"Bearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pain is bearable and there are no chills and fever, the patient may save the tooth by remaining in bed with a hot-water bottle continually on the face, and taking ten drops of laudanum to relieve the pain at intervals of several hours. Then many hours of suffering may be prevented if the gum is lanced ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... November came. School was decidedly more bearable now, in the opinion of Genevieve, perhaps because it was a rainy month; but Genevieve preferred to think it was because of Miss Hart. It was strange, really, how much Miss Hart had improved as a teacher!—all ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... relief swept through him, and he sat down. He was going to make it! The cabin was hot, like a closed attic on a hot July day, but it was bearable. He got back to the port again and watched as Pegasus turned in lazy circles many miles in diameter. The earth was coming closer at a pretty good clip. He was almost comfortable now, knowing that Jerry Lipton had ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... silken, she was scarfed, she was soft and steady; as in the past, sweetness and strength breathed from her. She was competent to deal with most calamitous situations and to make them bearable, to make them even graceful. She could do what she would with situations: Amabel felt that of her now as she ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... you have grown very arbitrary and headstrong since your experiences in the World War. I shall acquiesce since most of my time will be taken up on the lecture platform, advocating woman suffrage. I suppose I can find the place bearable during the heated term if you make yourself a little more agreeable. I wish I had married your brother-in-law, John Cornwall, when he asked me; he at least ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... that you have done me good," she said, pressing Olivia's hand; "how strange it seems—there is no cure for such a trouble as mine, and yet telling you about it has seemed to make it more bearable. Oh, please come again soon—very soon," and of course ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... declined to submit to familiar caresses in former years, but on such an occasion as the present, he felt that common propriety demanded the sacrifice of himself to some extent. He therefore allowed Annie to kiss him, and found the operation—performed as she did it—much more bearable than he had anticipated; and when Annie exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, "Oh, dear, dear papa, I did feel such a dreadful longing for you when the waves were roaring round us!" and gave him another squeeze, he felt that the market price of the bundle of goods on his ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... act at the words "Sehnen hin zur heilgen Nacht" (No. 4). It is akin to the death-motive proper, but the solemn harmonies are here torn asunder into a strain so discordant that without the dramatic context it would scarcely be bearable. It is the rending of the bond with this life and with the day. The music here reminds us that, however heroically the lovers accept their inevitable end, they feel that it means a rough and painful severance from that life which was once ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own mind, of Aunt Jane that chiefly worried her, the way that the little lady knew everything that was done, and everything that was touched in the house; but as long as Valetta took refuge with herself, and grumbled to her, it was bearable. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but no words would come; explanations were beyond her powers, and she left the room, shutting the door behind her. A passion of tears would have made the situation bearable, but when you are the lady of the house and unexpected company is coming to tea, and you have but one servant, you have to deny yourself ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... limbs and penetrated to my bones; and though I dismounted several times and tried to walk, uphill exercise was impossible in the rarefied air. The atmosphere was but one degree below the freezing-point, but at that height, a brisk breeze on soaked clothes was scarcely bearable. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Him and to see that He has a way through all these winding and crossing paths. Faith does more than hold a man's hand in the darkness; it leads him into the light. It is the secret of coherence and harmony. It does not make experience merely bearable, it makes it luminous and instructive. It takes the separate or the tangled strands of human experience and weaves them into one strong ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... of my friend Brunow!" he exclaimed. "Sir, I am delighted to meet you. And Brunow is here again? What news! And do you stay long? Oh, once again life will be bearable. In this dull hole, sir, I pledge you my most sacred word of honor, a man has but one contemplation; his thoughts are all towards suicide. Figure for yourself the life we lead here: the commandant a bachelor of sixty, and "—he ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... was 22 degrees 54', and the latitude of the Spray was the same just before noon. Many think it is excessively hot right under the sun. It is not necessarily so. As a matter of fact the thermometer stands at a bearable point whenever there is a breeze and a ripple on the sea, even exactly under the sun. It is often hotter in cities and on sandy ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... the cook's shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. 'I puff the prostitute away,' " says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his pipe. "There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable; no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and learning which had got me no small name in our college. The world ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bookcase, took out her father's Greek dictionary and spread the sacred pages of symbols and figures before her. She smoothed the sheets with a mixture of affectionate amusement and hope. Would other eyes look on them with her one day? The thought, long intolerable, was now just bearable. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... visit Nepaul, and reside at Katmandu, was unusual, but bearable; the idea of a common beef-eater infringing the limits of a circle beyond which no British resident, much less traveller, had ever penetrated, was so monstrous a heresy on the part of the prime minister—so serious an infraction of a ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... the weather has been so foggy that we began to consider ourselves as good as retired. But three days ago it began to become bearable again. We took good advantage of it. We were in our machines early in the morning and "worked" till 5:30 at night. I made five flights to-day. First, Wilhelm, as the observer, did some scout work, and later did some range-finding for the artillery. ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... of any importance occurred that night or the following day. They rode well and fast, finding the ground firm, and the temperature bearable. Toward noon, however, the sun's rays were extremely scorching, and when evening came, a bar of clouds streaked the southwest horizon—a sure sign of a change in the weather. The Patagonian pointed it out to the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... that, were it not for Lord Mortimer's influence and recommendation, he would never have been accepted in this exclusive college as a student. What then did he owe to Hal? Everything, as far as making life in the East bearable, as far as being received on an equality with the other boys went. It was a tremendous debt that he owed this handsome boy who was his host for the summer. But before the holiday was ended Shag paid that debt with all his heart, and ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... bear the reality, so it escaped into a neurosis. Maisie's behaving as though she wasn't married, so that her mind can say to itself that her marriage is incomplete because she's ill, not because Jerry doesn't care for her. It's substituted a bearable situation ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable. It finally assumes a form, and adjusts itself. One vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion, which is, however, sufficient for life. This is the mode in which the existence of Marius ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a layer down of definitions, as the Stoics think: but they are all pretty much alike, they give us only common notions, some one way, and some another.) But what is Chrysippus's definition? Fortitude, says he, is the knowledge of all things that are bearable: or an affection of the mind, which bears and supports everything in obedience to the chief law of reason, without fear. Now, though we should attack these men in the same manner as Carneades used to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Unziar serves his country and his sovereign, relentlessly watchful through the dead monotony of the days. At his own urgent request he was given charge of the lonely prison, its solitude appearing to him the one bearable condition of life. He has his work to do and he does it well, and always between Count Sagan and his dreams stands the irrevocable figure ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... to us, Colonel Osborne. Ladies always like political jobs, and think that they,—and they only,—make politics bearable. But this would not be a job at all. Papa could do it better than anybody else. Think how long ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... cracked voice that gradually gathered tone and force, she trolled her verses out. With an infectious abandonment, we took up the chorus. After all, 'twas a song of things that happen every day—one of those pieces of folk-humour which makes life's seriousness bearable by carrying us frankly back to the animal that is in us, that has been cursed for centuries and ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... had always feared Bough, and shrunk from his anger with unutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy hand was more bearable than his smile and his jesting amiability. Now, when she went down to the kraals on an errand, or to the orchard or garden for fruit or vegetables, or to the river for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious, padding footsteps coming ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... they could obtain the majority of things which serve to make life bearable even under depressing and oppressive conditions they commenced to launch out in the acquisition of things for improving creature comfort. With the money drawn from the banks and other institutions they purchased beds, cupboards, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... day on a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in her world. He was flirting, of course, he was only half in earnest; but it ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... days—there was nowhere else to go. Charlie was, in short, an ordinary, well-behaved youngster, except that his face hinted at possibilities he couldn't have fulfilled, and except for his dash of narrow rebellion. I don't see how, to such a stormy creature as Emily, he could have been bearable. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of such exaggerated impropriety that my mother's extemporary punishments were inadequate, she saved the matter up for Sunday, and made me go to church Sunday night—which was a penalty sometimes bearable, perhaps, but as a rule it was not, and I avoided it for the sake of my constitution. She would never believe that I had been to church until she had applied her test: she made me tell her what the text was. That was a simple matter, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... cold kindness of her cousins and their sharp reproaches, lasted three months. Sylvie's refusal to let her go to her little friends, backed by the necessity of beginning her education, ended the first phase of her life at Provins, the only period when that life was bearable to her. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Ormund affirms, "that if all the prisoners at the Atlanta federal penitentiary were life-termers and each had a voice in the selection of a warden to serve for a like term, William Moyer, the present incumbent—a man who has done more to make prison life bearable than any man in this country—would be selected without ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... breakfast. But the chief solace was rum, cheap, new, and fiery, from the West Indies. This and the rope-end formed the nexus of the crew. As for the pay, from which alone the sailor could make his lot bearable, it had not been increased since the reign of Charles II. Thanks to the Duke of York, that of the army had been raised from 8 1/4d. to 1s. a day, though not in proportion to the cost of living, the net gain being only ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Comus had played his cards well and transformed himself from an encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedy which she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or at the worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions. With money behind one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly to the simple question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not have to leave her square mile of Mecca and go out into the wilderness of bricks ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... was alone that night. She wrote carefully at first, choosing just the right words. "Thor is sleeping at the other house, and may continue to do so for some time. He seems to want to be there—as you can understand. Not only does he make it more bearable for Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy, but he gets a kind of assuagement to his grief in being near Claude. You needn't be surprised, therefore, if he remains a little longer—perhaps longer ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... was unable to raise any cabal against Janice and Amy, but quite the contrary, made the situation only a degree more bearable for the two friends. Although the other girls did not join Stella Latham in mourning the poor girl who lived in Mullen Lane, the latter felt deeply the fact that she was considered different from ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... will tell you all! It is a matter of life and death to our whole family interests. May God keep you, Nadine!" the young man kindly said, as he bent and kissed her hand. "I have tried to make your long journey bearable!" And then, a wrinkled face at a window appeared to end the coming disclosure, for Douglas was softening. A harsh voice rose up in a ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable ... a new idea, what can be more insipid—fit for members of parliament.... Shall I go to bed? No.... I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarme's to read—Mallarme for preference. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... tell stories and to compose poems. No doubt the Icelanders have thus wasted on poetical fantasies and visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room (bastofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful, and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... scene, I hope. It needs change of places and persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see a play by Moliere's company, as only they can act, instead of the loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit and charm in the original is transmuted to coarseness and vulgarity. When I leave this bed, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... younger brother by half an hour, was always enjoined to respect his senior. All the household was equally instructed to pay him honour; the negroes, of whom there was a large and happy family, and the assigned servants from Europe, whose lot was made as bearable as it might be under the government of the lady of Castlewood. In the whole family there scarcely was a rebel save Mrs. Esmond's faithful friend and companion, Madam Mountain, and Harry's foster-mother, a faithful negro woman, who never could ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cases of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 C.).—Allg. med. cent. Zeit., ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... common property, so to speak, this important element of musical utterance has been dragged through the mud; and modern composers, in their efforts to raise it above the commonplace, have gone to the very edge of what is physically bearable in the use of tone colour and combination. While this is but natural, owing to the appropriation of some of the most poetic and suggestive tone colours for ignoble dance tunes and doggerel, it is to my mind a pity, for it is elevating what should be a means of adding power and intensity ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... was excellent for fortification purposes. The Teutons had the better position in the chalky region along the Aisne, though the chalk formation did not add to the comfort of the men. In the northern part of Champagne trench life was more bearable. The forests in the Argonne, the Woevre, and the Vosges made the trenches the best of all on the western front. The greater part of these so-called trenches, the like of which had never before been constructed, could not be taken without a bombardment by heavy artillery. And, in the rear of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... were dispersed once more to our various works and duties. If it was bearable outside, the hut would soon be empty save for the cook and a couple of seamen washing up the plates; otherwise every one went out to make the most of any glimmering of daylight which still came to us from the sun below the northern ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... each one of which might well pass for the happiest of his life, but that this night stands clearly out as the most painful that he ever passed, yet so kind and considerate was Towneley that it was quite bearable. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the pleasure of hearing you shot first," retorted Raffles, through his teeth, "and that alone will make them bearable. Come on, Bunny, let's drive the swine along and ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... surrounded with huge ledgers, delving and already fretting for Mickey. She stood laughing in his doorway, half piqued to find him so absorbed in his work, and so full of the boy he was missing, that he seemed to take her news that she was too busy to see him that night with quite too bearable calmness; but his earnestness about coming the following night worked his pardon, so Leslie left laughing to herself over the surprise in store ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... than Ibsen. Yet when I came, at a far later date, to read The Wild Duck, memories of the embarrassing household of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, with his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every compromise that makes life bearable. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... "If Dante had seen it he would have been saved a deal of trouble, for he could simply have described its rocky wilds for his Inferno!" All blessed the fresher atmosphere and brisker breezes of the Indian Ocean, which, if warm, are bearable, and awoke from the lethargy of a sultriness which was like that of an overheated, airless room, to life ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... upper hand, enough of order and of justice to at least keep at a distance the civil war which was elsewhere raging. Languedoc owed to Marshal de Damville, second son of the Constable Anne de Montmorency, this comparatively bearable position. But the degree of security and of local peace which it offered the people was so imperfect, so uncertain, that the break-up of the country and of the state went still farther. In a part of Languedoc, in the Vivarais, the inhabitants, in order to put their habitations and their ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... melancholy-looking little row down the lee side of the ship, though I must say that we were quite as cheery as might have been expected under the circumstances. It was bright and sunny overhead, which made things more bearable. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... bring you to the bungalow, so look out for him when the boat gets in. He's tall and thin and clean-shaven and yellow, with a grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes. Peter is an angel, so be nice to him, Jan dear. It has been awful; it will go on being awful; but it will be a little more bearable when you come—for me, I mean—for you it will be horrid. All of us on your hands, and no money, and me such a crock, and presently a new baby. The children are well. It's so queer to think you haven't seen "little Fay." Come soon, Jan, come ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... We didn't stay very long that day, as we were far from home, and the afternoon was shortening fast. The retraite was sometimes long when we had miles of hard road before us, until we arrived at the farm or village where the carriage was waiting. When we could walk our horses it was bearable, but sometimes when they broke into a jog-trot, which nothing apparently could make them change, it was very fatiguing after ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... not fathom Helen. A year ago he felt sure that Mrs. Hilmer was the last woman in the world that Helen would have found bearable, much less attractive... He concluded that Helen was enjoying the novelty of watching Mrs. Hilmer nibble at a discreet feminine frivolity to which she was unaccustomed. After a while he looked for outward changes in Mrs. Hilmer's make-up. He figured that the shopping tours with Helen might be ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... them fled from Havre, from Rouen, to parts unknown, where neither Olga's rosily tinted notes nor Olga's rosily tinted person could reach him. She had hoped that Hermia's arrival from Paris would have made existence at Trouville at least bearable, but Hermia's change of mind explained by the belated telegram had made it evident that Fate was conspiring to her discomfort and inconvenience. To make matters the worse the Duchesse had taken upon herself an attack of the gout which made her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the general story of the fight of the 20th March on the inland edge of the Namib Desert. But how to picture vividly the scene before Riet that day? At dawn in those parts conditions are bearable enough; the sun has little strength; the night wind refreshes. From 6.30 till 10 o'clock the desert is endurable. Then comes the change. All along the front the stark yellow sand is taking on a different hue under the climbing sun rays. It turns almost to glaring whiteness all around—to ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... either wine or spirits, as a beverage, he would require a whole troop of followers for nothing else. Our greatest luxury in travelling was tea or coffee. We never once carried sugar enough to last a journey, but coffee is always good, while the sugarless tea is only bearable, because of the unbearable gnawing feeling of want and sinking which ensues if we begin to travel in the mornings without something warm in the stomach. Our drink generally was water, and if cool, nothing can equal it in a hot climate. We usually carried a bottle ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... this short study to analyze the specific forms of retardation which the Church exhibited to all of these branches of learning, whose only endeavor it was to search for the truth, to state the facts, and to alleviate and make more bearable man's sojourn on this earth. However, a few of the many instances of retardation on the part of the Church ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... she was not so badly married. Her husband was as good as any other man. He had become quite bearable. Of all that she read in the ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences, that of their married life was the most vague. She found a few isolated traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting and fastidious ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... bitterness of life, is the sense of wrong, the want of intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand life, life becomes bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you understand it, everything changes. When you realise its meaning, its value, you can put up with the difficulties. And our work with regard ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... Nat groaned. It would be dull enough to go for evergreens, but with the possibility of "a scare in the woods" for Dorothy and Tavia it might be bearable, whereas, if the girls would be obliged to ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... was quite sure that he would be captured in a few minutes, and, as a matter of fact, there were things that made the prospect decidedly bearable. The pain in his ankle from the trap in which he had been caught was excruciating. It seemed to him that he must cry out, but he kept silence resolutely. As long as there was a chance that he might not fall into the hands of the ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... the dirty hovels, with people who burrow in them to lead a life but little above that of the squirrels end foxes. There is throughout that air of room enough, and free if low forms of human nature, which, at such times, makes bearable all that would otherwise be ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... labors were lightened by a friendship which was an inspiration long before it ripened into love, and were rendered bearable both by Balzac's confidence in himself and by his ever nearer view of the goal he had set himself. The task before him was as stupendous as that which Comte had undertaken, and required not merely the planning and writing of new works ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... should say that if there were less caloric put in motion in the planets nearest to the sun, and more, on the contrary, in the distant planets, this simple phenomenon would suffice to equalise the heat and render the temperature of these worlds bearable to beings organised like we are. If I were a naturalist I should tell him, after many illustrious savants, that Nature furnishes us on earth with examples of animals living in very different conditions of habitability; that fish breathe ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... elder, his sponsor, his protector, with every right to direct him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility and headstrong folly. If the fellow had been old, weak, or in any way inferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, a sage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindly reasonable authority to which only a fool could fail to attend, and which for that ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I suffered no wound to a sensibility which has been kept in full repair for literary, if not for humanitarian purposes. The climate was as kind as the people. It is notorious that in summer the heat is that of a furnace, but even then it is bearable because it is a dry heat, like that of our indoor furnaces. The 5th of November was our last day, and then it was too hot for comfort in the sun, but one is willing to find the November sun too hot; it is an agreeable solecism; and I only wish that we could have ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... hard," he said in a low voice, not lifting his hand. "Juliet just made it bearable. I shall get over it, of course. But—I never want to ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... I can walk with Priscilla and Charlie. That will be a bearable degree of gooseberry. That Gilbert of yours is a darling, Anne, but why does he go around so ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is always out of tune, and whose rags, badly designed and badly worn, merely emphasise a painful note of uncomely misery, without conveying that impression of picturesqueness which is the only thing that makes the poverty of others at all bearable. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... many a month to come, the curve of Lilly's life would have shown a running festoon; six days whose uneventful continuity was bearable because they were looped up by the rosette of the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... successfully treated cases of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 deg. C.).—Allg. med. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... well understand," now resumed M. Vigneron, "it by no means amuses me to stay here, kicking my heels, while my wife and my son go back to Paris without me. They have to go, however, for life at the hotel is no longer bearable; and besides, if I kept them with me, and the railway people won't listen to reason, I should have to pay three extra fares. And to make matters worse, my wife hasn't got much brains. I'm afraid she won't be able to manage ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the heat, and sigh with all their hearts for the bracing frosts of higher latitudes. But those who have the means of bringing to bear on their comforts the innumerable contrivances which the ingenuity of wealth has devised in the East, indeed, make its climate not only bearable, but one of the most enjoyable ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... for him in Harley Street; but it is doubtful whether she will long continue to do so. The last time Dick Ruthven was at home on leave he persuaded her that it was her bounden duty to endeavor to make civilian life bearable to him when he should attain captain's rank, and, in accordance with his father's wish, retire from the army, events which are expected to take place in a ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, yet why is it more childish than a hundred other things? Only because one is not accustomed to look at life from the point of view of the convent. As a guest, I ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... him what was going on. Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs. Strether, on his side, set himself to walk again—he had his relief in his pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of restlessness might ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... this paper belong? (Henry B. Brown.) 2. What is his character? (Horrid, but bearable.) 3. What kind of hair has he? (Heavy, burnished brown.) 4. What kind of eyes has he? (Heavenly, bright blue.) 5. What books does he prefer? (Handsomely bound biographies.) 6. What animals does he prefer? (Howling ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... and Jock were rolling over together with too much noise to be bearable; Grandmamma turned round with an expostulatory "My dears," Mamma with "Boys, please ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... annoying flies. Only one there was who actively responded to the outrage at Homestead,—Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable. Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act, his attempt on the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... Lake George on a particularly cold day, she found to her surprise a wealthy Quaker, whom she had met at the Albany convention, so solicitous of her comfort that he placed heated planks under her feet, making the long ride much more bearable. He turned up again, this time with his own sleigh, at the close of one of her meetings in northern New York, and wrapped in fur robes, she drove with him behind spirited gray horses to his sisters' home to ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... recover Riversdale, and live there in peace and plenty, ease and indolence, ever after. That's a pretty poetical little romance, and serves to cheer the children, and make their sudden change of circumstance more bearable, but I know they will have to fight the battle of life each by himself, and quite unaided. Neither possesses a magic wand ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... know how to. Every time he pulls the lever marked 'release' he only releases hot steam. There are two kinds of steam in the bath, 'bearable' and 'scarcely bearable'; he has released them both. By this time I'm probably ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... around while she sings long cadenzas with the flute, in such trying relationships as would test the vocal technique of a sane person. In the time of Gluck this abuse had reached about the same height, and to make the matter less bearable, the Italian composers had not yet attained the art of expressing sentiment simply and directly, but were intent upon sweet-sounding trivialities calculated to please the groundlings, but of little or no relation to the drama. Gluck sought to restore the ideal of the original ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... wont! He would listen to her, loving her voice, and trying to bring his mind to what she read, but all the while his thoughts reaching out to what he would be doing if his life as worker were not blotted out. The call of his work tormented him all through the day, and the twilight was the time most bearable because it was an hour which had never been filled with the things of his work. In that short hour he sometimes, in slight measure found, if not peace, cessation from struggle. "This is what I would be doing now," ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... temperaments, would think alike in the future, any more than in the past. She would always be for experiments, for risks, which his critical temper, his larger brain, would of themselves be slow to enter upon. Yet she knew well enough that in her hands they would become bearable and even welcome to him. And for himself, she thought with a craving, remorseful tenderness of that pessimist temper of his towards his own work and function that she knew so well. In old days it ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said the Colonel; and the two young officers went straight through the scorching sunshine, which turned the great court of the fort into an oven, to where Bracy lay panting with the heat, with Gedge doing his best to make life bearable by applying freshly wrung-out towels ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... and very, very tired and his head ached violently. Between the flies, the heat and the uncomfortable bed, it was not a happy home; but the kindness of the sisters and the other wounded men who came to him occasionally, went far towards making it all bearable. There were men worse than he in that marquee, men in agony and near to death, with torn, septic wounds, but sticking it out without ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... is a better sort of life than this dull one made up of everlasting work, with no object but money. I can't starve my soul for the sake of my body, and I mean to get out of the treadmill if I can. I'm proud, as you call it, because I hate dependence where there isn't any love to make it bearable. You don't say so in words, but I know you begrudge me a home, though you will call me ungrateful when I'm gone. I'm willing to work, but I want work that I can put my heart into, and feel that it does me good, no matter how hard ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... did Joe. And to Joe, as an ordinary individual, she objected. There was an indefinable something in his manner which jarred on her. She came to the conclusion that it was principally his insufferable good-humour. If only he would lose his temper with her now and then, she felt he would be bearable. He lost it with others. Why not with her? Because, she told herself bitterly, he wanted to show her that she mattered so little to him that it was not worth while quarrelling with her; because he wanted to put her in the wrong, to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... like that when you come home, Mr. Vancouver," said Mrs. Wyndham. "But nevertheless you come back and seem to find Boston bearable. It is not such a bad place after all, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... us drink his health. Do you know Lady Julia Knighton?" asked Vivian of his neighbour. "This Hall is bearable to dine in; but I once breakfasted here, and I never shall forget the ludicrous effect produced by the sun through the oriel window. Such complexions! Every one looked like a prize-fighter ten days after a battle. After all, painted glass is a bore; I wish the Marquess would have it knocked ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... representatives of the cities complained grievously that their attendance was reduced to a farce, since they were always out-voted, and hence obliged to accept the decisions of the other estates. They stated that their position was no longer bearable, and for the first time drew up an Act of Protest, which further complained of the delay in the decisions of the Imperial courts; of their sufferings from the right of private war, which was still allowed to subsist in defiance ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... almost equally disquieting. To rule this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage while you're away—especially if she ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... to-day," said the favorite Theocritus; and the senator Cassius Dio whispered to Paulinus, "And therefore he was more bearable to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Isaac had entertained of adapting himself to the conditions of his home in New York were well-nigh dissipated. But a certain natural timidity, joined with the still complete uncertainty he felt as to what his true course should be, made him dissemble his disquiet so long as it was bearable. After a month or two, by a mutual agreement between his brothers and himself which exonerated him from much of the manual labor which they still shared with the men in their employment, he devoted himself to an occupation more accordant to his mind. He set to work to ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... theorists lies in their supposition that the assertion of superiority by one person necessarily inflicts wrong on another, whereas it is only the mastery obtained by certain men over others that makes the life of the civilized human creature bearable. The very servant who is insolent while performing his duty only dares to exhibit rudeness because he is sure of protection by law. All men are equal before the law. Yes—but how was the recognition of equality enforced? Simply by the power of the strong. No monarch in the world would venture ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Pittsburg. It is a drizzly, snowy morning, a kind of moisture that laughs at so-called waterproofs, and would penetrate an air-pump. As there was no smoking-car, we were constrained to enter another; and off we started. At first, the atmosphere was bearable; but soon, alas! too soon, every window was closed; the stove glowed red-hot; the tough-hided natives gathered round it, and, deluging it with expectorated showers of real Virginian juice, the hissing and stench became insufferable. I had no resource but to open my window, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... carefully—and anybody who is interested in them can go and look at them. If they had only been left as they were painted!—not by Lely, of course, but by some drapery man in his studio—passe encore! they might have been just bearable. But you see some wretched restorer went and daubed them all over a few ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shining, encircled by a silken fringe of very white hair: it was the banker who lived in St. Mary street. His wife was opposite. And there was much high-bred grace. There were tall windows thrown wide to make the blaze of gas bearable, and two tall mulattoes in the middle distance bringing in and bearing out viands too sumptuous for ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and conventions stung her like so many bees, and when she could turn nowhere for relief from constant heartache and the sickening monotony of her thoughts. She could not have Chris; she could not give him up. Hours with him were only a degree more bearable than hours ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... heat that you are able to experience the sensation of heat even in the coldest atmosphere. It is possible to train your imagination until you do this, and it can then be turned to practical account in making undesirable conditions bearable. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... And I have begun to wonder whether I am doing wisely in staying here. Yet, if I left, where could I go, and still obtain the solitude, and the sense of her presence,[1] that alone make my old life bearable? ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... sleep, the continual worry over the luggage, the jolting and the fasting brought on spitting of blood when I coughed, and this depressed my spirits, which were none too grand before. For the first few days it was bearable but then a cold wind began to blow, the windows of heaven were opened, the rivers flooded the meadows and roads, I was continually having to change my chaise for a boat. You'll read of my struggles with the floods and the mud in the article I enclose. I did not mention ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... for him to-day," Lavretsky added, "with his unsuccessful song. To be young and to fail is bearable; but to be old and not be successful is hard to bear. And how mortifying it is to feel that one's forces are deserting one! It is hard for an old man to bear such blows!... Be careful, you have a bite.... They say," added Lavretsky after a short ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... responsible to every fanatical ignoramus who chooses to prosecute him for exhibiting a cast of the Hermes of Praxiteles in his vestibule, or giving a performance of Measure for Measure, is mere slavery. It is made bearable at present by the protection of the Lord Chamberlain's certificate. But when that is no longer available, the common informer must be disarmed if the manager is to ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... number was good at this or that sort of work they elected him to attend to those matters—whether it was sweeping, settling quarrels, cooking, writing letters, petitioning "Old Griff," shaving, pulling teeth, or what not. Each prisoner contributed his knowledge and experience to make life bearable for all. The camp was a democracy, but Germany didn't seem to object. If the prisoners wished to dig a drain trench or a refuse pit, they asked for shovels. And sometimes they got them. Prisoners, ragged and forlorn, came to be known ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... live:—and, if a life With large results so little rife, Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth, Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream that falls incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, If I might ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... together with mansuetude, the especial Christian virtue, becomes in this fashion that mere guarding of virginity which, for some occult reason, is highly prized in Heaven; as to clean living being indispensable for bearable human relations, which even the unascetic ancients recognised so clearly, there is never an inkling of that. Whence, indeed, such persons as do not go in for professionally pleasing the divinity, who are neither priests, monks, nor nuns, need not stickle about it; and the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... from that fear made everything else bearable. She was even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative alarm that he had decided to marry again—that nightmare from whose realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley |
