"Bearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doubt the Icelanders have thus wasted on poetical fantasies and visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room (bastofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful, and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household read, or sang, about far-away knights ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... tied with strings and flirted his yellow silk handkerchief for the entire evening. It was dreadful to Ethelyn, for she could see nothing agreeable in Richard's friends; indeed, their presence was scarcely bearable, and the proud look on her face was so apparent that the guests felt more or less ill at ease, while Richard was nearer being angry with Ethelyn than he had ever been. Will Parsons and Tim Jones seemed exceptions to the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... swept through him, and he sat down. He was going to make it! The cabin was hot, like a closed attic on a hot July day, but it was bearable. He got back to the port again and watched as Pegasus turned in lazy circles many miles in diameter. The earth was coming closer at a pretty good clip. He was almost comfortable now, knowing that Jerry Lipton ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... what you would say," replied the man. "It would be bearable here—in fact, it might be enjoyable were it not for the black shadow upon us. Rather it is a shadow which ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... go on alone, with naught of what makes life bearable; you will keep climbing higher by your vanity, your strength, and your deceit. But yet I know however high you climb you will never find peace. You will remember me, and your spirit will seek in vain for rest. You will not exist for me, you will not be even a memory; but even against your will ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not in general approve of discussing things with servants. But Nora had told her frequently how faithfully Kate looked after her and, as far as it was possible, made things bearable, so she felt she could make an exception ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... led her alone beside this resting-place: that was chance, or it was God. But now it seemed that otherwise it would henceforward not have been bearable. For with this first near touch of death, there had come, strangely hand in hand, her first vision of the Internal. The look of this spirit was not toward time, and over the body of this death there had descended the robe of a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "Was it part of the bargain that he should insult you, trample on you, make you lead a dog's life without a single friend to make it bearable?" ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... managed to get through the world without much of that unhappiness which usually follows ill-assorted marriages. At home she managed to keep the upper hand, but she did so in an easy, good-humoured way that made her rule bearable; and away from home she assisted her lord's political standing, though she laughed more keenly than any one else at his foibles. But the lord of her heart was her brother; and in all his scrapes, all his ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... responsible he should be made responsible to a responsible functionary. To be responsible to every fanatical ignoramus who chooses to prosecute him for exhibiting a cast of the Hermes of Praxiteles in his vestibule, or giving a performance of Measure for Measure, is mere slavery. It is made bearable at present by the protection of the Lord Chamberlain's certificate. But when that is no longer available, the common informer must be disarmed if the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... squatter's hut the old squaw sits by her hunter lord, and puffs at the corn-cob sweetness, and how by lonely ways the traveler rests and thinks of home, and in the blue smoke greets once more the faces of the loved, perhaps forever gone. He sees how the Esquimaux, with his hollow Walrus-tooth, makes bearable the stifling squalor of his den; or, sterner and graver still, some item of historic lore mingles rudely with his dreams, and elbows sharply the airy spirits of his smoke-engendered thoughts. Softly tremble in the delicate blue mist and the azure spirals from his old Virginia ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage while you're away—especially if she reads ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... weather has been so foggy that we began to consider ourselves as good as retired. But three days ago it began to become bearable again. We took good advantage of it. We were in our machines early in the morning and "worked" till 5:30 at night. I made five flights to-day. First, Wilhelm, as the observer, did some scout work, and later did some range-finding for the artillery. We had agreed ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... Quintilian are said to have derived polished witticisms from the device of double-meaning; now, however, it is rightly held in great contempt, so much so that men of taste not only do not hunt for puns but even avoid them. They are, one must admit, more bearable, or at least less objectionable when they come spontaneously; but anyone who brings out ones he has thought up or indicates that he himself is pleased with them is quite properly judged to be inexperienced ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... in their supposition that the assertion of superiority by one person necessarily inflicts wrong on another, whereas it is only the mastery obtained by certain men over others that makes the life of the civilized human creature bearable. The very servant who is insolent while performing his duty only dares to exhibit rudeness because he is sure of protection by law. All men are equal before the law. Yes—but how was the recognition of equality enforced? Simply by the power of the strong. No monarch in the world would ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... given way under his troubles if it had not been for this friendship; but life became bearable when he found some one to whom he could pour out his heart. The first time that he breathed a word of his difficulties, the good German had advised him to live as he himself did, and eat bread and cheese at home sooner than ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... her own mind, of Aunt Jane that chiefly worried her, the way that the little lady knew everything that was done, and everything that was touched in the house; but as long as Valetta took refuge with herself, and grumbled to her, it was bearable. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his escort, it seemed to make it more bearable to have someone to speak to. In a few minutes they reached the spot where she had sat the day before. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... o'clock we were dispersed once more to our various works and duties. If it was bearable outside, the hut would soon be empty save for the cook and a couple of seamen washing up the plates; otherwise every one went out to make the most of any glimmering of daylight which still came to us from the sun below the northern ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... I, "what can one do to relieve the monotony of this intolerable place? If the country about were agreeable—nay, if it were bearable! but as it is, I repeat, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... himself in the annotations he put under innumerable sketches he was allowed to make during his long period of confinement, which (through her interest, and no doubt through his own good conduct) was rendered as bearable to him as possible. These sketches (which are very extraordinary) and her Grace's MS. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... marches twice a week, the brigade going off at 5.30 a.m. and returning about 7.30 a.m., all in the cool of the morning or such bearable temperature as there was in the 24 hours' daily round in that month. During these exercises the troops had plenty of firing practice, being taught to blaze away at bushes, and occasionally at targets representing dervishes. In that way the remainder of the million of tip-filed ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... been a ray of light, however feeble, in the hold, he thought his condition would have been more bearable, for then he could have faced the lifeless clay and looked at it; but to know that it was there, within a foot of him, without his being able to see it, or to form any idea of what it was like, made the case terrible indeed. Of course he ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... could imagine—... But it is no use; I cannot write wisely on this matter. I suppose no human being was ever devoted to another more entirely than she; and that makes the change not less but more bearable. It seems as if she could not be gone quite; and that indeed is ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... mingled with the cold kindness of her cousins and their sharp reproaches, lasted three months. Sylvie's refusal to let her go to her little friends, backed by the necessity of beginning her education, ended the first phase of her life at Provins, the only period when that life was bearable to her. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... devil, then you know something at least of what eternal death is. You know how, in such moments, there is a worm in the heart, and a fire in the heart, compared with which all bodily torment would be light and bearable; a worm in the heart which does not die: and a fire in the heart which you cannot quench: but which if they remained there would surely destroy you. So intolerable are they, that you feel that you will actually and really die, in some strange unspeakable way, if you continue in that temper ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... spite of his hopeful words to Nance, he feared the brave lad was gone. And it might have swallowed Nance. And if it had—it might as well have him, too. For it was only thought of Nance that made life bearable to him. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... said calmly. "I merely thought that my presence would not do much good. However," he added, glancing at Nejdanov with a smile, "I will stay if you like. Even death is bearable in ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... a shade paler. Arguing about his own veracity was even less bearable than he had thought; his manner all at once ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... great distance, and they could not hope to reach it until the end of the day. The passage of the mountains must necessarily be performed during the next night. The sky was cloudy all day, and the temperature was therefore more bearable, but ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... at him with great affection, "I'm glad you didn't go, for my own sake. You and music make Dornton bearable." ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... and twenty-nine counts and barons—the representatives of the cities complained grievously that their attendance was reduced to a farce, since they were always out-voted, and hence obliged to accept the decisions of the other estates. They stated that their position was no longer bearable, and for the first time drew up an Act of Protest, which further complained of the delay in the decisions of the Imperial courts; of their sufferings from the right of private war, which was still allowed to subsist in defiance of the Constitution; ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... a strong glass of brandy, usually brought down the palpitation, and enabled me to set to work again as if nothing had happened. Indeed, as the eels get accustomed to skinning, so I got used to all this; and it became at last an old habit, and bearable. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... everlasting droning filled the ear. And what nasty creatures they were, forever cleaning their shiny wings and rubbing the ends of their forelegs together with the loathsome suggestion of little grave-diggers anointing their palms. To the woman, at least, these flies almost made bearable the realization that, at best, this stopping point could be only a temporary one, and that within a few hours a fresh start must somehow be made, with fresh dangers to ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... agreed that the ladies, with Oliver and Potto Jumbo, Mr Sedgwick and Tanda, should remain at the fort, in case any stray Malays might have failed to get off. It was important also to drag away the dead bodies as soon as possible. In a very few hours they would render the fort scarcely bearable; besides which they would be certain to attract beasts of prey. Tanda and Potto Jumbo undertook to perform this unpleasant work, and to bury them in some soft ground at the bottom of the hill. The rest of us then set off to the sea-shore, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... been an obstacle in the way? I hope you do not think so meanly of me, and that you and Priscilla will give me the only consolation I can have in our common sorrow—the feeling that I have been able to make her last days more comfortable and your sorrow more bearable. If you refuse, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... huge ledgers, delving and already fretting for Mickey. She stood laughing in his doorway, half piqued to find him so absorbed in his work, and so full of the boy he was missing, that he seemed to take her news that she was too busy to see him that night with quite too bearable calmness; but his earnestness about coming the following night worked his pardon, so Leslie left laughing to herself over the surprise ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... School was decidedly more bearable now, in the opinion of Genevieve, perhaps because it was a rainy month; but Genevieve preferred to think it was because of Miss Hart. It was strange, really, how much Miss Hart had improved as a teacher!—all the school agreed to that. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... the first ability as a layer down of definitions, as the Stoics think: but they are all pretty much alike, they give us only common notions, some one way, and some another.) But what is Chrysippus's definition? Fortitude, says he, is the knowledge of all things that are bearable: or an affection of the mind, which bears and supports everything in obedience to the chief law of reason, without fear. Now, though we should attack these men in the same manner as Carneades used to do, I fear they are the only real philosophers: for which of these definitions ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... unable to raise any cabal against Janice and Amy, but quite the contrary, made the situation only a degree more bearable for the two friends. Although the other girls did not join Stella Latham in mourning the poor girl who lived in Mullen Lane, the latter felt deeply the fact that she was considered different ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... this world's inexplicable government—was gnawing at his very heart-strings, and cankering their roots by unbelief. It is a speedy process—throw away faith with its trust for the past, love for the present, hope for the future—and you throw away all that makes sorrow bearable, or joy lovely; the best of us, if God withheld his help, would apostatize like Peter, ere the cock crew thrice; and, at times, that help has wisely been withheld, to check presumptuous thoughts, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had been Jennka's increased their steps; timorously glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear of death somehow subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in the drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease—a free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the cataract had searched out somewhere and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... almost soundlessly, the heart of the Bella Cuba began to beat, and she glided through the glimmering water. If only one could know exactly where and how to expect the blow, the thought that it might fall would be more bearable, the girl felt. But one of many things might happen to wreck their hopes; and failure now probably meant ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... did not resemble her mother in hasty moods, she was rather the subject of permanent impressions. Her mother's conduct had wounded her to the quick. She could no longer endure it, she thought. Hitherto, her father's love had rendered it bearable—but now, even that seemed powerless to keep her under the same roof as her mother. Where could she go? She would walk on, no matter in what direction; then, when she could walk no more, she might perhaps be calm ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... always dyspeptic. They are near of kin to my Sympathy Seekers, who are pale, light-haired creatures, continually making appeals for sympathy. But my Sympathy Finders are very near and dear to me. They are generally silent, melancholy men. They are always bearable, unless they chance to be in love with some other woman, and make me, along with a dozen other people, their one and only confidant. Then is my life made a burden. I am privately interviewed on all occasions, the more inopportune the better. I am cornered and made a vessel for his pent-up feelings. ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... cases of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 deg. C.).—Allg. med. cent. Zeit., ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... day of the man[oe]uvres had come. A light mist which veiled the autumn sun made the heat bearable. The exercises ended in the early forenoon, and, after a final parade, the troops marched off to their garrisons. The infantry were despatched in long railway-trains, while the mounted branches of the service covered the ground by moderate ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... I am not well—a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. "How flat, dull, and unprofitable," appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... thing new under the sun. One cause of this may be, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and that the history of the past, like a landscape travelled over, loses in review all the rugged and wearisome annoyances that rendered it scarcely bearable in the journey. But it is hardly worth while to speculate upon the causes of an absurdity which a little candid retrospection will do more to dissipate than whole folios of philosophy. We can easily understand a man who sighs that he was not born a thousand ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... time, and we felt quite like old veterans. We were "fed up" with marching around the city on parade, and we longed to get into the real fighting. For my part, I was heartily sick of the whole thing, and all that made it bearable was the close friendship I had formed with some of the boys in my platoon; about a dozen of them were my close friends. I shall name a few of these, so that you may recognize them when they appear farther on in my story; there were "Bink," Steve, Mac, Bob, Tom, ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... forefinger he stripped his purple brow of a row of glistening sweat-drops. "I'll have Zeelah fix up a bed where this glorious breeze will play on you. Mr. Anthony, that trade-wind blows just like that all the time—never dies down—it's the only thing that makes life bearable here—that and the whiskey. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... can be more truly merciful than to render life bearable to such hapless beings. . ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... extreme in things—logical extreme. This is why he is only partly human, from our standpoint. The human is so constructed that he can't stand excess in any direction very long and remain human. Everything has to be diluted, alloyed, temporized for him or it is not bearable—it will not work successfully. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... officer, have seen events in this place which even I, so much older and more experienced than you, cannot but deplore with all my heart, and I can well understand it if you have lost that joyousness in the fulfilment of your duties which alone often makes these duties bearable. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... and you look at the loving eyes closing for the last time, what comfort has your doubting friend to give you? Not a word. He leaves you alone with your dead, and he has robbed you of the only hope which makes death bearable—the resurrection unto eternal life. You come to your own dying bed; is there one of these doubting, scoffing faith-destroying friends who can bring peace or calm to your last hours? Will it be any comfort to you ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... insurrection' than the other, from whom the doctrine had been concealed. Or, in other words, that the first would rise against oppression, when the oppression had reached a pitch which to the second would still seem bearable. The answer to Hume's proposition, interpreted in this way, would be that if the doctrine of resistance be presented to the populace in its true shape,—if it be 'truth,' as he admits,—then the application of it in practice should be as little ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Mrs. Barton's rejecting all arrowroot but hers, which was genuine Indian, and carried away Sophy and Fred to stay with her a fortnight. These and other good-natured attentions made the trouble of Milly's illness more bearable; but they could not prevent it from swelling expenses, and Mr. Barton began to have serious thoughts of representing his case to a certain charity for the relief of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... impatience of a long-delayed start, we did not think of the hardships of the future, and in fair weather, when the stay on deck in the brisk breeze was extremely pleasant, as on that first morning, existence on board seemed very bearable; but when it rained, and it rained very often and very hard, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... familiar caresses in former years, but on such an occasion as the present, he felt that common propriety demanded the sacrifice of himself to some extent. He therefore allowed Annie to kiss him, and found the operation—performed as she did it—much more bearable than he had anticipated; and when Annie exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, "Oh, dear, dear papa, I did feel such a dreadful longing for you when the waves were roaring round us!" and gave him another squeeze, ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Europe and elsewhere made such a shift imperative. Yet they found most commanders in Europe still unaware of the Gillem Board Report and its liberalizing provisions, and little being done to encourage within the Army the sensitivity to racial matters that makes life in a biracial society bearable. Until the recommendations of the board were carried out and discrimination stopped, they warned the secretary, the Army must expect ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... and Jock were rolling over together with too much noise to be bearable; Grandmamma turned round with an expostulatory "My dears," Mamma with "Boys, please don't ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the slightest intention of fulfilling since the first month I was with you. You have never taken me to see a patient, you have never given me any instruction or advice whatever. Beside this, you must know that your wife treats me in a manner that is no longer bearable. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... menagerie. She belonged to the proper street—at the proper time of day. Any one acquainted with the species would have known at once that this private-car trip to Deadwood was to please the prosperous-looking gentleman with the side whiskers, and that it was made bearable only by the two smooth-shaven individuals in ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity of light bearable to our organism. ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... which it did not give him some pleasant sensation to remember. There was a little sadness in some of them, and more than once the sadness was mingled with something of humiliation. Yet even this last was bearable. Though he did not realise it, he was quite unable to think of Maria Consuelo without feeling some passing touch of happiness at the thought, for happiness can live with sadness when it is the greater of the two. He had no desire to analyse these sensations. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... his mother had reached the outer air again and were driving away, Jarvis burst out: "Something must be done! If Sally won't let you and Jo have her—and that wouldn't be getting her out of the city, only into a more bearable in-door atmosphere—she must be taken into the country. Jo's plan is perfectly feasible. A tent in that pine grove would do the business. Mother, I'm going to put one there. If Max doesn't like it, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... in this short study to analyze the specific forms of retardation which the Church exhibited to all of these branches of learning, whose only endeavor it was to search for the truth, to state the facts, and to alleviate and make more bearable man's sojourn on this earth. However, a few of the many instances of retardation on the part of the Church will ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... his country and his sovereign, relentlessly watchful through the dead monotony of the days. At his own urgent request he was given charge of the lonely prison, its solitude appearing to him the one bearable condition of life. He has his work to do and he does it well, and always between Count Sagan and his dreams stands the irrevocable figure of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... "Well, John Calhoun, you have grown very arbitrary and headstrong since your experiences in the World War. I shall acquiesce since most of my time will be taken up on the lecture platform, advocating woman suffrage. I suppose I can find the place bearable during the heated term if you make yourself a little more agreeable. I wish I had married your brother-in-law, John Cornwall, when he asked me; he at ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... a far later date, to read The Wild Duck, memories of the embarrassing household of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, with his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every compromise that makes life bearable. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... resist strangulation; and the apprehension of the jerk was so vivid that she seized her head in both hands as if to save it from being torn off her shoulders. "The drop given was fourteen feet." No! that must never be. She could not stand that. The thought of it even was not bearable. She could not stand thinking of it. Therefore Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to go at once and throw herself into the river off one ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... which was uppermost in her mind and steeled her soul and justified the worst, was not the last thing of which she had to complain—her daughter's wrong—but the long years of loneliness, the hundred, nay, the thousand, petty slights of the past, bearable at the time and in detail, but intolerable in the retrospect now hope was gone. She dwelt on these, and the thought of what was coming filled her with a fearful joy. She thought of them, and took the lamp and passed into the next room, and, throwing the light on the rough ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... bench for her, and here she read and dreamed as contentedly as if her "garden ground" had been fairy-land. Here, too, she invariably came when anything had gone wrong, when the endless troubles about money which had weighed upon her all her life became a little less bearable than usual, or when some act of discourtesy or harshness to her father had roused in her a tingling, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... sibilance foreran the villain. Least mutable of all, the hero swaggered on, virtuous without mawkishness, pugnacious without brutality. How sublime a destiny, to stand for morals and muscle to the generations of Hoxton, to incarnate the copy-book crossed with the "Sporting Times!" Were they bearable in private life, these monsters ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... was perfectly bearable. Involuntarily I began to think of its heat when the lava thrown out by Snfell was boiling and working through this now silent road. I imagined the torrents of fire hurled back at every angle in the gallery, and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... struck us, discussing idly the various mysteries and terrors that may lie behind this fact or this fable, that no doom or horror conceivable and to be defined in words could ever adequately solve this riddle; that no reality of dreadfulness could seem caught but paltry, bearable, and easy to face in comparison with this vague we know ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... discovering a violin on board, insisted on his taking a place on the musical programme rendered nightly in the salon. As might be expected, his violin won him friends among all of the music lovers on board ship, and life for Barry began once more to be bearable. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... for him in Harley Street; but it is doubtful whether she will long continue to do so. The last time Dick Ruthven was at home on leave he persuaded her that it was her bounden duty to endeavor to make civilian life bearable to him when he should attain captain's rank, and, in accordance with his father's wish, retire from the army, events which are expected to take place in a few ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... with force and directness, and when, as a reward for her aid, she was given a few minutes with the bat, to carefully regulated bowling from Wally, Norah's cup of joy was full. She was even heard to say that school might be bearable if they let you play cricket most of the time!—which was a great admission for Norah, who had kept her word rigidly about not mentioning the dreaded prospect before her. That she thought of it continually, Jim knew well and he and his ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... so they killed him, and it seemed to him that his soul fled his body. The ox-headed demon dragged him down into the nether regions, where he tasted all the tortures in turn. But Du Dsi Tschun remembered the words of the ancient. And the tortures, too, seemed bearable. So he did not scream ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Enticed on by these successes, we knelt down so as to break through a wider extent of the calcareous stratum; but our torches began to burn palely, and the close chamber, now filled with a thick smoke, was no longer bearable. Sumichrast complained of humming in his ears, and I also felt uncomfortable; so, much against our inclination, I gave the signal of departure. The lamp was dying out, and was filling the outer chamber ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... down here, the sun powerful after 10 o'clock, but Punkahs not necessary. This is the Head-Quarters of the Punjab Frontier force. A pity they do not have an English Regiment stationed here as it is a very pleasant place as regards climate. Snow in winter, and this the warmest time of the year quite bearable. Brigadier gone to the hills for the hot weather. Took in supplies of bread and butter and purchased a pair of chuplus or sandals for marching in, as boots hurt ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... sense of wrong, the want of intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand life, life becomes bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you understand it, everything changes. When you realise its meaning, its value, you can put up with the difficulties. And our work with regard to those around us is to bring that ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... Nepaul, and reside at Katmandu, was unusual, but bearable; the idea of a common beef-eater infringing the limits of a circle beyond which no British resident, much less traveller, had ever penetrated, was so monstrous a heresy on the part of the prime minister—so ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... He then took refuge at his chateau of Prangins in the canton Vaud in Switzerland, closely watched by the Bourbonists, who dreaded danger from every side except the real point, and who preferred trying to hunt the Bonapartists from place to place, instead of making their life bearable by carrying out the engagements ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... for a time, and then the uproar got bearable and gradually sank. There were intervals when one could hear the turmoil of the liberated flood as it rolled by in swollen fury. The intervals lengthened, and by and by Thirlwell got on his feet with a sigh ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the truth, though they may vibrate in that direction. Besides, it is certain that sometimes very manifest advances, such as any medical man would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now, when a man is positively suffering discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling, he is no proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor can appreciate. Tooth-ache extorts ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... early dusk that a restlessness came on, and an increase of the distress and oppression of breath, which he thought might be more bearable in his chair; and Mr. Audley, who had just come in, began with Felix to dress him, and prepare to move him. But just as they were helping him towards the chair, there was a sort of choke, a gasping struggle, his head fell on Felix's shoulder, the boy in terror managed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gyarus, but when the Prince pleads for him, and he is backed by the intercession of a Vestal Virgin of sanctity,—corresponding to a Christian nun or abbess of exemplary piety,—Silanus is removed to the more bearable place of exile, the island of Cythaera ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... going to say: How it was like with you all the years there? Bearable like?" Oh, Isak was soft at heart now; he asked her that, and wondered ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Ireland will be given power without responsibility, to England will belong responsibility without power. Nor will the unnatural subjection of a great, a flourishing, a wealthy, and a proud country to a weaker and poorer neighbour be rendered the more bearable by the knowledge that the ill-starred supremacy of Ireland means, in England, the equally unnatural and equally ominous predominance of an English faction, which, since it needs Irish aid, does not command England's confidence. Radicals or revolutionists will in the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... mind to what she read, but all the while his thoughts reaching out to what he would be doing if his life as worker were not blotted out. The call of his work tormented him all through the day, and the twilight was the time most bearable because it was an hour which had never been filled with the things of his work. In that short hour he sometimes, in slight measure found, if not peace, cessation from struggle. "This is what I would be doing now," he told himself, ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... bearable than otherwise,' Margaret answered, laughing again. 'He knows that I think so, too, and it's no reason why he should be always trying to keep out of ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... persistent hope to the thread which had been put in my hand, I was too conscious of the maze through which we must yet pass, before the light could be reached, to feel that lightness of spirit which in itself might have lessened the hours, and made bearable those days of forced inaction. To beguile the way a little, I made a complete analysis of the facts as they appeared to me in the light of this latest bit of evidence. The result was not strikingly encouraging, yet I will insert it, if only in proof of my diligence and the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... short summer holiday and rode into romance. One section of the book is a trifle too hilarious, coming perilously near to farce, but underlying the steady humour of it all is a perfectly consistent, even saddening, criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has imagination without ability; life is made bearable for him chiefly by the means of his poor little dreams and poses; he sees himself momentarily in the part of a detective, a journalist, a South African millionaire, any assumption to disguise the horrible reality ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... Mr. Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will advise me how I may sell 'The Witch.' I don't mind telling you why. My father has simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped—be made bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I were in a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know of any people who care for that sort of horse, I'll be delighted to enter ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... to test the comfort of this bed in its primitive state, for our servants had brought with them everything that could render our quarters bearable if there were any foundation ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... forgetting," he said; "it is time to go home." And they went back together in silence, which was more bearable than speech just then. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... a while without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our first interview, I making a show of arranging papers on my desk. At length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome |
