"Endurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gigantic task of throwing back the avalanche across the mountain to the other side before it engulfed and ruined the world. While Europe agonized in torments unthinkable, immeasurable, and yet mysteriously endurable only because there was no escape visible, the Jake Nuddles, illiterate and literate, croaked their batrachian protest against capital, bewailed the lot of imaginary working-men, and belied the life of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... received with open murmurs. They had all been accustomed to every comfort with which a high civilization could provide them; they had already cut down their belongings to the lowest limit at which, in their estimation, life could be made endurable; and many of the articles they were told must be left behind were costly and artistic. It was a severe test of obedience and even Nasmyth, who knew the wilderness, desiring to safeguard the women, was not inclined to yield. Lisle had only Crestwick ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... compliant about everything but her sleep. On that point she can bear no interference and no stoppages. Unless she had it fully out every day, neither would life be worth having for herself, nor would she allow the life of any other people to be endurable. Sleep is her great gift; her body has been wonderfully constituted to take a great deal of ease. Deprive her of that, and you starve her as effectually as you famish a human being by abstraction of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... appeals to heaven of another sort. They were no longer sailors but landsmen, depending, not upon their fleet but upon their infantry. Yet in face of the great danger which still threatened them all these things appeared endurable.... ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... a note to the Honorable Ernest and to one or two other friends, announcing that we had suddenly been called home, and then I sat up far into the night putting my new-fangled wardrobe into a plausible condition. To be patched but neat seemed to me the most endurable and ingratiating, and at the same time an equally secure guise in which to figure, and I devoted my energies to accomplishing that result before morning. On that same day also, to my great relief, I succeeded in bundling off Aunt Helen without further ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... neighbouring apartment, began to practise on the ophicleide! At the first note George bounded from his seat as if he had been shot, and literally tore his hair. This was worse than all that had gone before. To one of his musical inspiration, the human voice divine in conversation was, endurable, and the roar of battle might even be tolerable, but to hear a creature attempt to play one of the "songs without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... not of the most respectable order. Sir Walter Scott took the chair, and there was scarcely another person of any note to support him except the actors. The dinner, therefore, would have been little better than endurable, had it not been remarkable for the confession of Sir Walter Scott that he was the author of the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... it was not a compliment,' replied Walstein. 'It was a sincere and becoming tribute of gratitude for three hours of endurable existence.' ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... associations which make man the kind patron of domestic life; nor is his mind capable of appreciating that respect for a wife which makes her an ornament of her circle. Saloons, race-courses, and nameless places, have superior attractions for him: home is become but endurable. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... although the summer season at Locri was undoubtedly more endurable then than it now is, yet the town must have been sufficiently hot in the dog-days; whereas my vineyard is situated among ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Diemen's Land, or in very high situations, the hot winds are extremely disagreeable. Especially in the colony of New South Wales, during the summer season, the westerly wind, which blows probably over immense deserts of sandstone, or over miles of country set on fire by the natives, is scarcely endurable at certain times, but feels like the heated air at the mouth of a furnace, and is then far from wholesome or pleasant. However, this blast of hot wind is said never to endure very long, and it is less ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... reasonably be questioned whether all this is progress, and it is well worth investigating whether the gap between half theological, clerical Christianity and a lay Christianity held in tutelage is more endurable than that between Gnosis and Pistis, which ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... in Donegal, that "the water is so strong it requires two whiskies;" but I would ask what amount of "spirits" would enliven this dreariness; what infusion of pleasantry would make Brown and Jones endurable when multiplied by what algebraists call an x—an unknown ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... still touches us most nearly is precisely in those scenes which the superficial custom of our age finds least endurable. It is not in his Gobbos or in his frolicsome boy-girls, that his essential spirit must be looked for; but in his Falstaffs ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in the automobile. The professor was not at all interested in the celebration, but he could not well remain at the ranch alone, and, it may be supposed, the invitation from Kitty helped to make the occasion endurable. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... first copies thrown aside, or may not be genuine at all. I will be glad to see Lockhart. My pronunciation is a good deal improved. My time glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the palsy. I should not like to be pinned to my chair. But I believe even that kind of life is more endurable than we could suppose. Your wishes are limited to your little circle—yet the idea is terrible to a man who has been active. My own circle in bodily matters is daily narrowing; not so in intellectual matters, but I am perhaps a bad judge. The plough is coming to the end of the furrow, so it ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... religious ceremonies. It was not practicable to utilize light from the feeble flames of those days in the elaborate manner necessary to draw upon these powers. Man was concerned with the more pressing needs. He wanted enough light to make the winter evenings endurable and the streets reasonably safe. The artists of those days saw the wonderful expressions of light exhibited by Nature, but they dared not dream of rivaling these with artificial light. To-day Nature surpasses man in the production of lighting effects only ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... back, even though that something were a gallows-tree. He had no great faith in the superstitions of the age, still such of them as occurred to him did not serve to lighten the time, or to render his situation the more endurable. He remembered how witches were said to repair at that ghostly hour to churchyards and gibbets, and such-like dismal spots, to pluck the bleeding mandrake or scrape the flesh from dead men's bones, as choice ingredients for their spells; how, stealing ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... truth, discontented with my lot; I have lived on a penny bread for so many years, that a soldier's rations will be a luxury to me. I do not care about more or less blows of a cane; all such evils are passing, and therefore endurable. I will never, God willing, slay a man in combat; but I am not unanxious to experience on myself the effect of the war-passion, which has had so great an influence on the human race. It was for the same ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... limited needs than men, do very well without these intellectual faculties, which would be perfectly useless in their way of living. Their instinct is sufficient for them, while all the faculties of man are hardly sufficient to render his existence endurable, and to satisfy the needs which his imagination, his prejudices, and his institutions multiply to ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... from the ranks of the living as soon as annihilation seems more endurable than existence and I choose to call ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... William's, springs into fame and draws a horde of students from all over Europe to sit at his feet. These 'nations' of young men have to be organised, brought under some sort of discipline, if only to make the citizens' lives endurable: and lo! the thing is done. In like manner Irnerius at Bologna, Vacarius at Oxford, and at Cambridge some innominate teacher, 'of importance,' as Browning would put it, 'in his day,' possibly set the ball rolling; or again it is suggested that a body of scholars dissatisfied ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a lie. Bessie; no, my life is not a happy one. All colour and brightness, all youthfulness and fervour, went out of me when I left Kingthorpe; but it is an endurable life, and I ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... care two straws for the lovely lake district amidst which she had been reared,—every pike and force, every beck and gill whereof was distinctly dear to her younger sister. She thought it a very hard thing to have spent so much of her life at Fellside, a trial that would have hardly been endurable if it were not for grandmother. Grandmother and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady Maulevrier's stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia could mould her as she pleased; but happily ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sentiments, and of violent struggles between his propensity to the habit and his acquiescence in the necessity which severs him from it, together with feeble attempts to curse that, without which, life to the unhappy poet seemed scarcely endurable. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... cinder-mill were American citizens. Not to discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our fellow-travellers on the deck of the "floating palace" were passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge discrimination, and characterize them en masse by negations. The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of July, 18—, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... escaped—without having declared any purpose. Twice on this day he had escaped, almost by subterfuges; once from Burton's office, and now again from Cecilia's presence. How long was this to go on, or how could life be endurable to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Grey was to lift the cloud which overshadowed her, was a consolation to Hannah, and helped to make life endurable, when at last his parents returned from Europe, and he went to his home in Boston. After that Grey spent some portion of every summer at the farm-house growing more and more fond of his Aunt Hannah, notwithstanding ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... peasants of Brittany—where the old constitution had been less entirely ruined—and those of Anjou were in a less oppressed condition, and in the cities trade flourished. Colbert, the comptroller-general of the finances, was so excellent a manager that the pressure of taxation was endurable in his time, and he promoted new manufactures, such as glass at Cherbourg, cloth at Abbeville, silk at Lyons; he also tried to promote commerce and colonization, and to create a navy. There was a great appearance ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... So he did his private's duty bravely, with cheery patience, relieving many a slender boy's arms of his gun, helping many another with words of cheer as he slumped on at his side, always with some device for making their dreary night-stops more endurable. Thanksgiving came and went. George went home on furlough. Moore refused one, and ate the day's extra allowance of tough beef and insipid rice with much fought-against memories of his New England festivals. The winter went on. Christmas days came. The man's brown face was getting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have seen, made of wattles or wicker-ware. The skill, therefore, of the architectural decorator took the direction of the variations in basket-work. We know that in the Gothic age those forms which were found the most endurable and graceful in which stone could be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms which guided the carver and the painter; so that all wood-work, metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination of books, and the like, repeated the ornaments of Gothic ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... time the anguish had lost something of its poignancy, the light of earlier and happier memories had begun to struggle with and to soften its thick darkness, and even that duty which he had confronted with such an effort had become an endurable habit. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... justice to add, however, that this was not much, a rigid system of keys and excellent locks prevailing in the well-watched household. Miss Lois's conscience would not allow her to employ half-breeds, who were sometimes endurable servants; duty required, she said, that she should have full-blooded natives. And she had them. She always began to teach them the alphabet within three days after their arrival, and the spectacle of a tearful, freshly-caught Indian girl, very wretched in her calico dress and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... thou have, when all those seats around thee were left vacant on thy coming? When all those Consulars, whom thou so frequently hadst designated unto slaughter, as soon as thou didst take thy seat, left all that portion of the benches bare and vacant? With what spirit, in one word, can thou deem this endurable? By Hercules! did my slaves so dread me, as all thy fellow citizens dread thee, I should conceive it time for leaving my own house—dost thou not hold it time to leave this city?—And if I felt myself without just cause suspected, and odious to my countrymen, I should choose ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... avoiding all public thoroughfares and conveyances, had driven off with Diana among the leafy wildernesses of the White Mountains; going where they liked and stopping where they liked. It was more endurable to Diana than any other way of spending those days could have been; the constant change and activity, and the variety of new things always claiming attention and admiration, gave her all the help ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... to bear it. But, if it happens in such wise that thou art not able to bear it, do not complain; for it will perish after it has consumed thee. Remember, however, that thou art formed by nature to bear everything, with respect to which it depends on thy own opinion to make it endurable and tolerable, by thinking that it is either thy interest or thy duty ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr. Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure Fancy—with a total ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the wardresses were less harsh, the chaplains a little more endurable, though still the worst feature in the prison personnel, with their unreasoning Bibliolatry, their contemptuous patronage, their lack of Christian pity—Christ had never spoken to them, Vivie often thought—their snobbishness. The chaplain ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... thoughts (yes, its very thoughts) to that of the majority. In this innumerable host of like beings, no one is authorized to possess any thing in private; of all aristocracies, that of the conscience appears then least endurable. Men believe in the majority, in the mass, in the nation. We have no idea of the intellectual despotism of a democracy which fails to encounter on its road the obstacle of personal convictions; it disposes of the human soul, it creates an unlimited confidence in the judgment of public opinion, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... and Lord Woodham, in their apprehension of the common foe, began to find each other endurable. If it was politics that attracted her, Tolshunt felt he too could stoop to a career. As for the Marquis, he began to meditate resuming office. Both had freely hinted to her Ladyship that to give a millionaire bride to a man who hadn't a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... they hav bin highsted sum where else; this iz a cross match, a bay and a sorrel; pride may make it endurable. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... face there ran again that little ripple of thought and sympathy, like shadow and flame. One fear was removed from him. Whatever happened Miss Harden would never misunderstand him. At the same time he realized that any prospect, however calamitous, would be more endurable than the course she ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... you have made endurable terms with this world by succumbing to its foolishness: but do you take comfort, for that is the one way open to anybody who has not rightly seen and judged the ends of this world. At worst, you have had all your desires, and you have made a ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... that man is slow to realize the injustice of his present attitude towards woman—an attitude once, from necessity, endurable; now, from too long continuance, grown intolerable. It would not be natural for him to feel it with equal keenness. It takes a great-minded fox to find out, what every goose knows, that foxes' teeth are cruel. And while we do not complain of this incapacity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... upon the style of dress appropriate in the execution of such and such schemes. If you express your regret at her recent indisposition, she will describe the exquisite robes de chambre which rendered her sufferings endurable. If you mention her brother, who has lately received an appointment near the person of the emperor, she will give you a minute account of the most approved court-dresses. If you allude to the possibility that her husband (for such is the rumor) may be sent as ambassador to the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... him and into the gully—a bird larger in proportion than the lizard itself.... It was the little sparrow the Chemist had sent in from the outside world—maddened now by thirst and hunger, which to the reptile had been much more endurable. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... a young French nobleman, many years her junior. He was killed in the war, I think at Verdun. I understand she is now living in this city. Her present name escapes me, but I know that her widowhood has been made endurable by a legacy which happens to be one in name only. In other words, he left her ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... full of abuse of the cold and wet weather. "If the winter would only set in," he said, "and dry things up and freeze the river, which has overflowed its banks almost to the St. Petersburg Station, on the Praga side, life would perhaps be more endurable." ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... man ate! The difference between fifteen and twenty-five cents is vast when purchasing a meal in a great city. George Henry was reasonably content when he rose from the table. He decided that his self-imposed task was at least endurable. He had counted on every contingency. Instinctively, after paying for his food, he strolled toward the cigar-stand. Half-way there he checked himself, appalled. Cigars had not been included in the estimate of his daily needs. Cigars he recognized as a luxury. He left the place, determined but ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... employed in different ways when notes are to be raised or lowered a semitone; chromatic passages easy of execution on the piano are almost impracticable on the harp. The same may be said of the shake; and it is only after long and exclusive devotion to its study that the harp can become endurable in the hands of an amateur, or the means of furnishing a professional harpist with a moderate income. It is needless to point out how far, in these respects, the harp is surpassed by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... are agreeable, we inspire forcibly, to enjoy them; but, if they are offensive, our inspirations are more cautious, or we close our nostrils. This sense is likewise modified by habit; odors which, in the first instance, were very offensive, may not only become endurable, but ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... supposed she should. He was looking very pale and anxious, while there was on his face the light of a new joy, as if the little life begun so short a time ago had brought an added good to him, softening his haughty manner and making him even endurable to the prejudiced sister watching him ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... a very much worn-out mother, who took to her bed with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, with the joints so involved as to require the handling of a trained nurse. The agony was such that the hypodermic needle was required to make existence endurable, and it was used with the idea that the brain would be less injured by the remedy than by the agony with its inevitable ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... find our summer acceptable, even after a Southern summer heavy-sweet with magnolia and jasmine, honeysuckle and mimosa; with spirea and bridal-wreath and white-blossomed sloe trees. And the house as put to rights by Clem would be found at least endurable. It had not the solid grace nor the columned front of the houses I had somewhat hurriedly admired in the Southland some years before, but its lower rooms were wide, its windows abundant, and outwardly it had escaped the blight ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... has done.' Not a married woman of her acquaintance, but would make her sick at heart with envy and regret. 'Whatever faults he may have, your husband hasn't won you as my husband won me.' You happy? Your married life endurable? Come! I have saved a few pounds, since I have been with Lucilla. I will lay you every farthing I possess, you two would be separated by mutual consent before you had been six months man and wife. Now, which will you do? Will you start ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... all the officers, began to grow weary of their sojourn at Boulogne, a town less likely, perhaps, than any other to render such an inactive existence endurable. They did not murmur, however, because never where the First Consul was did murmuring find a place; but they fumed nevertheless under their breath at seeing themselves held in camp or in fort, with England just in sight, only nine or ten leagues distant. Pleasures were rare at ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the rest. Christianity has no consolation for a generous man. I do not wish to go to heaven if the ones who have given me joy are to be lost. I would much rather go with them. The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and the angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... his daughter's marriage at all, for he had not a little of the old man's jealousy in him; and the notion of Percy being her husband was the only form in which the thought could present itself, that was in the least degree endurable to him. Yet he could not help admiring Harry; and until his thoughts had been turned into their present channel by Mrs. Cathcart's remarks, he had felt that that lady was unjust to the doctor. But to think that his line, for he had no son, should merge into that of the Armstrongs, who were ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... who regard the "world as their oyster," and her scheme of life was to get as much as possible for nothing. Arrayed in mourning weeds, she had begun a system of periodical descents upon his relatives and her own. She might have made such visitations endurable and even welcome, but she was not shrewd enough to be sensible. She appeared to have developed only the capacity to talk, to pry, and to worry people. She was unable to rest or to permit others to rest, yet her aversion to any useful form of activity was her chief characteristic. Wherever she went ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... programme of the day before, except that continuous rain was substituted for the baking sun, and proved far more endurable. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... community extremely preoccupied by their own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the government of the State for the purpose of making the conditions of their own industry and of their own daily lives more endurable. How far there was need of such an interference may be judged by any fair-minded man who reads the list of their complaints. A superficial view may recognise the Boers as the champions of liberty, but a deeper ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of skates, found hidden away amongst the Dobryna's stores, was speedily brought into use. The Russians undertook the instruction of the Spaniards, and at the end of a few days, during which the temperature was only endurable through the absence of wind, there was not a Gallian who could not skate tolerably well, while many of them could describe figures involving the most complicated curves. Nina and Pablo earned loud applause by their rapid proficiency; Captain Servadac, an adept in athletics, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... a state bordering on frenzy. Her anxiety and suspense were hardly endurable. I went up to the Castle, caught the horses, harnessed them to the wagon, and conveyed her and her trunks to the house. In the mean time the soldiers had marched up to the clearing, and decided to pitch their tents near the block house, for they ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... so, it's incongruous—impossible. I've come to the conclusion that the only things which make London—as I've known it—endurable are unlimited credit at a good dressmaker—Oh, and one of the beautiful new motor-cars. You don't mind travelling from Dan to Beersheba if you can do it in five minutes. But when you've got to catch omnibuses or take the Tube, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and set about the best way of getting them," answered Rhymer, with a laugh. The ship was now nearly under the line. The heat, as Rhymer had forewarned his messmates, was very great, though not enough to roast an ox; and when there was a breeze, it was at all events endurable in the shade. Had it been much greater it would not have impeded Commander Curtis in the performance of his duty. Ned bore it very well, although he confessed to Charley that he should like a roll in the snow. When the ship was becalmed the crew were allowed ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... they proceed PARI PASSU. A taste of comfort begets a love of comfort. And this kind of love militates, not impotently, against the other; for self- interest is a persuasive counsellor, and gets a hearing when the blood is cool. Life must be more than possible, it must be endurable; man must have some leisure, some repose, before his brain-needs have a chance with those of his belly. He must have a coat to his back before he can stick a rose in its button-hole. The worst of it is, he begins ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... but took especial care not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed, till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing, and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but took care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds; preferring to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the pensioner of Louis, to whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour and interests of Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight in playing the part of a tyrant himself; ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... more keenly. To refuse to let her go to see the girl she loved— her only close friend and playmate! And to refuse to allow Helen and Tom to come here to see her! This intimacy was all (and Ruth admitted it now, in a torrent of tears, as she lay upon her little bed) that made life at the Red Mill endurable. Had she not met Helen and found her such a dear girl and so kind a companion, Ruth told herself now that she never could have borne the dull existence of ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... chins, paunches. To him all old people were Struldbrugs. We smile at the insolence of youth, because we know it will pass with the beauty and strength that support it. Ogniben says, "Youth, with its beauty and grace, would seem bestowed on us for some such reason as to make us partly endurable till we have time for really becoming so of ourselves, without their aid; when they leave us ... little by little, he sees fit to forego claim after claim on the world, puts up with a less and less share of its good as his proper portion; and when ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... do everything short of stooping to an act of baseness. If, Madame, you have not found in me virtues which will assure you of this, at least trust my faults! My character is not supple. The one thing which makes my frankness endurable is, that it renders me incapable of conduct for which I should have to blush. Believe, then, Madame, that I can preserve my friendship for your friend, without falling, as you suspect, into the baseness of paying court to her [the Prince], in spite of the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... bit of a bully can scarcely be denied. It is difficult to combine the offices of Gabbai and Town Councillor without a self-satisfaction that may easily degenerate into dissatisfaction with others. Least endurable was S. Cohn in his religious rigidity, and he could never understand that pietistic exercises in which he found pleasure did not inevitably produce ecstasy in his son and heir. And when Simon was discovered reading 'The Pirates of Pechili,' dexterously ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... bravely the work which she and Tom had begun had been an excruciating torture to Grace, made endurable only by the thought that at least she was fulfilling Tom's wishes. She was ever urged on to her sorrowful task by the one consolation that when the blessed day of Tom's return dawned, and she believed that it must, he ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... well, dear little girl, that you will quite understand how the thought of life-long poverty has proved too much for me. I am not made of such coarse fibre as most men—those men who can face squalor and privation, and lack all the little accessories that make life endurable, without being any the worse for it. I am too refined, too highly strung, too sensitive, to enter upon such a weary struggle with circumstances as my marriage with a woman as poor as myself would entail; therefore, my darling Quenelda, much as I love you I feel it is my duty to renounce ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... if I were sensitive on that point life would not be endurable for me. "I receive many letters daily when at home and I am sure that twenty to thirty per cent of them mis-spell my name, ranging from 'Karnaghie' ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... generality of his countrymen, he looked much older than he was. With them, the elastic vigor of youth and manhood rapidly subside into an interminable and joyless old age, numbering as many years but with far less both of physical and mental faculty, to render them endurable, than the more equally poised gradations of our northern clime. It is by no means unusual to encounter a well-developed Italian, whiskered to the eyebrows, and "bearded like the pard," who tells ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after years of steady descent—when misfortune and disappointment become endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward better things that ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... does not often dream? above all DREAMS OF PLEASURE— peaceful dreams, sweet, cheering dreams if you will—dreams which, if realized, would have rendered my life (now far rather sad than pleasurable) more endurable. ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... the Spartan, "in one year the most patriotic Hellene will be he who has made the Persian yoke the most endurable. Don't ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... it's endurable at all. But to have a brute of a husband coming home at any hour of the night or morning, drunk upon the money she had earned by hard work, was enough to take more of the shine out of things than church-going on Sundays could put in again, regular as she ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... grasp. He felt it. And with that in his mind he waited, strong as steel in his conviction, capable of withstanding any strain endurable ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Jane could find the opportunity to make inquiries concerning the whereabouts of Graydon Bansemer. Her thoughts had been of nothing else; her eagerness had been tempered by the diffidence of the over-zealous. She and pretty Ethel Harbin had made life endurable for the gay young officers who came over on the ship; the pretty wives of certain captains and lieutenants had small scope for their blandishments at close range. Flirtations were hard to manage in space so small. The two girls were therefore in a state of siege most of the time. The abject ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... climates, with a view to health and comfort. The intolerable heat of the climate in India, during certain hours of the day, is well known to be the cause of much bad health among European settlers. By way of rendering the air at all endurable, the plan of agitating it with punkahs, hung to the roofs of apartments, the punkahs being moved by servants in attendance for the purpose, is adopted. Another plan of communicating a sensation of coolness, is to hang wet mats in the open windows. But by neither of these expedients is the end ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... a tendency to rheumatic gout and a daily increasing realization of the fact that the resources of a poor dukedom may be hopelessly depleted by an expensive youth passed brilliantly in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, when it was endurable, he found it expedient to give up what he considered the necessities of life and to face existence in the country in England. It is not imperative that one should enter into detail. There was much, and ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... de Telieux struck thirty-three great strokes on the refectory of her convent, 'mighty and marvellous,' implying that her thirty-three years of purgatory were commuted into thirty-three days. A bright light, scarcely endurable, then appeared, and remained for some eight minutes. The nuns then went into chapel ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the inequalities of life without repining insolence. They were humble, and felt that there were actually some people in the world superior to themselves. I do not paint their condition as desirable or interesting by our standard, but as endurable. They were doubtless very ignorant; but would knowledge have made them any happier? Knowledge is for those who can climb by it to positions of honor and usefulness, not for those who cannot rise above the condition in which they were born,—not for those who will be snubbed and humiliated and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... busy to permit him to watch those about him, or to pronounce judgment on their aims or character. Uncongenial as he had at first found the employment which his uncle had provided for him, he pursued it with a patient steadiness, which made it first endurable, then pleasant to him. At first his duties were merely mechanical; so much writing, so much computing each day, and then his time was his own. But this did not continue long. Trusted always by the firm, he was soon placed in a position where he was able to do ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... had been ten years with a New York evening paper. Fred held vaguely with labour parties, with socialists and single-taxers; his sister-in-law had a somewhat caustic feeling that if Fred had ever given Linda a really capable maid, his opinions might have been more endurable, to her, Harriet, at least. Linda had had maids, Polack and Swedish girls, and Irish country girls hardly intelligible in speech. But now she had no maid, she preferred the economy and independence of doing her ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... was gone while I spoke. Heavy as the news might be—this ill news which had struck me with apprehension the moment I saw Lord Ravenel—it was still endurable. I could not conjure up any grief so bitter as ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... place, to speak of my temper. I am melancholy, and I have hardly been seen for the last three or four years to laugh above three or four times. It seems to me that my melancholy would be even endurable and pleasant if I had none but what belonged to me constitutionally; but it arises from so many other causes, fills my imagination in such a way, and possesses my mind so strongly that for the greater part of my time I remain without speaking a word, or give no meaning ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... home—like those which we have been considering—was endurable because it was a working compromise that suited existing circumstances more or less, and that could be either mended or ended as time went on. But a general foreign monopoly—like Spain's monopoly of America—was quite unendurable. Could Spain not only hold what she had discovered ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... solemn friend evidently preferred the dropping-down-deadness of manner, which he had been accustomed to find in Hervey's "Meditations," and other kindred authors, where it always seems to be urged that life would be endurable but for its pleasures. A person once commended to my acquaintance an individual whom he described as "a fine, pompous, gentlemanly man," and I thought it prudent, under the circumstances, to decline the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... was perhaps less dreadful than the first; and the third was even endurable, for Blunt dealt out some praise. The fourth day Denton chanced upon the fact that the ferret-faced man was a coward. There passed a fortnight of smouldering days and feverish instruction at night; Blunt, with many blasphemies, testified that never had he met so apt a pupil; and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... pointed at as he walked the streets, were he a hero, or had done, said, or written anything that anybody remembered, though at first painful and embarrassing, for he was shy, he could conceive ultimately becoming endurable, and not without a degree of excitement, for he was ambitious; but to be looked at because he was a young lord, and that this should be the only reason why the public should be informed where he dined, or where he amused himself, seemed to him not only vexatious ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... comfortable. We have just started this hospital, and we are sadly destitute of many of the commonest necessaries of such an institution. But everything will get better in a week or so, and while I can not exactly promise you the comforts of a home, I can assure you that life will be made more endurable than it seems to be ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... whether I am, or am not, the genius you are pleased to call me,—but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be, till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... prepared to encounter a marked difference of race, of social and business life, together with the absence of many of such domestic comforts as habit has rendered almost necessities. The exercise of a little philosophy will reconcile him to the exigencies of the case, and render endurable here what would be inadmissible at home. A coarse, ill-cooked dinner, untidy service, and an unappeased appetite must be compensated by active interest in grand and peculiar scenery; a hard bed and a sleepless night, by the intelligent enjoyment of famous places clothed with historic interest; ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... and was silent. To hear Scott described as nice was to her mind less endurable than to hear him called peculiar. But somehow she could not bring herself to discuss him, so she choked down her indignation and ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the phalanx, but was the necessary development of the international relations of antiquity generally-so that the issue was not decided by provoking chance, but was the fulfillment of an unchangeable, and therefore endurable, destiny. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... regret in the heart of the woman as her practised fingers secured the warm body. It was game. Fair game, brought down in open chase, and it would provide welcome change in the monotonous diet of her home. Besides, the spirit of the hunter gripped her soul. It was the only thing which made life endurable in ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... collect it. Also, he was surprised to discover that he liked to work, that he took keen pride in striving to outdo the men who worked with him, and this spirit, despite the suspicion which the captain entertained of Billy since the episode of the forecastle, went far to making his life more endurable on board the Halfmoon, for workers such as the mucker developed into are not to be sneezed at, and though he had little idea of subordination it was worth putting up with something to keep him in condition to work. It was this line of reasoning that saved Billy's skull on one ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thought that robs death of its sting and makes the separation of friends endurable. If your departed friend needs not your prayers, they are not lost, but, like the rain absorbed by the sun, and descending again in fruitful showers on our fields, they will be gathered by the Sun of justice, and will fall in refreshing showers of grace upon your head: "Cast thy bread ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... then, grown up with plum, hazel, and vine—a rare place for children. At recess and the noon hour the children climbed trees, gathered flowers, and swung in grape-vine swings. There was a spelling-bee every Friday afternoon, for Sam the only endurable event of the school exercises. He could hold the floor at spelling longer than Buck Brown. This was spectacular and showy; it invited compliments even from Mr. Cross, whose name must have been handed down by angels, it fitted him so well. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in my earlier life, and, therefore, why not to all possible places? Any where introduced, the chapter was partially out of its place; as well then to introduce it in Birmingham as elsewhere. Somewhat arbitrary episodes, therefore, are these two last chapters; yet still endurable as occurring in a work confessedly rambling, and whose very duty lies in the pleasant paths of vagrancy. Pretending only to amuse my reader, or pretending chiefly to that, however much I may have sought, or shall seek, to interest him occasionally through his profounder affections, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... one night; but he's gone off now, to look up a fresh batch, which he'll unfold to-morrow. Now is the winter of our discontent, which is chilly enough; but, for my part, I often think that life would be endurable only for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... Plumas bored him to desperation, but on this occasion he thought it would be the part of wisdom to stay longer than had been his first intention. As long as the town was feverish with excitement he found it endurable. But when the dullness of peace settled over the streets again he walked about listlessly, wondering how he could manage to get through the day. At last he ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... not wanting, as the high treasurer was on their side. All depended on their inducing the captain to stop at Chennu; the poet's fate would there, at the worst, be endurable. At the same time, a trustworthy messenger was to be sent to the governor of Chennu, commanding him in the name of the king to detain every ship that might pass the narrows of Chennu by night, and to prevent any of the prisoners that had been condemned to the quarries from being smuggled ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the patient—physically and mentally, will in most cases be sufficient to render his condition endurable; otherwise the struggle against the irritation of complications becomes intense, rendering it imperative, in the first degree, that the brain symptoms should be ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the doctors, and held the divine vision a dream." Mr. Moore praises "The Heather Field" more forthrightly in "Samhain" of October, 1901, holding that "'The Heather Field' has been admitted to be the most thoughtful of modern prose plays written in English, the best constructed, the most endurable to a thoughtful audience." Patriotism or kinship, love of paradox or desire to assuage feelings hurt by the rough treatment of "A Tale of a Town," may any or all of them be called upon to explain so sweeping a statement. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... written with Landor's pen, that "study is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of old age." Of this theory there could be no better example than Landor's self. That life which outlasted all the friends of its zenith was made endurable by a constant devotion to the greatest works of the greatest men. Milton and Shakespeare were his constant companions, by night as well as by day. "I never tire of them," he would say; "they are always a revelation. And how grand is Milton's prose! quite as fine as his poetry!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the incorruptible integrity of his character and the sagacity of his plans.[875] Elevated to the highest judicial post at a critical juncture, he accepted a dignity for which he had little ambition, only that he might the better serve his country. What he could not remedy he resolved to make as endurable as possible. It was not within the power of a single virtuous statesman to allay the storm and quiet the surging waters; but by good-will, perseverance, and nerve, he might steer the ship of state through many a narrow channel and by many a hidden rock. An ardent lover ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on a Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises carefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun raised his head. He listened sharply. No sound ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... result from the breach of her own laws; and the best the man who would help his fellows can do, is to search after and find such other laws, whose applied operation will restore the general conduction, and render life after all an endurable, if not ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... without, at the same time, compromising his dignity, which he knew how to assert at the right moment like a man of spirit. He won golden opinions by the manner in which he threw himself into provincial ways, without criticising them; and for these reasons, every one endeavored to make his time of exile endurable. ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city of marble, but one in which the person and property of all citizens were fairly secure. By a new and rational bankruptcy law, and by a well-organised system of police, he made life endurable even for the poorest. If he initiated a policy which eventually spoilt and degraded the Roman population, if he failed to encourage free industry as persistently as it seems to us that he might have done, he may perhaps be in some degree excused, as knowing the conditions ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... women, and many to the noblest and most prominent children, as if they were captives in war? Yet those acts, though most distressing, yet at least in their similarity to others that had previously taken place seemed endurable to such persons as were away from them. But Sulla was not satisfied, nor was he content to do the same as others: a certain longing came over him to far excel all in the variety of his slaughters, as if there were some virtue in being second ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... coming to stay for a day or two coming on Saturday. If I don't like her, no harm's done. Back she goes to her people, that's all—her mother's family—I know nothing about them, and care less. At all events, she looks endurable—don't you think?" ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... found existence more endurable. They had adjustable window-shades, and electric fans, and there was a sheltered deck over their heads. So they dozed away the hot hours placidly until the memorable day dawned when Stump, after much close scrutiny of charts, ventured to leave the safe channel ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... cousins had predicted, less disgusted than the rest, as in matters of business he had been able to test the true worth that lay beneath the blemishes of tone and of temper; and his wife thought the Italian residence and foreign tincture made the affair much more endurable than could have been expected. She chose an exquisite tea-service for their joint wedding present; but she would not consent to let Lady Phyllis be a bridesmaid; though the Marquis, discovering that her eldest brother hated the idea ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a new and deeper anxiety, added to his already overburdened spirit; and he really had begun to be deserted of hope, and to contemplate a speedy relief from the pains of existence. Nothing but the confidence which he reposed upon Clara's love, rendered the bright sunshine an endurable blessing to the sadly distempered youth. But he could not see her. Day after day he called, and always the same cold, formal reply—"Miss Harland was yet very ill, but in no danger, and could not be spoken with." Could he but see her for an instant—could he touch her hand, or meet ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... never gave up hoping, or stopped saying, with a contented smile, 'Daddy tummin' soon.' The sunshiny little face was Hetty's only comfort. The sight of the fuzzy yellow head, bobbing round the house, alone made it endurable; and the touch of the loving baby hands kept her from the despair which made her long to end her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... subjects. He is the founder of a society called "The St George's Guild," the purpose of which is to spread abroad sound notions of what true life and true art are, and especially to make the life of the poor more endurable and better ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... story of the fight of the 20th March on the inland edge of the Namib Desert. But how to picture vividly the scene before Riet that day? At dawn in those parts conditions are bearable enough; the sun has little strength; the night wind refreshes. From 6.30 till 10 o'clock the desert is endurable. Then comes the change. All along the front the stark yellow sand is taking on a different hue under the climbing sun rays. It turns almost to glaring whiteness all around—to where it stops short at the foot of those scorched and smothered ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... flew to the very top of the highest sycamore and looked across country toward the Limberlost. Should he go there seeking a swamp mate among his kindred? It was not an endurable thought. To be sure, matters were becoming serious. No bird beside the shining river had plumed, paraded, or made more music than he. Was it all to be wasted? By this time he confidently had expected results. Only that morning he had swelled with pride as he heard Mrs. Jay tell ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sat, and Emily herself did not seek to alter this habit, knowing that she often, quite involuntarily, caused her mother irritation, and that to reduce their intercourse as far as could be without marked estrangement was the best way to make it endurable to both. But the evening hours she invariably devoted to her father; the shortness of the time that she was able to give him was a reason for losing no moment of this communion. She knew that the forecast ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... has left Felicia for a week past in this state of prostration, of disgust, of heart-rending, distressing irritation. It requires all of the old fairy's unwearying patience, the magic of the memories she evokes every moment in the day, to make life endurable to her beside that restlessness, that wicked wrath which she can hear grumbling beneath the girl's silences, and which suddenly bursts forth in a bitter word, in a pah! of disgust apropos of everything. Her group is hideous. No one will speak of it. All the critics are donkeys. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet |
