"Unbearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in church he saw Brother Paul going about like a man in a waking dream, and when he went up to bed he heard him moving restlessly in the adjoining cell. The fear of betraying himself was becoming unbearable, and he leaped up and stepped out into the corridor, intending to ask the Superior to give him another room elsewhere. But he stopped and came back. "It's not brave," he thought, "it's not kind, it's not human," ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her handkerchief. "Oh, the flesh is a beastly thing!" she cried. "To make a man howl outside there like that, because you're here. And to make me howl because I've got a child inside me. It's unbearable! What does ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the question stage of her development. It is "what?" "why?" "when?" especially "why?" all day long, and as her intelligence grows her inquiries become more insistent. I remember how unbearable I used to find the inquisitiveness of my friends' children; but I know now that these questions indicate the child's growing interest in the cause of things. The "why?" is the DOOR THROUGH WHICH HE ENTERS THE WORLD OF REASON AND REFLECTION. "How does carpenter know to build ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... flesh and blood." During the winter of 1916-17 soldiers at the front received letters from home telling of starvation and freezing and sickness in their families. And trench conditions in the long hard winter were all but unbearable. When a soldier finally got a leave of absence and started home, he found the railroad system breaking down and he had long waits at junction points with no sleeping quarters, no food, no shelter. French soldiers ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... a day or two more to stay; and Miss Frere felt an irresistible impulse to force him into at least one talk more. She hardly knew what she expected, or what she wished from it; only, to let him go so, without one more word, was unbearable. She wanted to get nearer to him, if she could, if she might not bring him nearer to her; and at any rate she wanted the bitter-sweet pleasure of arguing with him. Nothing might come of it, but she must have the talk if ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... in the same dug-out as Giffin and Allen. We did not get up until midday to-day. Giffin made himself quite unbearable, and eventually remarked that we would be having a scrap soon. 'Yes. I notice that you seem to have been trying to make yourself as objectionable as possible!' I dryly replied. He then declared that he was ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... an unpleasant nature happen to people she did not like. Kind-hearted Mrs. Ozanne, with mind always divided between stern conviction and a wish to deride it, suffered a mental trepidation that grew daily more unbearable, for what had been serious enough when Rosanne was younger began to be something perilously sinister now that she was turning into a woman and her deeper passions and emotions began to be aroused. In fact, the thing had come home to Mrs. Ozanne with renewed significance lately, and she was still ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... mother hadn't run after us. She didn't object to our being married, but, in the meantime, she remained with us, and she managed to make the country home we had escaped to, with the intention of settling down there, so unbearable, that, luckily for me as regards my future, I contrived to get away, and went as fast as I could on board my ship for refuge, never landing again during our ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... The Maynards always had good times at home, and of course when there, Marjorie didn't miss Gladys so much. But the long mornings in the school-room, and the long afternoons when she wanted to run over to Gladys's house were almost unbearable. ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Beaudry the fog lifted. In the savage, malignant eyes glaring at him he read that he was lost. The clutch of fear so overwhelmed him that suspense was unbearable. He wanted to shriek aloud, to call on this man-killer to end the agony. It was the same impulse, magnified a hundred times, that leads a man to bite on an ulcerated tooth in a weak impotence ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... street dress and removed all marks of identification. Her eyes swam with feverishness. While she was dressing, she bathed in hot water her arms where her husband's hands had been. She concluded that it was not what he had done—had constantly done—but what he was that made life unbearable. When she was through she went downstairs, and out of the front door, and walked slowly toward the center of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... incessant though useless effort to turn aside his head. A dull pain began to shoot insistently through his temples, and his limbs became numb and cold. The desire to escape from the relentless brilliance of the light cone became unbearable; he felt as though, if relief did not soon come, he would shriek out in a madness of terror. Then the hopelessness of doing so became apparent, and he nerved himself with all the power of his will to endure the ever-increasing torture. Yet this torture was, he knew, largely mental—the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... delivered to commissioners specially appointed for the purpose. It will be seen that these regulations were minute and severe. Trade was thus submitted to stern restrictions which would seem strange and unbearable in these days of freedom. What an outcry there would be if parliament should attempt now to dictate to our merchants the selling price of their merchandise! But in the seventeenth century such a thing ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... which I place no faith, for the sake of proving how slight the reasonable probability of a European war appears to be. It is not reasonably probable that the greater or lesser extent of a tributary State—unless conditions were altogether unbearable—should induce two neighboring and friendly powers to start a destructive European war in cold blood! The blood will be cooler, I assure you, when we have at last come together in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... thus become at least half tame (Plate LXI). Many spend the hot hours of mid-day beneath the houses, from which they are occasionally driven by the irate housewives, when their squealing and fighting become unbearable. The domestic pigs are probably all descended from the wild stock with which they still constantly mix. Most of the young pigs are born with yellow stripes like the young of the wild, but they lose these marks in a short time. Castration ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... were Mr. and Mrs. Cummings. The former said: "As you didn't say anything about dress, I have come 'half dress.'" He had on a black frock-coat and white tie. The James', Mr. Merton, and Mr. Stillbrook arrived, but Lupin was restless and unbearable till his Daisy Mutlar ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... in their effects upon the unhappy people subjected to his missionary efforts than the New England rum which accompanied the real missionaries in their descent upon the now depopulated islands of the Pacific. Private people with missions are nuisances, but public people with such ideas are simply unbearable. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... lay and thought, and slept when thinking became unbearable, and thus went his days and the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... notre procureur, qui deux fois m'a manque de politesse et qu'on a rosse a plaisir Vautre annee chez cette charmante et belle Natalya Pavlovna quand il se cacha dans son boudoir. Et puis, mon ami, don't make objections and don't depress me, I beg you, for nothing is more unbearable when a man is in trouble than for a hundred friends to point out to him what a fool he has made of himself. Sit down though and have some tea. I must admit I am awfully tired.... Hadn't I better lie down and put vinegar on my ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rivers tenanted by strange beasts wallowing in fetid mud which, when disturbed, sent forth bubbles that burst with foul odors, and made more unbearable the tepid moisture one had to breathe. Hostile, yellow people in strange garb slunk along the banks, hiding behind bamboos and watching the boats rowed by white men nearly succumbing to the torpor ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... including your little sister-in-law, who appears more as if she had been brought up with boys than at the 'Sacred Heart.' He is a worthy son of his father there," said she, pointing to one of the portraits near the young Royal-Nassau officer; "and he was the most brutal, unbearable, and detestable of all the dragoons in Lorraine; so much so that he got into three quarrels at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well! Some one described Bergenheim ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... something drove him, and other tasks that at least necessitated action, at night, before he won sleep, there was strife in his soul. He yearned to leave the endless sage slopes, the wilderness of canyons, and it was in the lonely night that this yearning grew unbearable. It was then that he reached forth to feel Ring or Whitie, immeasurably grateful for the love ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... in her bed mother Coupeau became positively unbearable. It is true though that the little room in which she slept with Nana was not at all gay. There was barely room for two chairs between the beds. The wallpaper, a faded gray, hung loose in long strips. The small window near the ceiling let in only a dim light. It was like a cavern. At night, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... into the carriage with a careful politeness. As he wrapped the rug about me I had a sudden sense of the finality of it and the trouble that lay before me and the others, and a pity for his disappointment as well that was so poignant as to be almost unbearable. ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... uncertainty and errors of pronunciation (bradyphasia and dysarthria), complete insensibility to touch and the electric current, which gave him no sensation of pain. On the other hand, he was subject to unbearable pains in various parts ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... to awake from their troubled dreams, thinking they heard the cry of their starving babes, to stifle the maternal yearnings which prompted them to turn back and perish with their darlings clasped to their breasts, were trials almost unbearable. The next day they traveled six miles. They crossed the summit, and the camps were no longer visible. They were in the solemn fastnesses of the snow-mantled Sierra. Lonely, desolate, forsaken apparently by God and man, their situation was painfully, distressingly ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... the enemy, enclosing themselves in a huge cave, where they hoped to escape detection. This cave was blockaded by the Boers. Here the unhappy blacks went through all the horrors of famine and thirst, and when their agony became unbearable, and they sallied forth in desperation in search of water, they were remorselessly shot down one by one. Nine hundred in all were killed outside the cave. Within was more than double that number who had perished in the frightful agonies of starvation. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... my body, the labouring of my heart, the soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable that I would gladly have given up. Nothing but the fear of Alan lent me enough of a false kind of courage to continue. As for himself (and you are to bear in mind that he was cumbered with a great-coat) he had first turned crimson, but as time went on the redness ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unendurable noise, a searing blast of blaze as if the sun had been dynamite exploded, splintering the very joists of heaven. The whole air rocked like a tidal wave breaking on a reef; the house writhed in all its timbers. Then silence—unbearable silence. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... decided that Somerset Maugham could no longer be regarded as a pleasant liqueur, but rather as the joint of a meal requiring steady digestion, and suppressed The Moon and Sixpence on Tahiti. The temptation to lend it to a kindred spirit was almost unbearable, but the thought of Lavina hearing of the above description of her person frightened me and I resisted. For kindred souls, on Tahiti as elsewhere, have their own kindred souls, and slowly but surely ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... at home at length grew so unbearable, that Sir Joseph Raikes, who had never had an explanation since his marriage, and had given into all his wife's caprices—that Sir Joseph, we say, even with his 'eavenly temper, he broke out into a passion; and one day after dinner, at which only his brother-in-law Dolly was present, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... feeling as if his life and himself and everything else were an utter failure. If he had only had on his cycling suit, he might have contemplated a ride, but the thought of turning into his dull lodgings, even to change, was unbearable, and the writing of a letter to Gertrude, with which he had beguiled many a lonely hour before, was not ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... be much in the words, child as he was, but there was something in his manner of eyeing her which gave her acute unbearable pain—a look as if she stood in his way and crossed his importance. It was but a baby fit of temper, but she was in no frame to regard it calmly, and with an alteration of countenance that went to his heart, she exclaimed—'Can that be my little Owen, talking ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lady had a great talent for music. I never saw her, but I became aware of her in more ways than one: whenever she crossed the floor on the third story, the ceiling shook, and the boards creaked, in a manner unbearable to an invalid. And just when I had settled myself off, and badly wanted to sleep, towards eleven o'clock at night, the heavy lady above would sit down at her grand piano, and make music that would have filled a concert hall resound through ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Yellow Jack slew, depressed her dreadfully, and she was startled at the callous fashion in which people, hardened by many years' experience of the scourge, received the news of the death of their most intimate friends. She was perpetually complaining of the unbearable heat, to which she never got acclimatised; she suffered "sadly" from the mosquitoes, and never could get used to earthquakes, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... lost Raby's love. I had forfeited his respect. There lay the unbearable sting. Never should I forget that pale, stern face and the unspoken reproach in ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... been a hot day even in the wide, clean portions of the city. Here the heat was almost unbearable, and the stench, incident to a congested ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... regarded as the most disgusting, the most dangerous and repulsive of substances, and the act of spitting as the last and deepest sign of contempt and hatred; and if directed toward an individual, the deadliest and most unbearable insult, which can be wiped out only by blood. Primitive literature and legend are full of stories of the poisonousness of human saliva and the deadliness of the human bite. It was the "bugs" in it that did it. It is most interesting to see how science has finally, thousands of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung one's elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind, just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as they ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... drowned the Cats, and poisoned the Rats. The latter have revenged 'emselves by dying behind the Wainscot, which makes the lower Part of the House soe unbearable, 'speciallie to Father, that we are impatient to be off. Mother, intending to turn Chalfont into a besieged Garrison, is laying in Stock of Sope, Candles, Cheese, Butter, Salt, Sugar, Raisins, Pease, and ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... concerning these clusters. Either that they belong to our stellar system, and hence the stars must be small and young, or they are another universe of millions of suns, so far way that the inconceivable distances between the stars are shrunken to a hand's-breadth, and their unbearable splendor of innumerable suns can only make a gray haze at the distance at which we behold them. The latter is the older and grander thought; the former the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... set away, and supper for the threshers must be planned and prepared. It was best so. "Time, the healer, and work, the consoler," enable us to bear many things which in the first keen freshness of grief seem unbearable. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... would show them a little more. Her excessive goodness seems somehow to pall upon us. Our only consolation while watching her is that there are not many good women off the stage. Life is bad enough as it is; if there were many women in real life as good as the stage heroine, it would be unbearable. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... independence, was conscious of her value, and knew that she should never obtain another servant who would take the trouble of the children so entirely off her hands. She retained, indeed, her privilege of grumbling, and sometimes complained to her husband that Abijah's ways were really unbearable. Still she never pressed the point, and Abijah appeared established as a permanent fixture in the Sankeys' household. She it was who, when, after leaving the service, Captain Sankey was looking round for a cheap and quiet residence, ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... a portentous sigh she dropped her chin on her hand. She was half acting, acting to herself. Life was not really quite unbearable, and she knew it. But it ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... down at the boy. Scotty's face was dark with anger. Store Thompson, who pretended to be his grandfather's friend, to publish his disgrace before these strangers! It was unbearable! "I'll not be English," he muttered. "I'll jist be Scotch, an' my name's MacDonald!" He clenched his fists and wagged his curly head threateningly. "He must be right," said the man eagerly. "He should ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... a country gentleman finds herself unprovided for at her father's death, and for some time lives as a dependant upon the kinsman who has inherited the property. Life is kept from being entirely unbearable to her by her young cousin Geoffrey, who at length meets with a serious accident for which she is held responsible. She is then passed on to other relatives, who prove even more objectionable, and at length, in despair, she runs away and makes a brave attempt to earn her own livelihood. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... too poor to have so fine a conscience," said the organist snappishly. "If you are so scrupulous now, you will be quite unbearable when you get rich with battening and fattening on this restoration." But he was evidently pleased with Westray's consideration for Miss Joliffe, and added with more cordiality: "You had better come down and share my meal; your rooms will ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... in the close and stifling atmosphere of the wood soon made me uncomfortably warm, at the same time increasing my thirst to an almost unbearable degree, but there was nothing for it but patience, so I pushed on, panting and perspiring, as rapidly as it was possible for me to get over the ground. As I continued to advance, the sound increased in volume, though it still appeared to come from a considerable distance, and I at length ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... were true," returned Hatty sorrowfully, and then her ill-humor vanished. "No, don't pet me, Bessie; I don't deserve it," as Bessie stroked her hand in a petting sort of a way. "I have been cross and ill-tempered all the week, just unbearable, as Christine said; but oh, Bessie, it seemed as though I could not help it. I was so miserable every night to think you were going away, that I could not sleep for ever so long, and then my head ached, and I felt as though I were strung on wires ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... it grew unbearable, so, leaping out of bed, Harry went to the window, drew up the blind, and threw open the casement, to lean out and gaze at the grey sea, that looked so dark in the early ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... man into whose company he could not avoid being thrown began to sting him to something like madness. And one day, left alone in the office with Mallalieu when Stoner the clerk had gone to get his dinner, the irritation became unbearable, and he turned on his partner in a sudden white heat of ungovernable and ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... "O unbearable, insupportable man of quiet habits that you are!" cried Dubkoff, turning to Dimitri. "Yet come with us, and you shall see what an excellent lady ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... back the ousted adversary? The old lady liked Rawdon, and Rebecca, who amused her. Mrs. Bute could not disguise from herself the fact that none of her party could so contribute to the pleasures of the town-bred lady. "My girls' singing, after that little odious governess's, I know is unbearable," the candid Rector's wife owned to herself. "She always used to go to sleep when Martha and Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners and poor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her. If I took her to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unbearable than emotion when one does not share it. I murmured "Mother!" feeling that after all she must appreciate such an outburst; then approaching, I kissed her, and made a face in spite of myself—such a salt and disagreeable flavor had been imparted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... its discriminations, the promulgation of this general statute was far from checking the feverish activity of the Government. With indefatigable zeal, its hands went on turning the legislative wheel and squeezing ever tighter the already unbearable vise of Jewish life. The slightest attempt to escape from its pressure was punished ruthlessly. In 1838 the police of St. Petersburg discovered a group of Jews in the capital "with expired passports," these Jews having extended their stay there a little beyond the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... an inclination for culture and feels the need of a guiding hand, and who at last, in a moment of discontent, throws down the reins and begins to despise himself. This is the guiltless innocent; for who has saddled him with the unbearable burden of standing alone? Who has urged him on to independence at an age when one of the most natural and peremptory needs of youth is, so to speak, a self-surrendering to great leaders and an enthusiastic following in the footsteps ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... irritating both the Free and the Slave-holding Sections of our Country against each other, to an almost unbearable point; had solidified the Southern States on the Slavery and Free-Trade questions; and at last—the machinations of these same Conspirators having resulted in a split in the Democratic Party, and the election of the Republican candidate to ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... me one afternoon in my room, as I came in from walking. I had been thinking of Jesus while I walked, as I was often in the habit of doing. Without any intention or premeditation on my part, I was now suddenly overwhelmed by a most horrible, unbearable, inexplicable pain of remorse for my vileness: for I seemed suddenly to be aware of Him standing there in His marvellous purity and looking at me—not with any reproach, but with the sweetness of a wonderful Invitation upon His face. And immediately I saw myself ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... notice me in my grey dress among the trees. I don't believe the Prince's best friends would call him an early morning man. He's the kind that oughtn't to be out before lunch, and he goes especially well with gaslight or electricity. I felt sure he'd be unbearable before breakfast—either his breakfast ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that a peasant who showed them the way meditated assassinating all three, and was only prevented by the fear of his village being made the scene of vengeance. Already, German tourists are finding their way back to these country resorts, and the sound of the German tongue is no longer unbearable to French ears. It is to be hoped that this outward reconciliation of the two nationalities may mean something deeper, and that ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... old man's voice were, if possible, more wounding than his language; Francis felt himself exposed to the most cruel, blighting, and unbearable contempt; his head turned, and he covered his face with his hands, uttering at the same time a tearless sob of agony. But Miss Vandeleur once ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suit, it must be, as she had all but said, so that she might be delivered from the persecution to which his Majesty had submitted her. The thought of her marrying Richmond, or, indeed, anybody, was unbearable to Charles, and it may have stifled his last scruple in the matter of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... about, Alice? You know I never really understood it. Can't you make me understand? Was it that I was simply unbearable? too disagreeable to be ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable. The colonists found a land magnificent with forest trees of every size and variety, but they had no sawmills, and few saws to cut boards; there was plenty of clay and ample limestone on every side, yet they could have no brick and no mortar; grand boulders of granite and rock were everywhere, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... two days the lives of the two young Saxons were well-nigh unbearable. At meals the count by turns abused and jeered at them, and his companions, following his example, lost no opportunity of insulting them in ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Merovee and his daughter Madame Germain were distracted. The whole of that day was spent by the boys in a strange, unnatural state of desoeuvrement and suppressed excitement for which no outlet was possible. The meals, especially, were all but unbearable. One was ashamed of having an appetite, and yet one had—almost keener than usual, if I may judge by myself—and for some undiscovered reason the food was ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... had been less sensitive, more world-hardened, his failure would not have seemed such a crushing, unbearable thing, but alone in the killing monotony he brooded over the money he had sunk for other people until it seemed like a colossal disgrace for which there was no excuse and that he could never live down. In his bitter ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... that jealousy should creep into such a moment, but her resolve recalled his amorous discontent. The prospect of Graham and her, watching alone, drawn to each other by their fright and uncertainty, by their surroundings, by the hour, became unbearable. It placed him, to an extent, on Paredes's side. It urged him, when Paredes had gone on downstairs, to spring ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... parents, except in the lowest classes; and parents were too often governed by pecuniary, rather than by personal considerations in choosing the wives and husbands of their sons and daughters. Such a system of marriage would seem unbearable, did we not know that it is borne and approved by the greater part of mankind. It is possible that the chief objection to it is to be found less in the want of attachment between married people, which might be supposed to be its natural result, than in the diminution ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... terrible without making society particularly delightful. A dull feeling of familiarity and comfort is all we can reasonably attribute to uninterrupted trooping together. Yet banishment from an accustomed society is often unbearable. A creature separated from his group finds all his social instincts bereft of objects and of possible exercise; the sexual, if by chance the sexual be at the time active; the parental, with all its extensions; and the combative, with all its supports. He is helpless ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled suspense. She spoke in ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... by. Say, I'm an old sinner. What'd th' old farmer say now? Do you love your uncle Tony? 'Old Ant,' they call me down at—" "The Bank," he was on the point of uttering; but the vision of the Bank lay terrific in his recollection, and, summoned at last, would not be wiped away. The unbearable picture swam blinking through accumulating clouds; remote and minute as the chief scene of our infancy, but commanding him with the present touch of a mighty arm thrown out. "I'm honest," he cried. "I always have been honest. I'm known to be honest. I want no man's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... heavy-faced lad, whose calmness chilled her own feverishness so painfully. She would a thousand times rather have been beaten than glared at like that. Those implacable looks, which followed her everywhere, threw her at last into such unbearable torments that on several occasions she determined to see her lover no more. As soon, however, as Macquart returned she forgot her vows and hastened to him. The conflict with her son began afresh, silent and terrible, when she ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... who treated him in the light of a common servant. "A change came o'er the spirit of his dream;" Mahomet was no longer a great man, and his temper changed with circumstances; in fact, Mahomet became unbearable, and still he was absolutely necessary, as he was the tongue of the expedition until we should accomplish Arabic. To him the very idea of exploration was an absurdity; he had never believed in it from the first, and he now became impressed with the fact that he was positively committed to ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... constant rain cast a shadow over the sunny Hoogeveld and made our lives sombre and almost unbearable. Then our tattered garments could not dry on our bodies, and everything about us was wet and dirty. Even in dry weather fuel was almost unattainable, for the treeless Hoogeveld had been almost exhausted by the many large commandos which had visited the 'uitspan' places. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... propaganda of war between England and Potsdam which has been going on openly for the last forty years on both sides. I beg the patience of my readers during this painful operation. If it becomes unbearable, they can always put the paper down and relieve themselves by calling the Kaiser Attila and Mr. Keir Hardie a traitor twenty times or so. Then they will feel, I hope, refreshed enough to resume. For, after all, abusing the Kaiser or Keir Hardie or me will not hurt the Germans, whereas ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... and even more to open Prideaux's. Though we were delighted at the prospect of having again the free use of our limbs, we did not enjoy the rude operation at all; and although (as we were in favour) the soldiers did their best not to hurt us, still the pain was at times quite unbearable, as the "point d'appui" now and then slipped from the stone to the chain itself, and pressing on the shin it seemed to us as if the leg would ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm of a short-sighted detective. As one turns over the pages, the suspense of the author becomes almost unbearable. The horses of Mr. William Black's phaeton do not soar towards the sun. They merely frighten the sky at evening into violent chromolithographic effects. On seeing them approach, the peasants take refuge in dialect. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... but can assign no origin to it,—some penalty, indignity or cross put suddenly on John, which the hasty John considered unbearable. His Mother's inconsolable weeping, and then his own astonishment at such a culprit's being forgiven, are all that remain with Anthony. The steady historical style of the young runaway of twelve, narrating merely, not in the least apologizing, is ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... herself with almost royal dignity, occupied that house in an enforced seclusion. She was a confirmed rheumatic invalid, but her soul was as strong as it was many years before, when she had given its support to Coombe in his unbearable hours. She had poured out her strength in silence, and in silence he had received it. She saved him from slipping over the verge ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... frighten the people into submission.[845] Cicero, though he of course thinks of them as merely the fables of poets, seems to suggest that the ordinary man did believe in them; thinking of his own recent loss, he says that our misery would be unbearable when we lose those we love, if we really thought of them as "in iis malis quibus vulgo opinantur."[846] Of course all these fables were Greek, not Roman. There is no reason to believe that the old Romans imagined their ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... I am afraid we should grow to be unbearable." She paused and smiled brightly at the Prince. "And yet women of your country are not so; at least those ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... last scenes. His voice sank a little; his notes dropped from his hand; and the silence grew oppressive. The dramatic force, the tender passionate insight, the fearless modernness with which the story was told, made it almost unbearable. Those listening saw the trial, the streets of Jerusalem, that desolate place outside the northern gate; they were spectators of the torture, they heard the last cry. No one present had ever so seen, so heard before. Rose had hidden her face. Flaxman for the first ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in her habit, she sat down directly, without going to take it off; but he was not to be thus satisfied. He found fault with her for hesitating in her translation, and desired her to read the Italian instead; then she read first so fast that he could not follow, and then so slowly that it was quite unbearable, and she must go on translating. With the greatest patience and sweetest temper she obeyed; only when next he interrupted her to find fault, she stopped and said gently, "Dear Fred, I am afraid you are not feeling ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... still worse than in the first village, but at least there were a few more babies than elsewhere. The chief suffered from a horrible boil in his loin, which he poulticed with chewed leaves, and the odour was so unbearable that I had to leave the house and sit down outside, where I was surrounded by many lepers, without toes or even feet, a very ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... to the Hostess' House and was silent and distraught as he ate his supper. Suppose Wainwright should come in while they were there and see Ruth and spoil those last few minutes together? The thought was unbearable. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... to look at me like that," said Henry when the silence became unbearable. "I'm waiting for a friend and when ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... come and stay somewhere near so as to be with him while he was in training? It was unbearable ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... 25 to 30 years ago our Russians exploring Sahalin performed amazing feats which exalt them above humanity, and that's no use to us: we don't know what those men were, and simply sit within four walls and complain that God has made man amiss. Sahalin is a place of the most unbearable sufferings of which man, free and captive, is capable. Those who work near it and upon it have solved fearful, responsible problems, and are still solving them. I am not sentimental, or I would say that we ought to go to places like Sahalin to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... master, a stranger whom they would like to intimidate and send about his business. Manette Sejournant, who was always talking about going, still remained in the chateau, and was evidently exerting her influence to keep her son also with her. The fawning duplicity of this woman was unbearable to Julien; he had not the energy necessary either to subdue her, or to send her away, and she appeared every morning before him with a string of hypocritical grievances, and opposing his orders with steady, irritating inertia. It seemed as if she were endeavoring to render his life at Vivey hateful ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... enterprises, the lanterns of which he always forgot to light; he, the great pursuer of dreams for ever in quest of the absolute; he, the funniest, most attractive as well as the vainest character of the Comedie Humaine; he, the original, as unbearable in private life as he was delightful in his writings; the big baby swollen with genius and conceit, who had so many qualities and so many failings that one feared to attack the latter for fear of injuring the former, and ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Jinnie Grandoken had been driven blindly into unknown places, forced to face conditions which but a short time before would have seemed unbearable. However, there was much with which Jinnie could occupy her time. Blind Bobbie was not well. He was mourning for the cobbler with all his boyish young soul, and every day Peggy grew more taciturn and ill. The funds left by Theodore were nearly gone, and Jinnie had given ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox. That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the summer, soon grew unbearable again. She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume—who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again—and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence—a resident governess. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... Maxime Valois recoils from the physical toil of the rocky bars of the American. His nature is aristocratic; his youthful prejudices are averse to hand work. Menial attendance, though only upon himself, is degrading to him. The rough life of the mines becomes unbearable. A Southerner, par excellence, in his hatred of the physical familiarity of others, he avails himself of his good fortune to find a purchaser for his interests. The stream of new arrivals is a river now, for the old emigrant road of Platte and Humboldt is delivering ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... believed that buildings left standing in the Russian retreat might serve as protection and cover for German artillery. So everything was destroyed—farm-houses, barns, churches, schools, orchards, even haystacks. Whenever the Russian lines retracted before the unbearable pounding of the terrible German guns, they left only a desert for the Kaiser's ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... cleavages. Change after change in their programme and theory of the Russian Trades Unionists has been due to the pressure of life itself, to the urgency of struggling against the worsening of conditions already almost unbearable. It is perfectly natural that those Unions which hold back from adaptation and resent the changes are precisely those which, like that of the printers, are not intimately concerned in any productive process, are consequently outside the central ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... bring upon us a twofold peril. It will leave the enemy in a state of savage isolation in which, thrown back upon himself, cramped, purified by misfortune and poverty, he will secretly reinforce his formidable virtues, while we, for our part, no longer held in check by his unbearable but salutary menace, will give rein to failings and vices which sooner or later will place us at his mercy. Before thinking of peace, then, we must make sure of the future and render it powerless to injure ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... part of the law, you must punish people for refusing to punish. If you have a police, part of its duty must be to compel everybody to assist the police. No doubt if your laws are unjust, and your policemen agents of oppression, the result will be an unbearable violation of the private consciences of citizens. But that cannot be helped: the remedy is, not to license everybody to thwart the law if they please, but to make laws that will command the public assent, and not to deal cruelly and stupidly with lawbreakers. Everybody disapproves ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... surrounding the vessel. It is the early morning. The sun is shining with that hard brightness only seen in the Arctic world—keen as silver, cold as steel. It plays upon the hummocks, and they send out shafts of light at fantastic angles, and a thin blue line runs between the almost unbearable general radiance and the sea of ice stretching indefinitely away. But to the west is a shore, and on it stands a fort and a few detached houses. Upon the walls of the fort are some guns, and the British flag is flying above. Beyond these again are the plains of the north—the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a fortnight this unbearable restraint has lain upon us. Her friend lives with her, and we are never alone. A circle of men surrounds the young women. With my seriousness and melancholy I am playing an absurd role as lover. Wanda ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... vanity—so far as he understood it and so far as she exhibited it—that the others were good-humored about it too—all the others except Tempest, whom conceit and defeat had long since soured through and through. A tithe of Susan's success would have made him unbearable, for like most human beings he had a vanity that was Atlantosaurian on starvation rations and would have filled the whole earth if it had been fed a few crumbs. Small wonder that we are ever eagerly on the alert for signs of vanity in others; we are seeking the curious comfort ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... would speak the truth to me. Thus I heard continually of my faults, the real and the ideal weaknesses. In the mean time, however, my feelings burst forth; and then I said that I would become a poet whom they should see honored. But this was regarded only as the crowning mark of the most unbearable vanity; and from house to house it was repeated. I was a good man, they said, but one of the vainest in existence; and in that very time I was often ready wholly to despair of my abilities, and had, as in the darkest days of my school- ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... world; but Maria saw them not, for the tears welled to her eyes and blinded her. She stood there motionless, with arms hanging piteously by her side, a stricken figure of grief; then a sudden anguish yet keener and more unbearable seized upon her; blindly she opened the door and went out upon ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... the fatigues of my continual journeyings in the suite of the Emperor, a disease of the bladder, from which I suffered horribly. For a long time I combated the disease with patience and dieting; but at last, the pain having become entirely unbearable, in 1808 I requested of his Majesty a month's leave of absence in order to be cured, Dr. Boyer having told me that a month was the shortest time absolutely necessary for my restoration, and that without it my disease would become incurable. I went to Saint-Cloud to visit my wife's family, where ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... if to warn my foolish heart that all hope is dead! Then how dreary and empty to me is this cold, unfeeling world we move in! I feel oppressed by the weight of my sorrowful yearning that hourly grows more unbearable and more hopeless; my lungs seem filled with leaden air, and all the blood in my heart stands still. In thinking of the time that must be dragged through till this same hour to-morrow, I feel neither the strength nor courage ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... next, once not only famous for its castle, but its tyrannical lord; who, in the time of Louis XIII., was governor of this part of the river, and carried on a system of oppression which became unbearable. He cast an iron chain across the river, to prevent the passing of vessels, on which he laid his hands in the most unpitying manner, taking possession of all he could meet with. At length, the relation of his cruelties and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... saw the ending for herself and De Musset of their hapless romance. An approach to complete reconciliation—for the existing partial estrangement had been discovered to be more unbearable than all besides—led to stormy scenes and violent discord, and resulted before very long in mutual avoidance, which was to be final. It is said that forgiveness is the property of the injured, and it should be remembered ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... was becoming unbearable; and my sorest trial was to receive it calmly and to meet it in kind. Truly, if he had found a brilliant leading woman in Madeline Spencer, he had an equally ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... accustom him to the idea of work. She had immutable faith that the war would be over before he was called upon to fight, and meanwhile the suit would be won, and they could begin again, this time on a different basis. The first thing different would be that she would have a child. It was unbearable that she ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... dumb-waiter in our house. A dumb-waiter is a good thing to have in the country, on account of its convenience. If you have company, everything can be sent up from the kitchen without any trouble; and if the baby gets to be unbearable, on account of his teeth, you can dismiss the complainant by stuffing him in one of the shelves and letting him down upon the help. To provide for contingencies, we had all our floors deafened. In consequence, you cannot hear anything ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... with the Danish and Gaelic, yet they are Irish in thought and feeling. They are a Catholic people, yet on excellent terms with their Protestant landlords. Outrages are unknown, for though the rents are high enough, they are not unbearable by a people so industrious ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... tense and expectant, keyed for the onslaught of the unknown. He waited a moment, wondering what manner of animal it was that had arisen from under his foot and that now made no sound nor movement and that must be crouching and waiting just as tensely and expectantly as he. The strain became unbearable. Holding the night-stick before him, he pressed the button, saw, and screamed aloud in terror. He was prepared for anything, from a frightened calf or fawn to a belligerent lion, but he was not prepared for what he saw. In that instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... at his side whilst I sobbed and cried as if some tremendous calamity had overtaken me. I knew without looking up, which I was ashamed to do, that his eyes were resting upon me with an expression of sad surprise; and the silence became perfectly unbearable. He ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... a nominal command and yet no command, became so unbearable that I asked permission of Halleck to remove my headquarters to Memphis. I had repeatedly asked, between the fall of Donelson and the evacuation of Corinth, to be relieved from duty under Halleck; but all my applications were refused until ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... even her husband, yet what awful things he says! If you gave him his way, he would make our life unbearable. ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no more material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range of Mr. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... time, and doubly sorry that they should have been asked on my account. They mistake me greatly, here. They know that I've thought Grey Abbey dull, and have avoided it; and now that I've determined to get over the feeling, because I think it right to do so, they make it ten times more unbearable than ever, for my gratification! It's like giving a child physic mixed in sugar; the sugar's sure to be the nastiest part of the dose. Indeed I have no dislike to Grey Abbey at present; though I own I have no ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... tone would have been enough to have put George's already sensitive nerves on edge. Both together were unbearable. It was, when you came down to it, the most awkward question in ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al. |
