"Insupportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... F. was at last compelled to acknowledge that we were lost! We were on an Indian trail, and the bushes grew so low that at almost every step I was obliged to bend my forehead to my mule's neck. This increased the pain in my head to an almost insupportable degree. At last I told F. that I could not remain in the saddle a moment longer. Of course there was nothing to do but to camp. Totally unprepared for such a catastrophe, we had nothing but the blankets of our mules, and a thin quilt in which I had rolled some ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... an occasion. Not so with me. I had not yet grown hackneyed enough to fly in the face of authority, and I frequently left the whist-table, or broke off in a song, to hurry over to the doctor's chambers and spout Homer and Hesiod. I suffered on in patience, till at last the bore became so insupportable that I told my sorrows to my friend, who listened to me out, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... certain private transactions of his own would not escape Hiram's observation. He felt magnetically that instead of bullying and domineering over the new-comer, Hiram's eyes were on him whatever he did. This was insupportable; but how could he help it? The more work he imposed on Hiram, the better the latter seemed to like it, and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... condemned by her sufferings to frequent retirement, she was distressed at the idea that the greater part of her future days and evenings would pass away solitary, useless, and in despondency. She recalled with terror the isolation in which Cardinal Richelieu had formerly left her, those dreaded and insupportable evenings during which, however, she had her youth and beauty, which are always accompanied by hope, to console her. She next formed the project of transporting the court to her own apartments, and of attracting Madame, with her brilliant escort, to her gloomy and already sorrowful abode, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... surrounded by the enemy they cut the tendons of his hams, after which he fought upon his knees till he was overpowered and slain. The mine was countermined; but the continual labour to which the besieged were subjected became insupportable, and they were utterly unable to repair the many breaches in their works. At this conjuncture, four vessels arrived from the viceroy Don Garcia, and landed only a reinforcement of twenty men. Solyman was much ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... dispirited, and he eyed all with the listlessness of a man who has given up hope. The prelate's face was as finely drawn as an ancient cameo, and as immobile. He gazed at Madame with one of those looks which penetrate like acid; and, brave as she was, she found it insupportable. There was ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... what he could possibly be about—if those dark curtains were never raised and he never looked at the outer world. Once or twice a face had appeared, but it was always the keen, thin face of Mr. Ogden; and Rose's curiosity, growing by what it fed on, began to get insupportable. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an end to it, remarked politely that the wind ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... their beauty. But what is your surprise while, as you are flowing along so happily, you suddenly encounter a steeper slope, longer and more dangerous than the first! Then the torrent recommences its tumult. Formerly it was only a moderate noise; now it is insupportable. It descends with a crash and a roar greater than ever. It can hardly be said to have a bed, for it falls from rock to rock, and dashes down without order or reason; it alarms every one by its noise; all fear to approach it. Ah, poor torrent! what will you do? You drag away ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... water in the bared and burning bars of the river to reflect the vertical sun, but under its direct rays one or two tinned roofs and corrugated zinc cabins struck fire, a few canvas tents became dazzling to the eye, and the white wooded corral of the stage office and hotel insupportable. For two hours no one ventured in the glare of the open, or even to cross the narrow, unshadowed street, whose dull red dust seemed to glow between the lines of straggling houses. The heated shells of these green unseasoned ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... The insupportable sense of weariness, after the sleepless night that she had passed, weighed more heavily on her than ever. She locked her door, but forbore, on this occasion, to fasten the bolts. The dread of danger was no longer present to her mind; and there was this ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the tiara, each requiring an equal sum to support the pomp of his court, but recognized as legitimate by only a portion of Christendom. The devices for drawing tribute from all quarters were multiplied to an almost insupportable extent. So effectual did they prove, that no pontiff, perhaps, ever left at his death a more enormous accumulation of treasure than one of the Popes of Avignon, John the Twenty-second. Much of this wealth was derived from the rich provinces ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... said, "I couldn't stay in the house—I'm going out." He found the atmosphere of alert efficiency created by these women utterly insupportable. The house stifled him with its teeming feminine life. In it he felt superfluous, futile. Hurrying out, he stumbled down the slope and, stripping, dived into the water. Its cold touch robbed him of thought; he became at once merely one of Nature's straying children ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... return; but how different in her appreciation of them! Her narrow miss of the recovered respectability they had hoped for from that tardy event worked upon her parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning her life with them grew almost insupportable. She had impulsively taken to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be, and clothed little Johnny in sables likewise. This assumption of a moral relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal one by two most unexpected ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Bath; she knew that he was highly esteemed by the family, and, aware in what a favourable point of view their affection for her would lead them to represent her, the idea that her first introduction had taken place at a moment which, of all others, she most regretted, was really insupportable to her. ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... Ruth, with an outburst of irritation, which was the result of tired-out nerves and body, "Trix is insupportable! She behaves as if she were the head of the house! How can you let her give herself such airs and domineer over you so? I shan't stand it for one, and the sooner she understands it the better. I am not going to be ordered about by a bit of a chit of seventeen, and apologise ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... upon which I was tried; but that weight has been more peculiarly pressing upon my heart when I found the accusation in the indictment enforced and supported upon the trial. That weight would be left insupportable if it were not for this opportunity of discharging it; I shall feel it to be insupportable since a verdict of my country has stamped that evidence as well founded. Do not think, my lords, that I am about ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... too. It sounded very much as if I were Brutus also." He stirs his tea and stares round at the company. "It seems to me that I have met these conspirators before. That's what makes Boston insupportable. You're always meeting the ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... helplessly in the grip of deadly hate and agony. He hated her then—hated her beauty—and the betrayal of her fear for him. What was life to him now? Oh, the insupportable bitterness! ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... and, if possible, to destroy the captured monarch. It was a day of intense and suffocating heat. Ten persons were crowded into the royal carriage. Not a breath of air fanned the fevered cheeks of the sufferers. The heat, reflected from the pavements and the bayonets, was almost insupportable. Clouds of dust enveloped them, and the sufferings of the children were so great that the queen was actually apprehensive that they would die. The queen dropped the window of the carriage, and, in a voice of agony, implored some one to give her a cup of water for her fainting child. "See, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where—somehow, but I knew not how—by some beings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages—was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... pray how does Peter mean to avoid the new field of duty, if he be sure of turning out on the Dean's death? Oh! I see—"finish his days at his College, if the changes at the University have not rendered it insupportable to one who remembers elder and better days." Poor Peter! Well; these are direful consequences of Miss Sandbrook's fit of flightiness! Yes, I'll show her the letter, it might tame her a little; and, poor thing, I own I liked her better when she ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almost insupportable; as, for the reason before assigned, every window and door was shut. However, this inconvenience, if it was severe, was luckily of short duration. A little after nine, their Majesties retired towards the door by which they had entered: and which, as it was reopened, presented, in the background, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in the fullness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme law of the empire. He also wrote of events when liberty had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. He describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself. He fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... harshness towards her, especially as it is not in her power to injure Carl. But you may well imagine that to one usually so independent of others, the annoyances to which I am exposed through Carl are often utterly insupportable, and above all with regard to his mother; I am only too glad to hear nothing of her, which is the cause of my avoiding her name. With respect to Carl, I beg you will enforce the strictest discipline on him, and if he refuses to obey your orders ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... and a habit of impressing their virtues upon others which was quite beyond all human endurance. Placidity was their note; provoking placidity. I felt sure it must have been of a woman of this type that the famous phrase was coined—"Elle a toutes les vertus—et elle est insupportable." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fact was, that Bridget was an heiress; if not on a very large scale, still an heiress, and, what was more, unalterably so in right of her mother; and the thought that a son of his competitor, Doctor Woolston, should profit by this fact, was utterly insupportable to him. Accordingly he quarrelled with Mark, the instant he was apprised of the character of his attentions, and forbade him the house, To do Mark justice, he knew nothing of Bridget's worldly possessions. That she was beautiful, and warm-hearted, and frank, and sweet-tempered, and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the home at Grandma Rugg's became insupportable to Arch. He could not remain there. The old woman was crosser than ever, and, though he gave her every penny of his ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... free balloon. Moreover, it must be remembered that—a most important consideration—the aerial voyager, necessarily travelling with the wind, is unconscious, save at exceptional moments, of any breeze whatever, and it is a well-established fact that a degree of cold which might be insupportable when a breeze is stirring may be but little felt in dead calm. It should also be remembered, in duly regarding Gay Lussac's remarkable record, that this was not his first experience of high altitudes, and it is an acknowledged truth that ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... you did," said Madame de Sainfoy, with a smile. "I find the country insupportable myself, but you see, as the fates have preserved to us this rat-infested ruin, we must make the best of it. I set you an example, Helene. I interest myself in restoring and decorating. If you were to help me, time ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... send him a telegram the first thing to-morrow to ask him to hurry home," said Mrs. Aylmer. "He is such a pleasant, bright fellow that life is insupportable without him. You used to be much more amusing than you are now, Bertha. ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... ascribed to Butler are: A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus, or London's Confession but not repentance ... (1643), represented in vol. iv. of Somers's tracts; Mola Asinarum, on the unreasonable and insupportable burthen now pressed ... upon this groaning nation ... (1659), included in his posthumous works, which is supposed to have been written by John Prynne, though Wood ascribes it to Butler; The Acts and monuments of our late parliament ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Marie Antoinette experienced upon her entrance into the French Court, was the necessity of observing a system of etiquette to which she had been unaccustomed, and soon pronounced, with girlish vehemence, insupportable. Barriere copies a ridiculous anecdote in illustration of this from the manuscript fragments of Madame Campan: "Madame de Noailles" (this was the first lady of honor to the dauphiness) "abounded in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... nunnery now became insupportable, and I determined to escape. I pleaded ill health and kept my bed. The physician of a neighbouring convent, who had a great reputation, was sent for against my wishes. When I heard of his arrival, I ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... than youth was made to bear, As if a punishment of after-life Were fall'n upon man here, so new it is To flesh and blood, so strange, so insupportable." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... savage and very morose. I meet him very seldom in society," said Saint Remy, with a shade of impatience; for this conversation was insupportable, both from its inopportuneness, and because the notary seemed to be much amused. But the stepmother of Madame d'Harville, enchanted at this meeting with a beau of society, was not the woman to let her ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Virginia and New England. Firstly, many servants, whose time with their masters had expired, on account of the good opportunity to plant tobacco here, afterwards families and finally entire colonies, forced to quit that place both to enjoy freedom of conscience and to escape from the insupportable government of New England and because many more commodities were easier to be obtained here than there, so that in place of seven farms and two or three plantations which were here, one saw thirty farms, as well cultivated and stocked with cattle as ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... were dancing with delight. Only Max was a little quiet. Teddie Gowan did everything a little better than he, Max, could do; it would be insupportable if Teddie were able soon to brag that he ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... impatience! The abominable cooking, the dawdling progress,—how was one to endure them? Especially when we had turned homeward, and were sluggishly repeating the ground already traversed, did the delay become almost insupportable. At length, on the 24th of August, we fairly said good-bye to Labrador, and came sweeping southward with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his icebergs once and for all behind; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... little boys and the judgments of the lower courts; of ordaining subdeacons and arrests; of despatching parting souls and captains' commissions; that this confusion of the spiritual and the temporal disseminates among the higher offices a multitude of men, excellent no doubt in the sight of God, but insupportable in that of the people; often strangers to the country, sometimes to business, and always to those domestic ties which are the basis of every society; without any special knowledge, unless it be of the things of another world; without children, which renders them indifferent to the future of the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... apartment became insupportable to her. She sprang up, opened the window, and sat down in the balcony outside, trying to find composure by looking down into the dark, still street. The voices of two men engaged in eager conversation reached her ear. They sat upon the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cherished a hope that the Revolution would preserve a pure moral character, and were not a little astonished on beholding the monstrous crimes to which it gave birth. Others merely rejoiced at the fall of the old and insupportable system, and numerous anonymous pamphlets in this spirit appeared in the Rhenish provinces. Fichte, the philosopher, also published an anonymous work in favor of the Revolution. Others again, as, for instance, Reichard, Girtanner, Schirach, and Hoffmann, set themselves ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... extremely disagreeable and very unwholesome. Hyperides, we are told, once said to the people, "Do not ask yourselves, men of Athens, whether or not I am bitter, but whether or not I am paid for being so," as though a covetous purpose were the only thing that should make a harsh temper insupportable, and as if men might not even more justly render themselves obnoxious to popular dislike and censure, by using their power and influence in the indulgence of their own private passions of pride and jealousy, anger and animosity. Phocion never allowed himself from any feeling of personal hostility ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and are probably identical with the "mere verses of society," mentioned in the letter to Murray of May 8, 1820. The last stanza reflects the mood of a letter to the Countess Guiccioli, dated November 25 (1819), "I go to save you, and leave a country insupportable to me without you" (Letters, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... involuntary; on the other hand, will comprehend those, who were forced, without any such condition or choice, into a situation, which as it tended to degrade a part of the human species, and to class it with the brutal, must have been, of all human situations, the most wretched and insupportable. These are they, whom we shall consider solely in the present work. We shall therefore take our leave of the former, as they were mentioned only, that we might state the question with greater accuracy, and, be the better enabled to reduce it to its ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... demure, modest, shamefaced hypocrite! How silent she is! She can prate enough to me! I would give my promised garter if she would but talk to him. Talk, talk, laugh, prattle, only simper, in God's name, and I shall be happy. But that bashful, blushing silence,—it is insupportable. Thank Heaven, the dance is over! Thank Heaven, again! I have not felt such pains since the last nightmare I had after dining ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Africa; the country is very extensive, and the people of Europe drive a great trade in it. The French were the first who discovered it, about the year 1346. The soil of this country is fertile, but the heat insupportable by any but the natives, who are counted the blackest of all the Negroes, and most of them go quite naked. Ignorance and stuperstition [sic] reign among them, and it is said that they offer human sacrifices. They look on God to be a good being, and for that reason ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... I will shut myself up in the fortress!" said she, smiling in spite of herself in the midst of her tears. "Since this insupportable man has taken possession of my drawing-room, I will remain in my own room; we will see whether he dares to ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... and not later. How long this idea has influenced German policy we do not pretend to say. But it has certainly contributed to her unenviable prominence in the 'race of armaments' which all thinking men have condemned as an insupportable, tax upon Western civilization, and which has aggravated all the evils that it ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... years (could life last so long) great as the evil may be, than form a union with such an object. He should pity, and seek her reformation, if not beyond the bounds of possibility; but love her he should not! The penalty will be absolutely insupportable. ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... that profession were wiser than he. All the motives they had mentioned, and one more, operated against him. The monarchs of the critic realm scouted him with one voice, because his work, was not written in the same cold, phlegmatic insupportable manner as ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... be obtained. But——are we to have no breakfast to-day? It is twenty-two minutes after nine! It really is shocking, dear Elise, that you cannot teach your maids punctuality! There is nothing more intolerable than to lose one's time in waiting; nothing more useless; nothing more insupportable; nothing which more easily might be prevented, if people would only resolutely set about it! Life is really too short for one to be able to waste half of it in waiting! Five-and-twenty minutes after nine! and the children—are they ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... hapless creature, immured in the dungeon as a malefactor and reserved for horrid tortures! That it should come to this! To this!—Perfidious, worthless spirit, and this thou hast concealed from me!—Stand! ay, stand! roll in malicious rage thy fiendish eyes! Stand and brave me with thine insupportable presence! Imprisoned! In hopeless misery! Delivered over to the power of evil spirits and the judgment of unpitying humanity I—And me, the while, thou wert lulling with tasteless dissipations, concealing from me her growing anguish, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... number of Turks he annually received as tribute insufficient, el-Mutasim purchased a great many for the purpose of training them for that particular service. But these youths speedily abused the confidence shown them by the caliph, who, perceiving that their insolence was daily growing more insupportable to the inhabitants of Baghdad, resolved to leave the capital, rebuild the ancient city of Samarrah and again make it the seat ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... lose her, all my rage will return with redoubled fury. The disgrace to be thus outwitted by a novice, an infant in stratagem and contrivance, added to the violence of my passion for her, will either break my heart, or (what saves many a heart, in evils insupportable) turn my brain. What had I to do to go out a license-hunting, at least till I had seen her, and made up matters with her? And indeed, were it not the privilege of a principal to lay all his own faults upon his underlings, and never be to blame ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Without it—you will still, no doubt, have applicants for removal equal to your means. Yes, Sir, people who will not only consent, but beg you to deport them. But what sort of consent—a consent extorted by a series of oppression calculated to render their situation among us insupportable. Many of those who have already been sent off, went with their avowed consent, but under the influence of a more decided compulsion than any which this bill holds out. I will not express, in its full extent, the idea I entertain of what has been done, or what ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... light brown color, and boils furiously. The waters in the other caldrons vary in color, and form deposits of the finest clay of every shade. Steam ascends in a dense white cloud, shutting out the sun; the ground is all hot, soon becoming insupportable. In places a little jet of steam and smoke rises fiercely from a hole in the hills, while in others boiling water rushes out as if forced from a steam engine. The water possesses ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be involved, in litigation—such an one must be instantly secured—at all events, taken from the enemy—at any cost. The pressure upon such a counsel's time and energies then becomes really enormous, and all but insupportable. As it is of the last importance either to secure his splendid services, or deprive the enemy of them, such a counsel—and such, it need hardly be said, was Sir William Follett—is continually made the subject of mere speculation by clients who are content ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... nor chimneys were to be seen, as winter is here replaced by a very mild rainy season. The heat in summer is often said to be insupportable, the temperature rising to more than 36 degrees Reaumur. To-day it reached 30 ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... and the perfect peace that I have this day enjoyed! The agony in the morning was almost insupportable. It seemed then utterly impossible for me to take up so heavy a cross as to follow my Saviour in the ordinance of baptism. The very thought was dreadful, and yet I knew that it was my duty. I felt that the anger of God would be kindled against me,—that his Holy Spirit would not always ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... in such boistrous weather but certain death on a coast so inhospitable and unknown. And now to reflect, if we had not reached the port with that seasonable supply, what could have become of this colony? 'Twould have been a most insupportable blow, and thus to observe our manifold misfortunes so attemper'd with the Divine mercy of these occasions seems, methinks, to suggest a comfortable lesson of resignation and trust that there are still good things in store, and 'tis a duty ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... me the effect of a pedagogic exuberance. Even the occasional good views (on harmony, for example) that it contains are obscured by a self-sufficiency in the tone and manner of them, of which one may well complain as insupportable. What Raff wishes to appear spoils four-fifths (to quote the time which he adapts so ridiculously to "Lohengrin" of what he might be. He is perpetually getting on scientific stilts, which are by no means of a very solid ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... revolts from the strain the over-taxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and the sub-conscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax, the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. That is, at least, on board the sailing ships where man must still, with almost brutal ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Coloneys were not inform'd of our Coming two Months sooner, and through the Interestedness, ill Nature, and Sowerness of these People, whose Government, Doctrine, and Manners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are insupportable; and no man living but one of Gen'l Hill's good Sense and good Nature could have managed them. But if such a Man mett with nothing he could depend on, altho' vested with the Queen's Royal Power and Authority, and Supported by a Number of Troops sufficient to reduce by force ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... it was best to let them talk and pay no attention to them; but the truth is, it became insupportable to me. I sometimes tried to catch a word that I might consider an insult and demand an explanation. I listened to whispered conversations in a salon where I was a visitor, but could hear nothing; in order to do us better justice, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... tobacco. Here in the wood with the summer sun streaming through the trees and a book and his pipe the boy forgot his cares and had an interval of that rest without which I verily believe his life would have been insupportable. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... concerning the common Cigale it is hardly needful to tell you how the insupportable Cacan can be reduced to silence. The cymbals are plainly visible on the exterior. Pierce them with the point of a needle, and immediately you have perfect silence. If only there were, in my plane-trees, among ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew all but insupportable. It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices. I could ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... home, Hughie would go to school for a couple of hours each morning. Alma could have wished it any other school than Mary Abbott's, but the thought was no longer so insupportable as when she suffered under her delusion concerning the two children. Now that she had frequently seen Minnie Wager, she wondered at the self-deception which allowed her to detect in the child's face a distinct resemblance to Harvey. Of course, there was nothing of the kind. She had ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... war came on it found in the family, as in so many others in that State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the Union, the others savagely hostile. This unhappy division begot an insupportable domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and brother left home with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal army not a hand was laid in his, not a word of farewell was spoken, not a good wish followed him out into the world whither he went ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... others two species of flies which in this country they call tics. Some of them are large, others are small, they fasten themselves to the skin and so penetrate into the flesh that one can only remove them by pulling them to pieces, even then a part remains and causes an insupportable itching. ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... made his conduct insupportable to those who accompanied him, and they rejoiced when they were obliged to put into the harbor of Topocalma in search of water of which they had run short. He was now arrested by some patriotic individuals. From the notorious nature of his ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... out at each encounter. From far they stretched their arms to dip their fingers in the holy water, but getting nearer, saw its color, and the hands retired. They scarcely breathed; the heat and atmosphere were insupportable; but the preacher was worth the endurance of all these miseries; besides, his sermon was to cost the pueblo two hundred and fifty pesos. Fans, hats, and handkerchiefs agitated the air; children cried, and gave the sacristans ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... have consulted Mr. T——: he does not object, and recommends Scarborough, which was Anne's own choice. I trust affairs may be so ordered, that you may be able to be with us at least part of the time. . . . Whether in lodgings or not, I should wish to be boarded. Providing oneself is, I think, an insupportable nuisance. I don't like keeping provisions in a cupboard, locking up, being pillaged, and all that. It ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... remember, my darling boy, that for me discovery would be my ruin for ever. I risk every thing to possess you, my beloved boy, I would care little for discovery, if it would not also separate us for ever. That idea, my adored Charlie, is insupportable, I can no longer exist without you." Here she threw her arms round my neck, and ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... across a rapidly-narrowing strip of snow. Then she could scarcely see the horses, and the muffled drumming of their hoofs was lost in a doleful wail of wind. It also seemed to her that the cold, which was already almost insupportable, suddenly increased, as it not infrequently does in that country before the snow. Then a white powder was whirled into her face, filling her eyes and searing the skin, while the horses were plunging at a gallop through a filmy haze, and Winston, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers had been eminently ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... would come, and he felt that, upon the whole, this was the worst part of the performance. He could bear her anger or her sullenness with fortitude, but her lachrymose caresses were insupportable. He held her, however, in his arms, and gazed at himself in the pier glass most uncomfortably over her shoulder. "Oh, Jack," she said, "oh, Jack,—what is to come next?" His face became somewhat more lugubrious than ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... that sagacious fish, the crab, and the not unfrequent practice of the mule and donkey, he described their general objects; which were briefly vengeance on their Tyrant Masters (of whose grievous and insupportable oppression no 'prentice could entertain a moment's doubt) and the restoration, as aforesaid, of their ancient rights and holidays; for neither of which objects were they now quite ripe, being barely twenty strong, but which they pledged themselves to pursue with fire and sword when needful. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... against any of the citizens, was it not competent to him to appoint a day of trial for him; to arraign him before those very judges against any one of whom severity may have been exercised? That it was not the consular authority but the tribunitian power that he was rendering hateful and insupportable: which having been peaceable and reconciled to the patricians, was now about to be brought back anew to its former mischievous habits. Nor would he entreat him not to go on as he commenced. Of you, the other tribunes, says Fabius, we request, that you will first of all consider that that power was ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... there, and told them a tale, and showed every sign of walkin' right out again without askin' them a thing. They couldn't even tell us to go to hell, because it looked like we didn't care what they said. It was insupportable, Willis! Characters that make trouble, Willis, do it to feel important. And we'd left them without a thing to tell us that was important enough to mention—unless they told us about the Cerberus. We had 'em baffled. ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... these monks appear almost insupportable to human nature, and notwithstanding the immense number of deaths occasioned by their rigorous austerities, the Cenobites of La Trappe, at the suppression of their order, amounted to one hundred monks, sixty-nine ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... peered, half believing that the whole episode was a dreadful, fevered dream, the abominable fumes of hashish grew, or seemed to grow, quite suddenly insupportable. Through the square opening, from the green void beyond, a cloud of oily vapour, pungent, stifling, resembling that of burning Indian hemp, poured out ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... the traffic," said Lawrence deliberately. Isabel turned scarlet. The truth would have been insupportable, but so was the lie. "Although it was no fault of mine, Laura, I'm more sorry than I can say. Will you let me telephone for my own car and motor you down? I could get you to Chilmark in the small hours—long before the ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... necromancy and discovers a spell in an old Greek manuscript, whereby, having shod his horse with gold and ridden seven days into the west, he comes to the enchanted land of Dame Venus and dwells with her a season. But the bliss is insupportable by a mortal, and he returns to his home and dies. The poem has analogies with "The Earthly Paradise" and the Tannhaeuser legend. The ancient city of Poitou, where the action begins, is elaborately described, with its "lazy grace of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... men, and presents them every moment with a disagreeable comparison. It is a trite observation in philosophy, and even in common life and conversation, that it is our own pride, which makes us so much displeased with the pride of other people; and that vanity becomes insupportable to us merely because we are vain. The gay naturally associate themselves with the gay, and the amorous with the amorous: But the proud never can endure the proud, and rather seek the company of those ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... The insupportable heat experienced by the crew shortened their stay at Rio. Upon the 16th of October, anchor was weighed, but it was five days before a land breeze allowed the vessels ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden—all is primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The dust is blinding, the heat insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits possible: the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation, dancing in the gentlemen's hats, and the gentlemen promenading 'the gay and festive scene' in the ladies' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... virtue, capacity, and good conduct," says La Bruy,re, "and yet be insupportable; the air and manner which we neglect, as little things, are frequently what the world judges us by, and makes them ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... in ten minutes from the temperature of spring to that of winter; the cold was keen and dry, but not insupportable. I examined all my sensations calmly; I COULD HEAR MYSELF LIVE, so to speak, and I am certain that at first I experienced nothing disagreeable in this sudden passage from ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting—was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... turned her head towards the Frenchman and looked at him fixedly, without moving. The rigidity of her metallic eyes and their insupportable clearness made the Provencal shudder. The beast moved towards him; he looked at her caressingly, with a soothing glance by which he hoped to magnetize her. He let her come quite close to him before he stirred; then with a touch as gentle and loving as he might have used to a pretty ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the press, provided one speaks discreetly and moderately in cool and general terms and in a low, even tone of voice. Here, the imperial machine, too aggressive, soon broke down; immediately, the iron arm by which it held adults seemed insupportable to them and they were able more and more to bend, push it away or break it. Today, in 1890, nothing remains of it but its fragments; for twenty years it has ceased to work and its ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had the honour to be trusted with is Education as his Governour; for which office, as he excelled in some, so he wanted other Qualifications. Though he had retired from his great Trust, and from the Court, to decline the insupportable Envie which the powerfull Faction had contracted against him, yet the King was no sooner necessitated to possess himself of some place of strength, and to raise some force for his defence, but the Earl of Newcastle (he was made Marquiss afterwards) obeyed his first call, and, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... my situation in the worst point of view, and determined either on flight or death. The length and closeness of my confinement became insupportable ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... of the sun, which at this period is almost vertical, quickly dissipates the clouds which obscure the sky, and produces an almost insupportable effect; but new clouds soon condense, and intercept the solar rays; a mitigating heat follows; the pores are compressed, and prespiration ceases. Variations succeeding so rapidly, are attended with the most serious effects, and the most ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... we are bound to believe that suffering and death are sent by him deliberately, and not cruelly. One single instance, however minute, that established the reverse, would vitiate the whole theory; and if so, then we are the sport of a power that is sometimes kind and sometimes malignant. An insupportable thought! ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the story, which we see no reason to question, in regard to several of the early Popes. But no large number of persons could have existed within them. The closeness of the air would very soon have rendered life insupportable; and supposing any considerable number had collected near the outlet, where a supply of fresh air could have reached them, the difficulty of obtaining food and of concealing their place of retreat would have been in most instances insurmountable. The catacombs were always places ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the men, for their presence there at all is a sufficient proof of their public spirit and their gallantry. But the lessons of the war seem to have been imperfectly learned, especially that very certain lesson that shell fire in a close formation is insupportable, while in an open formation with a little cover it can never compel surrender. The casualty lists (80 killed and wounded out of a force of 470) show that the Yeomanry took considerable punishment before surrendering, but do ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... these worlds all marshalled, And their ways all governed for ever; And he felt the sight of his soul Shrivel up like a fire-licked scroll In his insupportable terror. ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... said she. "You play the part of my very worthy husband to perfection. It is as if one saw and heard him. Ah, I would that he resembled you a little, as he would then be less insupportable, and it would be somewhat easier ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... liked him, ever so little, she had no one but Lilias Walsingham to tell; and I don't know that young ladies are always quite candid upon these points. Some, at least, I believe, don't make confidences until their secrets become insupportable. However, Aunt Rebecca was now wide awake, and had trumpeted a pretty shrill reveiller. And Gertrude had started up, her elbow on the pillow, and her large eyes open; and the dream, I suppose, was shivered and flown, and something ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... others. I spent yesterday at Yallahs, received five candidates, on examination, for baptism, preached in the morning, and administered the Lord's supper to about a hundred members in the afternoon. The congregation was such as to make the heat almost insupportable. There were nearly as many outside the house as within, and many more would come, but they cannot hear without exposure to the sun all the time. This however will, I hope, be remedied in a few months, as we have now commenced the ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... the captain came not. Randolph found the inactivity insupportable. He knew not where to seek him; he had no more clue to his resorts or his friends—if, indeed, he had any in London—than he had after their memorable first meeting in San Francisco. He might, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... doing almost the same by Valerie. It is undoubtedly this quality of perfect ease and unconscious insolence which for some unaccountable reason is attractive in Englishmen. If it were assumed it would be insupportable impertinence, but as you know, Mamma, it is not in the least. They are perfectly unconscious of their behaviour; it is just that there is one woman they want to speak to in a room, so that is all they ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... camp and the guardroom to the sanctuary of the historic muse, to worship in secret. But these private devotions could not remove his disgust at "the inn, the wine, and the company" he was forced to endure, and latterly the militia became downright insupportable to him. But honourable motives kept him to his post. "From a service without danger I might have retired without disgrace; but as often as I hinted a wish of resigning, my fetters were riveted by the friendly intreaties of the colonel, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... be brought back from the gibbet. O how will that commend the favour of a little more time in the world! But then if we knew what an eternal misery we are involved into, and stand under a sentence binding us over to such an inconceivable and insupportable punishment as is the curse and wrath of God; O how precious an esteem would souls have of the scriptures, how would they be sweet unto their soul, because they show unto us a way of escaping that pit of misery, and a way of attaining ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the Prince both in Lorraine and in Paris. They were, unluckily, born to make each other's lives 'insupportable.' ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... itself. The telegram is before me as I write. It would appear to have been handed in at Vere Street at eight o'clock in the morning of May 11, 1897, and received before half-past at Holloway B.O. And in that drab region it duly found me, unwashen but at work before the day grew hot and my attic insupportable. ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... foe they were attacking be taking them in the flank? The idea was almost unbelievable. And yet the fire was also insupportable. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... frankness, were added others more noble whereof he did not speak. He was desperately in love with Nyssia and jealous of Candaules. It was not, therefore, the fear of death alone that had induced him to undertake this bloody task. The thought of leaving Candaules in free possession of Nyssia was insupportable to him: and, moreover, the vertigo of fatality had seized him. By a succession of irregular and terrible events he beheld himself hurried toward the realisation of his dreams; a mighty wave had lifted him and borne him on in despite of his efforts; Nyssia herself ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints. Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had been at the head of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that a grown person could do wrong, and that person his dear Gilbert. As if the grave countenances were insupportable, he gave a long-drawn breath, hid his face on his mother's knee, and burst into an agony of weeping. He was lifted on her lap in a moment, father and mother both comforting him with assurances that he was a very good ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... electric fans, stirring the air ceaselessly so that excess moisture from breathing could be extracted by the dehumidifiers. But for them—if the air had been left stagnant—the journey would have been insupportable. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... he wrote to the Queen, in asking her aid, "was a time prescribed and limited by God Himself for the expiration of some of his greatest judgments, and it is full that time since I have with all possible humility, sustained the insupportable weight of the King's displeasure, so that I cannot be blamed if I employ the short breath that is remaining in me, in all manner of supplication, which may contribute to the lessening this burthen that is so heavy upon me. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the medley of their profusion. This charm would at once be destroyed by any approximation to the severity of the ancient taste in any one point, even in that of the costume; for the contrast would render the variety in all the other departments even the more insupportable. Gay, tinselled, spangled draperies suit best to the opera; and hence many things which have been censured as unnatural, such as exhibiting heroes warbling and trilling in the excess of despondency, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... mind of her son. Though she had never completely recovered from her rheumatic pains, she had become inordinately impatient of confinement to her own house, and weary of those dull evenings at home, which had, in her son's absence, become insupportable. She told over her visiting tickets regularly twice a day, and gave to every card of invitation a heartfelt sigh. Miss Pratt alarmed her ladyship, by bringing intelligence of some parties given by persons of consequence, to which she was not invited. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... they excited indignation and grief. I knew the source whence they sprung, and was merely able to suppress the utterance of my feelings in her presence. My looks, however, were abundantly significant, and my company became hourly more insupportable. Abstracted from these considerations, my father's remonstrances were not destitute of weight. He gave me being, but sustenance ought surely to be my own gift. In the use of that for which he had been indebted to his own exertions, he might reasonably consult his own ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... governed his behaviour towards all his dependents. I observed, when he was pleased, he was such a niggard of his satisfaction that, if his wife or servants betrayed the least symptom of participation, he was offended to an insupportable degree of choler and fury, the effects of which they seldom failed to feel. And when his indignation was roused, submission and soothing always exasperated it beyond the bounds of reason and humanity. I therefore pursued a contrary plan; and one day, when he ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Universal safe into its wrapper of orange and purple. In Edinburgh the old town and the new alike thrilled and hummed with the noise of a contested election. There were processions, hustings, battles royal everywhere, the night made hideous, the day insupportable. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... presence every day. I watched again all of last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep—indeed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are ...
— The Damned Thing - 1898, From "In the Midst of Life" • Ambrose Bierce
... exclaimed, suddenly, putting by the unfinished wreath a little wearily. "I think the worst of people dying is that we cannot find out what they are doing," and his eyes grew large and wistful. Alas! Dot, herein lies the sting of death—silence so insupportable and unbroken! ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... do it for her. Lady Alice would not fill this post efficiently. And Lesley, in her youthful shamefaced pride, felt that nothing would induce her to make her own explanation to Maurice. It would seem like asking him to ask her again to marry him—an insupportable thought. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin: would you, therefore, be fitted for afflictions, be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside, and then what afflictions soever you may meet with will be very ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "and so for that reason dropped her. Perhaps I would have continued to be kind if she had reciprocated attentions, but she did not. I am glad now, very glad, that we are unlikely to be friends, for, after what you have just told me, I should probably find her insupportable. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... nothing which so grinds the human soul, and produces such an insupportable burden of wretchedness and despondency, as pecuniary pressure. Nothing more frequently drives men to suicide; and there is, perhaps, no danger to which men in an active and enterprising community are more exposed. Almost all are eagerly reaching forward to a station in life ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... saying, that now not he, but others, had the command of the forces. Alcibiades, suspecting something of treachery in them, departed, and told his friends, who accompanied him out of the camp, that if the generals had not used him with such insupportable contempt, he would within a few days have forced the Lacedaemonians, however unwilling, either to have fought the Athenians at sea, or to have deserted their ships. Some looked upon this as a piece of ostentation ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... mother. They went to the bottom of the sea together. As for ever marrying again, not in this life. I have had enough of it. My first husband was the sweetest saint out of heaven, and my second was some mean little demon that had sneaked his way out of hell; and I found both insupportable." She lifted her hat as she spoke, and began to pin it on her beautifully dressed hair. "Have no fear for me," she continued. "I am sure Basil watches over me. Some day I shall be good, and he will be happy." Then, hand in hand, they walked to the door together, and there ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... a stout healthy race, and are seldom sick, although they expose themselves by lying out in the sun at mid-day, when the heat is almost insupportable to a white man. It is the universal practice of both sexes to grease themselves all over with butter produced from goat's milk, which makes the skin smooth, and gives it a shining appearance. This is usually renewed every day: when neglected, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Far more easy and pleasant to follow than to lead Fathers conceal their affection from their children Fault not to discern how far a man's worth extends Fault will be theirs for having consulted me Fear and distrust invite and draw on offence Fear is more importunate and insupportable than death itself Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself Fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? Fear was not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing Fear: begets a terrible astonishment and confusion Feared, lest disgrace should ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... aware of a great emptiness. And very certainly the scene before him offered no solution of the problem of the filling of that emptiness. And somehow or other it had to be filled— Iglesias knew that, knew it through every fibre of him—or life would be simply insupportable. Meanwhile from the public drawing-room below came sounds of revelry, innocent enough yet hardly calculated to soothe over- strained nerves. Little Mr. Farge—whose thin and reedy tenor carried as does a penny whistle—gave ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... attention—that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building—that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst—that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while no vultures or other birds of the like habits ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Nicholas people sent me a check for $50 for the "pirate" story. It would be insupportable affectation to say that I was not delighted. Jennings Crute and I were waiting for breakfast when I found the letter. I opened it very slowly, for I feared they would bluff me with some letter about illustrations or revision, or offering ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... possessed liberty of movement, were by him bound as serfs to the soil. Thousands of them fled, and an insupportable inquisition was established, as hateful to the landowners as to the serfs. All this was made worse by famine and pestilence, which ravaged Russia for three years. And in the midst of this disaster the ghost of the slain Dmitri rose to plague his murderer. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Raynor's yacht. He had told me of his conversations with Sylvia, but what reason had I to believe he spoke the truth? That any man should have loved these two women filled me with rage. That that man should be Walkirk was an insupportable thought. I was not only jealous but I felt myself the victim of a ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... Immediately I resumed my proper attitude and sat out the service as rigid as my neighbours, and so escaped the threatened punishment. Only on one other occasion did I transgress the prison rules: while at work I felt the pain in my leg become almost insupportable, and in order to relieve it I took rest, although still continuing to sew. For doing so I received a short reprimand. The state of my leg now became a cause of great anxiety to me, and rendered my out-door ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... the colonies was the immediate and just cause of the war; that without the protection afforded them during the war, they must have been a prey to the power of France; that without the compensation made them by Parliament, the burden of the expense of the war must have been insupportable." In their address to the King they make the same acknowledgments, and at the conclusion promise to evidence their gratitude by every expression of duty and loyalty ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... rustle of leaves, and then a complete silence took possession of the land; a silence cold, mournful, profound; more like death than peace; more hard to bear than the fiercest tumult. As soon as she removed her hand he hastened to speak, so insupportable to him was that stillness perfect and absolute in which his thoughts seemed to ring with the loudness ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... and in mind, he started forth without any object in view, without any thought-out plan, merely in order to hide himself somewhere, wherever it might be, and get some rest from the moral tortures which had become insupportable to him. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... breath in freedom save when out of his sight. Such a state of things could have but one ending—distrust and suspicion on one side, unqualified aversion on the other. A marriage, never of inclination, as indeed in those days amongst great families few marriages were, became an insupportable slavery ere the first year of wedded life had elapsed; and by the time an heir was born to the house of Horsingham, probably there was no unhappier couple within fifty miles of Dangerfield than dark Sir Hugh and his pretty, fair-haired, gentle wife. No; she ought never to have married him at ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... years be complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental Europe—France and Russia. They could by united action crush British power both by land and by sea. To dash this brimming cup from his lips was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently, of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... I can't say that. No; I couldn't have stood Cruger's arguments. 'Ditto to Mr. Burke' is certainly not a very brilliant observation, but still it's supportable, whereas I must have found the pains of contradiction insupportable. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... struggle at the same time against two evils which required opposite remedies; for it is proper during thunder to strike the sails, whereas it is necessary to spread them to avoid the flats, and had this double calamity lasted for eight or ten leagues it had been quite insupportable. The worst of all was, that all over this sea, both northwards, and to the north-east, the farther they went the greater number of low little islands they met with, in some of which there were trees, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... trouble of pointing out the fallacies of republican government, as the mathematician is spared that of demonstrating the absurdity of the convergence of parallel lines; yet the ancient Americans not only clung to their error with a blind, unquestioning faith, even when groaning under its most insupportable burdens, but seem to have believed it of divine origin. It was thought by them to have been established by the god Washington, whose worship, with that of such dii minores as Gufferson, Jaxon and Lincon ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... I cries, for my salwation depended on it, and, seein' the meetin' folks adwance, he just waulted from the timber onto which we stood right into the thin and insupportable air—" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... account of Mr. Edgeworth. I heartily concur with you in the wish that neither Plato nor any other profane author may lead him from the truths of the Gospel, without which our existence is an insupportable ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Johnson's brutal, ill-humored remarks; but seems to me if I had not spirit enough to resent the indignity, I would at least not publish it to the world! Briefly, my opinion, which this book has only tended to confirm, is that Boswell was a vain, conceited prig, a fool of a jackanape, an insupportable sycophant, a—whatever mean thing you please; there is no word small enough to suit him. As to Johnson, he is a surly old bear; in short, an old brute of a tyrant. All his knowledge and attainments ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... chin," from some hapless wight having been star-gazing, and another, anxious for as many strokes as possible, mistaking that part for the bottom of his shuttlecock; while this would be followed by, "O, my leg," from the untoward movement of a stick or a barrow. In short, such scenes were insupportable; and what with the accidents that arose, and the tops without strings, and the strings without tops, the hoops without sticks, and the sticks without hoops, the seizure of the favourite toy by one, and the inability of another to get any thing, it was evident that we ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... up and went out without waiting for the end of the play. He did not return to Felicie's dressing-room for fear of meeting Ligny there, the sight of whom was insupportable, and because by avoiding it he could pretend to himself that ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... said the baron—brutally, I thought, considering the present condition of the man, his distance from home, friends, and all the natural ties that render calamity less frightful and insupportable. I would gladly have said a word to soften the pain which the baron had inflicted; but it would have been officious, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... immortal. inmortalidad f. immortality. inmotivado without motive, ungrounded. inmovil motionless. inmovilidad f. immobility. inofensivo inoffensive, innocent. insecto insect. insensato mad, senseless. insigne notable, great. insignia badge, insignia. insoportable insupportable. inspirar to inspire. instante m. instant. instintivo instinctive. instruir to instruct, educate. insultante insulting. insulto insult. insuperable insuperable, insurmountable. intenso intense. intento purpose, design; ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, so far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze. Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find difficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... don't know here—not until we have been married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love that doesn't pass away, no matter ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... lips, and a nose disagreeably elevated, like the broad end of one of Sax's horns. His eyes of a dull gray, were small and red at the lids, and absolutely void of expression; yet they fatigued the observer by their insupportable restlessness. A few straight hairs shaded his forehead, which receded like that of a greyhound, and through their scantiness barely concealed his long ugly ears. He was very comfortably dressed, clean as a new franc piece, displaying linen of ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... wonderfully light-hearted, a gleam of brilliant colour thrown across their grey life. She loved poetry too, the hills, the sunsets, and those long walks across the purple moorland. It was a wonderful companionship into which they had drifted. He was her refuge in a life which she frankly declared to be insupportable. She was a revelation to him—the first he had had—of delicate femininity, full ever of suggestions of that wonderful world beyond, of which at that time he had only dared to dream. It was she who had kindled his ambitions, who had preached to him silently, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... is quite impossible to stand upright in the berths. Besides this, the motion of a sailing vessel is much stronger than that of a steamer; on the latter, however, many affirm that the eternal vibration, and the disagreeable odour of the oil and coals, are totally insupportable. For my own part, I never found this to be the case; it certainly is unpleasant, but much easier to bear than the many inconveniences always existing on board a sailing vessel. The passenger is there a complete slave to every whim or caprice of the captain, who is an absolute sovereign ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... consideration. "I come now," says he, "to show how the action of the will depends on causes; that there is nothing so agreeable to human nature as this dependence of our actions, and that otherwise we should fall into an absurd and insupportable fatality; that is to say, into the Mohammedan fate, which is the worst of all, because it does away with foresight and good counsel. However, it is well to explain how this dependency of our voluntary actions does not prevent that there may be at the bottom of things a marvellous ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... that has not happened every twenty-four hours since I was born," she said; "it is always the same—everything is the same, and it is this monotony that seems to me insupportable. As I sit here at this window I feel it to be impossible that I should ever drag myself through the remainder of this afternoon, and through the evening which will be like every other evening that I have spent. Aunt Rosa will repeat her exhaustless jokes, Aunt Angela will make her old complaints, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... declare I never eat any thing with so much appetite in all my life. Water was also found in this place, but it was of an abominable taste. After this truly frugal repast, we continued our route. The heat was insupportable in the last degree. The sands on which we trode were burning, nevertheless several of us walked on these scorching coals without shoes; and the females had nothing but their hair for a cap. When we reached the sea-shore, we all ran and lay ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... magistrate, by the same men who had refused such submission in England, and fled from their native country because it was demanded. Thus, however incredible it may appear, blind fanatics became public legislators, and those who were unable to endure tyranny in England, became the most insupportable tyrants in America. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt |
