"Insufferable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... terrific: the vibrant atmosphere over the red-hot sand looked as though it had become molten, and the glare to the eye was almost insufferable. There was not a breath of air stirring. Indeed, it was due solely to this fact that the patrol had ventured to cross the shifting dunes. Later, when the wind blew, it would be courting death to ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... from most of the gentlemen at that! "Preposterous!" said one. "Ridiculous!" said another. "Insufferable ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... endeavours, either to overthrow their government, or to bend it to his will. But the full experiment had now been made; and the result was a conviction not to be resisted, that moderation would only invite additional injuries, and that the present insufferable state of things could be terminated only by procuring the removal of the French minister, or by submitting to become, in his hands, the servile instrument of hostility against the enemies of his nation. Information was continually ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... for he is the greatest case of monopoly in conversation I ever met with or heard of. He is insufferable, unpardonable. He did nothing but talk, talk, talk, to the almost absolute exclusion of ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... was absolutely necessary that she should restrain herself and endure his insufferable endearments, and even force herself to speak. And yet her tongue seemed tied, and it was only by the utmost effort of her will that she could bring herself to express her astonishment at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... apparently extraordinary nature of the case, it struck me that I had not seen the tusks. I went back into the stable and discovered two little tumors, red and hard, in the situation of the inferior tusks, which, when pressed, gave the animal insufferable pain. I instantly took out my pocketknife and made crucial incisions through them both, down to the coming teeth, from which moment the horse recovered his appetite and, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and they were blinded with seas of brilliancy on all sides from lamps and tapers and crystals, cornelians and gems of fiery lustre, liquid lights and flashing mirrors, and eyes of crowding damsels, bright ones. So, when they had risen, and could bear to gaze on the insufferable splendour, they saw sitting on a throne of coral and surrounded by slaves with scimitars, a fair Queen, with black eyes, kindlers of storms, torches in the tempest, and with floating tresses, crowned with a circlet of green-spiked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Senate who were sent were relations of Marcius, and expected to be warmly welcomed by a man who was their near relation and personal friend. Nothing of the kind, however, happened. They were conducted through the enemy's camp, and found him seated, and displaying insufferable pride and arrogance, with the chiefs of the Volscians standing round him. He bade the ambassadors deliver their message; and after they had, in a supplicatory fashion, pronounced a conciliatory oration, he answered them, dwelling with ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... language all his own, hoping indeed to tune his tongue one day to something less uncouth. None can sympathize more cordially than the writer does with Durtal in his horror of unauthorized devotions, of insufferable vernacular litanies, of nerveless and sickly hymns, of interminable "acts of consecration" void of a single definite idea, more especially when these things are brought into the very sanctuary itself, with stole and cope and every apparent endeavour to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... alterations, before it would be perfectly comfortable, as a place of residence. 'I am sorry to hear it, my lord,' replied the Countess. 'And why sorry, madam?' 'Because the place will ill repay your trouble; and were it even a paradise, it would be insufferable at such ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... port, I'm there; if it's Sir Roger de Coverley, I'm there; I'll do anything to add to the general Schwaermerei. What the modern litterateur thinks it fine to write about Christmas being all sham sentiment is simply insufferable bosh. Christmas isn't in the least bit played out—though the magazinist may be, or may pretend to be. I think it's a grand thing to have a season for sending good wishes, for recollection of absent friends, for letting the young folk kick up their heels. I say, Linn, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Dorn—yes. Pretty girl?" Eastman spoke with the insufferable air of patronizing criticism of extreme masculine ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sickly women that might have lasted these ten years—Rebecca thought to herself, in all the woes of repentance—and I might have been my lady! I might have led that old man whither I would. I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her patronage, and Mr. Pitt for his insufferable condescension. I would have had the town-house newly furnished and decorated. I would have had the handsomest carriage in London, and a box at the opera; and I would have been presented next season. All this might have been; and now—now all was ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heard of her exploit of the night before. Miss Day and Miss Marsh had repeated this good story. It had impressed them at the time, but they did not tell it to others in an impressive way, and the girls, who had not seen Prissie, but had only heard the tale, spoke of her to one another as an "insufferable little prig." ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... abstracts and notes, the pemmican of school-boy learnings, are more or less a weariness and a bore; but the youth who comes out from the admiring circle of sisters and aunts with the airs of a man of the world and the blight of a premature ennui is peculiarly insufferable. Of course he has never known at home any grown-up people beyond the chrysalis stage of undergraduatism, except to receive from them patronising hospitalities and little attentions in the shape of ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... he asked. The Bishop nodded. "It's the worst trouble I've ever had. It would kill me to see him marry that man's daughter. I can't and won't resign myself to it. Why should I? Why should Dick choose, out of all the world, the one girl in it who would be insufferable to me. I can't give in about this. Much as Dick is to me I'll let him go sooner. I hope you'll see I'm right, Jim, but right or wrong, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... in the deyvle's name, Hawk, have you and Nickleby been talking about?' said the young man. 'I neyver heard such an insufferable riot. Croak, croak, croak. Bow, wow, wow. What ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... stopped. They came back to the table, Minnie with a pink glow on her face that made her younger than ever; Sidney, the insufferable ass, grinning and smirking and pretending to be eighteen. They looked like a couple of children—Henry, catching sight of himself in a mirror, was surprised to find that ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... demons!" he cried, "I'm not going to stand for her going hunting with that man-net! If she catches any insufferable pup ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... them come in again at the right moment; while the rest still hold their instrument under their left arm, and look about them. Thus the point is greatly weakened, if not entirely missed. I invoke the attention and vigor of orchestral conductors to this insufferable habit. It is, however, so rooted that they will only ensure its extirpation by making a large number of violinists amenable for the fault of a single player; by inflicting a fine, for example, upon a whole row, if one of them misses coming in. Even were this fine no more ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... all which was, that the carriage was ordered between three and four o'clock, and that in spite of the insufferable heat of the day the two invalids (so very differently disabled) were driven to the Central Park, were driven around it, heard Dodworth's Band perform half a dozen operatic selections as only that cornet-band ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... house into a palace in order to feast his bosom friend: on the contrary, 'tis the poor devil of a friend who fares the worst, and starves on the family joint, while mine host beggars himself to banquet "that disagreeable Mr. A., who is such an insufferable ass," and mine hostess sends her husband to the Fleet by vying with "that odious Mrs. B., who was ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Seated on the stone ballast beneath the bamboo deck there was yet another layer of humanity, whose condition can neither be described nor conceived. Without air, without light, without room to move, without hope; with insufferable stench, with hunger and thirst, with heat unbearable, with agony of body and soul, with dread anticipations of the future, and despairing memories of the past, they sat for days and nights together—fed with just enough of uncooked rice and water to ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... blushed when she welcomed him aroused my ire at once. Now Mr. Willoughby Newton was a very handsome and proper gentleman, and on his broad acres grew some of the sweetest tobacco that ever left Virginia; but I could scarce treat him civilly, which only shows what an insufferable puppy I still was, and I made myself most miserable. His learning was more of the court and camp than of the bookshelf,—a defect which I soon discovered,—and I loved to set him tripping over some quibble of words, a proceeding which amused me vastly, though my mirth was shared by none of the ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... would ever know anything about this night's doings. And with that every sentiment within him, down to curiosity itself, took flight before the longing to have done with it all and to find relief somewhere. The cold was increasing, and the street was becoming insufferable. Twice he walked away and slowly returned, dragging one foot behind the other, only to walk farther away next time. It was all over; nothing was left him now, and so he went down the whole length of the boulevard and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... "we were never in bondage to any man," and therefore the yoke of bondage would be insufferable to us, but slaves are accustomed to it, their backs are fitted to the burden. Well, I am willing to admit that you who have lived in freedom would find slavery even more oppressive than the poor slave does, but then you may try this question in another form—Am I willing ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the Dwarf, showing his yellow teeth with a detestable grin; while Ricardo turned quite white with anger, and not knowing how to deal with this insufferable little monster. ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... Harry's merits. Mrs. George Wyllys was loud in her declamations against it; next to the Hubbards, she looked upon the Taylors as the most disagreeable family of her acquaintance. She had a great deal to say about the dull, prosy mother, the insufferable father, the dandy son, and the rattling, bellish daughter. Miss Patsey, also, had her moments of wonder; but she wondered in silence; she did not appear to have any higher opinion of the son, than she had formerly entertained of the father. With these exceptions, the community ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... strong-featured Scot, has generally blown away that inauspicious bashfulness, which hangs a much longer time, commonly, on the faces of the southern students; such a one (if he fall not too egregiously into the contrary extreme, so as to become insufferable) may still be the more eligible person for a tutor, as he may teach a young gentleman, betimes, that necessary presence of mind, which those who are confined to a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... meaning of this business, Inez? Really, you are getting to be insufferable. I cannot allow you to come out with me if you carry on in this way." Benito had run to pick up his hat, and offered it to him, his eyes dancing with merriment, and the corners of his mouth twitching. The Father took it, and noting the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... at last in semi-darkness, lighted only by the dim rays of a sputtering kerosene lamp, whose vile odor made the close air almost insufferable. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... the extremists in Kyoto induced the sovereign to issue an edict in which, after speaking of the "insufferable and contumelious behaviour of foreigners," of "the loss of prestige and of honour constantly menacing the country," and of the sovereign's "profound solicitude," his Majesty openly cited the shogun's engagement to drive out the aliens within ten ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Jukh; Ohod (mount) to Uhud; Obayd (a little slave) to Ubayd; and Hosayn (a fortlet, not the P. N. Al-Husayn) to Husayn. As for the short e in such words as "Memluk" for "Mamluk" (a white slave), "Eshe" for "Asha" (supper), and "Yemen" for "Al- Yaman," I consider it a flat Egyptianism, insufferable to an ear which admires the Badawi pronunciation. Yet I prefer "Shelebi" (a dandy) from the Turkish Chelebi, to "Shalabi;" "Zebdani" (the Syrian village) to "Zabdani," and "Fes and Miknes" (by the figure Imalah) to "Fas and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... woman, who set her own father at defiance, and threw herself on the protection of such a wandering oddity as Percy Shelley. She was strong-minded, and brought with her into her husband's house her elder sister, also strong-minded, a ridiculous and insufferable duenna, whom Shelley hated with all his heart and soul, and wished dead and buried out of his sight,—finding, no doubt, his unsteady disposition controlled and thwarted by the voice and authority of his sister-in-law, who, knowing that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... beloved Pegasus," he whispered in the winged horse's ear, "thou must help me to slay this insufferable monster, or else thou shalt fly back to thy solitary mountain peak without thy friend Bellerophon. For either the Chimera dies, or its three mouths shall gnaw this head of mine, which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... their nurse, the only servant we have, thought proper to disapprove of my deportment towards her, and left me to the maternal delights of dressing, washing, and looking after my children during that insufferable heat. Miss H—— was entirely incapacitated, and I feared was going to be ill, and I have reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the constitution that I have, for it is certain that I need it. On Sunday ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... boudoir, as the expression on your part of a better frame of mind. But even Christian Charity has its limits. The continued presence of that wretch under your roof is, you will permit me to remark, not only a monument of your own weakness, but a perfectly insufferable insult to Me." ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... ever-living Gods, Till exultation burst in one wide voice Like music from Elysian winds. And thou Ascend beside me, veiled in the light Of the desire which makes thee one with me, 35 Thetis, bright image of eternity! When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might! God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames, The penetrating presence; all my being, Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 40 Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, Sinking through its foundations:' even then ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of good and evil, like all mankind,—nobler than their descendants in some attributes, less noble in others. The most strait-laced Massachusetts Calvinist of these days would have been disciplined by them for insufferable laxity, and yet their modern successor would count it utter shame, perhaps, to own a slave in his family or to drink rum-punch at an ordination,—which Puritan divines might do without rebuke. Not one of them has left on record ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Clematis. The self-importance of dogs, like that of the minds of men, is in directly inverse ratio to their size; and if the self-importance of Flopit could have been taken out of him and given to an elephant, that elephant would have been insufferable. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... be married so soon. But this is unheard of. At the end of a month you become engaged to a man who is a stranger to you, and about whom you know nothing. The man may be deaf—there are so many kinds of deafness!—he may be sickly, tiresome, insufferable! ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... and she endeavoured with patience to await the pleasure of her friends. But when the chief seated himself in her vicinity, and fell into one of his fits of abstraction, and the whole party became comparatively still and hushed, the poor girl's suspense was almost insufferable. She knew that human beings were all around her, and yet her situation was truly pitiable and lonely. She felt assured that if the war-party had returned in pursuit of her, the same means which enabled them to trace their victim ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... charged with the murder of his companion; and yet each day that it remained, it was endangering his own life, by the extremely offensive condition to which it was reduced. When, at last, the people from the boat effected a landing, they found the whole building filled with the most insufferable odour, and the dead body in such a state that it was impossible to remove it to Plymouth for interment: they therefore consigned it to the sea; but it was a long time before the rooms could ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... to all his profits, had restored my brother to his senses, and seeing that the mischief had been caused by his own insufferable pride, he rent his clothes and tore his hair, and lamented himself so loudly that the passers-by stopped to listen. It was a Friday, so these were more numerous than usual. Some pitied Alnaschar, others only laughed at him, but the vanity which had gone to his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... you talk of poor France; how I hope that you are able to hope for her. Oh, this absurdity of communism and mythological fete-ism! where can it end? They had better have kept Louis Philippe after all, if they are no more practical. Your Madame must be insufferable indeed, seeing that her knowledge of these subjects and men did not make her sufferable to you. My curiosity never is exhausted. What I hold is that the French have a higher ideal than we, and that all this clambering, leaping, struggling of indefinite awkwardness simply proves it. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... union should be the happiest in the whole of the existence of either man or woman, and is such in a congenial marriage. Yet in the history of very many marriages contentment or happiness is palpably absent and an almost insufferable misery is the heritage of both parties. It is therefore important that previous to the marital union the parties should take everything into consideration that fore-shadows happiness after marriage, as well as everything calculated to despoil ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Thus, in my insufferable pain, I spoke aloud; alone in that solitary place, a bleeding fugitive in the dark night, looking up at the stars I cursed the Author of my being and called on Him to take back the abhorred ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Pacific there would have been no "Credit-Mobilier" and its unsavory scandal, and it is safe to say that the road would not now be made to represent an expenditure of $106,000 per mile, and that Mr. Dillon and some others would not have so much money as to warrant them in putting on such insufferable airs. When it is remembered what use Oakes Ames and the Union Pacific crew made of issues of stock, it is not at all surprising that the president of the Union Pacific should think it an impertinence for a citizen to question the amount of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... The two insufferable wretches you have sent me plague me to death, and would treat me like a babe in strings.—D—n the fellows, what end can they mean by it? Yet that crippled monkey Doleman joins with them. And, as I hear them whisper, they have sent for Lord M.—to controul ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... he dared to make love to the pretty daughter of the Ramsgate Harbour-Master, that exalted individual, who entertained for the girl social ambitions in which fishermen's shacks had no place, resented his advances as insufferable impertinence. A word to Lieut. Leary, his friend at the local rendezvous, did the rest. Taylor disappeared, and though he was afterwards discharged from His Majesty's ship Utrecht on the score of his holding ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... degree of self-restraint in society, a man may be found almost insufferable. No one has pleasure in holding intercourse with such a person, and he is a constant source of annoyance to those about him. For want of self-restraint, many men are engaged all their lives in ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... perfectly splendid! Well, I declare, you've got him to a t. Lemmy see.' And, if you please, a hand was thrust over my shoulder and the sketch seized, without so much as a 'By your leave.' Can you fancy a more unwarrantable, insufferable liberty? But they are all alike over here. I turned about, and saw a woman who was examining the reverend revivalist with much satisfaction. 'Well, you have got him, to be sure,' she said, returning my angry glance with one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... evening, and, we having been previously warned by letter, the moment that they stepped in on deck we hove up our anchor, started our engine, and proceeded to sea, in order that we might avoid spending the night in the insufferable heat of the harbour. We kept the engine going until we had rounded Dondra Head and were heading north, with Adam's Peak square off our port beam, when we made sail, bound for Calcutta, where we arrived exactly ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Sometimes he doubted if she really knew that she was behaving insincerely, or whether, if she knew it, she could help doing it. He believed her to be a more truthful nature than himself, and it was insufferable for her to be less so, and then ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... locking him in her bedroom.... Either he would hate her for the humiliation he—Franz von Nettelbeck, glorious on the field of honor, a bound prisoner in a woman's bedroom while his class was blown to atoms, and his caste was roaring its impotent fury to a napping Gott!... Oh, an insufferable affront to a man of his order who held even the dearest woman as the favored pensioner on his bounty ... or she would be consumed with remorse, melt ... it was positive that she must visit him—not leave him to starve ... nor could she keep him bound ... and once more she would be his slave ... ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... moonlight, and there was that something strange and spiritual about him that seemed to meet the intention and disarm it. His jaw dropped, and he could not utter the words he had been about to speak. This was insufferable—! But there was that raised hand. It seemed like some one not of this world quite. He wasn't afraid, because it wasn't in him to be afraid. That was his pose, not afraid of those he considered his inferiors, and he did not consider that anyone ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... fires, only to glow the more consciously at sunset, and after nightfall to crown itself with imperishable stars. Wordsworth had that self-trust which in the man of genius is sublime, and in the man of talent insufferable. It mattered not to him though all the reviewers had been in a chorus of laughter or conspiracy of silence behind him. He went quietly over to Germany to write more Lyrical Ballads, and to begin a poem on the growth of his own mind, at a time when there were only ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... and women, and he had long exhausted both. As for female society, if they were ladies, it was expected that, in some form or other, he should make love to them, and he had no sentiment. If he took refuge in the demi-monde, he encountered vulgarity, and that, to Lord Montfort, was insufferable. He had tried them in every capital, and vulgarity was the badge of all their tribe. He had attempted to read; a woman had told him to read French novels, but he found them only a clumsy representation ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... and fro by the tide before the city; and, then, my good Glumdalclitch seeing that I had talked a long time and was much wearied, took me up and put me into my box and carried me away. But not before I had heard the King speak of my dear country in a way which gave me great pain. 'Insufferable little wretches,' His Majesty was pleased to say, 'as foolish when they are living at peace at home as when they are going out to kill other little creatures abroad,' with more that was like this, and not fit for ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... look like a pair of beggars that have come two thousand miles to crave pity at the feet of the high and mighty Captain Forest? Your condescension, Cousin, is insufferable," she added. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... She was a devoted mother for two days' space, and then candidly decided that Roger was developing into the most insufferable ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... in the regiment would be glad, for he is an insufferable ass. I suppose, when he comes into the title, he will either cut the army altogether, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... world of Shakespeare's latest period; and it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... a comparatively short time you will be a priest, I do hope you won't, without his experience, try to imitate Father Rowley too closely in his summary treatment of what I have already I hope made myself quite clear in believing to be in this case a most insufferable young man. Don't misunderstand this letter. I have such great hopes of you in the stormy days to come, and the stormy days are coming, that I should feel I was wrong if I didn't warn you of your ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... revelation they know not, they have not, they acknowledge not; nay, they despise him in his saving and soul-ascertaining illuminations; and the workings of that mighty power to them-ward who believe, is to the men of this new mould (because they have not found it) an insufferable fancy, to be exploded with a disdain and indignation, which discovers what spirit actuates them in ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... often used for ordinary torture were stockings of parchment, into which it was easy enough to get the feet when it was wet, but which, on being held near the fire, shrunk so considerably that it caused insufferable agony ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... of these cottages, the visitor is at a loss to determine which of the two is the more obnoxious—the suffocating smoke in the passage or the poisoned air of the dwelling-room, rendered almost insufferable by the crowding together of so many persons. I could almost venture to assert, that the dreadful eruption called Lepra, which is universal throughout Iceland, owes its existence rather to the total want of cleanliness than to the climate of the ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... insufferable every moment; and she felt as if she would faint were this torturing suspense to last much longer, when the well-known, beloved signal appeared suddenly in Gaston's window, and told her that her lover was about ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... nonsense." Her desire to learn Arabic now seemed to her an absurd caprice; and once more she had reason to wonder at her swift passage from one enthusiasm to another, her intense preoccupation with things that suddenly became insufferable. She entered the library dressed and hatted for the street, pulling on her gloves; and while occupied with her glove buttons said calmly, in ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... possible oratorical power of Mrs. H., had she received the advantages and enjoyed the practice of her brother, who spoke the previous evening, he said: "But of course Mrs. Hooker couldn't vote, nor be a member of the legislature, or even a justice of the peace. Insufferable nonsense! If such women don't vote before I die—well, like Gough's obstinate deacon, I ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... upon us. It was now evident that its nucleus would first reach us. A wild change had come over all men; and the first sense of pain was the wild signal for general lamentation and horror. The first sense of pain lay in a rigorous construction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result of investigation sent an electric thrill of the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... after, equally ready to vow that she will take flight from this as soon as possible. Sometimes, also, one gets a little too much of herself, and an overdose in this direction is about as bad as most insufferable things. But then there must be seasons of discouragement in everything. They inhere to all human enterprises, just as measles and whooping-cough to childhood. It is well to remember as they pass how rarely it is that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... talk, and the bright young secretaries industriously "kept up" with the dizzy cross-current of prophecy and erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto it was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed most insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same friends that they had become not only sympathetic but even interesting. It was something, after all, to be with people who did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional opportunities for bathing and adultery, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a long breath of relief as the front door closed behind him. "Thank God, he's gone," she said aloud, unconscious that her words were overheard. "He is insufferable. I cannot understand why father ever encouraged him to come to ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... she thinks so, though; for, as you well say, her pride is insufferable, and I, who have long known her, can assure you it does not diminish ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of all-taste and judgment, have dispositions directly contrary: so that if this clause had made part of a law, there would have been an end, in all likelihood, of any valuable production for the future, either in wit or learning: and that insufferable race of stupid people, who are now every day loading the press, would then reign alone, in time destroy our very first principles of reason, and introduce barbarity amongst us, which is already kept out with so much difficulty by so ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... her all at once. To be called this man's "dear young lady" was insufferable. And grandeur did not come easily to her, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... anticipates are precisely such as a vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Caesar with dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but "to be chastised" by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured Octavia—"rather a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... part. She desired to terminate the conversation and took this rude, insolent means of doing so. Never had he been so flagrantly insulted,—and for what reason? He had been courteous, deferential, friendly. What right had she,—this insufferable peacock,—to consider herself his superior? Hot words rushed to his lips, but he checked them. He contented himself with an angry contemplation of her slender, graceful figure as she poised in the open doorway, holding the latch in one hand while the other was ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... mine; I only consented because Miss Lawton had been kind to me, and I desired to aid her in her trouble, if I could. But that he—that I—should be suspected and watched, and treated like criminals, oh, it is insufferable. To-day, also, I leave the Anita Lawton Club. You shall find some one else to play detective for you—you and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... "have killed six ordinary men," and that he had never seen any part of the human body so dead to feeling on a live and healthy person. Finally, he covered it all over with a dark plaster, and told me to return in three days. But next day, the throbbing feeling of insufferable coldness in the foot compelled me to return at once. After my persistent appeals, he removed the plaster; and, to his great astonishment, the whole of the frosted part adhered to it! Again, dressing the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... and Anna with her special gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... towards certain classes a bigoted antipathy. He spoke of "parsons" and all who belonged to parsons, of "lords" and the appendages of lords, with a harshness, sometimes an insolence, as unjust as it was insufferable. He could not place himself in the position of those he vituperated; he could not compare their errors with their temptations, their defects with their disadvantages; he could not realize the effect ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and yet there were some things he could not stand. One of these was cruelty to a human being, and Rutter's public disowning of Harry was cruelty of the most contemptible kind. But one explanation of such an outrage was possible—the man's intolerable egoism, added to his insufferable conceit. Only once did Temple address Harry, walking silently by his side under the magnolias, and then only to remark, more to himself than to his companion—"It's his damned, dirty pride, Harry—that's ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... insufferable effrontery for any man to appear before an audience who persists in driving the h out of happiness, home and heaven, and, to paraphrase Waldo Messaros, will not let it rest in hell. He who does not show enough self-knowledge to see in himself such glaring faults, nor enough ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... piazza di Roma. No other name. The General, who can do what he pleases, pleases to receive our paper (our kind Abbe mediating) on condition that we do not talk of it, and so at last I shall attain to getting out of this dark into the free upper air. It is insufferable to be instructed by the 'Giornale di Roma' as to how Cialdini writes to Turin that his Piedmontese are perfectly demoralised, and that the besieged dance for triumph each time an Italian cannon is fired into the vague. On the other hand, I hear regularly every morning from the Romans that Gaeta ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... He contended that the French preachers were heard further than the English, because they raised their voices at the end of the sentence, just where the words often required particular emphasis to express the meaning. The omission of this was a fault even of capable preachers, was "insufferable," and ought to be corrected at school. After two centuries his criticism still holds good ("Parentalia," p. 320). His remarks upon architecture ought to be reprinted from the "Parentalia," and made compulsory for every student ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... my merits. Do you know that if it were not for my timely lectures, Lascelles would grow the most insufferable gossip about town? There is not a match nor a divorce near St. James's of which he cannot repeat all the whys and wherefores. I call him Sir Benjamin Backbite; and I believe he hates me ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... bearings, we agreed that, deducting a fair proportion for his five weeks' sojourn, I should return the remainder of his L100, and request immediate possession of his apartments. Like a man suddenly relieved of an insufferable load, and breathing freely once more, I instantly prepared to carry into effect the result of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... imagination and of curiosity. I recall having given a friend, who was a journalist, a little book of Nietzsche's to read, which he returned with the remark that he had not been able to get through it, as it was insufferable drivel. I have heard the same opinion, or similar ones, expressed by journalists of Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Dostoievsky, Stendhal and all the ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... sovereign. True, the silver had seldom been forthcoming; still, he had asked for it; and where in life could he have got the gold? Many was the rude questioner, whose curiosity had been quenched in drink; many the insufferable pryer, whom club-law had been called upon to silence. Meanwhile, Roger steadily kept on, accumulating silver where he could: for his covetous mind delighted in the mere semblance of an increase to his store, and took some untutored numismatic interest ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was great with his child, it was his turn to submit. She sat opposite him, sewing, her foreign face inscrutable and indifferent. He felt he wanted to break her into acknowledgment of him, into awareness of him. It was insufferable that she had so obliterated him. He would smash her into regarding him. He had a raging agony of desire to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... good news, my dear doctor," said he, slowly. "Then we shall be able to travel soon, perhaps to-morrow or the next day. It is of an extreme importance. This place is insufferable to me. We have ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... we sleep in linen "as white as the wings of the dove," in the second on pieces of smelly blankets; the first is redolent of ottar of roses, Shakib's favourite perfume, the second is especially made insufferable by that stench which is peculiar to every Hebrew hive. For these and other reasons, Khalid separates himself from his Semite fellow peddlers, and makes this time a bigger move ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... birth, not of wealth, not of education, but of mere locality. They would not hear of privileged orders: but they wished to have a privileged city. That twenty-five millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundred thousand gentlemen and clergymen was insufferable; but that twenty-five millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundred thousand Parisians was as it should be. The qualification of a member of the new oligarchy was simply that he should live near the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that I would not talk to you," she burst out, "but your impertinence is so—so insufferable—so absolutely insufferable, that I must speak. You say you will tell people what you know about me. What do you know about me?" She arose to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... manners of the people;—he perceived among the persons of quality, an affectation of grandeur, a state without greatness, and in the lower rank of gentry, a certain stiffness, even to the meanest, and an insufferable pride, which came pretty near ferocity:—the costly, but ill-contrived parades frequently made, discovered less their riches than their bad taste, and appeared the more ridiculous to Natura, as they were extolled for their magnificence ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... straight down the ridge to the mail box, grimly determined to let no little clue to Johnny Jewel's insufferable behavior escape her. Johnny was up to something, and it might be that the mail box was worth inspecting that morning. So Mary V rode up ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Lutterworth, Leicestershire. The rector was a Mr. Elmhirst, a native of the poet's Lincolnshire village. The latest historian of Lutterworth says that "The great puffs of tobacco smoke with which he [Tennyson] mellowed his thoughts, proved insufferable to his host, and he was accordingly turned out into Mr. Elmhirst's workshop in the garden, which in consequence became the birthplace of one of the gems of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... over on swift horses; but yet, when we reached the borders of the lake we were quite exhausted, and our hearts failed us. The heat of the smoke was insufferable, and sheets of blazing fire flew over us in a manner ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... mind the pros and cons of the situation, he had wisely determined that Herminia's confinement had better take place somewhere else than in England. The difficulties and inconveniences which block the way in English lodgings would have been well-nigh insufferable; in Italy, people would only know that an English signora and her husband had taken apartments for a month or two in some solemn old palazzo. To Herminia, indeed, this expatriation at such a moment was in many ways to the last degree distasteful; for her ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... cologne on the handkerchief and a pungent odor filled the room. She laid the wet handkerchief on her mother's sallow forehead, then she recoiled, for her mother, at the shock of the coldness, experienced a new and almost insufferable spasm of pain. "Let—me alone!" she wailed, and it was like the howl of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... get away from these fellows!" said the major, "they are so uncommonly prosy! That commissary, with his mess beef, and old Pritchard, with black doses and rigors,—nothing so insufferable! Besides, in reality, a young officer never needs all that nonsense. A little medicine chest—I'll get you one each to-morrow for five pounds—no, five pounds ten—the same thing—that will see you all through the Peninsula. Remind me of it in the morning." This we all promised to do, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the waters at Bagnigge Wells, and living at the 'Imperial Hotel' there, there used to sit opposite me at breakfast, for a short time, a Snob so insufferable that I felt I should never get any benefit of the waters so long as he remained. His name was Lieutenant-Colonel Snobley, of a certain dragoon regiment. He wore japanned boots and moustaches: he lisped, drawled, and left the 'r's' out of his words: ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wish for every girl who is growing up to womanhood that it might be brought home to her by some refined and ethically-minded member of her own sex how insufferable a person woman becomes when, like a spoilt child, she exploits the indulgence of man; when she proclaims that it is his duty to serve her and to share with her his power and possessions; when she makes an outcry when he refuses to ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... insufferable and his ignorance colossal. What time he could spare from his English tailor—"and you just ought to see his clothes, and especially his checkerboard waistcoats"—had been spent in abusing everything in English art that wasn't three hundred years ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you've told a fib, which only makes things worse." He smiled complacently at having beaten her in argument, and Myra thought she had never met such an insufferable boy in her life. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... insufferable LLOYD GEORGE as the most dangerous, the most malignant, the most incompetent politician who has ever attempted to misrule this country. The iniquity of the Coalition will make enlightened rulers like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... been vehemently but vainly striving to accomplish by argument what had been wrought in an instant by the French King's insufferable insult. It is one of the most brilliant periods of his political activity. Comparatively undistinguished before, he now, at the age of forty, stepped into the foremost rank of publicists. He lost not a moment in throwing himself into ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... He, like Mackinnon, knew his business too well to let Savage Keith Rickman slip through his fingers. Like Mackinnon he was pleased with the idea of securing a deserter from the insufferable Jewdwine. But the Courier was full up with war news and entirely contented with its staff. Hanson was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of interlaced boughs that were now smoking amid the ashes of the fires. Not a sign of disorder, nor even of the rapidity with which so great an army had been moved; not a scale of armour left behind—only the insufferable stench of a barbarian camp, of offal and refuse piled or scattered about, of dead beasts and of dead men—the sick and wounded who had yielded to sword or disease during the last ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... of Africa, where, as a monument of his perilous expedition, he erected the famous "Pillars of Hercules," one of which he placed on each side of the Straits of Gibraltar. Here he found the intense heat so insufferable that he angrily raised his bow towards heaven, and threatened to shoot the sun-god. But Helios, far from being incensed at his audacity, was so struck with admiration at his daring that he lent to him the golden boat with which he accomplished his nocturnal transit from West ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... This awakened Teresa, and she made me take some nasty medicine thinking I had fever. I made promises of reform. I wanted to be good, studious and patient, in order to be an example to Paula who would see my good qualities and would thus endeavor to imitate me. Nevertheless I became absolutely insufferable! My older sisters without being quite so enthusiastic as I was, nevertheless spoke often of Paula. Catalina began to worry that Paula might suffer in our house, but she soon consoled herself by remembering that my father had promised to put her out to board, ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... escaped: she followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe. Fraud, however, was but one half of his story. Soule gave like a prince,—secretly, with a woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain or want of a human being were insufferable to him. In this he was alone: the woman had no share in it. She was as cold, impervious to the suffering of others as nothing but a snake or a selfish woman can be: whatever muddy human feeling did ooze from her brain was for this man only. And yet, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... must either have lost that view a moment later or been goaded by it to further aggression, for I remember asking her if our great man were in a good vein of work and when we might look for the appearance of the book on which he was engaged. I've every reason now to know that she found me insufferable. ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... exploits, committed in order to please his lady, was the talented Peire Vidal. On one occasion he caused himself to be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds. He was an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in love. The prince of caricatures, however, was the German knight and minnesinger, Ulrich of Lichtenstein. He is responsible for a novel in prose, entitled The Service of Woman, which is faintly reminiscent of ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... letter, except in the matter of looking "pleased and eager." His round, fresh-coloured face maintained its habitual expression of rather prim gravity. The Liberal young ladies, while gratified that he should have danced with them, thought him distinctly dull, the Tory young ladies declared him an insufferable oaf; but Phyllida the tall milk-maid, when she came across him in the dance, nodded and smiled at him in kindly approval. He noticed that she danced several times with the plain young man in the Elizabethan ruff, and that they seemed very ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... Stevens was thoroughly aroused and flaming. She wished Marjorie had never seen nor heard of this hateful girl. And to think that Constance had announced that she was going to give a party in honor of her, the very person she had robbed of her best friend! It was insufferable. What could she do? If she refused to go, Marjorie and all those girls would wonder. She could give no reasonable excuse for declining to go at this late day. She told herself she would rather die than have Marjorie know how deeply she had hurt her. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester |
