"Tolerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feeling an explanation of his presence in the gambling-house were necessary, "and I thought I'd drop around and get a little excitement out of the game if I could. Burton was there and had just been cleaned out; he was in an impatient sort of humor and was damning things at a tolerable speed. Nothing vicious, you know, but just ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... tranquillity. Indeed, this remark of his about the joyous side of things was made in the dark, early days when life was hardest for him. He broadened in his view as he grew older and conditions became more tolerable, and he has painted a whole series of little pictures of family life and of childhood that, in their smiling seriousness, are endlessly delightful. The same science, the same thoughtfulness, the same concentration and intellectual grasp that defined for us the superb gesture ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... religion: he hoped by this means to keep England firm to the Spanish alliance and to Catholicism.[182] And on the English side also much might be said for it. An ally was needed against France, even to obtain a tolerable peace: there was some danger that Philip, if rejected by the Queen, might perhaps marry a French princess; to be secure against the French claims the Queen seemed to need the support of Spain. Her first answer was not in ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... With tolerable accuracy he gave the details of his first interview with Diane, three years previous. Long before he finished, Lucilla was weeping silently, while Derek stood like a man turned to stone. Even the banker's own face took on an expression ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still before hand, and ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... illiterate in a general way, a passionate lover of music and an amateur of some skill. The father soon perceived the child's talent, and caused him to study so severely that it not only affected his constitution, but actually made him a tolerable player at the age of six years. The elder Paganini's knowledge of music was not sufficient to carry the lad far in mastering the instrument, but the extraordinary precocity shown so interested Signor Corvetto, the leader at the Genoese theatre, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... his third expedition, in the vicinity of Lake Eyre, reached the centre of Australia and named a tolerable high mount Central Mount Stuart. Christened the Murchison Range and Tennant's Creek, but failed to reach the head waters of the Victoria owing to a dry ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... against considering uncleanness more tolerable, because it is sanctioned by the customs, habits, and practices of what is called high life. If this sin wears kid gloves, and patent leathers, and coat of exquisite fit, and carries an opera-glass of costliest ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... the Phalanstery shall be completed it will become necessary to establish different rates of room rent. It is a matter of doubt whether such an arrangement is not already desirable. In our present crowded condition, indeed, the general inconveniences are distributed with tolerable equality, but still it is impossible to avoid some exceptions, and it might contribute to the harmony of the Association if a just graduation of rates for different apartments should now be established. As far as possible no member should be the recipient of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... "Tolerable, tolerable, Josiah," answered the Captain. "I 've been mining for sea gold." Daniel wondered what in the world sea gold might be. "Ye see," he went on, turning to include Daniel in the conversation, "my father was a sea captain before me, and my gran'ther too. Why, ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... italicized, as if they meant to administer typographical chastisement upon us. "What the devil do I care!" I shouted, and up I jumped out of bed. Strange to say, the pain in my joints became tolerable. ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... plain to the jury of view proved a total loss of perspicacious reasoning, for the land was forthwith condemned and the road opened, any oil-boring company being allowed by law a right of way thirty feet wide. The heavy hauling of the oil company had already made a tolerable wagon track, and the passing back and forth of the men and teams and machinery added an element of interest and excitement to the thoroughfare such as Narcissa's wildest dreams had never prefigured. She had no heart for it now. When the creak of wheels ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... reader, by the help of the translations which accompany them, may form a tolerable idea not only of what the Gypsy tongue is, but of the manner in which the Hungarian Gypsies think and express themselves. They are specimens of genuine Gypsy talk - sentences which I have myself heard proceed from the mouths of the Czigany; they are not Busno ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... mouth, and give your eyes a rub over, and you will be all to rights," said Dick; "don't say die yet; now on we go;" and suiting the action to the word, dragging Jerry along with him, they began moving forward in a "hop-skip-and-a-jump" fashion, which enabled them to get over the soft ground with tolerable rapidity. They were scarcely more than a quarter of the way across, when the Cossacks reached the edge of the marsh, of the existence of which they were apparently not aware, for, without pulling rein, they plunged in; the consequence being that, with the impetus they had attained, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... arrived in the ships of the East India Company, and sold it cheap for ready cash. The soldiers, however, whom he got together showed little inclination to fight the Scots, with whom they were in tolerable agreement on religious matters. Charles was therefore at last obliged to summon a Parliament, which, owing to the length of time it remained in session, is known as ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the Indians, but from which they could obtain only a partial view of the performances. There was a large lodge, built in shape of an amphitheatre, with a hole in the centre. The sides and roof were covered with willows, forming a tolerable screen, but not so dense as to obstruct entirely the view. The performances began with low chants and incantations. Five young men were brought in and partially stripped, their mothers being present and assisting ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... agreeable comradeship with his daughter, General Herbert had lived through the period of his bereavement with very tolerable comfort. He had rendered the dead the dead's due of regretful tenderness; but Elizabeth never asked him when he was going to make his reentry into politics; and she never reproached him with having wasted the very best years of his life in trying to make four hundred acres of scientifically farmed ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... evident that the history of this trade may be divided with tolerable accuracy into ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... anterior, which is impossible; the terms being Relative, which mutually subsist, and are not without each other. And therefore this duplicity was ill contrived to place one head at both extreams, and had been more tolerable to have settled three or four at one. And therefore also Poets have been more reasonable than Philosophers, and Geryon or Cerberus less ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... houses, on the other. Half a dozen small vessels were riding at anchor, curtained round, half-mast high, with herring nets; and a fleet of herring-boats lay moored beside them a little nearer the shore. There had been tolerable takes for a few nights in the neighboring sea, but the fish had again disappeared, and the fishermen, whose worn-out tackle gave such evidence of a long-continued run of ill-luck, as I had learned to interpret on the east coast, looked gloomy and spiritless, and reported ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... know, had not the initial impulse to depart from ancient usage that my father had in his habitual scepticism. He had always been a nonconformist in his heart; she bore lovingly the yoke of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom, to him, was the only tolerable condition of life; to her it was confusion. My mother, therefore, gradually divested herself, at my father's bidding, of the mantle of orthodox observance; but the process cost her many a pang, because ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... former supplies from that source, the loss is limited to the effect on her balance of trade, and is without the more serious repercussions on her economic life which are contemplated in the text. Here is an opportunity for the Allies to render more tolerable the actual operation of the settlement. The Germans, it should be added, have pointed out that the same economic argument which adds the Saar fields to France allots Upper Silesia to Germany. For whereas the Silesian mines are essential to the economic life of Germany, Poland does not ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... who knows not what I now know, must be at a loss to account for your flight, as they will call it. And how, my dear, can one report it with any tolerable advantage to you?—To say, you did not intend it when you met him, who will believe it?—To say, that a person of your known steadiness and punctilio was over-persuaded when you gave him the meeting, how will that sound?—To say, you were tricked out ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... highly popular. The mechanism of this deplorable piece is more grossly disgusting—I mean aesthetically, not morally—than anything to be found elsewhere in the too voluminous library of impure literature. The idea would seem to have been borrowed from one of the old Fabliaux.[53] But what is tolerable in the quaint and naif verse of the twelfth or thirteenth century, becomes shocking when deliberately rendered by a grave man into bald unblushing prose of the eighteenth. The humour, the rich sparkle, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... would have given much to have been told something about Barty, and, above all, to have learned what Barty had said about herself. But she was far too proud even to mention the old man's name of her own accord. She was quite sure that she had been abused. She guessed, probably with tolerable accuracy, the kind of things that had been said of her, and suggested to herself what answer Brooke would make to such accusations. But she had resolved to cloak it all in silence, and pretended for a ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... it appeal to any one's sense of fairness to give the stronger party in a struggle additional advantages and deny them to the weaker one? Would that be considered honorable—would it be considered tolerable—even among prize-fighters? What would be thought of a contest between a heavy-weight and a feather-weight in which the heavy-weight was allowed to hit below the belt and the feather-weight was confined to the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... imitation of everything that struck me, not by its beauty but by its strangeness, and not wishing to confess myself an imitator I resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original. According to my idea nothing was good or even tolerable; nothing was worth the trouble of turning the head, and yet when I had become warmed up in a discussion it seemed as if there was no expression in the French language violent enough to sustain my cause; but my warmth would subside ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... In determining questions of authorship I have so often found myself (and others, too) at fault, that I shrink from adopting the dictatorial tone assumed in these matters by learned Germans and a few English scholars. But I think in the present instance we may speak with tolerable certainty. Before my mind had been made up, my good friend, Mr. Fleay, pronounced strongly in favour of Massinger. He is, I think, right; in fact, it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that Massinger wrote the speech quoted above. In all Massinger's work ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... doors of three rooms. It was covered with a deeply-worn strip of oil-cloth, the pattern being quite undistinguishable in the middle, and at the entrances of the doors and foot of the stairs, but appearing with tolerable clearness for a distance of several inches out along the walls. A high wainscoting ran along the sides; at the front door stood an old-fashioned hat-tree, with no hats upon it; for the professor had a way of wearing his hat into the house, and only taking it off when he ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... sketch of the country, because I have not yet passed over a sufficient surface to give a connected view of the whole watershed of this region, and I regret that I cannot recommend any of the published maps I have seen as giving even a tolerable idea of the country. One bold constructor of maps has tacked on 200 miles to the north-west end of Lake Nyassa, a feat which no traveller has ever ventured to imitate. Another has placed a river in the same quarter ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... down the burden of our wretched little makeshift individualities for ever at each lift towards the goal of evolution, which can only be a being that cannot be improved upon. After all, what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor will it be possible for me to conceive my present imperfections (and what I cannot ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... and transported with this humour. To repress the excess and extravagance whereof, nothing in way of discourse can serve better than a plain declaration when and how such a practice is allowable or tolerable; when it is wicked and vain, unworthy of a man endued with reason, and ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... extraordinary outburst, for though in the original it is but an indecorum as compared with that famous passage in the 'Memoirs of Madame Roland' which M. de Sainte-Beuve gracefully describes as 'an immortal act of indecency,' it is yet an indecorum of a sort more tolerable in the French than in the English tongue. If the style is the man, the style is also the woman. In 1771 Marie Phlipon 'knew not what to do with the hatred in her heart.' In 1789 Marie Roland, then on the eve of her appearance upon the public stage of the Revolution, had found ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city" (Mark ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... uncle Ro, when I was done with college, proposed to finish my education by travelling. As this was only too agreeable to a young man, away we went, just after the pressure of the great panic of 1836-7 was over, and our "lots" were in tolerable security, and our stocks safe. In America it requires almost as much vigilance to take care of property, as it does industry ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... personality and modulations to make a fifteen-minute telephone conversation tolerable, and youth to make it possible. Ruth had both. For fifteen minutes she discussed with Carl the question of whether she should go to Marion Browne's dinner-dance at Delmonico's, as Phil wished, or go skeeing in the Westchester Hills, as Carl wished, the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... could. The weather was exceedingly hot and dry, no rain having fallen for several months, and there was, in consequence, a great scarcity of insects, and especially of beetles. I therefore devoted myself chiefly to obtaining a good set of the birds, and succeeded in making a tolerable collection. All the peacocks we had hitherto shot had had short or imperfect tails, but I now obtained two magnificent specimens more than seven feet long, one of which I preserved entire, while I kept the train only attached to the tail of two or three others. When this bird is seen feeding ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... my wife. He was tolerable good to his Negroes. Edmond Gant was a black preacher in slavery. He married us. He married us in white folks' yard. They come out and looked at us marry. I had to ask my master and had to go ask for her then. Our children was to be Strahorn by name. Will would own them 'cause my wife ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... from those most near, and most capable of advantage to judge, is like to be truer than to have it only from that which is gotten by my observers abroad. The outside of the platter and cup may look well, when within they may be full of excess. (Matt. 23:25-28) The outward shew and profession may be tolerable, when within doors may be bad enough. I and my house 'will serve the Lord,' is the character of a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... out of the church, and walked slowly down to the hotel, purchasing by the way, at a mean little shop, some tolerable engravings of Luther's room, the church, &c. To show how immutable every thing has been in Wittenberg since Luther died, let me mention that on coming back through the market-place, we found spread out for sale upon a cloth about a dozen pairs of shoes ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pretty tolerable well—and I ain't accusing him uh ribbing up a big josh on yuh. He ain't ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... deal of labor, and which were the more necessary for them by reason of the destitution which I have described. Nor was it pleasant for us at headquarters, for we had got our own establishment into a condition of tolerable comfort. Some brick had been got from a ruined and abandoned house, and with them a chimney with an open fireplace had been built at the back of one of our tents, which thus made a cheerful sitting-room for our mess. It is a soldier's proverb that comfortable ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... The book might be misread, the tradition encumbered, but the experience was eternally clear and inspiring. It shone through the Roman Diaspora as it afterwards illuminated the Roman Ghetto, making the present tolerable by the memory of the past and ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... is thrown in as additional compensation," I reminded him. "And thanks to you and your kindness, I believe I'm going to find my place more than tolerable." ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... in English; and a translator of Bourne would frequently find himself obliged to supply what is called the turn, which is in fact the most difficult and the most expensive part of the whole composition, and could not perhaps, in many instances, be done with any tolerable success. If a Latin poem is neat, elegant and musical, it is enough; but English readers are not so easily satisfied. To quote myself, you will find, in comparing the Jackdaw with the original, that I was obliged to sharpen a point which, though ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... style of his establishment, which consisted, as before, of herself and a small person who acted as scourer, kitchen-wench, and scullion; Mrs. Catherine always putting her hand to the principal pieces of the dinner; but he treated his mistress with tolerable good-humour; or, to speak more correctly, with such bearable brutality as might be expected from a man like him to a woman in her condition. Besides, a certain event was about to take place, which not unusually occurs in circumstances ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the dead, it will be seen, is not hopeful. Their condition is at best a tolerable one. What we may glean from other sources but confirms the general impression, conveyed by the opening and closing lines of the Ishtar story, or makes the picture a still gloomier one. The day of death is a day of sorrow, 'the day without mercy.' The word for corpse conveys the idea that ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... on the way to Wad Bishari. Major-General Gatacre, as usual, rode out with them to the bivouac, and then galloped back to camp. The troops were in great glee at setting off. The men marched briskly, their officers tramping beside them. On the whole, the track was tolerable, mostly compact sand and gravel. In some places, however, it was rough and full of loose stones, and the sand lay deep and soft in several khors and wadies that had to be crossed. The worst bit was in the second ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... an university in that city, and they make some attempts in it to cultivate the intellect: but the vicinity of the bears and wolves during the winter is so close, that all ideas are absorbed in the necessity of ensuring a tolerable physical existence; and the difficulty which is felt in obtaining that in the countries of the north, consumes at great part of the time which' is elsewhere consecrated to the enjoyment of the intellectual arts. As some compensation, however, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... systematically, the supply is variable, and accounts of sport naturally differ very widely. We can only say that it is poor work after our English covers, and that we know some residents at Avranches who prefer making excursions into Brittany for a week's shooting. Trout may be caught in tolerable abundance, and salmon of good weight are still to be found in the rivers, but they are diminishing fast, being, as we said, netted at ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... for America!" said Mr. Follingsbee, gazing round, and settling his collar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the class of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, "so-so," or "tolerable," or "pretty fair,"—a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the spirits ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is not meant by any means to assert that Spain has put forth an energy adequate to the service—or in any tolerable proportion to her own strength. Far from it! But upon whom does the blame rest? Not surely upon the people—who, as long as they continued to have confidence in their rulers, could not be expected (after the early fervours of their revolution had subsided) much ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... face of the country is flat; but, in some parts, the land is high and craggy. It abounds in deer, wolves, bears, squirrels, racoons, and foxes; in wild turkeys and quails; geese and ducks, partially; and hawks, buzzards, and pigeons in tolerable abundance; and the rivers contain several species of fish. In the prairies there are rattlesnakes. The woods supply grapes, pecan nuts, (similar to our walnut,) and hickory nuts. Hops, raspberries, and strawberries, here grow wild. Limestone abounds; and salt, copper, and ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... minute; fine; inconsiderable, paltry &c. (unimportant) 643; faint &c. (weak) 160; slender, light, slight, scanty, scant, limited; meager &c. (insufficient) 640; sparing; few &c. 103; low, so-so, middling, tolerable, no great shakes; below par, under par, below the mark; at a low ebb; halfway; moderate, modest; tender, subtle. inappreciable, evanescent, infinitesimal, homeopathic, very small; atomic, corpuscular, microscopic, molecular, subatomic. mere, simple, sheer, stark, bare; near run. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... disappear, its growth being impeded, its pith extracted, and its core rotted, by the baleful embraces of the wild fig, of "this Scotchman hugging the Creole." After we had fairly shaken into our places, there was every promise of a very pleasant visit. Our host had a tolerable cellar, and although there was not much of style in his establishment, still there was a fair allowance of comfort, every thing considered. The evening after we arrived was most beautiful. The house, situated on its white plateau of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... is known to most people who pretend to be cultivated, yet it is not more read than the "Paradise Lost" or the "Faerie Queene," being too deep and learned for some, and understood by nobody without a tolerable acquaintance with the Middle Ages, which it interprets,—the superstitions, the loves, the hatreds, the ideas of ages which can never more return. All I can do—all that is safe for me to attempt—is to show the circumstances and conditions in which it was written, the sentiments which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... into shams, was rarely imposed upon, and was scrupulous and honest in his dealings as an individual. He was also a fascinating man when he unbent; was affable, intelligent, accessible, and unstilted. He was an admirable talker, and a tolerable author. He always sympathized with intellectual excellence. He surrounded himself with great men in all departments. He had good taste and a severe dignity, and despised vulgar people; had no craving for fast horses, and held no intercourse with hostlers and gamblers, even ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... universal peace; for by such a league nothing is superadded to the obligation of natural law, and no agreement is made for the performance of any thing which the parties were not previously bound to perform; nor is the original obligation rendered firmer or stronger by such an addition. Men of any tolerable culture and civilization might well be ashamed of entering into any such compact, the conditions of which imply only that the parties concerned shall not offend in any clear point of duty. Besides, we should be guilty of great ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... its true bearing. In the result, Elsie found she had prepared a clear and fairly accurate chart of the bay and its headlands, while the position of the distant range of mountains was marked with tolerable precision. But Courtenay was far ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Brussels, and at first we put clean sheets on every day. But latterly he grew so restless that he preferred having only the blanket. I had purposely sent for a French cotton one, as I thought the flannel would tease him. The bed was made tolerable at least, and though I could not be pleased with it, he was. He repeated more than once, "What a thing it was for you being in this country!" and I had the delight of hearing him say that he did not know what he would have done without me. He said he was sure he ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... Johnson's. It is clear that his style, good or bad, was the same from his earliest efforts. It is only in his last book, the 'Lives of the Poets,' that the mannerism, though equally marked, is so far subdued as to be tolerable. What he himself called his habit of using 'too big words and too many of them' was no affectation, but as much the result of his special idiosyncrasy as his queer gruntings and twitchings. Sir Joshua Reynolds indeed maintained, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... respecting the dead bodies of diminutive human creatures or pigmies, brought from India, is an idle tale; such pretended men being manufactured in the island of Basman in the following manner. The country produces a species of monkey of a tolerable size, and having a countenance resembling that of a man. Those persons who make it their business to catch them shave off the hair, leaving it only about the chin. They then dry and preserve them with camphor and other drugs; and having prepared them in such a mode that they have exactly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... from which we might view the procession and the Blessing of the Sick. But we were disappointed; and, after a certain amount of scheming, we managed to get a position at the back of the crowd on the top of the church steps. I was able to climb up a few inches above the others, and secured a very tolerable view ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... wondered now that he had ever besought Menehwehna for help to return. Although it could never be proved against him, he must acknowledge to himself that he, a British officer, was now in truth a willing deserter. But to be a deserter he found more tolerable than to return at ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Abimelech. Sir Alexander wants me to turf them over! He says that, where you may have the smooth verdure, gravel walks are ridiculous; and are only tolerable in common pathways, where continual treading would wear away the greensward. But I know what has given him such a love for the soft grass. Sir Alexander is gouty, and loves ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... room, then used as a church. My brother and myself finally succeeded in placing them in a proper position in front of the pulpit, and then we waited until Asaad and Michaiel and Yusef and Nasif had enforced a tolerable stillness. It should be said that silence and good order are almost unknown in the Oriental churches. Men are walking about and talking, and even laughing, while the priests are "performing" the service, and they are much impressed by the quiet ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... vigilance which belongs to her sex, and is often misapplied, but not so very often as cynics say. Even the honest friendship between him and the remarkable woman he calls his "viragos" gives him many a pleasant hour. He is still a humorist, though cured of his fling at the fair sex. His last tolerable hit was at the monosyllabic names of the immortal composers his wife had disinterred in his library. Says he to parson Denison, hot from Oxford, "They remind me of the Oxford poets in the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... trifling Circumstances. Of what Consequence is it, whether a Turkey is brought on the Table boild or roasted? And yet, how often are the Passions sufferd to interfere in such mighty Disputes, till the Tempers of both become so sowerd, that they can scarcely look upon each other with any tolerable Degree of good Humor. I am not led to this particular Mode of treating the Subject from an Apprehension of more than common Danger, that such Kind of Fricas will frequently take Place in that Connection, upon which, much of my ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... deserving both of great regard and of a very attentive consideration: but I content myself with stating the above, as well because I think it the clearest and the strongest of all, as because most of the rest, in order that their value might be represented with any tolerable degree of fidelity, require a discussion unsuitable to the limits and nature of this work. The reader will find them disposed in order, and distinctly explained, in Bishop Chandler's treatise on the subject; and he will bear ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... sitting-room, thinking that the Major would prefer it to the coffee-room; but, as it turned out, he was in no state to appear. They left him asleep, and the ship's doctor sat in the seat that had been prepared for his patient, and made the meal as tolerable to us both as it could be. He was an odd, old-fashioned fellow, but as true ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... Inverary marble; and, mixing it with water and sugar, filled their glasses and invited them to drink. The travellers were in haste, and, besides, the flavour of the whiskey to their southern palates was scarcely tolerable; but the generous poet offered them his best, and his ardent hospitality they found impossible to resist. Burns was in his happiest mood, and the charm of his conversation was altogether fascinating. ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... they had lost in the race with the seasons, and that winter would be on them before he would be able to take the trail. She faced the dreary prospect light-heartedly, but under his instruction omitted no precautions that would make a winter sojourn in the wild land tolerable. Fish were caught and dried, rabbits and hares snared, not merely for meat, but for their skins, which when a sufficient number had been accumulated were fashioned into parkas and blankets against the Arctic cold which ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... as there, and there only, is there any feed to be had for our animals. They have fallen off considerably of late from the hot weather and the scantiness of good feed. As soon as they were taken over the creek they were taken out to one of the stone-ridges and there left in tolerable feed but not very abundant. The water is lying all over the flat in sheets and the creek rising rapidly. It must have been a very long time since this part of the country has been similarly visited with rain, as the country generally, the flats principally, ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... of something like that for several months," said Frank. "I was tolerable sure that he was spending more money than he was making now. He must be an expert player or else an unfair one. I suppose he thought as long as he got you there the rest would follow easy enough. I'm glad you didn't ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... the whole secret, but isn't that suffering, at least for a man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could not shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the great dread spirit could build up any tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly, 'incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.' And so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... word may be said by the way. The very slightest account of Rousseau is too slight to be tolerable, if it omits to mention Calvin. Rousseau's whole theory of the Legislator, which produced such striking results in certain transitory phases of the French Revolution, grew up in his mind from the constitution which the great reformer had so predominant ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... expeditions I will mention only the two we took most frequently, which led us in less than an hour to Blankenburg or Greifenstein, a large ruin, many parts of which were in tolerable preservation. It had been the home of Count Gunther von Schwarzburg, who paid with his life for the honour of wearing the German imperial crown ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... would be much jollier for Jimmy to have you there for his holidays. I depend upon you to make things tolerable for Jimmy. You know how few people there are near us who would trouble themselves about a boy. You will be my stand-by with Jimmy ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I returned to the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and with a warmer feeling by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of an incompetent officer. His distrust is so profound that he ceases not only to believe in the employer, but he ceases to believe in the law, ceases to believe in Parliament, as a means to that tolerable life he desires; and he falls back steadily upon his last resource of a strike, and—if by repressive tactics we make it so—a criminal strike. The central fact of all this present trouble is that distrust. There is only one way in which our present drift towards ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... for a cable could never be laid. So if our across-the-river brigades had ever been forced to retire in daylight they would have been compelled, first to retire two miles over absolutely open country, and then to cross bridges of which the positions were known with tolerable accuracy to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... checks which are imposed by the religious beliefs and observances of others. We cannot estimate their influence either on the personal happiness, or the moral character, or the social welfare of men, without taking this circumstance into account. To arrive at even a tolerable approximation to a correct judgment, we must endeavor to conceive of Atheism as prevailing universally in the community, as emancipated from all restraint, and free to develop itself without let or hindrance of any kind, as tolerated by law, and sanctioned by public opinion, and unopposed by any ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... They had a tolerable Christmas. Kenneth Escott was there, admittedly engaged to Verona. Mrs. Babbitt was tearful and called Kenneth her new son. Babbitt was worried about Ted, because he had ceased complaining of the State University and become suspiciously ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... a few days of tolerable quietness on the banks of the Rappahannock, with our camp near the Phillips House, Falmouth, a most lovely spot, we were to-day ordered out as escort or guard to a train destined for the Shenandoah Valley. Such a job is generally any thing but pleasant to a cavalry force, for the movement is ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... churches, the vestments of the clergy, the private confession of sins, the use of wafers in the administration of the Lord's supper, the form of exorcism in the celebration of baptism, and other ceremonies of the like nature, as tolerable, and some of them useful. The Lutherans maintain, with regard to the divine decrees, that they respect the salvation or misery of men in consequence of a previous knowledge of their sentiments and characters, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... therefore best to look out and keep free of them. About three o'clock we caught sight of the main land of Cape Cod, to which we sailed northerly. We arrived inside the cape about six o'clock, with a tolerable breeze from the west, and at the same time saw vessels to the leeward of us which had an east wind, from which circumstance we supposed we were in a whirlwind. These two contrary winds striking against each other, the sky became dark, and they whirled by each other, sometimes the ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... a safe bet he hadn't—and it and his pants was made of the loudest kind of black-and-white checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh—whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... velvet Madame wore last winter. I have friends who can choose for you, if I write to them; and you will have but to bring the goods, and see they suffer no harm on the voyage. And you can go to the Rue de Tourain and see whether my servants are keeping the house in tolerable order." ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... literature in India, our knowledge of the state of Hindustan between the incursion of Alexander and the Muhammadan conquest is very slight. But it is ascertained with tolerable accuracy that, after the invasion of the kingdoms of Bactria and Afghanistan, the Tartars or Scythians (called by the Hindus '[S']akas') overran the north-western provinces of India, and retained possession of them. The great ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... You forget all the mass of training and tradition and instinct that go to make him a tolerable master. Nature is a mother; her sympathies have always been feminist, and she has tempered the man to ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... princesses are conspicuous for lack of beauty, while kings and princes cut most ordinary figures in mufti. Only their uniforms, the ribands and decorations, the mise-en-scene render them tolerable imitations of ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... ladies of the court of Charles in 1675. Nothing could be more galling towards Dryden, a part of whose duty as poet-laureate was to compose the pieces designed for such occasions. Crowne, though he was a tolerable comic writer,[11] had no turn whatever for tragedy, or indeed for poetry of any kind. But the splendour of the scenery and dresses, the quality of the performers, selected from the first nobility, and the favour of the sovereign, gave "Calisto" ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... alarming because unaccompanied by any noise whatever. These emotions, however, gradually subsided, and after three or four short relapses he wiped his eyes with the cuff of his coat, and looked about him with tolerable composure. ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... again at the idea of an article estimated at so high a figure passing into the possession of Selina Vickers. In a voice broken with emotion he urged her to persevere in her claims to a fortune which he felt would alone make his fate tolerable. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... himself "an immoralist," he means that he is the true moralist; that he is going to substitute for a decayed, outworn, conventional, and stupid morality, a morality based upon a rational human principle—a morality that will make society better and more tolerable. In this particular essay he asks us to get rid of the idea that the family, as at present constituted, is the highest form of human co-partnership. "The people who talk and write as if the highest attainable state is that of a family stewing in love continuously from ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... little boy often on board the Rock Ferry steamer with an accordion,—an instrument I detest; but nevertheless it becomes tolerable in his hands, not so much for its music, as for the earnestness and interest with which he plays it. His body and the accordion together become one musical instrument on which his soul plays tunes, for he sways ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... something extremely like it, may with great probability be the final outcome of that particular melting; though anything else is perhaps just as probable, and in any case the melting is general, not special. The one thing we can guess with tolerable certainty is that the melting-pot stage has begun to overtake us, socially, ethically, politically, ecclesiastically; and that what will emerge from the pot at the end of it must depend at last upon the relative strength of those unknown ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men, young and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to raise the question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of it? The moderation with which old age is pictured by Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic, not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is described by Plato in the most ...
— The Republic • Plato
... "She's tolerable—only tolerable, Buddy. She allows she don't have enough to keep her doin' in the new—" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... satisfaction, which Don Quixote received with dignity and gravity, and bade them make up a better bed for him than the last time: to which the landlady replied that if he paid better than he did the last time she would give him one fit for a prince. Don Quixote said he would, so they made up a tolerable one for him in the same garret as before; and he lay down at once, being sorely shaken and in want ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... be tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... enter upon the subject of his proposals, (intending to consider them maturely,) and was not highly pleased with his conclusion, I desired to be excused seeing him till morning; and the rather, as there is hardly any getting from him in tolerable time overnight. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... midnight. Here Wilson went ashore, more dead than alive, and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant, who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless looked ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fits of depression evident in most of the quotations thus far given, there were many alleviations, as life settled into more tolerable conditions, and one chief one was now very near. Probably no event in the first years of Anne Bradstreet's life in the little colony had as much significance for her as the arrival at Boston in 1633, of the Rev. John Cotton, her father's friend, and one of the strongest ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... thirty-five minutes past eleven. I will not trouble your Lordship with transcribing the courses and compass bearings from this to Sansanding. The latitude of the places will give a sufficient idea of the course of the river; and I hope to give a tolerable correct chart of all its turnings and widings, when I return to ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... ceaseless novelty of the scene, one became a little fatigued, a little weary; but as we approached Matanzas, the refreshing air from off the Gulf of Mexico suddenly came to our relief, full of a bracing tonic, and rendering all things tolerable. The sight of the broad harbor, lying with its flickering surface under the afternoon sun, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the courts of the State, women are permitted to practice as advocates, and a woman has been the advocate under whose direction and care and advocacy the case has been won in the court below. Is it tolerable that the counsel who has attended the case from its commencement to its successful termination in the highest court of the State should not be permitted to attend upon and defend the rights of that client when the case is transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States? ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... anything I had heard before; and yet he said it all as if it was common talk among his kind, where he came from; and it was very consonant with what the King had set me to do, which was to hear what the common people had to say. My gorge rose at the man again and again; but I was a tolerable actor in those days, and restrained myself very well. When he went at last he clapped me on the back, as if it were I who ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... McCulloh as a proof of sensibility and refinement. Researches, p. 361.] These legislative provisions may strike us as very defective, even as compared with those of the semi-civilized races of Anahuac, where a gradation of courts, moreover, with the right of appeal, afforded a tolerable security for justice. But in a country like Peru, where few but criminal causes were known, the right of appeal was of less consequence. The law was simple, its application easy; and, where the judge was honest, the case was as likely to be determined correctly on the first ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... now in the latitude of 19 degrees 32 minutes, and had hitherto a tolerable voyage as to weather, though at first the winds had been contrary. I shall trouble nobody with the little incidents of wind, weather, currents, &c., on the rest of our voyage; but to shorten my story, shall observe that I came to my old habitation, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Harper dolefully; and thereupon fled her last visions of a gay London home. Yet she already liked her husband's county and people well enough to bear the sacrifice with tolerable equanimity. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the last chief who could so far resist the ruinous influence of the increasing communication of his tribe with the villanous, the worse than barbarous, whites of the extreme frontier as to keep the young men under a tolerable control, but his death proved a signal for license ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... a high-bridged, intrepid nose, and in age he was the younger by some two or three years. He wore his auburn hair rather longer than was the mode just then, but in his apparel there was no more foppishness than is tolerable in a gentleman of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... before leaving his Corps, was made aware of many of the facts of this camp-life. But its more intimate details, those making the existence tolerable or intolerable, were to be discovered only by experience; and, moreover, depended largely upon the name and the reputation of the individual, and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... which she might be altogether unprepared. This was accordingly done, and her natural terrors were soothed and combated by Reilly and her father, who succeeded in reviving her courage, and in enabling her to contemplate what was to happen with tolerable composure. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... it—what he would have called the real thing. In short his hostess's news, though he couldn't have explained why, was a sensible shock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other immediately get rid of. There were too many connexions missing to make it tolerable he should do anything else. He was prepared to suffer—before his own inner tribunal—for Chad; he was prepared to suffer even for Madame de Vionnet. But he wasn't prepared to suffer for the little girl So now having said the proper thing, he wanted to get away. She held ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of the three successive councils, Pisa, Constance, and Basil, have been written with a tolerable degree of candor, industry, and elegance, by a Protestant minister, M. Lenfant, who retired from France to Berlin. They form six volumes in quarto; and as Basil is the worst, so Constance is the best, part ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Hafner; "I was sure that, in talking against pessimism, I should make the Contessina talk.... Very gay?" he continued. "No. But when I think of the misfortunes which might have come to all of us here, for instance, I find it very tolerable. Better than living in another epoch, for example. One hundred and fifty years ago, Contessina, in Venice, you would have been liable to arrest any day under a warrant of the Council of Ten.... And you, Dorsenne, would have been exposed to the cudgel like Monsieur de Voltaire, by some ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... think now, this 5th or 6th of April, 1873, that I can see my future life. I think it will run stiller and stiller year by year; a very quiet, desultorily studious existence. If God only gives me tolerable health, I think now I shall be very happy; work and science calm the mind and stop gnawing in the brain; and as I am glad to say that I do now recognise that I shall never be a great man, I may set myself peacefully ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... explosive, and showed a row of nice teeth. "Well, I ain't hard to please," he added. "I won't kick on that, I guess. I like your looks tolerable well, and I'm willing to take yuh on for a boss. If yuh do your part, I bet we'll get along fine." His tone was banteringly patronizing "Anyway, I'll try yuh for a spell. You can put my name down as Rowdy Vaughan, lately ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... as the patient does not intirely lose all perception during the paroxysm. Which only shews, that a less exhaustion of sensorial power renders tolerable the pains which cause convulsion, than those which cause epilepsy. The hysteric convulsions are distinguished from those, owing to other causes, by the presence of the expectation of death, which precedes and succeeds ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Lawrence she had nothing to say. She knew that he knew that she had nothing worth saying. She resented his penetration; she resented his pity; and pity was the only light in which he found the thought of her tolerable. He had thought to show her through his eyes widening vistas of beauty and grandeur; and instead he caught glimpses through hers of awful heights and depths of vacancy, peopled only by thinly veiled phantoms of darkness and horror. But she could not look with his eyes, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... sure-footed beast; but would stretch out his neck now and then to get a passing bite of the wheat which grew by the road side. I wished to get on to Boulogne to sleep, and therefore tried all his paces; but found his trotting scarcely tolerable by human feeling. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... lifetime occupied by the interests of the public. His own fortune has suffered. His children must provide for themselves. I am determined to get my own living, and to be dependent upon no one. With a tolerable share of common sense, I hope, in America, to be independent and free. Rather than live otherwise, I would wish to die ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... would naturally have followed the descending current and established themselves in the river as they have done now.] In the barbarism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair it during the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to have attended any of these ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... eagerly, "and I think the club-house is very comfortable. There are often some quite nice men staying there. If only father weren't so awfully peculiar, the place would be almost tolerable in the season. That reminds me," she went on, with a little sigh, "I must warn you about father. He's the most unsociable person that ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... obliged, for fear of her brother's displeasure, to pursue the same conduct. In fact, it is possible for a third person to be very intimate, nay even to live long in the same house, with a married couple, who have any tolerable discretion, and not even guess at the sour sentiments which they bear to each other: for though the whole day may be sometimes too short for hatred, as well as for love; yet the many hours which they naturally spend together, apart from all observers, furnish people ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... must therefore be regarded as meager in comparison with those of our imagination, though the dream does not renounce all claims to the restitution of logical relation to the dream thoughts. It rather succeeds with tolerable frequency in replacing these by ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... this, was not tolerable. There was an universal burst, almost a shout, of indignation from that assembly, the wonted mood of which was so stern, so cold, so gravely dignified, and silent. Many among the younger senators sprang to their feet, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings, to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants. Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election, nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the consecration of religion and of time, can make ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon |
