"Bearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immense quantity of MS. in cipher—a cipher which is evidently identical with that he used himself in the annotations he put under innumerable sketches he was allowed to make during his long period of confinement, which (through her interest, and no doubt through his own good conduct) was rendered as bearable to him as possible. These sketches (which are very extraordinary) and her Grace's MS. are now in ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... In spite of his hopeful words to Nance, he feared the brave lad was gone. And it might have swallowed Nance. And if it had—it might as well have him, too. For it was only thought of Nance that made life bearable to him. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... it dies down at intervals, and becomes quite bearable, especially when no one see it ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in our battery it is still bearable," said ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Blount, blinking dizzily, and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... now our fourth day upon the desert, and we had not sustained the smallest inconvenience; the heat, even at noon, being very bearable, and the sand not in the least degree troublesome. Doubtless, at a less favourable period of the year, both would prove difficult to bear. The wind, we were told, frequently raised the sand in clouds; and though the danger ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... being a clever woman, with a good digestion and command of her temper, had managed to get through the world without much of that unhappiness which usually follows ill-assorted marriages. At home she managed to keep the upper hand, but she did so in an easy, good-humoured way that made her rule bearable; and away from home she assisted her lord's political standing, though she laughed more keenly than any one else at his foibles. But the lord of her heart was her brother; and in all his scrapes, all his extravagances, and all his recklessness, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... cloud covered with fleecy masses, which rests on the bank to our right, and seems half inclined to sweep over us with one of those refreshing pelts of which we had a succession last night. It is this habit of showers which renders the vicinity of the Line more bearable than the summer heat of other parts within the Tropics. However, the cloud sticks to the shore, so I have come down to write this line ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... and his mother had reached the outer air again and were driving away, Jarvis burst out: "Something must be done! If Sally won't let you and Jo have her—and that wouldn't be getting her out of the city, only into a more bearable in-door atmosphere—she must be taken into the country. Jo's plan is perfectly feasible. A tent in that pine grove would do the business. Mother, I'm going to put one there. If Max doesn't like it, he can ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... wild," he added slowly. "It peps them up. It makes the monotony and the weariness bearable. And then, suddenly, they break. They hate the machines and the city and everything they ever knew or did. It's a sort of delayed-action psychosis which goes off with a bang. Some of them go amuck in the city, using their belt-weapons until they're killed. More of them bolt for the jungle. The city ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... was quite sure that he would be captured in a few minutes, and, as a matter of fact, there were things that made the prospect decidedly bearable. The pain in his ankle from the trap in which he had been caught was excruciating. It seemed to him that he must cry out, but he kept silence resolutely. As long as there was a chance that he might not fall into ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... the morning meal she chatted incessantly to Jose, asking a thousand questions. Everything conspired to add to her joys. The sky was deep brilliant blue, but there was a light breeze to make the heat bearable; the birds sang until their little throats throbbed; the flowers in the garden seemed to have flung out new masses of bloom to make the small world about them brighter. In her chamber, near the roof, Pepita's gala dress ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... intention of fulfilling since the first month I was with you. You have never taken me to see a patient, you have never given me any instruction or advice whatever. Beside this, you must know that your wife treats me in a manner that is no longer bearable. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... was perfectly bearable. Involuntarily I began to think of its heat when the lava thrown out by Snfell was boiling and working through this now silent road. I imagined the torrents of fire hurled back at every angle in the gallery, and the accumulation of intensely heated ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... younger, for her aunt's sake, and had made up his mind that he would be very attentive to her, no matter how displeasing and uninteresting she might be: it was sure to be a time of trial to his old friend, and he would help all he could to make the visit as bearable as possible. Everybody knew of the niece's existence who had known the Prince family at all, and though Miss Prince had never mentioned the unhappy fact until the day or two before her guest was expected, her young cavalier had behaved with most ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... twilight hour made all the rest bearable. The little hut on the rim of the gorge seemed to hold Jennie's presence. It was not as if he felt her spirit. If it had been he would have been sure of her death. He hoped Jennie had not survived her second misfortune; and that intense hope had burned into belief, if ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... prisoners discovered that they could obtain the majority of things which serve to make life bearable even under depressing and oppressive conditions they commenced to launch out in the acquisition of things for improving creature comfort. With the money drawn from the banks and other institutions they purchased beds, cupboards, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... been so foggy that we began to consider ourselves as good as retired. But three days ago it began to become bearable again. We took good advantage of it. We were in our machines early in the morning and "worked" till 5:30 at night. I made five flights to-day. First, Wilhelm, as the observer, did some scout work, and later did some range-finding for the artillery. We had agreed that we were to fly above the enemy's ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our first interview, I making a show of arranging papers on my desk. At length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, I turned ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... If one attempted to carry either wine or spirits, as a beverage, he would require a whole troop of followers for nothing else. Our greatest luxury in travelling was tea or coffee. We never once carried sugar enough to last a journey, but coffee is always good, while the sugarless tea is only bearable, because of the unbearable gnawing feeling of want and sinking which ensues if we begin to travel in the mornings without something warm in the stomach. Our drink generally was water, and if cool, nothing can equal it in a hot climate. We usually carried a bottle of brandy rolled ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... inasmuch as the murder with which he is charged was supposed to have been committed by a colored man, he is not guilty of it. The motives here are quite obvious. Both these individuals find life much more bearable believing, as they do, in their innocence of the crimes imputed to them. Many other examples could be cited to prove that symptoms in mental disease do serve a definite purpose; that there may be indeed considerable ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... scandalous ramble Gordon had become more or less friends with Rudd, and had to a large extent helped to make his life more bearable. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... and unvarnished account of the late Monsieur Zabriska's very ordinary and quite reputable life and death. No doubt she was right. Both she and the neighborhood had to wait, and her efforts did something to make the period more bearable for both of them. The only sufferer was poor Mr Gainsborough, who was driven from Blentmouth and the curiosity shop by the sheer terror of encountering ladies from villas who told him all about what his daughter ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... hot again; however, Daisy felt better. The heat was more bearable. It was a very quiet day. Both she and Juanita obeyed orders, and did not talk much; nevertheless, Juanita sang hymns a great deal, and that was delightful to Daisy. She found Juanita knew one hymn in particular that she loved exceedingly; ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... offer, it was never with any desire to open negotiations with him, nor did he ever remind Aymer of the possibility. They fought together against the difficulties that beset the great venture and their comradeship reduced the irritating trivialities of the first start to bearable limits. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... side—that twenty-two or twenty-three years ago he injured the ear by the use of a detonating tube in shooting. Since then he had always had a noise on that side, and when he had the work of office upon him, this and the pain became scarcely bearable at times, as I understood him. Brodie told him that 'as some overwork one part and some another, he had overworked his brain,' but he said that with this exception his health was good. It was pleasant to me to find and feel ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... resisted far more fiercely than the Kaiser's. Successful as that resistance has been, it has piled up a sort of National Debt that is not the less oppressive because we have no figures for it and do not intend to pay it. A blockade that cuts off "the grace of our Lord" is in the long run less bearable than the blockades which merely cut off raw materials; and against that blockade our Armada is impotent. In the blockader's house, he has assured us, there are many mansions; but I am afraid they do not include either ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... seamstress work from the 'Green Dragon,' and from another neighbour ten miles away across the moor. At this she cheerfully laboured, and from that height she could afford to pity the useless talents and poor attitude of Mr. Archer. It did not change her admiration, but it made it bearable. He was above her in all ways; but she was above him in one. She kept it to herself, and hugged it. When, like all young creatures, she made long stories to justify, to nourish, and to forecast the course of her affection, it ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... necessarily oppressive, although the European or American traveller who prefers a less enervating climate hastens to exchange that region for the more bracing air of the uplands. The night breezes, however, compensate largely for the heat of the sun, and render bearable, and indeed agreeable, the Vera Cruz littoral and the Yucatan peninsula, by the lowered temperature they afford. The rains also, which have their season from June to November, do much to refresh the atmosphere. Indeed, the year is divided mainly by the matter of rainfall into a wet and dry period, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Faith, slaved day and night to render the greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal as bearable as possible. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... interest you to know that Nansen used every available modern invention to help make his voyage successful and bearable. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is said that no person wishes to be vanquished by another in respect of anything. The only one whose victory or superiority, however, is bearable or, rather, prayed for, is the son. Hence, the Rishis wish unto Krishna a son even superior ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sought to peer upward through his thick lashes. The effort was painful, but less so than he had feared. Already, through natural buoyancy or else by reason of the unseen nurse's ministrations, the throbbing ache was becoming almost bearable. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... maintain festivals and formalities for the healthy continuance and honour of a pastime or of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a festival—and a mighty one—in behalf of a faith which makes the corporate human existence bearable amid the menaces and mysteries that for ever threaten it,—the faith of ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... that you have done me good," she said, pressing Olivia's hand; "how strange it seems—there is no cure for such a trouble as mine, and yet telling you about it has seemed to make it more bearable. Oh, please come again soon—very soon," and of ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... kin in the world as far as she knew. These facts redoubled the pity of the girls, and they mentally resolved that as long as they were at Lakeview Hall they would do all they could to make life more bearable for the frail and forlorn woman who had been brought into their lives in a way so unexpected ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... railway-station. My real wife's image—Rosey's, here—just takes the place at the altar where the other one should be, and prevents my getting at any recollection of her. It is the only thing that makes the dream bearable." ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... engaged in everyday employment are really digging for the dead, and it is only in the actual sight of death and its emblems that one can persuade one's self that it is all true. The want of sleep conduces to an unnatural condition of the mind, under which these awful facts are bearable ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... afternoon was shortening fast. The retraite was sometimes long when we had miles of hard road before us, until we arrived at the farm or village where the carriage was waiting. When we could walk our horses it was bearable, but sometimes when they broke into a jog-trot, which nothing apparently could make them change, it was very fatiguing ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... wind or the man's plight might have been more bearable, for the current of air would have carried the smoke and fire to one side. As it was, most of the smoke and flames went straight up, save now and then, when a draught created by the heat would swirl the black clouds down on the performer, hiding him from sight for a second ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... had been four days in London. For Nelly, life was just bearable up to five or six o'clock in the evening because of her morning and afternoon visits to the Enquiry Office in D—— Street, where everything that brains and pity could suggest was being done to trace the 'missing'; ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... here she read and dreamed as contentedly as if her "garden ground" had been fairy-land. Here, too, she invariably came when anything had gone wrong, when the endless troubles about money which had weighed upon her all her life became a little less bearable than usual, or when some act of discourtesy or harshness to her father had roused in her a tingling, burning sense ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... New York were well-nigh dissipated. But a certain natural timidity, joined with the still complete uncertainty he felt as to what his true course should be, made him dissemble his disquiet so long as it was bearable. After a month or two, by a mutual agreement between his brothers and himself which exonerated him from much of the manual labor which they still shared with the men in their employment, he devoted himself to an occupation more accordant to his mind. He set to work to make single beds and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... with his quick, light step and drew a chair up beside Reginald's couch. He planned his work so as to be with the invalid as much as possible, and his constant sympathy and cheer were all that made the days bearable to him. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... find it hard to be thankful, read a little of history, and thankfulness will come. Thousands of millions of men have lived and suffered to make your existence here at least bearable. You may not be satisfied, but you have comforts that were not dreamed of by the luckiest a few centuries back. You think the ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... absolutely free from all evil. It is but the more perfect playing of that part, of which every sound sleep is a rehearsal. The thought of it is mournful to the enjoying soul, but not terrific; and even the mournfulness ceases in the realization. He uttered a piece of cruel madness who said, "Hell is more bearable than nothingness." Is it worse to have nothing than it is to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... accumulation of bodily suffering, that wasted the frame; poisoned the sources of enjoyment; entailed, in the long retinue of ills, dependence and poverty, and with all these, associated that which was far less bearable, an intolerable mental load, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... and of humanity. If we send out obscure people, unknowing and unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter aggravation of the victim's suffering. Oppression and robbery are at all times evils; but they are more bearable, when exercised by persons whom we have been habituated to regard with awe, and to whom mankind for ages have been accustomed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... when driven by stark necessity, that it is unfortunately the easiest thing in the world to exploit them. People of either sex faced by starvation for themselves or those dependent on them must take the first thing that offers if the conditions be in any way bearable. In my opinion, next to the parliamentary vote, the most powerful lever in raising the condition of women will be the entrance into the labour market of a considerable number of women so trained in Economics that ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... would have given way under his troubles if it had not been for this friendship; but life became bearable when he found some one to whom he could pour out his heart. The first time that he breathed a word of his difficulties, the good German had advised him to live as he himself did, and eat bread and cheese at home sooner than dine abroad at such a cost. Alas! Pons ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, yet why is it more childish than a hundred other things? Only because one is not accustomed to look at life from the point of view of the convent. As ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... common property, so to speak, this important element of musical utterance has been dragged through the mud; and modern composers, in their efforts to raise it above the commonplace, have gone to the very edge of what is physically bearable in the use of tone colour and combination. While this is but natural, owing to the appropriation of some of the most poetic and suggestive tone colours for ignoble dance tunes and doggerel, it is to my mind a pity, for ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... what day you are both to be rescued from your misery, and when I am to have the exquisite satisfaction of having my house completely turned upside down for your mutual benefit," said Esther. "I trust it will be as soon as possible, as we cannot rationally expect that either of you will be bearable until it is all over, and you find yourselves ordinary mortals again. Come now, out with it. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... misery— love's yearning No more unspeakably torments my heart, Yet bearable alone through thee, my being— All thou art not is idle, stale and dying, Colourless, ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... said the Colonel; and the two young officers went straight through the scorching sunshine, which turned the great court of the fort into an oven, to where Bracy lay panting with the heat, with Gedge doing his best to make life bearable by applying freshly wrung-out towels to his ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... this occasion should not be allowed to slip; a free afternoon would benefit him. He was always rather lavish of those licenses; and it seemed to him that the tintinnabulation of teacups in Lady Garnett's primrose and gray drawing-room would be a bearable change from the din of a hundred hammers, which had pelted him through the open windows all the morning. They were patching a little wooden barque with copper, and he paused a moment in the yard, leaning on his slim umbrella to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... groaned. It would be dull enough to go for evergreens, but with the possibility of "a scare in the woods" for Dorothy and Tavia it might be bearable, whereas, if the girls would be obliged ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... Just here it is bearable, because we are near the governmental headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur—not the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... you years ago that Nature had chosen our sex for ill-usage. Try what we may, defeat and suffering await us, in one form or another. You are dissatisfied with your form of suffering, I with mine. A creature in pain always thinks it would be more bearable if only it were ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... some submission? The mistake of rabid theorists lies in their supposition that the assertion of superiority by one person necessarily inflicts wrong on another, whereas it is only the mastery obtained by certain men over others that makes the life of the civilized human creature bearable. The very servant who is insolent while performing his duty only dares to exhibit rudeness because he is sure of protection by law. All men are equal before the law. Yes—but how was the recognition of equality enforced? ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the apprehension of the jerk was so vivid that she seized her head in both hands as if to save it from being torn off her shoulders. "The drop given was fourteen feet." No! that must never be. She could not stand that. The thought of it even was not bearable. She could not stand thinking of it. Therefore Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to go at once and throw herself into the river off one of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... which had been one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... truth, though they may vibrate in that direction. Besides, it is certain that sometimes very manifest advances, such as any medical man would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now when a man is positively suffering discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling, he is no proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor can appreciate. Toothache extorts more groans ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been left as they were painted!—not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery man in his studio—passe encore! they might have been just bearable. But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... crossly. "In heaven's name what's the matter with you anyway? Now when the whole city is wild over the author of 'Arivana' and your presence is demanded everywhere, you want to run away from all the glory and triumph, and hide yourself in a little, dark hole which is only bearable in midsummer. Such an idea ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... occasions on which such talks had ended, by reason, truly, of some mere wanton freak, in unconditional release.—Preposterous indeed that the only acts of his life hitherto viewed with self-contempt, were beginning to seem the only ones bearable to remember! ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... malversation and peculation, is first banished to the island of Gyarus, but when the Prince pleads for him, and he is backed by the intercession of a Vestal Virgin of sanctity,—corresponding to a Christian nun or abbess of exemplary piety,—Silanus is removed to the more bearable place of exile, the island of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the outrage at Homestead,—Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable. Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act, his attempt on the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... led her alone beside this resting-place: that was chance, or it was God. But now it seemed that otherwise it would henceforward not have been bearable. For with this first near touch of death, there had come, strangely hand in hand, her first vision of the Internal. The look of this spirit was not toward time, and over the body of this death there had descended the robe of a more ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ray of light, however feeble, in the hold, he thought his condition would have been more bearable, for then he could have faced the lifeless clay and looked at it; but to know that it was there, within a foot of him, without his being able to see it, or to form any idea of what it was like, made the case terrible indeed. Of course he drew back ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a bitterness which is sweet to her, and with a rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes—there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. This was what she had been expecting, and what she had not got. To be lectured because ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... skipper sometimes remarked, he carried padding always about with him; he was, therefore, a little apt to sneer at the attempts of his brethren to render the ill-shaped, wooden- bottomed chairs, with which the hall was ornamented, bearable. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... gained the closest hold upon her he had yet had. But if she were more a woman than ever before, dependent, asking for aid, he was less a man, wanting himself to rest on her and have his discomforts made bearable by her consolations. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... at least, "change" with the rest! And now that autumn is fully come, the loss of summer is more bearable. It is while we hope that summer still may stay that we ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... had their pleasant face, though; they served to make a horribly monotonous journey more bearable, and on an average he was in grief, some way or another, about every ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... first numb apathy of the shock, it had seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. Nothing could make the dreadful state of affairs more bearable; but now she acknowledged to herself that some things did help. How wonderfully comforting Phil's assurance of sympathy had been; the silent assurance of that firm, tender hand-clasp. It was easier to be brave since he had called her so ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... should love him? But he is lame, and his hair is the color of a warming-pan. Young girls are queer; still, I don't think that Cesarine—And then her mother wants to see her the wife of a notary. Alexandre Crottat can make her rich; wealth makes everything bearable, and there is no happiness that won't give way under poverty. However, I am resolved to leave my daughter mistress of herself, even ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... sleep. But sleep did not visit his eyelids. He was thinking, thinking. "I'm going to find God! I'm going to search for Him with all my heart, and somehow I'm going to find Him before I'm done. I may never come home, but I'll find God, anyhow! It's the only thing that makes life bearable!" ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 deg. C.).—Allg. med. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... bearable if the Doctor could only have taken time from his soul-absorbing work to listen at the end of the day, with amused tenderness, to all her little experiences, if he had discussed with her the best way of handling ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... not fathom Helen. A year ago he felt sure that Mrs. Hilmer was the last woman in the world that Helen would have found bearable, much less attractive... He concluded that Helen was enjoying the novelty of watching Mrs. Hilmer nibble at a discreet feminine frivolity to which she was unaccustomed. After a while he looked for outward changes in Mrs. Hilmer's make-up. He figured that the shopping tours with Helen ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... serves his country and his sovereign, relentlessly watchful through the dead monotony of the days. At his own urgent request he was given charge of the lonely prison, its solitude appearing to him the one bearable condition of life. He has his work to do and he does it well, and always between Count Sagan and his dreams stands the irrevocable ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... that to have spoilt my youth was enough; but she was yet to destroy my best years. Ah! Rose," he wrote, "if I had loved you less it would have been more bearable. I met you; I worshipped you; won you. Then, after a brief dream of joy, the cloud came down, and my evil genius was upon me. I don't think you were in love with me, my beloved, but it would have come even after you had found out what a commonplace fellow it was whom you thought a hero; ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... friend, I am not well—a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. "How flat, dull, and unprofitable," appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... my friend Brunow!" he exclaimed. "Sir, I am delighted to meet you. And Brunow is here again? What news! And do you stay long? Oh, once again life will be bearable. In this dull hole, sir, I pledge you my most sacred word of honor, a man has but one contemplation; his thoughts are all towards suicide. Figure for yourself the life we lead here: the commandant a bachelor of sixty, and "—he lowered ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Father than Ibsen. Yet when I came, at a far later date, to read The Wild Duck, memories of the embarrassing household of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, with his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every compromise that makes life bearable. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... is sitting in his after-breakfast chair before the fire with The Times in his hands. He has breakfasted well, and is in that condition of first-pipe serenity in which the affairs of the. nation seem almost bearable. He is a tallish, square, personable man of forty-seven, with a well-coloured, jowly, fullish face, marked under the eyes, which have very small pupils and a good deal of light in them. His bearing has force and importance, as of a man accustomed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wonderful! You would never know him.... For long I had not the courage to tell him I came to bring him back East. I kept putting it off. And I rode, I climbed, I camped, I lived outdoors. At first it nearly killed me. Then it grew bearable, and easier, until I forgot. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit now that somehow I had a wonderful time, in spite of all.... Glenn's business is raising hogs. He has a hog ranch. Doesn't it sound sordid? But things are not always what they sound—or seem. Glenn ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... if a life With large results so little rife, Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth, Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream that falls incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... this short study to analyze the specific forms of retardation which the Church exhibited to all of these branches of learning, whose only endeavor it was to search for the truth, to state the facts, and to alleviate and make more bearable man's sojourn on this earth. However, a few of the many instances of retardation on the part of the Church ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Aristippus taught that the aim of life was intelligent pleasure, Epicurus declared that the aim of life was happiness. Now, does happiness consist in pleasures, or does it exclude them? Epicurus was quite convinced that it excluded them. Like Lord Beaconsfield, he would say, "Life would be almost bearable, were it not for its pleasures." Happiness for Epicurus lay in "phlegm," as Philinte would put it; it lay in the calm of the mind that has rendered itself inaccessible to every emotion of passion, which is never irritated, never moved, never ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... amid the grass, many making directly towards me. To be surrounded, even in daylight, by such creatures would have been especially unpleasant, but in the dusk, when I could scarcely see them, the sensations I experienced were scarcely bearable. I felt inclined to shriek out at the top of my voice, but I restrained myself, and began slashing away right and left with my stick. Some I killed, but the others being more nimble than the rattlesnakes, escaped. ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... the early dusk that a restlessness came on, and an increase of the distress and oppression of breath, which he thought might be more bearable in his chair; and Mr. Audley, who had just come in, began with Felix to dress him, and prepare to move him. But just as they were helping him towards the chair, there was a sort of choke, a gasping struggle, his head ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Oliver and Potto Jumbo, Mr Sedgwick and Tanda, should remain at the fort, in case any stray Malays might have failed to get off. It was important also to drag away the dead bodies as soon as possible. In a very few hours they would render the fort scarcely bearable; besides which they would be certain to attract beasts of prey. Tanda and Potto Jumbo undertook to perform this unpleasant work, and to bury them in some soft ground at the bottom of the hill. The rest of us then ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Brothers Cheeryble must have been turned out only by way of stop-gap; and there are passages in "Little Dorrit" which may have been done speedily enough by the author, but which no one of my acquaintance can reckon as bearable. Dickens saw the danger of exhausting himself before he reached fifty-four years of age, and tried to repair damages inflicted by past excesses; but he was too late, and though "Edwin Drood" was quite in his best manner, he could not keep up the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... a million. I've been with him in times that show men's qualities. Don't judge men by what they are ordinarily. They don't reveal their real selves. Wait till a crisis comes—then you see manhood or lack of it. Life is bearable, at the worst, for any of us in the routine. But when the crisis comes we need, not only all our own strength, but all we can rally to our support. I tell you, Miss Severence, Grant is one of the men that can be relied on. I despise his surface—as ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... for him to-day," Lavretsky added, "with his unsuccessful song. To be young and to fail is bearable; but to be old and not be successful is hard to bear. And how mortifying it is to feel that one's forces are deserting one! It is hard for an old man to bear such blows!... Be careful, you have a bite.... They say," added Lavretsky after a short pause, "that ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... something you didn't want for the sake of being waited on by "Abraham in the flesh." Here was the Arabian Nights in very reality, and all the romance and lure of a thousand dreams. The smell was a bit overpowering, but bearable if you surrounded yourself with the smell of your ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... sigh with all their hearts for the bracing frosts of higher latitudes. But those who have the means of bringing to bear on their comforts the innumerable contrivances which the ingenuity of wealth has devised in the East, indeed, make its climate not only bearable, but one of the most enjoyable in ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... hanging above the left-hand window where was her favourite seat. "Then the azalea. The lovely rose-pink azalea; and after that—oh, I forget. But always something coming—something that we cannot afford to buy, but which has made our sitting-room delightful; and horrid Bridge Street a bearable place to live in. Now you have all been dying to find out who it is that has given us these delightful things; but I have always known; and at last I am going ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... heartfelt thanks for the infinitely gracious and affectionate way with which you and the Prince have treated me during my stay in London.[25] It was a melancholy time, that of my arrival. By the sympathetic view which you took of my situation, most gracious Cousin, it became not only bearable, but even transformed into one that became proportionately honourable and dignified. This graciousness of yours has undoubtedly contributed towards the change of opinion which has resulted in my favour, and so I owe ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... a good box!" said Alvilde; "if we had only other neighbors! The doors are opening and shutting eternally, and make a draught which is not bearable for the teeth. And then they speak so loud! the other night I did not hear a single word of ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... cripple for life. From that moment I had become a changed being, solitary and sometimes morose. I would come and sit staring at the ocean, meditating on tilings in general, but chiefly on things connected with cripples, asking myself, as now, whether life would be bearable on crutches. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... his children, his power to ride to hounds, his pretty taste in wine, his fencing, dancing, flirting, and all that had made life bearable—everything, as he said, but his gout and his liver (and, it may be added, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... grown very arbitrary and headstrong since your experiences in the World War. I shall acquiesce since most of my time will be taken up on the lecture platform, advocating woman suffrage. I suppose I can find the place bearable during the heated term if you make yourself a little more agreeable. I wish I had married your brother-in-law, John Cornwall, when he asked me; he ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Almayer looked vainly westward for a ray of light out of the gloom of his shattered hopes. Years passed, and the rare letters from Mrs. Vinck, later on from the girl herself, were the only thing to be looked to to make life bearable amongst the triumphant savagery of the river. Almayer lived now alone, having even ceased to visit his debtors who would not pay, sure of Lakamba's protection. The faithful Sumatrese Ali cooked his rice and made his coffee, for he dared not trust any one else, and least of ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... once.... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank, whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distant as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his ears for days.... and to think of all which echoed through those vaults of fire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!—was it possible! Millions upon millions burning forever for Adam's fall .... Could God ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of the vile dunghill obtained me respect among the wretches of whom I formed part, and served to set up my spirits, which otherwise were flagging; and my position was speedily made more bearable by the arrival on board our ship of an old friend. This was no other than my second in the fatal duel which had sent me thus early out into the world, Captain Fagan. There was a young nobleman who had a company in our regiment (Gale's foot), and who, preferring ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who burrow in them to lead a life but little above that of the squirrels end foxes. There is throughout that air of room enough, and free if low forms of human nature, which, at such times, makes bearable all that would otherwise ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... any importance occurred that night or the following day. They rode well and fast, finding the ground firm, and the temperature bearable. Toward noon, however, the sun's rays were extremely scorching, and when evening came, a bar of clouds streaked the southwest horizon—a sure sign of a change in the weather. The Patagonian pointed it out to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... fleeting gleams. I longed so much to see them again that I stole up to the surface, and lay down in the sunshine all amongst the white water-lilies and their great green leaves. But, ugh! how the sun burnt me there on the lake I It was scarcely bearable. Bitterly did I regret that I had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... a sigh of relief. If Todd was with him life would still be made bearable for his uncle. Perhaps, after all, a winter with Tom Coston was the wisest thing ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... day. His sister keeps house for him in Harley Street; but it is doubtful whether she will long continue to do so. The last time Dick Ruthven was at home on leave he persuaded her that it was her bounden duty to endeavor to make civilian life bearable to him when he should attain captain's rank, and, in accordance with his father's wish, retire from the army, events which are expected to take place in a few ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... had permitted the lame foot to hang down unsupported, so that the pain must indeed have been scarcely bearable. He could restrain himself ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lugged in a tout dropos, and the little lyrical phrase with which he winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable ... a new idea, what can be more insipid—fit for members of parliament.... Shall I go to bed? No.... I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarme's to read—Mallarme for preference. I remember Huysmans speaks of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... were dispersed once more to our various works and duties. If it was bearable outside, the hut would soon be empty save for the cook and a couple of seamen washing up the plates; otherwise every one went out to make the most of any glimmering of daylight which still came to us from the sun below the northern horizon. And ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... declined to submit to familiar caresses in former years, but on such an occasion as the present, he felt that common propriety demanded the sacrifice of himself to some extent. He therefore allowed Annie to kiss him, and found the operation—performed as she did it—much more bearable than he had anticipated; and when Annie exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, "Oh, dear, dear papa, I did feel such a dreadful longing for you when the waves were roaring round us!" and gave him another squeeze, he felt that the market price ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... well and transformed himself from an encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedy which she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or at the worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions. With money behind one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly to the simple question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not have to leave her square mile of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... left tremendously satisfied with the evening's work. He had done something for the natives that would help make their intolerable situation more bearable until the time came when they could be freed of their slavery ... and he had made a new friend ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... dismounted several times and tried to walk, uphill exercise was impossible in the rarefied air. The atmosphere was but one degree below the freezing-point, but at that height, a brisk breeze on soaked clothes was scarcely bearable. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Channel—everybody being ill. We formed a melancholy-looking little row down the lee side of the ship, though I must say that we were quite as cheery as might have been expected under the circumstances. It was bright and sunny overhead, which made things more bearable. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... me pretty hard," he said in a low voice, not lifting his hand. "Juliet just made it bearable. I shall get over it, of course. But—I never want ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... she was not so badly married. Her husband was as good as any other man. He had become quite bearable. Of all that she read in the ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences, that of their married life was the most vague. She found a few isolated traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Quintilian are said to have derived polished witticisms from the device of double-meaning; now, however, it is rightly held in great contempt, so much so that men of taste not only do not hunt for puns but even avoid them. They are, one must admit, more bearable, or at least less objectionable when they come spontaneously; but anyone who brings out ones he has thought up or indicates that he himself is pleased with them is quite properly judged to be inexperienced in society. Hence it ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... misplaced individual a burden to himself and to those by whom he is surrounded. Natural tendencies cannot be wholly suppressed, even by education systems; and the victim's existence is not rendered more bearable by the reflection that, but for circumstances which he is rarely able to analyze, he might have succeeded in some other and more agreeable occupation had he only received the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... to be other than a coward concerning them. The pot-hunter held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and stuffy, but a little window at the back had been thrown open, and the soft air blowing from off miles of plain made the place a little more bearable. ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... Switzerland, closely watched by the Bourbonists, who dreaded danger from every side except the real point, and who preferred trying to hunt the Bonapartists from place to place, instead of making their life bearable by carrying out the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... memories almost equally disquieting. To rule this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage while you're away—especially if she ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... was more bearable to Bobbie now that her hand was held in the large rough hand of the red-jerseyed sufferer; and he, holding her little smooth hot paw, was surprised to find that he did not mind it so much as he expected. She tried ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... complement. indifferent, middling, ordinary, mediocre; average &c 29; so-so; coucicouci, milk and water; tolerable, fair, passable; pretty well, pretty good; rather good, moderately good; good; good enough, well enough, adequate; decent; not bad, not amiss; inobjectionable^, unobjectionable, admissible, bearable, only better than nothing. secondary, inferior; second-rate, second-best; one-horse [U.S.]. Adv. almost &c; to a limited extent, rather &c 32; pretty, moderately, passing; only, considering, all things considered, enough. Phr. surgit amari ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... well understand," now resumed M. Vigneron, "it by no means amuses me to stay here, kicking my heels, while my wife and my son go back to Paris without me. They have to go, however, for life at the hotel is no longer bearable; and besides, if I kept them with me, and the railway people won't listen to reason, I should have to pay three extra fares. And to make matters worse, my wife hasn't got much brains. I'm afraid she won't be able ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... little tired, and very, very hot. It would have been a great relief to burst into tears, or be disagreeable to some one. I don't know why, but I had the most homesick longing to see Mr. van Buren. It seemed as if, had he come with us, everything would have been right, or at least bearable. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... unpleasant experiences and become more able to conquer difficulties; therefore, for the feasting rich, it makes intestinal work after a meal less evident and drives away the deadly ennui; for the student it is a means to keep wide awake and fresh; for the worker it makes the day's fatigue more bearable. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... night are quite bearable when the heart is aglow, and the future dimmed by present happiness; but upbraidings in the early morning are quite intolerable when the outlook into the future shows a black abyss through the medium of an ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... calm, almost any degree of cold is bearable, but the application of successive doses of it to the face by wind, becomes, occasionally, almost unbearable; indeed, I remember seeing the left cheek of nearly twenty of our soldiers simultaneously frost-bitten in marching about ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... scene, I hope. It needs change of places and persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see a play by Moliere's company, as only they can act, instead of the loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit and charm in the original is transmuted to coarseness and vulgarity. When I leave this bed, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... her mother in hasty moods, she was rather the subject of permanent impressions. Her mother's conduct had wounded her to the quick. She could no longer endure it, she thought. Hitherto, her father's love had rendered it bearable—but now, even that seemed powerless to keep her under the same roof as her mother. Where could she go? She would walk on, no matter in what direction; then, when she could walk no more, she might perhaps be calm enough ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... story-books of the day, it is delightful to find in Catharine Sedgwick herself an example of a bookish child who was natural. Her reminiscences include an account of the way the task of sweeping out the schoolhouse after hours was made bearable by feasts of Malaga wine and raisins. These she procured from the store where her father kept an open account, until the bill having been rendered dotted over with such charges "per daughter Catharine," these treats to favorite schoolmates ceased. Also a host of intimate details of this large ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... be too pessimistic, Alan, if I were you," the girl was saying. "Mrs. Lancaster, given her own way and plenty of money, may be quite bearable, if not charming, to live with, and Doris is evidently ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... and Harry, George's younger brother by half an hour, was always enjoined to respect his senior. All the household was equally instructed to pay him honour; the negroes, of whom there was a large and happy family, and the assigned servants from Europe, whose lot was made as bearable as it might be under the government of the lady of Castlewood. In the whole family there scarcely was a rebel save Mrs. Esmond's faithful friend and companion, Madam Mountain, and Harry's foster-mother, a faithful negro woman, who never could be ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... together to make more bearable the pain of those gripping claws; but the hurt was easier to bear when he saw that the girl was more carefully treated. She was close ahead as his captors hustled him from this room into others and yet others, all carved from the ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... sort of work they elected him to attend to those matters—whether it was sweeping, settling quarrels, cooking, writing letters, petitioning "Old Griff," shaving, pulling teeth, or what not. Each prisoner contributed his knowledge and experience to make life bearable for all. The camp was a democracy, but Germany didn't seem to object. If the prisoners wished to dig a drain trench or a refuse pit, they asked for shovels. And sometimes they got them. Prisoners, ragged and forlorn, came to be known by the ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... some future plan of life that should have in it some better promise of success for him than his sudden scheme of going to the diamond-fields. But there was no other plan which became practicable in his eyes. On the afternoon of the very next day London was no longer bearable to him; and as there was no other place but Croker's Hall to which he could take himself with any prospect of meeting friends who would know anything of his ways of life, he did go down on the following day. One consequence of this was, that Mary had received from her lover the letter which he ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... St. John returned to town. Nan missed him every minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life—which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable—and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... occupied to leave much room for such studies. Yet somehow her song touched the doctor's heart. He forgave her entirely that walk with the curate. He went in softly, less impatient than usual with her crazy Quixotism. A child—a sick child especially—was a bearable adjunct to the picture. A woman could be forgiven for such necessary ministrations—actually, to tell the truth, could be forgiven most follies she might happen to do, when one could have her to one's self, without the intervention ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... and when, as a reward for her aid, she was given a few minutes with the bat, to carefully regulated bowling from Wally, Norah's cup of joy was full. She was even heard to say that school might be bearable if they let you play cricket most of the time!—which was a great admission for Norah, who had kept her word rigidly about not mentioning the dreaded prospect before her. That she thought of it continually, Jim knew well and he and his chum were wont, by all means in their power, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... himself. Society, the crudest organization on earth, laughed to itself about him. He had known how to live before his marriage; now that the marriage had proved a failure, he would still know how to make life bearable. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... no occasion to test the comfort of this bed in its primitive state, for our servants had brought with them everything that could render our quarters bearable if there were any foundation upon ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... other world, but is only gradually accustomed to the altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity of light bearable to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... living as though such were their conviction. And were it so, who would strive and moil in this world? When the heart has been broken, and the spirit ground to the dust by misery, then,—such is God's mercy—eternity suffices to make life bearable. When Mrs. O'Hara spoke to her daughter of eternity, there was but cold comfort in the word. The girl wanted something here,—pleasures, companions, work, perhaps a lover. This had happened before Lieutenant Neville of the 20th Hussars had ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... day like this, when only madmen and the English go abroad, was better than the nervous waiting in his darkened room. Dreadful forces, forces of ruin and murder and disgrace, were abroad in the world of men; the menace of the low black clouds and stifling heat was more bearable. He wanted to get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene was already prepared for them; the setting and ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... Sphaerus's, a man of the first ability as a layer down of definitions, as the Stoics think: but they are all pretty much alike, they give us only common notions, some one way, and some another.) But what is Chrysippus's definition? Fortitude, says he, is the knowledge of all things that are bearable: or an affection of the mind, which bears and supports everything in obedience to the chief law of reason, without fear. Now, though we should attack these men in the same manner as Carneades used to do, I fear they are the only real philosophers: for which of these definitions is there which does ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... usually brought down the palpitation, and enabled me to set to work again as if nothing had happened. Indeed, as the eels get accustomed to skinning, so I got used to all this; and it became at last an old habit, and bearable. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... were proving more powerful than he had anticipated; away from Mabel, his hatred, even of her, flagged more and more with every day, and he was disarmed as against Mark by the evident pleasure the latter took in his society, for the most objectionable persons become more bearable when we discover that they have a high opinion of us—it is such a redeeming touch in their nature. And besides, with all the reason Caffyn had for cherishing a grudge against Mark, somehow, as they became more intimate, he slid gradually into a half-contemptuous and half-affectionate ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... on the safety valve. However unflattering to national self-esteem it might be to see national legislation universally disregarded, the leakage of steam by evasion had made the tension bearable. The Act also opened to a number of subaltern executive officers, of uncertain discretion, an opportunity for arbitrary and capricious action, to which the people of the United States were unaccustomed. Already a justice ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... words, and signified the feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back impatiently on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson |
