"Unbearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more aristocratic than his own. She addresses him by the term Magnifice Conjux, which certainly does not betoken a very great degree of intimacy between husband and wife; and the letter concerns the unbearable conduct of the poet Poliziano, who was then an inmate of their house and the private teacher of their children. It seems that he had persecuted her with his attentions, and she is led to protest against his continued employment. In spite of her protest, however, she ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... we were gazing tremblingly back to see whether we had been observed, for to lose now the wondrous treasure in our grasp seemed unbearable. ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... to enliven after awhile, and the ennui became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way under it. It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax it too far. So somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early, had a good breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to know what it is to be stared at, you should interrupt, as I had, a conversation between two young men of about this age in Fulham or elsewhere. They stared in unison and in silence until the tension became unbearable, and one of them, the elder, whose name was Bill, relieved it with the above quest on, "Kin yer write ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... were passing and the unbearable nervous horror grew, and the inner tension, terrible and so taut that it seemed to be ready to snap every second, was beginning to turn into a sort of nightmare, which makes one shiver all over, which dims one's eyes with red mist, which banishes all fear ...
— The Shield • Various
... indeed. All he wanted was money. I gave him money, my own. money, for I made a great deal in my stage days. But his demands increased. To silence him I have paid him thousands. He squandered them faster than ever. And finally, when it became unbearable, I appealed to a friend. That friend has now succeeded in placing this man quietly in a sanitarium for ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... broken pieces in his hand, he exclaimed that life would be unbearable without tobacco, and asked her to send his reserve pipe over from the rack in the hall. This she promised to do, and a little later ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... or in the neighboring underbrush. They are fed at night close to the dwellings, and thus become at least half tame (Plate LXI). Many spend the hot hours of mid-day beneath the houses, from which they are occasionally driven by the irate housewives, when their squealing and fighting become unbearable. The domestic pigs are probably all descended from the wild stock with which they still constantly mix. Most of the young pigs are born with yellow stripes like the young of the wild, but they lose these marks ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead. All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me out of the Negro race. I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame. Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... not console his wife, whose hysterical fit was succeeded by a racking headache, which by night was almost unbearable. Strong coffee, aconite, brandy, and belladonna, were all tried without effect. Nothing helped her until she commenced her toilet, when in the excitement of dressing she partly forgot her disquietude, and the pain in her head grew leas. Still she was conscious of a feeling of wretchedness and regret ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... She understood, with a congealing vividness, how those poor droves of lads in bitterer cold were suffering, scattered along the frontiers of war like infinite flocks of sheep caught in a blizzard. She felt ashamed to be here shivering in this palatial misery when she might be sharing the all-but-unbearable squalor ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... that peculiar metallic rattle had been so slight and the silence now was so perfect that it was very difficult to believe one's senses. Dona Rita looked inquisitively at me. I gave her a slight nod. We remained looking into each other's eyes while we listened and listened till the silence became unbearable. Dona Rita whispered composedly: "Did ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... as the witch. She ordered a buffalo hide to be soaked in vinegar three days and three nights, then taken out and wrapped around the wounded youth. But the prince's cuts only burned the more, and his sufferings became still more unbearable. When he saw that he was in a bad way, he sent for a priest that he might relieve his heart before he died and give him the sacrament. But Ileane was not idle. She went to the priest, offered him a large sum of money, and induced him to let her go to the palace instead. So Ileane arrived at the ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... Hostess' House and was silent and distraught as he ate his supper. Suppose Wainwright should come in while they were there and see Ruth and spoil those last few minutes together? The thought was unbearable. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... consequence of the fatigues of my continual journeyings in the suite of the Emperor, a disease of the bladder, from which I suffered horribly. For a long time I combated the disease with patience and dieting; but at last, the pain having 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... before. For it is on that same day, when Halberger and his daughter started off to visit the Indian village; and as these had not returned soon as promised, the anxiety of the wife, rendered keen by the presentiment which had oppressed her at their parting, became at length unbearable; and to relieve it Gaspar has been despatched ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... frighten the people into submission.[845] Cicero, though he of course thinks of them as merely the fables of poets, seems to suggest that the ordinary man did believe in them; thinking of his own recent loss, he says that our misery would be unbearable when we lose those we love, if we really thought of them as "in iis malis quibus vulgo opinantur."[846] Of course all these fables were Greek, not Roman. There is no reason to believe that the old Romans imagined their own dead experiencing ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... The cheek may be eaten through by the third day, though a week generally passes before this happens. There is a burning watery discharge from the unhealthy wound. The breath smells terribly and it is almost unbearable. The gangrene may spread over one half of the face of the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... master? You are not the only one who complains of him. His bad conduct which has grown unbearable in everything, puts me ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... offence, sir," said Tag-rag, in a mitigated tone; "but I must say, that ever since you first came here, Titmouse has been quite another person. He seems not to know who I am, nor to care either—and he's perfectly unbearable." ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... said not a word against his wife, except by implication. Though she and her sister were making his home unbearable, he still loved her, and, even if he did not, he had ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... war correspondents, who at this time was with the Russian forces before Warsaw, gives a very vivid description of a night cannonade in the neighborhood of Blouie: "The fire of the German cannons is unbearable. Night grows darker and darker. Everywhere, in a great circle, the country is lighted up by camp fires which send their flames toward heaven in a cloud of smoke. These little red spots throw everywhere a fiery glow over the snow, and down upon this wonderful color symphony the moon pours ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... swung between the extremes of hope and dejection, and at last, when the strain had become unbearable, he cabled her. The answer ran: "Very well best love writing"; but ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... he was dead, retired from the field; the neighbourhood of which soon became unbearable, from the horrid odour which proceeded from it. Having thus washed away all the stains of the combat, in a neighbouring stream, for they were all three very nice young men, and hated to be more dirty than was necessary, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... confirmed in her surmise; for in an hour Sara was in a burning fever, and there was little sleep in the house that night. To have Sara ill was unprecedented—almost unbearable—and the whole household was visibly affected by it. Morton's face settled into a gravity which nothing could move, and Molly's dimpled visage had never looked ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... be wondered at. She was suffocating for want of air; and if the other girls in the room were not stifled like her, it was because they were accustomed to this atmosphere, which to one who was in the habit of sleeping in the open air was unbearable. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... which the rebels were driven from most of their strongholds; and in 1859, he submitted a plan for an advance on Nanking, which was approved and ultimately carried out. Meanwhile, the plight of the besieged rebels in Nanking had become so unbearable that something had to be done. A sortie on a large scale was accordingly organized, and so successful was it that the T'ai-p'ings not only routed the besieging army, but were able to regain large tracts of ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... "It's positively unbearable!" she said. "That man in the pew in front of us spoils the service for me. His voice is harsh and he has no idea of a tune. Can't you ask him to ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... drinking disenchantment and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights?—only the obligation to go on, without discharge or furlough, bearing the unbearable? Ich trage unertraegliches, the quotation rose in his mind; he repeated the whole piece, one of the most perfect of the most perfect of poets; and a phrase struck him like a blow: Du, stolzes Herz, du hast es ja gewollt. Where was the pride of his heart? And he raged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no space for maneuvering or for wriggling free. Clear from the ground Brice's feet were swung. The breath was squeezed out of him. His elastic strength was cramped and made useless. His lungs seemed bursting. The pressure on his ribs was unbearable. Like many a better man he was paying the price for ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... well; but can assign no origin to it,—some penalty, indignity or cross put suddenly on John, which the hasty John considered unbearable. His Mother's inconsolable weeping, and then his own astonishment at such a culprit's being forgiven, are all that remain with Anthony. The steady historical style of the young runaway of twelve, narrating merely, not in the least apologizing, is ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Philipon, which occurred in her daughter's twenty-first year, Manon's life at home became almost unbearable. Her extreme grief impaired her health, and anxiety and mortification were added by the excesses and frivolous extravagances into which her father plunged. He formed associations with people of bad character, and took to gambling. Manon strove to make herself ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... print. Moreover, it was unnice to behold. Wild-folk have a habit often of going temporarily insane when they first find themselves trapped, because the trap represents to them the most supreme, the most unbearable, of all terrors—loss of freedom; and freedom is to them more than life, especially to birds, and more especially still to those whose lives are dedicated to ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... enough truth in what you say, to make the remark unbearable. However, it doesn't matter to me now that I "meditate the thankless Muse" no longer, but....' He paused, as if endeavouring to think ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... moreover deprived of the positive comforts and happiness that education affords. Neither books nor public questions will interest him; his leisure moments will be a time of idleness and unbearable tedium; a whole world—the world of the mind—will be closed to him, with its joys, pleasures and comforts ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Seated on the stone ballast beneath the bamboo deck there was yet another layer of humanity, whose condition can neither be described nor conceived. Without air, without light, without room to move, without hope; with insufferable stench, with hunger and thirst, with heat unbearable, with agony of body and soul, with dread anticipations of the future, and despairing memories of the past, they sat for days and nights together—fed with just enough of uncooked rice and water to keep soul ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... believe the Prince's best friends would call him an early morning man. He's the kind that oughtn't to be out before lunch, and he goes especially well with gaslight or electricity. I felt sure he'd be unbearable before breakfast—either his ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... imbibing of acid or bitter substances subjects us to sensations more or less painful, according to their degree. It is said that the cause of the rapid effects of hydrocyanic acid is that the pain is so great as to be unbearable by ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... desolate, weary, Sickened with shame and despair, like a kid torn young from its mother? What if my beauty insult thee, then blight it: but me—Oh spare me! Spare me yet, ere he be here, fierce, tearing, unbearable! See me, See me, how tender and soft, and thus helpless! See how I shudder, Fancying only my doom. Wilt thou shine thus bright, when it takes me? Are there no deaths save this, great Sun? No fiery arrow, Lightning, or deep-mouthed wave? Why ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground. And after all this some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at his head! It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever been treated in this manner. Accordingly, he determined to have vengeance, and remained till daylight in an ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... role of an idiotic woman in an imbecile play. I was in despair, and the wildest ideas came into my head. I wanted to give up the stage and go into business. I spoke of this to our old family friend, Meydieu, who was so unbearable. He approved of my idea, and wanted me to take a shop—a confectioner's—on the Boulevard des Italiens. This became a fixed idea with the worthy man. He loved sweets himself, and he knew lots of recipes for various sorts of sweets ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... this. I am beginning to be conscious of myself, now that I know there is some one who recognizes my meagre worth. The situation here is unbearable. I am weary of this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... air, alternating with great tempests, during which the air was of so putrifying a quality as to rot the clothes on their backs. He had formerly lingered by the way, to prevent them arriving too soon on the coast, when the heat of the sun is scorching and unbearable. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... against the man to whom she had sold herself, but in thought it was hardly possible for her to give him anything but tolerance, or to feel much beyond the callous indifference she purposely cultivated, to make their life together endurable. The things that at first only irritated her grew almost unbearable afterwards. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "The heat becomes unbearable. The winds arise and sweep all one way, for a time. Then comes the black rain. The heavy typhoon soon begins to howl and to turn in a circle for two or three days. The wheeling storm moves from place to place, and finally ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... furiously thundering a quadrille, a perfect tempest which made the hall shake; while the dancers, striking the floor with their feet, raised a cloud of dust which dimmed the brightness of the gas. The heat was unbearable. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... minutes—not more than five probably, though it seemed more like five hours—had passed the silence and strain grew unbearable to Duke. He peeped at Pamela; her eyes were closed, she looked so dreadfully white!—his heart gave such a thump that he looked round for a moment in terror, it seemed to him such a loud noise,—what could make her look ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... blame in the matter. Hunter is said to have excused his own irritability on the grounds that being an anatomist, and accustomed to "the passive submission of dead bodies," contradictions became the more unbearable. Many of the physiological researches begun by him were carried on and perfected by his more famous brother, particularly his investigations of the capillaries, but he added much to the anatomical knowledge ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of spring had ceased to bluster, and summer asserted her rights; and if the cold had formerly been unbearable, so now too was the heat when July came in. The old gentleman visibly gathered strength, and following his usual custom, went out to a garden in the suburbs. One still, warm evening, as we sat in the sweet-smelling ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... did so by the aid of some adhesive substance at the end of its legs I was sure,—I could feel it stick. Its weight increased as it ascended,—and it smelt! I had been for some time aware that it emitted an unpleasant, foetid odour; as it neared my face it became so intense as to be unbearable. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... heat against his face told him that coals were still glowing under the ashes, yet he might be able to creep through. It was worth a trial: the smoke in the cabin was still almost unbearable. His muscles were more at his command now; with a great lurch he sprang up and thrust head ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... their name tarnished in the sight of his schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of—Holly! Unbearable! What was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... people are Saracens. The heat is tremendous, and on that account their houses are built with ventilators to catch the wind. These ventilators are placed on the side from which the wind comes, and they bring the wind down into the house to cool it. But for this the heat would be utterly unbearable. [NOTE 2] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a general permit to eat, drink and couple like animals in pasture, was recognized or tolerated. Nor could the royal young woman make friends. Her relatives-by-marriage were mostly freaks, and all were unbearable; her entourage a collection ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... the Cross the full revelation of Light; of the Light which lightens every man that comes into the world: and find that painful, not because of its darkness, but as the blaze of full sunshine is painful, from unbearable intensity of warmth and light? Let ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... "This is unbearable," said the judge, angrily, after having repeated his question several times without eliciting any reply. "Take him away! Let him be kept in complete isolation, in one of the separate cells of the ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... The cold breath of her reasons was, with everything else, in the air; but he didn't care for them any more than for her wish itself, and he would stay in spite of her, stay in spite of odium, stay in spite perhaps of some final experience that would be, for the pain of it, all but unbearable. That would be his one way, purified though he was, to mark his virtue beyond any mistake. It would be accepting the disagreeable, and the disagreeable would be a proof; a proof of his not having ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... expected attack never came, however, but the shot and shell of a furious cannonade told with fatal effect upon men and officers as they lay on their faces hugging the ground. The torments of this trying situation were almost unbearable, but it was obvious to all that it was necessary to have at hand a compact body of troops to repel any assault the enemy might make pending the reconstruction of the extreme right of our line, and a silent determination to stay seemed to take hold of each individual soldier; ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... last night she had overlooked. She realized the woman. She divined her secret, her significance, all that she stood for and all that she portended. In the light of that woman (for she spread round her an unbearable illumination) Jane saw transparently what she had been to Tanqueray. She had had no power and no splendour for him of her own. But she had been the reflection of the woman's splendour and her power. So much so that, when he looked at her as he had looked the other evening, he, George ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... premature indulgence in fruit, and by the inability to rest during the rush of mobilisation, did not spend a very happy night. The men fared even worse, for the smell of hot, cramped horses, steaming up from the lower deck, was almost unbearable. But their troubles were soon over, for by seven o'clock the boat was gliding through the crowded docks ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... unhappy one. She was fond of society and gaiety, he wanted quiet and seclusion. She Was impulsive and impatient, he deliberate and grave. The strong wills clashed. After two years of an unbearable sort of life they had separated—quietly, and without scandal of any sort. She had wanted a divorce, but he would not agree to that, so she had taken her own independent fortune and gone back to her own way of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... year. Like a fruit hidden among its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife in Combray, Francoise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from Thiberzy. My aunt was unable to 'rest,' owing to the cries of the girl, and as Francoise, though the distance ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... intense pain when the exciting orders were placed in his hands. Nevertheless, he promptly started on his desperate errand, traveling at first by rail and steamer and then in an ambulance, until its jolting motion became unbearable when he had himself lifted into the saddle with the grim determination of riding the remainder of the way. Even for a man in perfect physical condition the journey would have been distressing, for the roads, poor at their best, were knee deep in mud and a wild storm of wind ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... grief, as you suggest. The truth is my life here is unbearable; my heart is breaking. I must leave you, Edmee, and go and live in the middle of the woods. I cannot stay ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... individuals here whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have a personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lodgings in Grime Street was often almost unbearable. When his work was done, and Tom looked out of the window and saw nothing but carts and cabs and tradesmen, and the dismal houses opposite, what wonder if he sometimes felt miserable? When he heard nothing but pattering footsteps down the pavement, the rumble of wheels and the street cries under ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Upper Canada, the Government for nearly half a century was considered despotic, and held up by American writers themselves as an unbearable tyranny. But one Church was alleged to be established in the country, and the government was that of a Church party; but never was the elective franchise there confined to the members of the one Church; never were men and women denied, or hailed before ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... motionless on the ground. As Clark talked they peered out from under their blankets, once, twice, thrice. He was still talking to the wondering Monsieur Gratiot. But no other voice was heard, and the eyes of all were turned on him in amazement. But at last, when the drama had risen to the pitch of unbearable suspense, he looked down upon the two miserable pyramids at his feet, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... when he addrest his people as follows: Here I am, back among you, and I hope to remain here a long time; if I left you, it was because I have so great an affection for all my servants and because even the bare thought of seeing them suffer caused me unbearable sorrow. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... that the commotion and bustle had reached a stage so unbearable to his taste, speedily betook himself, after merely sitting for a little while, to other places in search of relaxation and fun. First of all, he entered the inner rooms, and after spending some time in chatting and laughing with Mrs. Yu, the waiting-maids, and secondary wives, he eventually took ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... course deny that what the dervish said was perfectly reasonable, but, in spite of that, the thought that the dervish would be as rich as I was unbearable to me. Still there was no use in discussing the matter, and I had to accept his conditions or bewail to the end of my life the loss of immense wealth. So I collected my camels and we set out together under the guidance of the dervish. After walking some time, we reached what looked like a valley, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... were sadly annoyed by violent knocking and drumming—at times apparently in the house, and at other times seemingly on the house-top. This disturbance continued for weeks without much change, but then the annoyance became unbearable. An offensive smell pervaded the house; boards danced through rooms and passages by day; and at night, drumming was heard for hours together in the apartment ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... about it at home. My brother, with his three hundred a year and his French argot, made home unbearable and I thought of clearing out of it. But where could I go? You see, if you work for some specialist for a number of years, the only job you can move to is a position with another specialist ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... with wealth and learning. The bourgeoisie wanted power and privilege commensurate with their place in business and administration. It seemed unbearable that a foppish noble whose only claims to respect were a moldy castle and a worm-eaten patent of nobility should everywhere take precedence over men of means and brains. Why should the highest social distinctions, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the two hurry off horribly scared; the idea of having to leave has never crossed their minds, and is quite unbearable. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... make up her mind to do that. Probably they would not want her at home again, after all the trouble and expense she had been to them. Perhaps her father might even send her back to Hillside again. The shame of that would be unbearable! ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... around, with little or nothing to do. Only a few guests required their attendance. Everything was very quiet. The burning sun fairly scorched the leaves of the acacia trees, which grew everywhere. The Nile was exceedingly low, and water was comparatively scarce. The older part of Cairo was simply unbearable; the little Koptic community dwelling in the low huts, which reeked with dirt and vermin, would, one would have thought, have been ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... A girl married like that, at random. . . . And what is her life like afterwards? You can understand: a well-educated, cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if she meets a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor—well, she gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runs away from her husband. And ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... beholding nothing but accusation and anger in heaven and earth, and wishing nothing more than to sink into the waters under the earth, but having no way of reaching them, finding his troubles quite unbearable, and unable to meet the manifold eye of man, he sought relief after the unsagacious fashion of a larger bird than he. His burly form underwent a series of convulsions not unlike sobs, and he shut his eyes tightly and held them so, presenting a picture of misery unequalled in the memory of any ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... idleness. It is our mission to benefit mankind both here and hereafter, by despatching useless persons to Paradise and thus cheering the lives of the friends they leave on earth. Assured of this, as we are, all inactivity is unbearable to us. At the present moment we are, so to say, unemployed philanthropists; we are but a potential and passive blessing to our fellow-creatures, though we burn to be doing good to all! I appeal to my friend, Count Gambardella, here. Is this ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... or heard. Still, it was unbearable that this fellow Paul should be engaged to a girl like Eva. Tall, dark, handsome though he was, Locke knew him to be a ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... the Law and by His suffering and death He merited and earned from God, His heavenly Father, this great and superabounding grace, namely, that He not only has forgiven our sin and taken from us the unbearable burden of the Law, but that He also wishes to justify us by faith in Christ, to infuse justification or the righteousness (sondern auch uns durch den Glauben an Christum will rechtfertigen, die Gerechtmachung eingiessen), and, if only we obey, through the operation of His Holy Spirit and through ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... word to say: his name, Gontran, Gontran, Gontran! Gontran or the convent, and the most rigorous one of all, the Carmel, in sackcloth and ashes! Oh, Aunt Louise, do look at him! He listens to all this with an unbearable little ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... time, towards the end of these three years, when these assaults and temptations became horrible and unbearable. Aerial men and women, with obscene words and still more obscene gestures, seemed to invade her little cell, sweeping round her like the souls of the damned in Dante's "Hell," inviting her simple ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... them? Into what abysses shall we go and plunge ourselves, we three?—for we shall be our own three upon earth, and not one soul with us. What shall I reply to them if they come and say to me; 'Yes, life is unbearable in a world like this. Let us die together. Show us the path of Bernica, or the lake of Stenio, or the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... terror against which she had fought and screamed on the night when she had lain alone in the dark in her cradle and Feather had hid her head under the pillow—came back and closed slowly around and over her, filling her inarticulate being with panic which at last reached its unbearable height? She had not really stood waiting the entire morning, but she was young enough to think that she had and that at any moment Anne might come and take her away. He had not come running—he had not come laughing—he ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... so ill off, but the state of Rome was unbearable. Everybody was in danger, and at last a plot was formed for his death; and as he was on his way from his house to the circus, and stopped to look at some singers who were going to perform, a party of men set upon him and killed him with many wounds, after ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Somerset Maugham could no longer be regarded as a pleasant liqueur, but rather as the joint of a meal requiring steady digestion, and suppressed The Moon and Sixpence on Tahiti. The temptation to lend it to a kindred spirit was almost unbearable, but the thought of Lavina hearing of the above description of her person frightened me and I resisted. For kindred souls, on Tahiti as elsewhere, have their own kindred souls, and slowly but surely the fact ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Elector of Saxony, Catholic (Sham-Catholic) King of Poland, for its Official Head; "August the Physically Strong," a man highly unconcerned for matters Evangelical! So that the nibblings go on worse and worse. An offence to all Protestant Rulers who had any conscience; at length an unbearable on to Friedrich Wilhelm, who, alone of them all, decided to intervene effectually, and say, at whatever risk there might be, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... wheel if she can. But I have Sir Reginald's consent. He is Muriel's guardian, you know. Also, I had her father's approval in the first place. It has got to be soon, you see, Daisy. The present state of affairs is unbearable. She will ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... some of the Jorth clan would show themselves. He strained to still the trembling those sudden shots and that significant yell had caused him. No man appeared. No more sounds caught Jean's ears. The suspense, then, grew unbearable. It was not that he could not wait for an enemy to appear, but that he could not wait to learn what had happened. Every moment that he stayed there, with hands like steel on his rifle, with eyes of a falcon, but added to a ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... machine-gun bullets in his hip, is on the other side. He is very patient, but sometimes the pain is a little too much for him. To a Frenchman, "Oh, la, la!" is an expression for every conceivable kind of emotion. In the future it will mean unbearable physical pain to me. Our orderlies are two poilus, long past military age. They are as gentle and thoughtful as the nurses themselves. One of them brought me lemonade all night long. Worth while getting wounded just to have something ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... singers. Herr Niemann, for instance, has moments—and, indeed, whole evenings—when his voice, seemingly rejuvenated, not only rises to sublime heights of dramatic passion, but possesses rare sensuous beauty; while on other occasions the sound of his voice is almost unbearable. Niemann, of course, is fifty-eight years old, but many of the younger German singers too often have their bad quarter-hours; and even Lilli Lehmann—whom I would rather hear for my own pleasure ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... eyes yet see the light in which it is enveloped, and thy heart yet feels the beauty it reveals, in spite of the clouds that overhang and the storms that trouble them, that beauty will be unbearable, till regret become remorse, and remorse penitence, and penitence restore thee to those intuitions of the truth that illumine his sacred pages, and thou knowest and feelest once ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... one thought very badly of a man who was moderately abusive of his wife. In America, violence against women was, from the first, an unbearable idea. Laws protecting maid servants, dependent women, and, as we have seen, even wives, were very early enacted ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... his scrutiny, but the lower part of his person gave him such unbearable sharp twitches that finding it a hard task to keep up, he, with a shout of "Ai-yo," lay himself down again, as he heaved a sigh. "What do you once more come here for?" he asked. "The sun, it is true, has set; but the heat remaining on the ground hasn't yet gone, so ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... daughter of a country gentleman finds herself unprovided for at her father's death, and for some time lives as a dependant upon the kinsman who has inherited the property. Life is kept from being entirely unbearable to her by her young cousin Geoffrey, who at length meets with a serious accident for which she is held responsible. She is then passed on to other relatives, who prove even more objectionable, and at length, in despair, she runs away and makes a brave attempt to earn her own livelihood. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... stairway of the parsonage home when her strength was almost spent and her racking cough struck cold on the hearts of her sisters. And think of Charlotte in her terrible grief turning to fiction as the only resource from unbearable woe and loneliness. It is one of the great tragedies of literature, but out of it came the flowering of ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... sold themselves to the highest bidder.[1] Indescribable misery oppressed the poorer classes and the peasants. A series of obscure revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to a vehement plebeian reaction against a state of things that had become unbearable. The lower classes of the burghers rose against the 'popolani grassi,' and a new class of princes emerged at the close of the crisis. Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on Bologna and the Medici on Florence, and Baglioni on Perugia ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the terrible rapidity with which Yellow Jack slew, depressed her dreadfully, and she was startled at the callous fashion in which people, hardened by many years' experience of the scourge, received the news of the death of their most intimate friends. She was perpetually complaining of the unbearable heat, to which she never got acclimatised; she suffered "sadly" from the mosquitoes, and never could get used to earthquakes, hurricanes, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... has been lunching here and has just gone, as I write, but will transfer himself later to our house, as it has now become unbearable for him at Mrs. Ellsworth's. I fancy that arrangement has been brought to an end! Your presence in the menage was the ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... this awful story about God's godchild. He had heard it more than once and was already picturing to himself this godchild riding on a white horse to his godfather and godmother; he was riding in the darkness, over the desert, and he saw there all the unbearable miseries to which sinners are condemned. And he heard their ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... MEN LIVE; for that is exactly what it is, a stimulus, an excitement, a faith, a force that re-infuses the positive willingness to live, even in full presence of the evil perceptions that erewhile made life seem unbearable. For Tolstoy's perceptions of evil appear within their sphere to have remained unmodified. His later works show him implacable to the whole system of official values: the ignobility of fashionable life; the infamies of empire; the spuriousness ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... it unbearable. He wasn't used to keeping the curb on himself like this, and he hadn't the least intention of learning how to do it. A fierce, physical irritability overcame him, and he stopped short in the hall, just because he could not stand the silly chatter that was always flowing from these ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable. The colonists found a land magnificent with forest trees of every size and variety, but they had no sawmills, and few saws to cut boards; there was plenty of clay and ample limestone on every side, yet they could have no brick and ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle |
