sparkle, the wit, the merry gaillardise, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... "Tolerable, tolerable, Josiah," answered the Captain. "I 've been mining for sea gold." Daniel wondered what in the world sea gold might be. "Ye see," he went on, turning to include Daniel in the conversation, ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful learning. Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn Latin, not only because I had no inclination to learn languages, but because of the objection the quakers have against the books in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... after our coming here Isaac Newton and James Austin came to add to our number E.W.H. and C.L.A., so now there are five of us instead of three. We are pleasantly situated in a room by ourselves in the upper or fourth story, and are enjoying our advantages of good quarters and tolerable food as no one can except he has ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... the shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once noble race. They are fettered by 'rheumatiz' and the disordered liver. They move like boats dragging their anchors. To make life tolerable their imaginations need assistance. They are like the Flub Dubs of lost Atlantis. Each imagines himself the greatest man in the village. They talk in loud words. They quarrel and fight over the crown. So it has ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... their tops downwards. Some Snow is also to be Seen on the high points and hollows of the Mountains to the East of us. our Course this evening was nearly South 18 Ms. makeing a total of 36 miles today. we encamped on the N. Side of a large Creek where we found tolerable food for our horses. Labeish killed a Deer this evening. We Saw great numbers of deer and 1 bear today. I also observed the burring Squirel of the Species Common about the quawmarsh flatts West of the Rocky Mountains. Musquetors very troublesom.- one man Jo. Potts very unwell this ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al |
