"Endurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him out every day as a pattern to the young princes of the imperial family. I exhort them to study that extraordinary personage, to learn from him how to direct nations, how to make the yoke of authority endurable, by means ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... We can not avoid the inevitable results of the economic disorders which have reached all nations. But we shall diminish their harm to us in proportion as we continue to restore our Government finances to a secure and endurable position. This we can and must do. Upon that firm foundation rests the only hope of progress and prosperity. From that source must come relief for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... beyond them sounded almost stentorian at times. More than once Joe's gaze went to that colorless face; just as often it searched Steve's gravely unreadable countenance, and it was Fat Joe who first found the silence no longer endurable. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... him. He was not a fool. He knew that people, the women especially, shrank from the crippled, the disfigured, the malformed, the horrible. That had been his experience. It had very nearly driven him mad. He had no illusions about the men who worked for him, about his neighbors. They found him endurable, and that was about all. If Doris Cleveland had seen him clearly that day on the steamer, if she had been able to critically survey the unlovely thing that war had made of him, she might have pitied him. But would she have found pleasure in the sound of his voice, the touch of his ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of all that was transpiring about them; and the sights which he had seen in the miserable, tumbledown village left a very disagreeable feeling in his heart. Somehow, his hitherto blithe spirits were dampened by this morning's walk, and he thought the great bare Rock would be a great deal more endurable if the fish-huts and their inmates were only off it. True, it would be much lonelier, but that was far more endurable than the sight of such shiftlessness and ignorance. He wondered if Uncle Richard ever went among them, and whether he really ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... you might get an innings somewhere after four o'clock, even if only at the nets. But during the football season—it was now February—to be in extra lesson meant a total loss of everything that makes life endurable, and the School protested (to one another, in the privacy of their studies) with no uncertain voice ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... barely endurable by the help of croquet! I trust so! He was very patient and tolerant—made holidays for me that first summer which it ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really wanted to go to a party before. It will be something to remember next month at Newport, when we have to and don't want to. Remember your own theory that contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is my party and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty to-morrow night will consist in being nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll warrant you were adept enough at it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... claes. As for the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been you, I would hae waired my siller better gates than that." And he proposed I should buy winter hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, and made them "extraordinar endurable." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the liver, to the professional scrutiny. And he was to be the fourth, in a line of financially successful Kents, to die untimely from mere eating and drinking. You would not have stayed long with this sick man. Only a large love or a large salary could have made the atmosphere of his presence endurable, for he was the essence of impatience, the quintessence of wilfulness. The sumptuousness of his surroundings, the punctilious devotion of his servants, the deferential respect shown him in high financial circles, books, people, memories, all failed ever to soften that drawn, hard face, for he was ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... enough, involved a fallacy in its most important point. A marriage so contracted, with a woman of Sophie's character, could by no possibility turn out a happy or even endurable union. She would not be likely long to survive it; if she did, it would be to suffer a life more painful than any death; for no one depended more than Sophie upon integrity and nobility in those she loved; and the break in her family relations would be another source of agony to her, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... pope's resolution to maintain her cause. "Much resort of people came daily to her."[537] The vexatious dispute upon her title had been dropped, from an inability to press it; and it seemed as if life had become at least endurable to her, if it never could be more. But the repose was but the stillness of evening as night is hastening down. The royal officers of the household were not admitted into her presence; the queen lived wholly among her own friends and her ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... seem unhappy, however, not so much as many a single one he had met in more luxurious homes, and he said to himself, 'Women of the lower class are much better and happier when well curbed.' It did not occur to him that possibly the evil tempers of men of the lower class are made more endurable by a system of co-operation; one reed bends, breaks, and dies, but ten reeds together ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on a Med Ship in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises carefully generated to keep the silence of the ship endurable. Calhoun raised his head. He listened sharply. No sound could come ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... minority appears criminal if it takes the liberty of refusing to subject its thoughts (yes, its very thoughts) to that of the majority. In this innumerable host of like beings, no one is authorized to possess any thing in private; of all aristocracies, that of the conscience appears then least endurable. Men believe in the majority, in the mass, in the nation. We have no idea of the intellectual despotism of a democracy which fails to encounter on its road the obstacle of personal convictions; it disposes of the human soul, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... his beautiful and aristocratic home, which he had forfeited so completely that the prison would be more endurable than the forced and painful toleration of his presence, which was the best he could hope for from his mother and sisters; and he felt that he would much rather stay where he was for life than again meet old neighbors and companions. But he now saw how, with that home and his father's honored ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... d'elle, what sort of a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At one time he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a book-keeper. As an ordinary obscure individual and not the mari d'elle, he had been quite endurable: he used to go to his work and take his salary, and all his whims and projects went no further than a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder. Since he had become "the husband of a celebrity" he ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the heat was hardly endurable: bright sunshine, blue sky,—snow-tipped Alps in the distance. No place, I think, ever suited my needs, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... had attained the summer heat; the thermometer standing about fifty-seven degrees in the morning, early, but rising to about ninety degrees at noon. The incessant breezes, however, which sweep these vast plains render the heats endurable. Game was scanty, and they had to eke out their scanty fare with wild roots and vegetables, such as the Indian potato, the wild onion, and the prairie tomato, and they met with quantities of "red root," from which the hunters make a very palatable beverage. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... had been endurable only because men foresaw its speedy end, all eyes were directed to her younger sister Elizabeth. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who bore her under her heart when she was crowned as Queen. After many changes, Henry VIII, in agreement with Parliament, had recognised her ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... ecclesiastical and civil, of the early Christians of the North were, as we have seen, made of wattles or wicker-ware. The skill, therefore, of the architectural decorator took the direction of the variations in basket-work. We know that in the Gothic age those forms which were found the most endurable and graceful in which stone could be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms which guided the carver and the painter; so that all wood-work, metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination of books, and the like, repeated the ornaments of Gothic architecture. It would ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... to be long endurable, so I added a pony to our caravan, purchased, from a home-going Dane of the customs service, for forty-four dollars Mexican. The Yunnanese ponies are small and sturdy, and as active as cats. They are all warranted to kick, and mine was no exception. Although he was ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... hot springs there, and during two thousand years they have poured forth a never-diminishing abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is reduced to an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. The new Friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever been invented, and with all the additions of herbs and drugs that his ailment may need ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... over the maiden whose head had sunk so low, but he could not see the gleam of happiness which lighted up her face as she said softly: "I have been so anxious that life has hardly been endurable ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... he established himself at Passy, in a part of the Hotel de Valentinois, which was kindly placed at his disposal by its owner, M. Ray de Chaumont. In this at that time retired suburb he hoped to be able to keep the inevitable but useless interruptions within endurable limits. Not improbably also he was further influenced, in accepting M. Chaumont's hospitality, by a motive of diplomatic prudence. His shrewdness and experience must soon have shown him that his presence in Paris, if not precisely distasteful to the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... return from Buxton. She had been rewarded by the sweetest of smiles, but Captain Talbot had said it must never happen again, or he should be accused of letting billets pass in posies. The whole place was pervaded, in fact, by an atmosphere of suspicion, and the vigilance, which might have been endurable for a few months, was wearing the spirits and temper of all concerned, now that it had already lasted for seven or eight years, and there seemed no end to it. Moreover, in spite of all care, it every now and then became apparent that Queen Mary had some communication with the outer world which ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the National Hotel, which is now quite crowded, but I have an endurable room with furniture hardly endurable, for it is hard to find, in this hotel at least, a table or a bureau that can stand on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger's washing-pan, unless the lame leg ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... that Binhart would now try to get out of the country. He would make his way to some territory without an extradition treaty. He would look for a land where he could live in peace, where his ill-gotten wealth would make exile endurable. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... swung into a horse ambulance and thereafter swung and swayed for a couple of hours until, closing my eyes, I could fancy I was once again at sea. This was rougher than the sledge, but endurable and certainly the most comfortable of all the wheeled vehicles in which I travelled. I bless the inventor of the springs that kept it swaying gently on a road all ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... was certainly not hopeful. To the degenerate Europeans of the present day, whose programme involves constant holidays in a mountain climate, occasional furloughs to England, and, when resident in India, a residence made endurable by imported luxuries, and by every possible precaution against heat, there is something almost incredible in this long life of exile, where the English language would not be heard for years, and where quilted curtains and wooden shutters would be all the protection of the most luxurious ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... of June, just before the commencement of the rainy season—at that period of the day and year when the tropic sun of Southern Mexico is least endurable. His fervid rays, striking perpendicularly downward, had heated like smouldering ashes the dusty plain of Huajapam, which lay like a vast amphitheatre surrounded by hills—so distant that their blue outlines were ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... became less and less endurable, Chief Agueynaba resolved, out of the soreness of his heart, to test this reputed immortality of his guests. A messenger, one Salzedo, was to be sent away from San Juan on some official errand, with a little company of natives as freighters and servants. This was Agueynaba's chance. He ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... thought it was the Father's will. It amused Lysken to hear people pity her as one who had failed to win the woman's aim in life. To have failed to obtain what she had never sought, and did not want, was in Lysken's eyes an easily endurable affliction. The world was her home, while she passed through it on her journey to the better Home: and all God's family were her brethren or her children. The two sisters from Enville Court were both happy and useful in their corners of the great ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... that Grey was to lift the cloud which overshadowed her, was a consolation to Hannah, and helped to make life endurable, when at last his parents returned from Europe, and he went to his home in Boston. After that Grey spent some portion of every summer at the farm-house growing more and more fond of his Aunt Hannah, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... nuisance of a bad cold. I am very well, without exception. The only unpleasant effect I feel from this climate is a constant tendency to slight relaxation of the throat, but this is nothing more than a trifling inconvenience, very endurable, and which probably a little more seasoning will remove.... I tell you of our health first, for at our distance from each other that is the matter ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... In this respect they are no worse than the other whole tribe of ciceroni, who assuredly are among the greatest bores that necessity imposes. If they would confine themselves to leading the way, and interpreting, and rest contented with solicitude for the horses, they would be useful and endurable. S—— forewent for a moment his amber mouthpiece to give us his experience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of domestic life; nor is his mind capable of appreciating that respect for a wife which makes her an ornament of her circle. Saloons, race-courses, and nameless places, have superior attractions for him: home is become but endurable. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... pale and anxious, while there was on his face the light of a new joy, as if the little life begun so short a time ago had brought an added good to him, softening his haughty manner and making him even endurable to the prejudiced sister ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... get used to anything. Morgan says that even the New England summer is endurable when you learn to dress warmly enough. We come to endure pain and loss with equanimity; one thing and another drops out of our lives-youth, for instance, and sometimes enthusiasm—and still we go on with a good degree of enjoyment. I do not say that Miss Forsythe ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... steady, systematic work in youth, and untiring effort has been the rule of his life. Man was made to be well, and he was made to work. It is only work—which is the constant effort to retain equilibrium—that makes life endurable. So we find Haeckel now, at near fourscore years, a model of manly vigor, with all the eager, curious, receptive qualities of youth—a happy man, but one who knows that happiness lies on the way to Heaven, and not in arriving there and sitting ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... many-coloured experience. And that is the case with all healthy-minded people. We may, like Job, in moments of depression curse the day when we were born; but the curse dies on our lips. Swift, it is true, kept his birthday as a day of mourning; but no man who hates humanity can hope to find life endurable, for the measure of our sympathies is the measure of our joy ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... opening; very many have failed, and their imperfections have been in every one's way. They have been more partial, more harsh, more officious and impertinent, than those compelled by severer friction to render themselves endurable. Those who have a more full experience of the instincts have a distrust as to whether the unmarried can be thoroughly human and humane, such as is hinted in the saying, "Old-maids' and bachelors' children are well cared for," which derides at once ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... many things which she had valued very lightly until then. Health became a boon too precious to be trifled with; life assumed a deeper significance when death's shadow fell upon its light, and she discovered that dependence might be made endurable by the sympathy of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... more than two years ago. A stranger, on coming to the ground, is struck with wonder when for the first time he obtains a near view of the vast piles of masonry towering majestically above all the surrounding objects—strong as the pillars of Hercules, and apparently as endurable—his eyes wander instinctively to the ponderous tubes, those masterpieces of engineering constructiveness and mathematical adjustment; he shrinks into himself as he gazes, and is astonished when he thinks that the whole is the developed idea of one man, and carried out, too, in the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... lofty aim, cheered by neither friendship nor affection; for she could not teach herself to feel anything warmer than toleration for her daily companion, Mrs. Tadman—only working laboriously because existence was more endurable to her when she was busy than when she was idle. It was scarcely strange, then, that she brooded upon the memory of that night when the nameless stranger had come to Wyncomb, and that she tried to put the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Mrs. Lincoln is in indigent circumstances, and has to sell her clothing and jewelry to gain means to make life more endurable?' ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Whatever literary production was brought under Matthew Arnold's notice, his judgment was clear, sympathetic, and independent. He had the readiest appreciation of true excellence, a quick intolerance of turgidity and inflation—of what he called endeavors to render platitude endurable by making it pompous, and lively horror of ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... also, on political economy, and on many other social subjects. He is the founder of a society called "The St George's Guild," the purpose of which is to spread abroad sound notions of what true life and true art are, and especially to make the life of the poor more endurable and better ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... modified the excessive temperature. Therefore, between the extreme cold of the aphelion and the excessive heat of the perihelion, by the great law of compensation, it is probable that the mean temperature would be tolerably endurable." ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... answer in a crowd of invitations. I need not vex you nor myself, Emmy, writing as I do with a heavy, heavy heart, by describing gayeties in which I felt no pleasure, even when amongst them, for my Emmy was not there: splendour, prodigality, and red-hot rooms, only made endurable by perpetually fanning punkahs: pompous counsellors, authorities, and other men in office, and a glut of military uniforms: vulgar wealth, transparent match-making, and predominating dullness: along ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... character place him among the most valuable class of business men. But though prudent in business affairs, and of deeply earnest character in all relations of life, Mr. Farmer has not allowed the stern realities of life to obscure the lighter qualities that serve to make life endurable. Always cheerful in manner and genial in disposition, with a quaint appreciation of the humorous side of things, he endeavors to round off the sharp corners of practical life with a pleasant and genial smile. A meditative ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it. The same persons would perhaps have looked with great complacency upon Poussin's celebrated picture of the Plague at Athens[1] Disease and Death and bewildering Terror, in Athenian garments, are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within the "limits of pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of. Yet if we could abstract our minds from the fascinating colors of the picture, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... The latter have generally furnished their own ammunition and other equipments for the expedition. Most of these are practised riflemen, men of undoubted courage, and capable of bearing any fatigue and privations endurable by veteran troops. The Indians are composed of a party of Walla-Wallas from Oregon, and a party of native Californians. Attached to the battalion are two pieces of artillery, under the command of Lieutenant ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... and stairways, without a moment of leisure for months and months, till brain and nerve and sense reel, and the country is longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief! Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought by wealth. The only thing that makes all this labor at all endurable is, that it is utterly and entirely useless, and does no good to any one in creation; this alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the vulgar toils of a housekeeper. These delicate creatures, who can ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... home; but she fell into New England ways more readily than might have been expected. When she moved north, she brought Dinah, who was her particular property, with her; indeed, Dinah was so much attached to her young mistress that she refused to be left behind, and life on the farm was made more endurable by her services. When, in the course of time, a son was born, he was placed in Dinah's care, and little Clarence was as fond of his black nurse as was ever the southern-born child of its black "mammy" of the ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... godliness, then there is little hope of this steamer making the Kingdom of Heaven. One habit of the men is disgusting; they expectorate freely over everything but the ocean. The cold outside is so intense as to be scarcely endurable, while the closeness of the atmosphere within is less so. These are a few of the minor discomforts of travel to a mission station; the rest can be better imagined than described. If, to the Moslem, to be slain in battle ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... confirming the concession of Clement Eighth, in the erection of the province. He restored the title and office of provincial to the same father Fray Gregorio, confirmed his former patents, and restored everything to its former condition. However, there were certain endurable reservations, by which they could not found more monasteries or receive novices. At the end of the three years' term, the calced provincial was to visit that reformed branch in whose jurisdiction the Recollect convents were to be. He conceded them many indulgences, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Newmarket!' exclaimed the young Duke. 'If it required five-and-twenty thousand pounds to make Doncaster amusing, a plum, at least, will go in rendering Newmarket endurable.' ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Marquise broke in, "in print it may be endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is a punishment which I do not in the ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... begged Beatrice. "I love Hubert with the love that comes but once in life; that man was nothing to me except that his flattery, and the excitement of contriving to meet him, made my life more endurable. He gave me a ring, and said in two years' time he should return to claim me. He was going on a long voyage. Lily, I felt relieved when he was gone—the novelty was over—I had grown tired. Besides, when the glamour fell ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... real life, that is to say, of life imposed on us by outer necessities and combinations, which is so often one-sided, perfunctory, not to be dwelt upon by thought nor penetrated into by feeling, and endurable only according to the angle or the lighting up—the angle or lighting up called "purpose" which we apply ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Cohn was a bit of a bully can scarcely be denied. It is difficult to combine the offices of Gabbai and Town Councillor without a self-satisfaction that may easily degenerate into dissatisfaction with others. Least endurable was S. Cohn in his religious rigidity, and he could never understand that pietistic exercises in which he found pleasure did not inevitably produce ecstasy in his son and heir. And when Simon was discovered reading 'The Pirates of Pechili,' dexterously concealed ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... inanities which seem proper to that condition poured forth on the stage. I know of no European drama of any importance which treats of a prosperous and happy love as its principal subject; it needs the delicate pen of a Kalidasa to make it endurable. It does not of course follow that love is to be altogether banished from dramatic art. The dramatist surveys the whole field of human life and could not, if he wished, afford to neglect the most powerful and universal of human motives. All depends upon the treatment, and no subject is more ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... hundreds of fine fellows labouring here beneath a sun that at this winter season was at times insufferably fierce, and amidst a pestilential swamp whose exhalations were foetid to a degree scarcely endurable even for a few moments; wading amongst stumps of trees, mid-deep in black mud, clearing the spaces pumped out by powerful steam-engines; wheeling, digging, hewing, or bearing burdens it made one's shoulders ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of ceremony is a funeral without a legacy; an assembly is a mob, and a ball a compound of glare, tinsel, noise, and dust. However amusing in their freshness, after a few repetitions, they are only rendered endurable by the prospect of some collateral gain, or the gratification of personal vanity. To exhibit the beauty of a young wife, or the diamonds of an old one; to be able to say the best thing that is uttered; to sport a ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... making of matrimonial happiness, I cannot help thinking that a personage of her present able exterior, thoroughly experienced in all the domestic arts which render life comfortable, might make the later years of some hitherto companionless bachelor very endurable, not to say pleasant. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reward were needed, the wistful delight with which a patient from the front would regard a raw onion was ample; while for me the care of the homely, growing vegetables and fruit brought a diversion of mind which made life more endurable. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... All his longing of remorse gives to the last great scene, before the supposed statue, an intensity of beauty hardly endurable. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... grip upon his hands, "Have you, too, discovered that sentimentality is the crudest thing in the world? It is. It is perfectly ruthless. It makes more tragedies than malice. Ludicrous tragedies—which are less endurable than the other sort. Unless one were enough of an Olympian so that he could laugh." She relaxed again and made a nestling movement toward him. "I thought for a while ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... game. Fair game, brought down in open chase, and it would provide welcome change in the monotonous diet of her home. Besides, the spirit of the hunter gripped her soul. It was the only thing which made life endurable in these drab outlands. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... wonder, though," thought he, "whether the Italian is still playing that awful instrument?" Curiously enough, the idea did not disturb him in the least. "I shall teach him a Russian tune or two!" he decided, cheerfully. "Then, maybe his playing will be endurable." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... which was more warm even than the pleasure of the present moment; for having made one such mistake, how could I tell that there were not more discoveries awaiting me, that life might not prove more endurable, might not rise to something grander and more powerful? The old prejudices, the old foregone conclusion of earth that this was a world of punishment, had warped my vision and my thoughts. With so many added faculties of being, incapable of fatigue as we were, incapable of death, ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... of martial law was much to make life less endurable than ever. All who were convicted by a court-martial of being rebels were to have property confiscated, and slaves set free. Then there was a certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish to have guardians appointed over their actions. There were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sculpture: its decoration of guttae, seen in silver points against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a kind of continual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable when the eye is quickly drawn away from it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... encounter a marked difference of race, of social and business life, together with the absence of many of such domestic comforts as habit has rendered almost necessities. The exercise of a little philosophy will reconcile him to the exigencies of the case, and render endurable here what would be inadmissible at home. A coarse, ill-cooked dinner, untidy service, and an unappeased appetite must be compensated by active interest in grand and peculiar scenery; a hard bed and a sleepless night, by the intelligent enjoyment of famous places clothed ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... me—how, meaning and willing to give, you gave nobly! Do you think I have not seen in this world how women who do love will manage to confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how much alloy such pure gold as your love would have rendered endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what but this makes me confident and happy? Can I take a lesson by your fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw all the world—the worthier, better men there ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... thinking. "Do you know," he said, presently, "what a lot girls have to do with making a fellow's life endurable?... Since I went to work I—I've felt really GOOD only twice. Both times it was a girl. The other one just grinned at me when I was feeling down on my luck. It was a dandy grin.... ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... hav bin highsted sum where else; this iz a cross match, a bay and a sorrel; pride may make it endurable. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... calculated to prejudice Calvin on the point submitted to him," says Professor Hume Brown. {56} Calvin replied that the quarrel might be all very well if the exiles were happy and at ease in their circumstances, though in the Liturgy, as described, there were "tolerable (endurable) follies." On the whole he sided with the Knoxian party. The English Liturgy is not pure enough; and the English exiles, not at Frankfort, merely like it because they are accustomed to it. Some are partial to ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... of the question, and boating equally uninviting. The playground had been left deserted to bake and scorch under the fierce sun, and the swings and poles in the gymnasium had blistered and cracked in solitude. The only place where life was endurable was down by the river, and even there it was far too hot to do anything but sit and dabble our feet under the shelter of the trees, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and glowing under the sheltering Alpes-Maritimes, like a golden lizard sunning itself on a shelf of gray rock, he felt within him a more kindly and comprehensive feeling for that flower-strewn arena of vast hazards. It was, after all, the great chances of life that made existence endurable. Its only anodyne lay in effort and feverish struggle. And his ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Napoli that he hoped to be able to cast the bars there, in which case I shall have to wait for the coals from Hydra. The impertinence of these shopkeepers has at length attained a pitch that is scarcely endurable—it is to be hoped your lordship will make them send the coals—[The remainder ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... a power in the markets. When Monsieur Verlaque had finished instructing Florent in his new duties, he advised him to conciliate certain of the stall-holders, if he wished his life to be endurable; and he even carried his sympathy so far as to put him in possession of the little secrets of the office, such as the various little breaches of rule that it was necessary to wink at, and those at which he would have to feign stern displeasure; and also the circumstances ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... was up, but the slaves were used to self-repression. All that was endurable in their lives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... whom, after all, he contrived to manage, and by whom he was listened to and respected: for he knew precisely what to say to them, and how, while talking lightly, to teach them the most serious things. For the joy of teaching, and of continually learning by teaching others, made everything endurable. Not only did he teach them to read, write, and cipher, which then included almost the entire programme of primary education; he endeavoured also to place his own knowledge at their service, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... that the soldier's dwelling, his tent and barrack, will be reduced to the lowest endurable dimensions in the campaign, for there is a seeming necessity for this economy of room; but in garrisons, stations, and cantonments, and even in encampments in, time of peace, this necessity ceases, and there is a power at least, if not a disposition, to give a more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... copies thrown aside, or may not be genuine at all. I will be glad to see Lockhart. My pronunciation is a good deal improved. My time glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the palsy. I should not like to be pinned to my chair. But I believe even that kind of life is more endurable than we could suppose. Your wishes are limited to your little circle—yet the idea is terrible to a man who has been active. My own circle in bodily matters is daily narrowing; not so in intellectual matters, but I am perhaps a bad judge. The plough ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... did, above the freshly reaped fields. And I felt, as I leaned against the parapet watching for my train's smoke coming towards me, not the loss, but rather the inestimable gain which a kindly past represents. Years gone by? Nay, rather years which make endurable, which furnish and warm the present, giving it sweetness and significance. How very poor we must be in our early youth, with no possessions like these; and how rich in our later life, with many years distilled into the ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... sympathy, like shadow and flame. One fear was removed from him. Whatever happened Miss Harden would never misunderstand him. At the same time he realized that any prospect, however calamitous, would be more endurable than the course she ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... contrast between the nightly frosts and the midday heat, produced by considerable insulation but still more by the raw northerly winds, causes frequent chills, though the prevailing bright sky makes the season of the year much more endurable than in many other regions where the winter cold is equal. As a fact the climate of Japan agrees very well with most Europeans, so that people have already begun to look upon certain localities as climatic watering-places ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... have struck paydirt on the first try. Perhaps I am lucky. At any rate I am alive, and my lifeboat, while somewhat damaged by an inept landing, is still sufficiently intact to serve as a shelter, and the survival kits are undamaged, which should make my stay here endurable if not pleasant ... and we are learning a great deal about our galaxy with the development of the interstellar drive—not the least of which is that authoritative opinion is mere opinion and ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... Draxy's inflexibility of resolve, she could not help being disheartened. She could not see how they were to live; the three rooms over the store could easily be fitted up into an endurable dwelling-place; but what was to supply the food which the farm had hitherto given them? There was literally no way open for a man or a woman to earn money in that little farming village. Each family took care of itself and hired no service, except in the short season ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... clothes, watched out for his health—often, I am convinced, she stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed, beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But he never loved ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... a limb, or falling ill of a severe sickness. And he never prayed for himself without praying also that Mr Paton's misfortune might in some way be alleviated; and even, impossible as the prayer might seem, that he, Walter, might himself have some share in rendering it more endurable. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... employed in different ways when notes are to be raised or lowered a semitone; chromatic passages easy of execution on the piano are almost impracticable on the harp. The same may be said of the shake; and it is only after long and exclusive devotion to its study that the harp can become endurable in the hands of an amateur, or the means of furnishing a professional harpist with a moderate income. It is needless to point out how far, in these respects, the harp is surpassed by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... was not lighted without a purpose. The peasant had a son, to whom the flame had been passed on; for he aimed at the priesthood. This has ever been a refuge of ambitious minds that cannot rise by any other means above the dullness of the peasant's life, which is the more endurable the more the man is able to place himself upon the animal level of his plodding ox. The son was being educated in a seminary, but he was now home for the holidays. Presently he appeared. He was a youth of about ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... her heart; but throughout Zeus' palace the gods of heaven were troubled. Then Hephaistos the famed craftsman began to make harangue among them, to do kindness to his mother, white-armed Hera: "Verily this will be a sorry matter, neither any more endurable, if ye twain thus fight for mortals' sakes, and bring wrangling among the gods; neither will there any more be joy of the goodly feast, seeing that evil triumpheth. So I give counsel to my mother, though herself is wise, to do ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... would never consent to my leaving the valley. Although what he said merely confirmed the impression which I had before entertained, still it increased my anxiety to escape from a captivity which, however endurable, nay, delightful it might be in some respects, involved in its issues a fate marked ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... a party to a contract; (3) as a member of a household. The charges made against her in all of these have been summed up in a recent attack on her in the Atlantic Monthly, as "a lack of every quality which makes service endurable to the employer, or a wholesome life ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... was small, close, and very poorly furnished. In former days Miss Garth would have hesitated to offer such a room to one of the servants at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it gave her a few minutes alone; and it was endurable, even welcome, on that account. She locked herself in and walked mechanically, with a woman's first impulse in a strange bedroom, to the rickety little table and the dingy little looking-glass. She waited there ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Helen, smiling; she introduced the two men, and Mr. Harrison sat down upon the other side of the girl. Somehow or other he seemed less endurable than he had just before, for his voice was not as soft as Mr. Howard's, and now that Helen's animation was gone she was again aware of the millionaire's ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... manifested no disdain for the homely virtues of the work dogs whose faithfulness has won for them an honorable place in the community, that Dubby had soon given unmistakable signs of friendliness that helped to make Baldy's new home endurable. ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... generality of his countrymen, he looked much older than he was. With them, the elastic vigor of youth and manhood rapidly subside into an interminable and joyless old age, numbering as many years but with far less both of physical and mental faculty, to render them endurable, than the more equally poised gradations of our northern clime. It is by no means unusual to encounter a well-developed Italian, whiskered to the eyebrows, and "bearded like the pard," who tells you, to your utter astonishment, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... no reasonable nor endurable time, if I were to point out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood which the inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. It is not this man, nor that man, nor one school nor another; all agree in entire ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin |
