"Discomfort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every respect the accession of another Minister was to be desired. Pitt closed this painful correspondence with a letter, also of 3rd February, requesting a pension of L1,500 a year for Long, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, whose private means were so slender as to leave him in discomfort if he should resign. The King briefly assented to Pitt's retirement and to Long's pension. To Long's services the King accorded a few words of thanks: to those of Pitt not a word. This is the more remarkable as Pitt was then suffering from ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... not speak till we were half a mile from the house, and then came a hill, and we walked, because I feared to discomfort my companion. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... very grateful because we contrived to cash out of our own pockets a twenty-dollar express check for him. He was flat broke with his pocket bulging with checks and was living in a pension at six francs a day. There is going to be a lot of discomfort and suffering unless some money is made available pretty soon. The worst of it is that this is the height of the tourist season and Europe is full of school-teachers and other people who came over for short trips with meager resources carefully ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Agricola with something like the shame of repentance. His character seems to have been naturally proud and independent, but unequal to heroism in action. Like almost all literary minds he shrunk from facing peril or discomfort, and tried to steer a course between the harsh self-assertion of a Thrasea [43] and the cringing servility of the majority of senators. This led him to become dissatisfied with himself, with the world, and with Divine Providence, [44] and has left a stamp of profound and rebellious ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... which the natural positions of subject and biographer are reversed, the man of genius writing the life of the unimportant friend, and the fact that the friend was exceedingly lovable in no way lessening one's discomfort in the face of such an anomaly. Carlyle stands on an eminence altogether removed from Sterling, who stands, indeed, on no eminence at all, unless it be an eminence, that (happily) crowded bit of ground, where the bright and courageous and lovable stand together. We Germans ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... manner into a supply train, also carrying its own water, food and water for the half-battalion of the escort and the 2,000 artificers and platelayers, and the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda-water, and cigarettes which enable the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort. And presently the empty trains would depart, reversing the process of their arrival, and vanishing gradually along a line which appeared at last to turn up into the air and run at a tangent into an ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... that night and morning was so harsh, so virulent and so swift that it left the inmates of the Old Mill as though stunned. Instead of uniting them in a common emotion, it scattered them, giving each of them an impression of discomfort and uneasiness. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman's recollection of the speaker's abstract opinions. So no more was said by either on the subject of hair, eyes, or development. Elfride's mind had been impregnated with sentiments of her own smallness to an uncomfortable degree of distinctness, and her discomfort was visible in her face. The whole tendency of the conversation latterly had been to quietly but surely disparage her; and she was fain to take Stephen into favour in self-defence. He would not have been so unloving, she said, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... slapped his leg. Westover saw that he had on long India-rubber boots, which came up to his knees, and he gave a wayward thought to the misery they would be on an August day to another man; but Whitwell was probably insensible to any discomfort from them. "When a man's mindin' his own business any government's good, I guess. But I should like to prowl round some them places where they had the worst scenes of the Revolution, Ever been in the Place de la Concorde?" Whitwell gave it the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by all who have recognised the indubitable fact that religious belief is undergoing a sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety, vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the fermentation of the change is felt, who have abandoned their old moorings, and have not yet reached the haven for which they are steering, cannot but be indistinct ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of duty, and the ruling desire to be useful, are cardinal elements of success. It is at the trumpet call which duty sounds, that all the nobler attributes of manhood spring into life; and duty is something that must be done without regard to discomfort, sacrifice, or death. It must be done in secret, as well as in public; and according to the measure of our faithfulness in this respect, will be the real measure of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... windows, as he listened and shuffled his feet for warmth in the straw of the floor. [No one, by the way, can understand the incessant harping of our early poets upon May-time and the return of summer until he has pictured to himself the dark and cold discomfort of a Middle-English winter.] These three poor scholars fed habitually on bread, with soup and a little wine, tasting meat only on Sundays and feasts of the Church. Yet one of them, Richard of Chichester, who lived to become a saint, saepe retulit quod nunquam ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... centre of a little crowd of village boys; his golden head was bare in the blazing sun, but the crop of curls seemed thick enough to protect him from its rays, and he was far too engrossed in his occupation to heed any discomfort from the heat. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... gauntlets and swung it furiously on to the burning strip. The flame lessened, rose again when I raised the glove, but died out altogether after I had hit it twice more. The load of fear left me, and I discovered an intense discomfort, wedged in as I was between the two crossed bracing-struts. Five minutes passed before I was able, with many a heave and gasp, to ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... discomfort, and the blankets, etc., stored in Winchester's cabin often warmed these two honest hearts, as with pitying hands they wrapped them ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... command them; but consideration for Eustace and Gaston induced him to spare the young gentleman a sojourn which he would have regarded as so far from enviable. Nor was the leech more desirous of a lengthened stay with a patient whom he suspected to be unable to requite him for the discomfort which he might endure in his service. He therefore pronounced Sir Eustace to stand in no further need of his attentions; and recommending rest, and providing him with good store of remedies, he saddled his mule to accompany Sir ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... room flicker; but the king heeded it not. He had completed his toilet and drunk his chocolate; now he was working. It did not disturb him that his room was cold, that the candle on his table gave but a poor light, and even seemed to increase the appearance of discomfort in his apartment; it gave sufficient light to enable him to read the letters which lay upon his table, and which had arrived the previous day. His ministers might sleep—the king waked and worked. He read every letter and petition, and wrote a few words of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... first, was a dirty, coal-spattered shed with dim recesses, for it was lighted on one side only, and its temperature was somewhere below freezing. Surely he could not be blamed for a tempered enthusiasm! But for me, all the dirt and cold and discomfort were blotted out, and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen forging her way across blue water in the South Seas. Treasure Island, alas, was as yet unwritten; but among my father's books were two old volumes in which I had hitherto taken no interest, with crude ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... they began to realize that a soldier's life was not all beer and skittles. They were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call "Paythans," and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night, but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march said, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage-it is a run, you may almost count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but don't expect them, and you won't add a sense of disappointment to one of discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that north or south of 35 degrees north and south latitude there exists no such thing as ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... de Salinas, his uncle, appointed him governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands, because of the arrival at that juncture of news of the death of Don Pedro de Acuna. Without stopping to consider the discomfort and lack that he was causing his family, and the short time in which his successor would arrive, he accepted and went to take charge of the said duties. During the period of his government, he made peace with the Mindanaos, and reenforced the kingdom ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... stool at Mistress Mary's feet, looked up at her with a dull, uncomprehending smile. Why were those beloved eyes full of tears? She could not be displeased, for she had been laughing a moment before. She hardly knew why, but Mistress Mary's wet eyes tortured her; she made an ejaculation of discomfort and resentment, and taking the corner of her apron wiped her new friend's face softly, gazing at her with a dumb sorrow until the smile came back; then she took out her string and her doll and played by ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yourself; but it is much more amusing—for awhile—to go your own way. I had lunched, and was prepared to battle with the desert for several hours. It was now past mid-day, and notwithstanding the altitude, the heat was very great. But for the discomfort that we endure from the sun's rays we are more than amply compensated by the pleasure that the recollection brings us in winter, when the north wind is moaning through the sunless woods and the dreary fog hangs over the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... this port of Cavite. They left Nueva Espana late, and the vendavals set in early. Hence the voyage has been one of hardships, and it was a great mercy of God that they were able to make the islands, although not little is the discomfort and not few the additional expenses that have been incurred because of their inability to make this port. What I grieve over most is to see the inadequacy of the aid, which does not reach two hundred and fifty thousand pesos, while I informed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... purpose conquer them. Occasionally one of these grows so angry and so violent that the surrounding inertia quickens into purpose—the purpose of making an end of this agitation which is serving only to increase the general discomfort. And the agitator is trampled down, disappears, perhaps silently, perhaps with groan or shriek. Continue to look at this crowd, so pitiful, so terrible, such a melancholy waste of incalculable power—continue to observe ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Perhaps after an hour or two of this choking heat the hot wind, with its cloud of dust, passes away southward, and we have a deliciously cool evening, which we enjoy all the more contrasted with the afternoon's discomfort. The longest time I have known the hot wind to last was two days, but it is usually over in a few hours. The colonials say that these winds are even of use, by blowing the insect tribes out to sea; and that but ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... thing to avoid is stiffness or discomfort of any kind in the pose. At the same time one must have a gracious air, and while feeling perfectly solidly poised on the feet, must make the impression of a certain lightness and freedom from all ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... Though his brilliant courage and his impetuous activity fitted him admirably for such enterprises as that of Cadiz, he did not possess the caution, patience, and resolution necessary for the conduct of a protracted war, in which difficulties were to be gradually surmounted, in which much discomfort was to be endured, and in which few splendid exploits could be achieved. For the civil duties of his high place he was still less qualified. Though eloquent and accomplished, he was in no sense a statesman. The multitude indeed still continued to regard even ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in Rome. Costantino was still in bed, his son Fiovo and his nephew Sanguineo were with him attempting to comfort him; he was pointing out that it is little use trying to comfort a man who is, and has been for twelve years, enduring such extreme discomfort. They were interrupted by a messenger who announced the return of the captain ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... to this little town on the river, thinking that we might not have done it entire justice, because of the discomfort of the rainy day. And while we did not, it is true, find anything of great value to record, nor anything in the way of bells to gloat over, still our rather dismal impression of the little town in the drizzling rain as we last saw it, was quite removed and replaced by a picture ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... seems to have been averse from danger; and it must be admitted that the dangers to which a public man was exposed, in those days of conflicting tyranny and sedition, were of a most serious kind. He could not bear discomfort, bodily or mental. His lamentations, when in the course of his diplomatic journeys he was put a little out of his way, and forced, in the vulgar phrase, to rough it, are quite amusing. He talks of riding a day or two on a bad Westphalian road, of sleeping on straw for one night, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... matter of exercise in the open air, as walking, riding, driving, but the prime reason is mainly a climatic one, uniform habits of exercise being more easily kept up in that climate than in this, and being less exhaustive, one day with another. You can walk there every day in the year without much discomfort, and the stimulus is about the same. Here it is too hot in summer and too cold in winter, or else it keys you up too tight one day and unstrings you the next; all fire and motion in the morning, and all listlessness and ennui in the afternoon; a spur one ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... flat, for Jack was wholly absorbed by the pain in his feet and ankles, as the blood was being forced into the congested veins. Dade led the white horse close, to save him the discomfort of hobbling to it, and waited until Jack was in the saddle before he vaulted upon the tricky-eyed buckskin. He led the way down into a shallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the 10th November we set out for our last taste of the war, little thinking that our hours of danger and discomfort were now numbered. The Battalion was advanced guard to the Brigade, which was moving forward via Pommeroeul, Hautrage, ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... anything to counteract sleep, the rule was to read with difficulty by nine, without much comprehension by quarter past nine, and either be asleep or go to bed by half past nine. The 3 grain dose of caffeine repeatedly obviated all this discomfort up to ten o'clock, but did not prevent the habitual, prompt, and sound sleep, from the time of going to bed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... in one of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's stories of a night in an Indian city when the dog star rages. Luridly, but vigorously, the author brings home to you the odious discomfort, the awful suffering, and, finally, the morose anger and almost homicidal fury, which the sweltering light produces in the waking soldiers. This would have been something like the temper of the House of Commons on June 18th, if that assembly had not recently discovered ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... cross in a row-boat was not a dangerous undertaking. But squalls at some seasons and floating ice at others were things to be feared. More than one instance is recorded where boats were crushed and passengers drowned, or saved only by scrambling upon ice-floes. After a week or ten days of discomfort and danger the jolted and jaded traveller reached New York. Such was a journey in the most highly civilized part of the United States. The case was still worse in the South, and it was not so very much better in England and France. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... to shake off the ruffians who beset him, and two more had come out from their concealment when he thought he was making some progress in freeing himself from their grasp. As soon as his wrists were ironed he realized that resistance was useless, and that it could only increase his discomfort. It was a terrible calamity to have fallen into the power of a man so brutal and unscrupulous as Captain Flanger, bent upon revenging himself for the mutilation of his most prominent facial member. He was certainly ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... RADICAL CURE OF HERNIA.—The inconveniences and discomfort caused by even the best-adjusted trusses or bandages, the unsatisfactory support they afford, and the risk of their slipping and allowing the hernia to escape, have given rise to many attempts to ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... wandering aimlessly over the old town. The wind was bitterly piercing and a fog hung over the canal but I was not altogether aware of bodily discomfort. My mind, trying to adjust itself to new conditions, was in a haze, staggering back and forth from the consciousness of regained freedom to servitude and ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... wife had fought along in their new house, hiding their discomfort from each other, and abiding the slow degrees by which their dwelling should change into a home. But before that change was worked, the woman fell under a paralytic stroke, and their savings, on which they had just contrived to live, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... invincible repugnance for what would be so tremendous a calumny on human nature, if the book were meant to be a picture of human nature as a whole. "I count Rochefoucauld's Maxims," says one critic, "a bad book. As I am reading it, I feel discomfort; I have a sense of suffering which I cannot define. Such thoughts tarnish the brightness of the soul; they degrade the heart." Yet as a faithful presentation of human selfishness, and of you and me in so far as we happen to be mainly selfish, the odious mirror has its uses by ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... "At this time [Aug., 1554] there was so many Spanyerdes in London that a man shoulde have mett in the stretes for one Inglisheman above iiij Spanyerdes, to the great discomfort of the Inglishe nation. The halles taken up for Spanyerdes."—Chron. Q. Jane and ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of those that serve as a bed, which Sleep little visits, for one who may watch through the night over some helpless sufferer—a woman's shawl thrown carelessly over its hard narrow bolster;—all, in short, betraying that pathetic untidiness and discomfort which says that a despot is in the house to whose will order and form are subordinate;—the imperious Tyranny of Disease establishing itself in a life that, within those four walls, has a value not to be measured by its worth to the world ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... short time after our ride through this district, a stranger was killed. It is very unfair to refuse foreigners the permission to carry any arms through such dangerous parts, when it is considered a disgrace to go unarmed by the inhabitants. Our saddles, too, were beginning to cause us much discomfort. After the first few hours on a Turkish saddle, every movement of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Bremen for New York via Southampton, found the brief period of their stay at the latter port almost unendurable; and while some paced the wet decks impatiently, others grumbled both loudly and deeply in the cabins, or shut themselves up in their state-rooms in sulky discomfort. Those who remained on deck had at least the amusement of watching for the steamboat which was to bring the Southampton passengers—a pastime which, however, being indefinitely prolonged, began to grow wearisome. It came at last—a wretched little vessel, rather smaller ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... uncomfortable and distasteful. So pleasant a vision as that gleaming up at him between wet brown hair and wet brown boa should have evoked only associations as pleasing; but each effort to fit her image into his past resulted in the same memories of boredom and a vague discomfort... ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... not. It used to be extremely prominent at one time, and was the cause of much misery to myself and discomfort to every one about me—my lady friends especially ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... was not to be dissuaded, even when the impressionable and experimental Becky tried his storage system and suffered keen discomfort before her penny was restored to her by a resourceful fellow traveler who thumped her right lustily on the back until her crowings ceased and the coin was ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... violently. The metal board was wired. Thenceforth every move in the game he must play with the metal men would complete the circuit and send the biting needles through his frame. It was delicately gauged, a nerve-racking discomfort without definite pain, a thing to snap the dreadful tension of a man's endurance ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... avoided in the inland passages of the Straits of Magellan and the Suez Canal. We have encountered no continuous stormy weather, except during the four days preceding our arrival at Yokohama. We have suffered discomfort from heat and detention in calms, but storms have disturbed us seldom, and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... 13 or 14 to the age of forty-five or fifty it is a monthly reminder to woman that she is a woman, that she is a creature of sex; and, while to many women this periodically recurring function is only a source of some annoyance or discomfort, to a great number it is a cause of pain, headache, suffering, or complete disability. Man has no such phenomenon to annoy him practically his ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... began his academic career with an initiation ceremony which varied in different countries and at different dates, but which, so far as we know, always involved feasting and generally implied considerable personal discomfort. The designation, "bejaunus" or bajan, which signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... position of my head and throat, always caused me to froth at the mouth more or less. Some people think it very fine to see this, and say, "What fine spirited creatures!" But it is just as unnatural for horses as for men to foam at the mouth; it is a sure sign of some discomfort, and should be attended to. Besides this, there was a pressure on my windpipe, which often made my breathing very uncomfortable; when I returned from my work my neck and chest were strained and painful, my mouth and tongue tender, and ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... paid little heed to it, since it gave him no pain and little more than a passing discomfort. It started, in fact, as a small hard cyst low down at the back of the right thigh, incommoding him when he bent his knee. He called it "a nut in the flesh," and tried once or twice to get rid of it by squeezing ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... attention, insomuch, that most of those who have visited the country have been struck by the extraordinary contrast between the neat and clean appearance of their fields, in which the plants rise in even rows, and not a weed is to be seen, and the universal air of rudeness, slovenliness, and discomfort which ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... was the growing discomfort of my attitude which produced this backsliding. My night's rest and the 'ascent from the bath' had, in fact, done little to prepare me for contact with sharp edges and hard surfaces. But Davies had suddenly ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... commander towards the same ravine where, about four years before, they had seen poor Zeppa disappear among the recesses of the mountain. Redford felt a little surprise, and more than a little discomfort, at the peculiar conduct of his captain; but he comforted himself with the thought that if he should attempt any violence, there was a brace of pistols in his belt, and a cutlass at his side. He even for a moment meditated using the pistols ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tunnel-like mouth of my dim cave the day reared itself in a wall of blinding sunshine. After a time I crawled to the entrance, and, for the sake of greater discomfort, lay down in the burning sunshine on a narrow ledge of rock. It positively baked me, that terrible sun, and the more it hurt me the more I delighted in it, or in myself rather, in that I was thus the master of my flesh and superior ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... between them and sleeping in a park, had every reason to be panic-stricken. But to explain the hysteria of the hundred thousand other Americans is difficult—so difficult that while they live they will still be explaining. The worst that could have happened to them was temporary discomfort offset by adventures. Of those they experienced they ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... hers—not Helen's. Different with the latter, and far more bitter the emotion that stirs within her person, scalding her heart. Little cares she what sort of house she is hitherto to dwell in, what she will have to wear, or eat. The scantiest raiment, or coarsest food, can give no discomfort now. She could bear the thought of sheltering under the humblest roof in Texas—ay, think of it with cheerfulness—had Charles Clancy been but true, to share its shelter along with her. He has not, and that is an end ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... from tightness of breath now, and constantly felt a weight on her chest, which her respiration had difficulty in lifting. A sort of constraint and vague discomfort, caused by this, made itself felt throughout her whole system, attacking her nerves, taking from her all vital energy and all inclination to move about, keeping her crushed and submissive, without any strength to fight against it or ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... told me to try fighting him a while with the light drag and the thumb-brake. So far only the heavy drag had frozen. I tried Dan's idea, to my exceeding discomfort; and the result was that the swordfish drew far away from us. Presently the reel froze solid. The handle would not turn. But with the drag ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Gentlemen of England have shown from time immemorial, through peace and war, by land and sea, in every country and climate of the habitable globe. Jack is a child of that Empire on which the sun never sets, and if he live he is like to have larger opportunities of bearing discomfort than was afforded by the wooly worry of his bottle-green leggings. I am in good hopes that he will not ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... spectacle of a pair of thin black legs descending one fence, scudding across the yard to the accompaniment of a terrified moaning, and scrambling madly over the other. At her own back-door Maudie collapsed on the step, and, to the intense discomfort and annoyance of her father, had her first fit ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... baseless enough, but strong to colour a girl's life with all the brightness of a thousand dawns. There had been rare potentialities in those days, anything might happen, something would happen. The little Emeline Cox, moving between the dreary discomfort of home and the hated routine of school, might surprise all these dull seniors and school-mates some day! She might become an actress, she might become a great singer, she might make ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... of them survive, and to this day occupy the soil which their privations and valor assisted in achieving. On their removal here, they brought with them no aspirations or projects but such as were loyal to the Constitution of Mexico. They repelled the Indian savages; they encountered every discomfort; they subdued the wilderness, and converted into cultivated fields the idle waste of this now prolific territory. Their courage and enterprise achieved that which the imbecility of your countrymen had either neglected, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... period arrives a girl or woman has a feeling of discomfort and lassitude, there is a sense of weight, and a disclination for society. Menstruation should not, however, be regarded as a nuisance; a girl's friends respect her most when she is "unwell." She should keep more than usually quiet while the flow continues, which ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... wandering about the house evidently bored for want of something to do, and that the dining- room, where he would have been much more out of the way, was empty and quite in order, I failed at first to understand the reason for his deliberate choice of discomfort. I, however, kept my reflections to myself, and inquired after the ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... apostle of English notions, talks of the moral lessons to be acquired by fielding out or by patient batting. Compulsory games at school are practically unknown; nobody plays unless he wants to; so that the duffer does not experience the questionable moral advantage of physical discomfort and frequent humiliation, and the naturally painstaking or excellent athlete gets no more than his fair chance of exercising his gifts. And these are less likely to have an undue importance in their possessor's eyes, because they will not of themselves lead him to a position of great ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... narrower days; one paralysed the other. It might be gathered from the slight tone of patronage in the address of youth to age that the advantage lay with the former; but polite conversation, at best, was sustained with discomfort. Such considerations, however, were far from operating with the Milburns. Mrs Milburn would have said that they were characteristic of quite a different class of people; and so ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... had no appetite for a meal, was shut close in her own chamber, and refused all service. Nell laughed and bade me fall to. I obeyed, being hungry in spite of my discomfort. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the wind were to change and blow it all this way?" asked Nigel, with very pardonable feelings of discomfort. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... night came there were no blankets, and it was cold and the ground soaked. The men lay down together as closely as they could pack themselves, but it was an uncomfortable night. Under such hardships men become impatient and reckless, and prefer a fight to the discomfort. We occupied this ground next day. Towards night a very hard rain came down, which gave us another rinsing. We moved back a piece where there were large fresh brush piles. These we fired and, while they lasted we had comfortable warmth. Then we lay down on the wet ground and courted ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... deal of discussion of the best mode of spending the summer, and the course of the people who go to Europe, instead of submitting to the discomfort and extortion of American hotels, is for the most part greatly commended. The story told about the hotels and lodging-houses is the same every year. The food is bad, the rooms uncomfortable, and the charges high. The fashion, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... and storing up for the future. I punish excess in fruit eating as in everything else by prompt discomfort and pain." ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... should be taken in selecting shoes to secure a proper fit, and by giving shoes occasional attention much discomfort and complaint will ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... unhappiness, and had no idea that she was really and deeply hurt at not being believed. But, as it became more and more plain during the evening in her every motion and look, that, although she tried to amuse herself with her toys, her heart was too vexed and troubled to enjoy them, her nurse's discomfort grew and grew. When bedtime came, she undressed and laid her down, but the child, instead of holding up her little mouth to be kissed, turned away from her and lay still. Then nursie's heart gave way altogether, ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... and soon returned in triumph to build a glorious fire, which drew all forlorn wanderers to its hospitable circle. A motley assemblage; but mutual danger and discomfort produced mutual sympathy and good will, and a general atmosphere of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... to claim—and also to reward," she answered me with a warmth that gave me a great discomfort. "And how did you escape from the General into feminine society on your very first day? Wasn't there work for you at the Capitol? I understand that they are expecting that French Commissioner very soon now." She ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... risk, I mean the physical peril and hardship and discomfort, don't amount to—that." He snapped his fingers. "It was only the unending desolation that hurt; it was the separation from you that punished me—the thought ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the Twenty-Second Congress, Mr. Clay, on his return to Ashland, put into execution a project he had long contemplated of visiting the Eastern cities. At that period even an excursion of one thousand miles was a serious affair, and attended with great discomfort. Wherever Mr. Clay went he was received with enthusiasm. Receptions, public dinners, and fetes succeeded each other in all the principal cities. In Baltimore, in Wilmington, and in Philadelphia, he was entertained at balls and banquets. In New York he was the guest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... aware, in some mysterious fashion, of the deep longing with which he longed for sight or sense of her, to assure him that—in spite of qualms and indecisions—he had chosen aright. Conviction grew that directly the veil of sleep fell he would see her. It magnified his insomnia from mere discomfort to a baffling inimical presence withholding him from her:—till utter weariness blotted out everything; and even as he hovered on the verge of sleep, she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the pressure of poverty. Halve the income of a rich man, you oblige him to retrench; he must give up his yacht, his carriage, or other luxuries; but such retrenchment, though it may wound his pride, will not cause him great personal discomfort. But halve the income of a well-paid mechanic, and you reduce him and his family at once to the verge of starvation. A drop from 25s. to 12s. 6d. a week involves a vastly greater sacrifice than a drop from L500 to L250 a year. A working-class family, however ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... that my resolution was weakening, though my captain let no meal-hour pass without doing his best to weaken it, and more than once had brought me a message from mademoiselle herself begging me to join them at table. No; I was as fixed as ever, and, in a way, enjoying my own discomfort, since to pose as a martyr ever brings with it a certain satisfaction which ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... of the young men cared to be thrown into convulsions by the innocent-looking lass, who seemed to feel no discomfort. ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and there was a hurt look in his eyes. Audrey put out her hand to him, but he did not seem to see it; he only muttered something that sounded like 'Good-morning,' as he lifted his cap and went back to the gate. Audrey walked on very fast, but her cheeks would not cool, and a miserable feeling of discomfort harassed her. She was vexed with him, but still more with herself. Why need she have taken alarm so quickly? It was not like her to be so missish and disagreeable. Why had she been so cold, so ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... taken into his system were never eradicated in the life-time of my grandfather, a 'breaking out,' or rash, appearing every spring, greatly to his annoyance and discomfort." ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... us there, entirely undigested, including Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson, against whom, at that period, I entertained a strong prejudice by reason of our divergent views upon the subject of spelling. Even in this hour of our mutual discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone, but persisted in asking me how I spelt Jonah. Nobody was looking, so I kicked him. He sprang up and came after me. I tried to run away, but became wedged between Hop-o'-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar. I suppose our tearing about must have hurt the dragon, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... it in the last six years," she answered, "as I have learned to love many things that I once hated. Oh, this wind is good when it blows over the ploughed fields, and yet between city streets it would bring only dust and discomfort." ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... sleep. No one really suffered, any discomfort just showed them how soft they were getting with easy living. Considering everything, they were coming along just fine. And in a few days everything would be all right again. They went to sleep thinking ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... at a very low ebb. She was still touring the provinces, and heartily sick of all the discomfort involved. Dingy lodgings, hurried train journeys, much bickering and jealousy in the company with which she was acting, and a great deal of domestic worry over that handsome, extravagant mother, who had once taken her, in company with ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... It became the fashion to regard her as a muse, and she, who had felt oppressed by Stefan's lover-like deification, now found her friends, too, conspiring to place her on a pedestal. Essentially simple and modest, she suffered real discomfort from the cult of adoration that surrounded her. Coming from a British community which she felt had underestimated her, she now found herself made too much of. A smaller woman would have grown vain amid so much admiration; Mary only became inwardly more humble, while outwardly carrying ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... at Warrenton was anything but agreeable. The cold northwest winds swept through our camps, carrying chilly discomfort everywhere. The men shivered over their log fires; but while the fitful wind drove the smoke and fire into their faces, it froze their backs. At our head-quarters, as we drew closely about our fire, dreading equally the chilly winds and the provoking ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... last in a purple silk gown, and marched to the carriage without the slightest sign of the discomfort she really felt; but that was no wonder, belonging, as she did, to a sex which can walk not only smiling but jauntily, though dead lame on stilts, as you may see any day ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... external, but it may be accompanied with a keen sense of dishonor. Isolation, also, may, to a pupil, who is sensitive to honor, be a severe blow to self-respect. But a punishment founded entirely on the sense of honor would be wholly internal, and have no external discomfort attached ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... is now working out, on her head, at the bottom of that stream! QUEEN. Yes, but when I banished her, I gave her all the pleasant places of the earth to dwell in. I'm sure I never intended that she should go and live at the bottom of a stream! It makes me perfectly wretched to think of the discomfort she must have undergone! LEILA. Think of the damp! And her chest was always delicate. QUEEN. And the frogs! Ugh! I never shall enjoy any peace of mind until I know why Iolanthe went to live among the frogs! FLETA. Then why not summon ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and dilettante accomplishments, and Mrs. Jellyby, the philanthropist, whose eyes "see nothing nearer" than Borrioboola-Gha, on the banks of the far Niger, and never dwell to any purpose on the utter discomfort of the home of her husband and children. Characters of this kind no one ever delineated better than Dickens. That Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist, who had sat for the portrait of Skimpole, was not altogether flattered by the likeness, is comprehensible ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Colonel possessed a strong constitution and happened to be lucky. His old friend and physician, if called professionally, had a way of beginning his examinations in this wise: "Well, John, what you reckon ails you?" The Colonel would then give a diagnosis as suggested to him by a night of discomfort. "Well, well! You must feel right bad, John! What you reckon I'd better give you?" The Colonel would then name some nostrum, also decided upon during the long night. Old Doctor Meal would open his saddle-bags and mix it, along with a toddy to make it palatable; then he would build ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... rather loved a litter of periodicals, chiffons, broken packets of cigarettes, tobacco and half-eaten fruit on the tables. A picture askew never attracted her attention. To remain in the house, dressed in her out-of-door clothes, seemed to her vain extravagance and discomfort. A wrapper and slippers, the more soiled and shapeless the better, were the only indoor wear. Andrew deplored her lack of literary interest. She would read the feuilletons of the Petit Journal and the Matin in a desultory fashion; but she could not concentrate ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... raving lunatic arrived at the Castle in dress clothes and his right mind, whereon Ida promptly repeated her thrilling history, somewhat to the subsequent discomfort of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... was terrific, but Muriel's courage never wavered. She endured it with unfaltering resolution, hour after hour reckoning the dwindling miles that lay before them, passing over all personal discomfort as of no account, content only to be ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... had made for itself under the dividing fence to roam over the neighboring lawn. On this day he was taking his%c-customed ramble, when something startled him, and he ran, not back to his hole, but to our fence, through which he squeezed himself, evidently to his own great discomfort; for once in our yard, and under the refuge of a small bush he found there, nothing would lure him back, though every effort was made to do so, both by the small boy to whom he belonged, and the old serving-man or gardener, who ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... with a white-washed ceiling traversed by wooden beams. Within this compartment, and leaving but a narrow, circumscribing border, was a sort of cattle-pen, into which the paupers crushed, awaiting amid discomfort and universal jabber the divine moment. The single jet of gas-light depending from the ceiling flared upon the strange simian faces, and touched them into a grotesque picturesqueness ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... discomfort," he said, with a shake of the head, and his slow French gave his words more meaning than they perhaps deserved. "I regret this. It is hard for me to bear, for it is new to me to be a burden. But what can I do? I cannot go away. I am not enamored of this voyage, for I do not like ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... rained for a week down at Shrimpton; 'Tis zero or less in the shade; You can paddle your feet in the principal street And bathe on the stony parade; But still on our holiday pleasures No thoughts of discomfort intrude, As we whisper, "This sight is a bit of all right," For the sea's in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... way out, without much risk, but some discomfort. You could strike south-east to the Bird Reefs, take a small boat, and get over to the mainland. As soon as the blockade is off, the yacht can take your luggage around. The trip would be rough for you, but not dangerous. Not as dangerous as staying ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tremendous commotion on deck: blowing of whistles, roaring of steam, playing of bands, bumping of trunks and boxes, and finally the steady pulsation of the engines as the big ship stood out to sea. After nine days of discomfort in the stuffy steerage and thirty-six hours of downright misery while crossing the stormy North Sea, Inga found herself once more in the land of her birth. Full of humiliation and shame she met her husband at the railroad station, and prepared herself ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Aconitum napellus, to be followed by Ignatia and Sulphur in the order in which they are here given. These are the usual remedies for thread worms. For round worms, whose presence in the stomach is indicated by great thinness, sickness and discomfort, and pain in the stomach, Aconitum napellus, Cina, Ignatia and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of his coming ill, Not greatest cause of her discomfort were, She saw his blood from his deep wounds distil, Nor what he suffered could she bide or bear: Besides, report her longing ear did fill, Doubling his danger, doubling so her fear, That she concludes, so was her courage lost, Her wounded lord was ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... generally neglected; that when the camp was moved they suffered from cold; that their sight was dim, so that they could not see far; that their teeth were gone, so that they could not chew their food. Only discomfort and misery await the old. Much better, while the body is strong and in its prime, while the sight is clear, the teeth sound, and the hair still black and long, to die in battle fighting bravely. The example of successful warriors would be held up to them, and the boys urged to emulate their brave ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... eight years had its pleasures and its troubles; certainly much discomfort and a lot of disagreeable work. During the working season, April to November, my time was mostly spent with the round-up or on the trail, with occasional visits to our head office in Las Vegas, and also to Amarillo on business matters. To ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... he finished, but Joyce's silence, her apparent discomfort, gave him a kind of assurance that upheld him ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... from the Derby had been a long one, but Glory had enjoyed it. When she had settled down to the physical discomfort of the blinding and choking dust, the humours of the road became amusing. This endless procession of good-humoured ruffianism sweeping through the most sacred retreats of Nature, this inroad of every order of the Stygian demi-monde on to the slopes of Olympus, was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... people, and at Ashdone in Essex three miles from Saffron Walden, gaue battell to Cnute, where after sore and cruell fight continued with great slaughter on both sides a long time, duke Edrike fled to the comfort of the Danes, and to the discomfort ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the bluffs becoming very bold in their descent upon the river, which, at Harper's Ferry, presents as striking a vista among the hills as a painter could desire to see. But a beautiful landscape is a luxury, and luxuries are thrown away amid discomfort; and when we alighted into the tenacious mud and almost fathomless puddle, on the hither side of the Ferry, (the ultimate point to which the cars proceeded, since the railroad bridge had been destroyed by the Rebels,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... delirium tremens, of palsy, and of lunacy. It is but a fanciful advantage which they enjoy, for whom the immediate impunity avails only to hide the final horrors which are gathering upon them from the gloomy rear. Better, by far, that more of immediate discomfort had guaranteed to them less of reversionary anguish. It may be safely asserted, that few, indeed, are the suicides amongst us to which the miseries of indigestion have not been a large concurring cause; and even ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... night we passed among the mountains recalled us painfully from the enjoyment of nature to all the petty miseries of personal discomfort. Arrived at our inn, a forlorn parlour, filled with the blended fumes of tobacco and whiskey, received us; and chilled, as we began to feel ourselves with the mountain air, we preferred going to our cold bedrooms rather than ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... countrified, roughest, barren and unattractive imaginable, the inhabitants are so idle; so that I preferred to run away. The danger of brigands—it was very great in those parts—or at least my fear of them, was driven out of my mind by the discomfort of my illness.... After covering four miles on this ride I reached Maastricht. There after a drink to soothe my stomach I remounted and came to Tongres, about three miles away. This last ride was by far the most painful to me. The awkward gait of the horse ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... began to heave and move, And bluster into stormy sobs and say, 'I never loved him: an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead, For this discomfort he hath ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... chiefly officials of the civil administration or connected with the railway, who chatted or slept or quietly drank away the weary hours; for them there was no novelty in the trip to dull the feeling of discomfort. At one small station a man who might have been a planter got in, followed by an attractive-looking Annamese woman carrying a little child. She cried bitterly as she waved good-bye to a group of natives on the station platform. The man seemed ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... illegal, but improper, and of bad example, have determined the King, who left it to them, not to consent to it, though the Bishop himself still insists on it. As this decision disappoints Bishop Newton, Lord Bath has obtained a consolatory promise for him of the mitre of London, to the great discomfort of Terrick and Warburton. You see Lord Bath(575 does not hobble up the back-stairs for nothing. Oh, he is an excellent courtier! The Prince of Wales shoots him with plaything arrows, he falls down dead; and the child kisses him to life again. Melancholy ambition I heard him, t'other night, propose ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... contracted prior to our removal. It is therefore quite possible that the two who have injured each other as described, may find themselves members of the same family. Then, whether they remember the past grudge or not, the old enmity will assert itself and cause them to hate anew until the consequent discomfort forces them to tolerate each other, and perhaps later they may learn to love where ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel |
