"Supportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a mere bag of bones. The fish would neither bite nor be bitten. Most of the running-tackle of the ship had been used for macaroni soup; all the leather work, our shoes included, had been devoured in omelettes; with oakum and tar we had made fairly supportable salad. After a brief experimental career as tripe the sails had departed this life forever. Only two courses remained from which to choose; we could eat one another, as is the etiquette of the sea, or partake of Captain Abersouth's novels. Dreadful alternative!—but ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the invariably grey sky rarely rains. Travellers are told that June and July are the cream of the year, the healthiest time for seasoned Europeans, and this phantom of a winter renders the climate more supportable to ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... me into Heaven, for I am determined to spend all eternity in Hell!" Those who heard these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort him; but all to no purpose: for, the society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city, and retired, like savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say that he was murdered there by ruffians: others, that he died at Bologna in 1500, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... actresses. Count Altenberg had declared that he was particularly fond of theatrical amusements. That hint was sufficient. Besides, what a sensation the opening of a theatre at Falconer-court would create in the country! Mrs. Falconer observed that the only possible way to make the country supportable was to have a large party of town friends in your house—and this was the more necessary for her, as she was almost a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... cool to-day. We are on high ground, although in a wady; and this renders the heat very supportable. The reported attack keeps our minds occupied, and has a little upset us; but no one talks of flinching. Besides, this has not been the first alarm, nor will it be the last. I sent an account of this circumstance so ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... had this idea taken possession of him than he became more composed, arranged his couch to the best of his power, ate little and slept less, and found existence almost supportable, because he felt that he could throw it off at pleasure, like a worn-out garment. Two methods of self-destruction were at his disposal. He could hang himself with his handkerchief to the window bars, or ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... full use of one's time to the great end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... the wanderings must begin again; the painful explaining away of facts, the feverish raking up of illusions, the cultivation of a fresh crop of lies in the sweat of one's brow, to sustain life, to make it supportable, to make it fair, so as to hand intact to another generation of blind wanderers the charming legend of a heartless country, of a promised land, all flowers and ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... water, would have formed a thick circle of clouds which would have lessened the excessive heat, hence there would be compensation between the cold of the aphelion and the heat of the perihelion, and an average probably supportable." ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... in about fifteen minutes after Captain HARDY left him. Doctor SCOTT and Mr. BURKE, who had all along sustained the bed under his shoulders (which raised him in nearly a semi-recumbent posture, the only one that was supportable to him), forbore to disturb him by speaking to him; and when he had remained speechless about five minutes, HIS LORDSHIP'S Steward went to the Surgeon, who had been a short time occupied with the wounded in another ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... the notes of innumerable birds arrayed in all the splendid hues of the Tropics. Although Tahaiti is only seventeen degrees from the Equator, the heat is so much moderated by refreshing breezes that it is very supportable even to an European. Bougainville never found it above twenty-two, and often under eighteen degrees of Reaumur. That indeed was during the winter; but even in January, the middle of the Tahaitian summer, the atmosphere is much cooled by the frequent rains. The air is usually dry, clear, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... of a duck in a farmyard drain becomes in a wonderful way supportable when you tackle it as cheerfully as that. It comes to the Australian as a shock, at the first introduction—the Manning River country after the Manning River flood has subsided is, as a New South Welshman suggested, the nearest imitation ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... find these verses sufficiently supportable, so that people will not laugh at me, you can put them into the Paris paper, even with my name. I shall honor myself in rendering this homage to Franklin, but on condition that you find the verses printable. As I make no pretension on account of them, I shall be perfectly content, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... him. At this age he has a philosophy, a metaphysical system, which he really believes in, (a species of delusion the first to quit us,) and he persists in seeing his dogma reflected to him from all sides. This is supportable, or may be disguised in poetry; it becomes intolerable in prose. Add to all which, that the writer of a novel should have had some experience in the realities of life, a certain empirical knowledge of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... am present; and put that down to begin with!" This made every one laugh. "What a happy thing is it," thought I, "that good nature generally accompanies this character; else, how would some people be supportable?" ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Virtue of the Loadstone, or perhaps the Pressure of the Atmosphere: Their Language is peculiar to themselves, and they scorn to express themselves on the meanest Trifle with Words that are not of a Latin Derivation. But this were supportable still, would they suffer me to enjoy an uninterrupted Ignorance; but, unless I fall in with their abstracted Idea of Things (as they call them) I must not expect to smoak one Pipe in Quiet. In a late Fit of the Gout I complained ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... a chace of ten hours, had taken shelter under the roof of Sir James, was, at our return, stamping up and down, the vestibule, disappointed both in his sport and dinner, shew'd an aspect cloudy as the heavens.—My mortification was scarce supportable, when I heard him roar out, in a voice like thunder, What the devil have we here?—I sprang to the top of the stairs in a moment,—there stopp'd to fetch breath; and again the same person, who had ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... or three minutes, and yet the shock was supportable. It was observed that as soon as the machine had touched the earth all the cloth became unfolded in a few seconds, which seemed to confirm the opinion of Montgolfier, who believed that electricity had ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... lively, laughing urchins. The old women are thorough hags. Indolence, when left to themselves, is their besetting sin; they detest any fixed employment, and their foulness of person and garments renders them disagreeable inmates: in this rainy climate they are supportable out of doors. Though fond of bathing when they come to a stream in hot weather, and expert, even admirable swimmers, these people never take to the water for the purpose ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to Lovelace.— The lady's pious frame. The approaches of death how supportable to her; and why. She has no reason, she says, to grieve for any thing but the sorrow she ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... some. in the history of the fabled Atlantis, the production of food should have been exactly sufficient to meet the wants of the population, that the makers of the commodities of the artificer should have amounted to just the number supportable by the surplus food of the agriculturists. And, as there is no harm in adding another monstrous supposition to the foregoing, let it be imagined that every man, woman, and child was perfectly virtuous, and aimed at the good of all as the highest ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Smith leaves in the course of a fortnight. He will spend a few weeks in Ireland previously to settling at Keighley. He continues just the same: often anxious and bad-tempered, sometimes rather tolerable—just supportable. How did your party go off? How are you? Write soon, and at length, for your letters are a great comfort to me. We are all pretty well. Remember me kindly to each member of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... ordinary friendship (tho even that brings delight and benefit), but of real and true friendship, such as belonged to those of whom very few are recorded; for prosperity, friendship renders more brilliant, and adversity more supportable, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... done for him the best they knew. They had not only saved his life, but, thanks to his father's money, he had been fitted out with certain artificial aids to the human body which would go far towards making life supportable. In fact, they expressed themselves as extremely gratified with what they had been able to do for the poor young man, nay, they were even proud of him. He was a surgical triumph, and as such they were returning him to Paris, by such and such a train, ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... terror from which her own conversation had distracted her. The crucial minute was at hand. The door was but a few yards away. He would either go in with her—or he would go back. She hardly knew which would be the more supportable—the joy or ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... success that was attending her unselfish efforts to harmonize her own and her uncle's conceptions of the temporal fitness of things, Miss Lee began to find life at the Pier quite supportable. "There's not much to do here," she declared, with her customary candor, "and the hotels—all ugly and all in a row—make it look like an overgrown charitable institution; and most of the people, I must say, are such a dismal lot that they ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... which my life in the fortress became not only supportable, but even agreeable. I was received as a member of the family in the Commandant's house. The husband and wife were excellent people. Ivan Mironoff, from being the adopted child of the regiment, rose to officer's rank. He was a plain, simple, uneducated man, but thoroughly good ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... the patience of the antediluvians; their libraries were insufficiently furnished; how then could seven or eight hundred years of life be supportable?—COWPER, Life ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... do not deprive me of the only hope that can make life supportable. I must be free, or I must die. Your commander loves gold above all things. Surely I can purchase my liberty from him at some price, and however unreasonable it may be, I am willing to satisfy his demand. Tell me, I entreat of you, what sum you ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... author has delved in the "Scriptores Historiae Augustae," that he has read Lampridius, Suetonius, and the others, but he does not strive to make us aware of it. The historical form has at last found a poet to render it supportable. Blood runs across the pages; gore and booty are the principal themes; and yet Beauty struts supreme through the horror. The author's sympathy is his password, a sympathy which he occasionally exposes, for he is not above pinning his heart to ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... would be superfluous, a legislature would become useless, and our authority must cease for want of objects to employ it; but we find, my lords, that there are men whom nothing but laws and penalties can make supportable to society; that there are men, who, if they are not told their duty, will never know it, and who will, at last, only perform what they shall be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... see my letter is dated on many different days, and, if you look back to the first, you will perceive, that I began to write soon after your departure from France. To write was, indeed, the only employment that withdrew me from my own melancholy, and rendered your absence supportable, or rather, it seemed to destroy absence; for, when I was conversing with you on paper, and telling you every sentiment and affection of my heart, you almost appeared to be present. This employment has been from time ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... intolerable. She said again that she was devoured with two unassuageable fevers, one for the holy communion, the other for suffering, humiliation, and annihilation. 'Nothing but pain,' she continually said in her letters, 'makes my life supportable.'"[185] ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... over excellences not your own. If a horse should be elated and say, "I am handsome," it would be supportable. But when you are elated and say, "I have a handsome horse," know that you are elated on what is, in fact, only ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... music is allowed, but never cards or games of any kind. The man who proposed such a thing in Adelaide would be anathema maranatha. The general feeling, is, that the Sunday was made too wearisome in England to be supportable in a common-sense community; and Sabbatarianism is gradually losing ground day by day, as fast as the keeping up of appearances will allow. There was a great outcry on one occasion because the Governor of Victoria travelled on a Sunday; but this was rather because there ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... student of life, he maintained, must keep in touch with life at every feasible angle. No experience should come amiss to a detective; he should be a pundit of all knowledge. A detective he now frankly considered himself; and the real drudgery of his unique profession of Ad-Visor was supportable only because of the compensating thrill of the occasional chase, the radiance of the Adventure of Life glinting from time ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Stope that had moved him so swiftly and tragically from his long indifference, his aversion to life, had gone, leaving him more hoplessly alone than before. The sudden extinction of Ellen's life had been more supportable than Millie's crouching dumbly at his feet. His arm unconsciously tightened about her, and she gazed up with a momentary, questioning flicker of her wide-opened eyes. He repeated her name in a deep whisper, but her head fell forward loosely, and ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ships brought Madeira from that island by the pipe, and sack from Spain and Portugal, and red wine from France when there was peace. And puncheons of rum from Jamaica and the Indies for his people, holding that no gentleman ever drank rum in the raw, though fairly supportable as punch. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... settled, and the facilities of obtaining hands increased, such legal acts of compulsion, far from being any longer necessary, will have introduced a spirit of industry that will render the labors of the field supportable and even desirable; and in this occupation all the tributary natives of the surrounding settlements can be alternately employed, by the day or week, and thus do their work almost at the door of their own huts, and as it were in sight of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the Arabs "the fathers of rain." In March arise the pernicious winds from the southern quarter, with the same circumstances as in Egypt; but they become feebler as we advance towards the north, and are much more supportable in the mountains than in the low country. Their duration at each return varies from twenty-four hours to three days. The easterly winds, which come next in order, continue till June, when they are commonly succeeded by an inconstant breeze from the north. At this season the wind shifts ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... wife? Would that I never had married and dwelt with her in the palace. But I judge happy those, who are unmarried and childless; for theirs is one only life, for this to grieve is a moderate burden: but to behold the diseases of children, and the bridal bed wasted by death, is not supportable, when it were in one's power to be without children and ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... thought over Leah and her designs, feeling certain that she would pay me another nocturnal visit and renew the assault in force. I resolved to weaken myself with some common woman, if I could find one at all supportable. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... him there need be regarded as an object of pity. The climate is good; food is abundant; life is tolerably easy. True, there are no newspapers and no Parliament; but existence has often been found supportable in the absence of these things. The natives are friendly; and there are no animals anywhere, not even rats. The men are decently clad, and the women wear a very voluminous kilt, sometimes two or three of them, over each other. These garments ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... these distractions, our delay was barely supportable; and watching the course of the muddy river, the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... grows into habit, and habit is a second nature. A secret idea of fame makes his forbearance of happiness supportable to him: for he has now the self-satisfaction of considering himself raised to that highest pinnacle of fashionable refinement which is built upon apathy and scorn, and from which, proclaiming himself superior ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... taught us to suspect; let us consult that reason, which, for the vilest purposes has been so infamously calumniated, so cruelly dishonoured; let us examine with attention the visible world; let us try, if it will not enable us to form a supportable judgment of the invisible territory of the intellectual world: perhaps it may be found there has been no sufficient reason for distinguishing them—that it is not without motives, well worthy our enquiry, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... simple, takes us in at the door, and promises to send her down to us in five minutes. How much we love him—as at that moment I loved Francoise—the good-natured intermediary who by a single word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love. If we are to judge of them ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... through this compound the ascent became so difficult and fatiguing, that we were all under the necessity of reposing every twenty or thirty yards, tormented by the sulphureous vapour, which rendered respiration painful, and was even less supportable than the abruptness of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... these treasured laces, the only real charm of grandeur, the only unalloyed gift of fortune. Fine country seats are a bore, diamonds a weight and a care, fast horses a danger; but lace! without whose adornment no woman is properly dressed—every other privation is supportable; but what is ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin |
