"Endurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... therefore Delitzsch infers that her structure must have undergone a change, although he cannot say in what respect He dwells also on the "subjection" of woman, which "the religion of Revelation" has made by degrees more endurable; probably forgetting that the Teutonic women of ancient times were regarded with veneration, long before Christianity originated. Besides, the subordination of the female is not peculiar to the human race, but is the general law throughout the ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... its full offensive length through the international press; leaving him with his divorce signed and a future endurable only when his senses had been sufficiently drugged. In sober intervals he now had neuritis and a limp to distract his mind; also his former brother-in-law with professions of esteem and respect and a tendency to borrow. And drunk or sober he had the Ariani. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... flame had been passed on; for he aimed at the priesthood. This has ever been a refuge of ambitious minds that cannot rise by any other means above the dullness of the peasant's life, which is the more endurable the more the man is able to place himself upon the animal level of his plodding ox. The son was being educated in a seminary, but he was now home for the holidays. Presently he appeared. He was a youth of about nineteen, wearing a blouse like any ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was out of the question, and boating equally uninviting. The playground had been left deserted to bake and scorch under the fierce sun, and the swings and poles in the gymnasium had blistered and cracked in solitude. The only place where life was endurable was down by the river, and even there it was far too hot to do anything but sit and dabble our feet under the shelter of the trees, and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to be entirely impracticable; assuring me that the Typees would never consent to my leaving the valley. Although what he said merely confirmed the impression which I had before entertained, still it increased my anxiety to escape from a captivity which, however endurable, nay, delightful it might be in some respects, involved in its issues a fate marked ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or to thorough resignation. When they heard at the same time of the horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe. The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... up, but the slaves were used to self-repression. All that was endurable in their lives depended on patience ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Reid family in the automobile. The professor was not at all interested in the celebration, but he could not well remain at the ranch alone, and, it may be supposed, the invitation from Kitty helped to make the occasion endurable. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... was denied by the aristocrats, his word he had never yet broken. That circumstance—as personified by Maximilien Robespierre—should break it for him now was matter enough to enrage him, for than this never had there been an occasion on which such a breach could have been less endurable. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... I am at the National Hotel, which is now quite crowded, but I have an endurable room with furniture hardly endurable, for it is hard to find, in this hotel at least, a table or a bureau that can stand on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger's washing-pan, unless the lame leg is propped up with an old shoe, or a stray ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... carried with him to the singing-school that astounding impudence which had long been the terror and admiration of the camp. But a quality which had always seemed exactly the thing when applied to poker seemed to the boys barely endurable ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... with fearful force on our heads, while the reflection of his rays from the glittering sea almost blinded our eyes. Long as I had ploughed the salt ocean, I had never felt the heat greater. For two or three days it was endurable, but after that every one began to complain; even Duchess looked out for a shady place, under the sail or bulwarks, to lie down in, and poor Steadfast went panting about the deck with his tongue out, the fowls hung down their heads, and the merry robins ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... was gone while I spoke. Heavy as the news might be—this ill news which had struck me with apprehension the moment I saw Lord Ravenel—it was still endurable. I could not conjure up any grief so bitter as the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of the Creek for the appraisal of a part of the strip known as the "Upper Reserve." From an attitude of suspicion and sneering contempt Peter's companion had changed to one of indifference. The unfailing good humor of the new superintendent had done something to prepare the ground for an endurable relation between them. Like Beth Cameron Shad had sneered at the word "forester." He was the average lumberman, only interested in the cutting down of trees for the market—the commercial aspect of the business—heedless of the future, indifferent to the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... better even, he thinks, than the Roman,—which would be a greater consolation to an Italian than we can well understand. Nevertheless it was not society, and it did not make his fellow-townsmen endurable to him. He recoiled from them more and more, and the solitude in which he lived among his books filled him with a black melancholy, which he describes as a poison, corroding the life of body and soul alike. To a friend who tries to reconcile him ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... she sat there by the fire knitting tranquilly, scarcely ever even lifting her calm young eyes to the man. Twice again he poured out what he "needed" for himself before the agony in his sickened brain and body became endurable—before the tortured nerves had been sufficiently drugged once more and the indescribable torment had subsided. He looked at her once or twice where she sat knitting and apparently quite oblivious to what he had been about, but ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... pass upwards, it is common to leave apertures in or near the ceiling for their escape. Were it not, indeed, for such contrivances, the upper parts of theatres and some other buildings would scarcely be endurable; but a mere aperture, though it allows the foul air to escape, in consequence of its specific lightness, is also apt to admit a counter-current of denser and cold air, which pours down into the room, and produces great inconvenience. This effect is prevented by heating, in any convenient way, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... Landor's pen, that "study is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of old age." Of this theory there could be no better example than Landor's self. That life which outlasted all the friends of its zenith was made endurable by a constant devotion to the greatest works of the greatest men. Milton and Shakespeare were his constant companions, by night as well as by day. "I never tire of them," he would say; "they are always a revelation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... weird noises, were lonely and depressing. Only her ability to sleep quickly and soundly made them endurable. The first night that she spent in her completed house behind barred windows and barricaded door was one of almost undiluted peace and happiness. The night noises seemed far removed and impersonal and the soughing of the wind in the trees was gently soothing. Before, it had carried ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been ten years with a New York evening paper. Fred held vaguely with labour parties, with socialists and single-taxers; his sister-in-law had a somewhat caustic feeling that if Fred had ever given Linda a really capable maid, his opinions might have been more endurable, to her, Harriet, at least. Linda had had maids, Polack and Swedish girls, and Irish country girls hardly intelligible in speech. But now she had no maid, she preferred the economy and independence of ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... ought to be in contemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, one thing was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament might be brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests, and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Not only must Royalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, but also those conspicuous Presbyterian enemies of the Army who had occasioned all the recent troubles! That there might ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... But it is apt to spoil two good things—a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeble writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in which it is endurable is when it is extremely spontaneous, when the analogy presents itself with eager promptitude. When it shows signs of having been groped and fumbled for, the needful illusion is of course absent and the failure complete. Then the machinery alone ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... seen, made of wattles or wicker-ware. The skill, therefore, of the architectural decorator took the direction of the variations in basket-work. We know that in the Gothic age those forms which were found the most endurable and graceful in which stone could be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms which guided the carver and the painter; so that all wood-work, metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination of books, and the like, repeated the ornaments of Gothic architecture. It ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... get through Pickwick. My solemn friend evidently preferred the dropping-down-deadness of manner, which he had been accustomed to find in Hervey's "Meditations," and other kindred authors, where it always seems to be urged that life would be endurable but for its pleasures. A person once commended to my acquaintance an individual whom he described as "a fine, pompous, gentlemanly man," and I thought it prudent, under the circumstances, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Crescent—basely escaped—without having declared any purpose. Twice on this day he had escaped, almost by subterfuges; once from Burton's office, and now again from Cecilia's presence. How long was this to go on, or how could life be endurable to him under ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... several weeks, but they were weeks of increasing uneasiness and pain for Norma, and she knew that Chris found them even less endurable than she. The happy hours of confidence and happiness grew fewer and fewer, and as their passion strengthened, and the insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and more forcibly, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... ideal of art. In the last century, they set him up in Beatrice recalls her Germany and in France as befitting an era of enlightenment, the light of which came too manifestly from the wrong quarter to be long endurable. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... to be expected that the soldier's dwelling, his tent and barrack, will be reduced to the lowest endurable dimensions in the campaign, for there is a seeming necessity for this economy of room; but in garrisons, stations, and cantonments, and even in encampments in, time of peace, this necessity ceases, and there is a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... blood, but miserable wooden puppets, moved according to his fancy and made to produce all sorts of contortions and grimaces. But what kind of an age is this, which not only makes such a book possible, but even finds it endurable and delightful!" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... alleviate the sufferings of Martin. His attentions did not stop there; for he was backwards and forwards constantly, and rendered Mark good service in all his brisk attempts to make their situation more endurable. Hope or comfort for the future he could not bestow. The season was a sickly one; the settlement a grave. His child died that night; and Mark, keeping the secret from Martin, helped to bury it, beneath ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the entertainment of those readers only who have formed their taste on the French drama. His tragedies are some of the most endurable we have in what a lively modern critic[4] has termed the rhetorical style. Yet he had some ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... effect of civilisation: they proceed PARI PASSU. A taste of comfort begets a love of comfort. And this kind of love militates, not impotently, against the other; for self- interest is a persuasive counsellor, and gets a hearing when the blood is cool. Life must be more than possible, it must be endurable; man must have some leisure, some repose, before his brain-needs have a chance with those of his belly. He must have a coat to his back before he can stick a rose in its button-hole. The worst of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... before the eyes rendering the paper scarce visible as he wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on the pen. What man among us has not had nights and hours like these? But to the manly heart—severe as these pangs are, they are endurable: long as the night seems, the dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the fever abates, and rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the past misery with feelings that ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the ground; another while clouds send forth the thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice, and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life and of joy in death: My God! Take God away, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... back to Arden Court, and was proud to think of herself as the mistress of the place she loved so dearly; but it seemed to her that an existence weighed down at once by the wisdom of Sophia Granger and the exuberant gaiety of Lady Laura would be barely endurable. She sighed for Arden Court as she remembered it in her childhood—the dreamy quiet of the dull old house, brightened only by her brother's presence; the perfect freedom of her own life, so different from the life whose every hour was subject to the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... interrupted. "You know very well, my dear Henry, the exact terms upon which we have both found married life endurable. If I choose to receive foolish letters from foolish men, it concerns you no more than your silent adoration of Pauline Marrabel does ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... departed the pleasantest part of her office life, a fact she could not disguise. In the week that followed, when "C," true to his word, waited, saying nothing, she missed continually the sympathy, the gay talk, the companionship that had made the constantly-occurring annoyances endurable, and the days that dragged so now seem short. The office business did not fill half her time, and the constant confinement began to be irksome to her, whose nature demanded activity; in consequence, she often grew impatient ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... merriment. The boys were as delighted as children with a spade and bucket by the sea, and many an impregnable redoubt was thrown up with a dozen stones. What those homes will be like at the end of a week I don't know. A picnic where love is may be endurable for one afternoon, when there are plenty of other people to cook and wash up. But a hungry and unclean picnic by day and night, beside a muddy river, with little to eat and no one to cook, nowhere to sleep but the ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... tumbledown village left a very disagreeable feeling in his heart. Somehow, his hitherto blithe spirits were dampened by this morning's walk, and he thought the great bare Rock would be a great deal more endurable if the fish-huts and their inmates were only off it. True, it would be much lonelier, but that was far more endurable than the sight of such shiftlessness and ignorance. He wondered if Uncle Richard ever went among them, and whether he really knew what ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... even a little insincere themselves or a shade less fond. His Journal at that period contains two entries, however, which show that neither Lady Fitz Rewes nor Reckage were wrong in fearing he had received a mortal blow which no earthly influence could make endurable. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... dark places light, its rough places plain, its hard things easy, even its saddest things endurable. His Gospel was this: God, Who made us in His own Image, loves us like a Father; and therefore, in life and in death, in time and in eternity, all is, and must ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... consent, established among school-boys, that school and school-masters are necessary evils, only endurable because incurable, and that, as a matter of course, the return to school must be looked on as a species of martyrdom, the victims of which are unanimously opposed to the usual persuasives that school-days ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... of ceremony is a funeral without a legacy; an assembly is a mob, and a ball a compound of glare, tinsel, noise, and dust. However amusing in their freshness, after a few repetitions, they are only rendered endurable by the prospect of some collateral gain, or the gratification of personal vanity. To exhibit the beauty of a young wife, or the diamonds of an old one; to be able to say the best thing that is uttered; to sport a red ribbon ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... always going to be! Life would hardly be endurable were it not for dreaming, hoping, believing. I could stand any loss better than that of my faith in humankind." I sat upright, my hands locked in my lap. "I'm not here to do things for the people you have ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... great, but Divine Mercy is infinite, and you may repair all by staying with me.—Rise up in Christian charity, my dear—I am your wife, and not your judge. I am your possession; do what you will with me; take me wherever you go, I feel strong enough comfort you, to make life endurable to you, by the strength of my love, my care, and respect.—Our children are settled in life; they need me no more. Let me try to be an amusement to you, an occupation. Let me share the pain of your banishment and of your poverty, and help to mitigate it. I could always be of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... endurable that children grow up starved and overworked, that boys and girls be submitted to vicious surroundings, that talent be crushed, that young men and young women be devoured by crime and greed. Youth, its nurturing and developing, has become the passion of the day. This is the meaning of ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... aside, or may not be genuine at all. I will be glad to see Lockhart. My pronunciation is a good deal improved. My time glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the palsy. I should not like to be pinned to my chair. But I believe even that kind of life is more endurable than we could suppose. Your wishes are limited to your little circle—yet the idea is terrible to a man who has been active. My own circle in bodily matters is daily narrowing; not so in intellectual matters, but ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... end, as it seems to them, in a dunghill of misery—how can we expect such to understand any obligation to live for the sake of the general others, to no individual of whom, possibly, do they bear an endurable relation? What remains?—The grandest, noblest duty from which all other duty springs: the duty to the possible God. Mind, I say possible God, for I judge it the first of my duties towards my neighbour to regard his duty from ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... seldom it is that one really wants to do anything nowadays. I wonder when I have really wanted to go to a party before. It will be something to remember next month at Newport, when we have to and don't want to. Remember your own theory that contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is my party and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty to-morrow night will consist in being nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll warrant you were adept enough at it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there are many such young valkyrs ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... with us. There was good about the old lady, and by purloining her artificials, limiting her snuff, and soaking her in tea, she was made endurable enough. Until her death, which occurred a couple of years ago, she passed her time alternately with us and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... companionship of books. Perhaps in all his life he never extracted so much benefit from study as during that brief period of enforced idleness, when it was his sole means of making the dragging hours endurable. Dave, he knew, could not return in less than twenty days, and one daily task, never neglected, was to cut a notch in the stick that marked the humdrum passage of the days. Within the week he could hobble about on his crutches for a short distance; ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... to remain here until we disturb him. Since you insist, I will banish him again, but I do not see how he can be unhappier than he already is. I will go hack to Denver and treat myself to a little season of comfort, and edible food, and endurable beds, and bodily decency; then I will fetch my things, and notify poor papa ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... ruined life by exposing her. Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob, the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again without killing her, unless this problem was settled. When he had determined on what he should do, he might get courage to look ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... nowhere more endurable than in a country where duty towards one's neighbour, that is, one's fellow-citizen, was practised with the utmost piety, as a means of gaining the favour of God the King. (146) Thus the Hebrew citizens would nowhere be so well off as in their own country; outside ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... started this hospital, and we are sadly destitute of many of the commonest necessaries of such an institution. But everything will get better in a week or so, and while I can not exactly promise you the comforts of a home, I can assure you that life will be made more endurable than it ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... could watch equally well the profiles of the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee and Margaret MacLean. His heart had always been inclined to intermit; or—as he put it to himself—he adored them both in quite opposite ways; and which way was the better and more endurable he had never been able ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... soon ebbed from the saint's face, leaving the chapel in obscurity. Odo had crept there that afternoon with a keener sense than usual of the fact that life was hard on little boys; and though he was cold and hungry and half afraid, the solitude in which he cowered seemed more endurable than the noisy kitchen where, at that hour, the farm hands were gathering for their polenta, and Filomena was screaming at the frightened orphan who carried the dishes to the table. He knew, of course, that life at Pontesordo would not last for ever—that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... she knew was impossible, till now represented no impossibility to him. He actually declared it as a thing which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. Only so could the past be retrieved, or the future made endurable. But to that matter they did not immediately come. She dined at the farmer's table with Abel and three men. Then he was told that he might make holiday and spend the afternoon with his mother where he pleased. He took ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... heart-sinking. She was afraid to speak afraid to touch her aunt, and abode motionless in the grasp of that dread for minutes. But Mrs. Rossitur did not stir a hair, and the terror of that stillness grew to be less endurable than any other. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in thought when idle, than in labour when employed. The cessation from labour was favourable to the thoughts that made it endurable. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... never was a human being more weary of herself. I sometimes wonder whether I could go again and sit in that cage in the House of Commons to hear you and other men speak,—as I used to do. I do not believe that any eloquence in the world would make it endurable to me. I hardly care who is in or out, and do not understand the things which my cousin Barrington tells me,—so long does it seem since I was in the midst of them all. Not but that I am intensely anxious that you should be back. They tell me that ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... in a state bordering on frenzy. Her anxiety and suspense were hardly endurable. I went up to the Castle, caught the horses, harnessed them to the wagon, and conveyed her and her trunks to the house. In the mean time the soldiers had marched up to the clearing, and decided to pitch their ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... youthful and inexhaustible fancy of Homer which lights up the sublime images of a heroic age and moulds them into forms of surpassing beauty. The poetry of Hesiod appears struggling to emerge out of the narrow bounds of common life, which he strives to ennoble and to render more endurable. It is purely didactic, and its object is to disseminate knowledge, by which life may be improved, or to diffuse certain religious notions as to the influence of a superior destiny. His poem entitled "Works and Days" is so entirely occupied with the events of common life, that ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... passion for service. She cooked for Grimshaw, knitted woollen socks for him, brushed and mended his clothes, watched out for his health—often, I am convinced, she stole for him. As for Grimshaw, he didn't know that she existed, beyond the fact that she was there and that she made material existence endurable. He never again knew physical love. That I am sure of, for I have talked with Marie. "He was good to me," she said. "But he never loved me." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... seems so deuced lonely to-night. If poor George were sitting opposite to me, or—or even George's sister—she's very like him—existence might be a little more endurable. But when a fellow's lived by himself for eight or ten years he begins to be ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... was so beautiful and so cheerful in her pleasanter moods that he thought her a treasure. When he took his baby on his knee and felt her soft, warm cheek against his own, he realized that life might be endurable even in adversity. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... we read, "The fanatical passion of the nuns for their confessors, priests, and monks, exceeds belief. That which especially renders their incarceration endurable is the illimitable opportunity they enjoy of seeing and corresponding with those persons with whom they are in love. This freedom localizes and identifies them with the convent so closely that they ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... very name,—your name, miss, allowin' it was your father,—ef he had made that presence so hateful, that name so infamous, that exile, that flyin' to furrin' parts, that wanderin' among strange folks ez didn't know ye, was the only way to make life endurable; and ef he'd given ye,—I mean this good old man Don Jose, miss,—ef he'd given ye as part of yer heritage a taint, a weakness in yer very blood, a fondness for a poison, a poison that soothed ye like a vampire bat and sucked yer life-blood ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... something would occur to release me: it could not be that I should have to go. With the exaggeration of youth, it seemed to me an impossibility that I could endure anything so grievous. How I hated all the careless, thoughtless, happy household! Only Richard, enemy as he was to my happiness, seemed endurable to me. For Richard was not merry-making in his heart, and I was sure he was sorry for me all the time he was trying ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... is more or less hot according to the latitude; only continual bathing can render it endurable. There are but two seasons, the wet and the dry. As soon as the southwest monsoon sets in, masses of spongy cumuli gather on the summits of the western mountains, giving rise to furious squalls about sunset, and dispersing in peals of thunder and torrents of refreshing rain. From the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the habit of steady, systematic work in youth, and untiring effort has been the rule of his life. Man was made to be well, and he was made to work. It is only work—which is the constant effort to retain equilibrium—that makes life endurable. So we find Haeckel now, at near fourscore years, a model of manly vigor, with all the eager, curious, receptive qualities of youth—a happy man, but one who knows that happiness lies on the way to Heaven, and not in arriving there and sitting down ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... there seemed to be no chance of future escape. They had brought with them a piano and a few books, mostly French;—and with these it seemed to have been intended that the two ladies should make their future lives endurable. Other resources except such as the scenery of the cliffs afforded ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... affair. It was very natural, especially as England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without again naming Messrs. Slidell ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... above all the officers, began to grow weary of their sojourn at Boulogne, a town less likely, perhaps, than any other to render such an inactive existence endurable. They did not murmur, however, because never where the First Consul was did murmuring find a place; but they fumed nevertheless under their breath at seeing themselves held in camp or in fort, with England just in sight, only nine or ten leagues ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... without any response to the advertisement. Paul spent his days walking the streets of New York and Brooklyn at random, for the sake of the chance, about one in ten billions, that he might meet Ida. Anything was more endurable than sitting at home waiting, and by dint of tramping all day long he was so dead tired when he reached home at night that he could sleep, which otherwise would have ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... information, is its singular activity. His energies never seem to flag—even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued, or jaded. Some such quality as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political excitement. Take the routine of a day for instance. In his early life he has been known to attend, in his place in court, on circuit, at an early hour in the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... was going to put me in irons here in this river once. A great shame it was; but I'll tell you the story another time. There, gently now; that's it. Thank God! once more upon land. How I do hate a ship; upon my life, a sauce-boat is the only boat endurable in this world." ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... there was not the turn of an eyelid that could be construed into penitence. A brawling woman is but little less endurable than a perfectly silent one. You may almost as well "flee to the house-top" from one as the other. What few words were spoken by Mr. Eldred at the breakfast table ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... renders the possibility of non-fulfilment unthinkable. Then Maurice had entered the field, carrying all before him, with the inimitable assurance that was his; and by now Kenneth had reached the agony-point in a painful, if educative experience. Standing aside was no longer endurable. By some means he must secure Elsie, if only for ten minutes, and discover ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing to the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... as you please, my love," he replied; "I owe you too much to contradict you in aught which may render your solitary mode of life more endurable. Make of this youth what you will, and you have my full authority for doing so. But remember he is your charge, not mine—remember he hath limbs to do man's service, a soul and a tongue to worship God; breed him, therefore, to be true to his country ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... should be perpetually blaming, and criticising, and mocking, and making sour faces at everything, and saying 'I will not have this!' and 'I will not have that!' and 'I will not have it so! It is folly; it is unbearable; it is wearisome; it is stupid!' precisely as if they themselves only were endurable, agreeable, and clever! No, I have learned better manners than that. It is true that I have no genius, nor learning, nor talents, as so many people in our day lay claim to, but I have learned ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... not hopeful. To the degenerate Europeans of the present day, whose programme involves constant holidays in a mountain climate, occasional furloughs to England, and, when resident in India, a residence made endurable by imported luxuries, and by every possible precaution against heat, there is something almost incredible in this long life of exile, where the English language would not be heard for years, and where quilted curtains and wooden shutters would be all ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... many to the noblest and most prominent children, as if they were captives in war? Yet those acts, though most distressing, yet at least in their similarity to others that had previously taken place seemed endurable to such persons as were away from them. But Sulla was not satisfied, nor was he content to do the same as others: a certain longing came over him to far excel all in the variety of his slaughters, as if there were some virtue in being second to none even ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... ladies' names, As in the ladies faces; Some names fit for every age, Some only fit for youth; Some passing sweet and musical, Some horribly uncouth; Some fit for dames of loftiest grades, Some only fit for scullery maids Ann is too plain and common, And Nancy sounds but ill; Yet Anna is endurable, And Annie better still, There is a grace in Charlotte, In Eleanor a state, An elegance in Isabel, A haughtiness in Kate; And Sarah is sedate and neat, And Ellen innocent and sweet Matilda has a sickly sound, Fit for a nurse's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... here, at his Fleet Street window, the poet felt quite at ease in contemplating female beauty. To see and not to be seen was what his heart enjoyed in full delight, and he fervently expressed his opinion to Tom Benyon that the only thing that made the big city endurable, and even money-hunting excusable, was the presence of all these fair women. Tom felt much gratified at this declaration, considering any praise of London as a ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... hard ground, or even on stones, passing the cold nights under the open sky, should not pursue his journey farther than from Joppa to Jerusalem: for, as we proceed, the fatigues become greater and less endurable, and the roads are more formidable to encounter; besides this, the food is so bad that we only eat from fear of starvation; and the only water we can get to drink is lukewarm, and offensive from the leathern jars ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... "whether the Italian is still playing that awful instrument?" Curiously enough, the idea did not disturb him in the least. "I shall teach him a Russian tune or two!" he decided, cheerfully. "Then, maybe his playing will be endurable." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... vulgar and boorish. And they learned to accept the inequalities of life without repining insolence. They were humble, and felt that there were actually some people in the world superior to themselves. I do not paint their condition as desirable or interesting by our standard, but as endurable. They were doubtless very ignorant; but would knowledge have made them any happier? Knowledge is for those who can climb by it to positions of honor and usefulness, not for those who cannot rise above the condition in which they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... out of the chaotic hotels soon as possible, for there were some things in them simply not endurable. They rent houses and employ servants and set up housekeeping. The newspaper correspondents have been driven to this, and they are comparatively happy. They have found ponies almost a necessary of life, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother's bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling on the sister's picture-book, and whether such conduct does not justify the sister in blowing out the brother's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... conversation drifted into the endless moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness is only to the well ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... assuage my grief by thy dear assurances. I am not happy," (and the tears flashed and fell from under her down-cast lids), "for we are inmates of a miserable prison, and there is no joy for us; but the true love I bear you will render this and every other loss endurable." ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... at the regimental mess, with the officers of the North Cork. The mess-room is by far the most endurable place to be found in camp. The hut is large, and the mess-room is capable of receiving between thirty and forty guests, besides the officers of the regiment, when a great dinner-party is given. As I saw it, the whole space was divided into a dining-room and two anterooms by red curtains drawn across; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is growing," she said as I bent over her fingers. "I truly believe we are to have an endurable day at last." She smiled at me as I straightened up, and continued to regard me very intently, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Spartan, "in one year the most patriotic Hellene will be he who has made the Persian yoke the most endurable. Don't blink ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... were escorted there and back by a guard of armed soldiers on horseback, some of them heading the cavalcade, the others bringing up the rear. It was a most unusual day for Cebu, as the slightly overcast sky made the temperature quite endurable. The country passed on our drive was unusually fine, with its groves of palms and plantains; its tall cottonwood-trees by the road-side, the ripe pods on the bare branches bursting and showing the soft, white fluff within; its giant mango-trees with bonfires built beneath ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle's house. Those endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves up in his ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... replaced the plumes, the shining armour, and the chivalrous knights. Ruskin, however, was a subtle improvement even on the last stand with the shot-riddled banner. He anticipated those who have been most popular because they made our War entrancing and endurable. He went to the heart of the matter. He knew that the audience which would the more readily agree with him when he made an emotional case for the ennobling nature of war would be mainly of reclused women. He addressed them. So did, of late, some of our most successful writers on war. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... a rebel himself. Yet it would be unjust to pronounce him a mere hypocrite. In revolutions men live fast: the experience of years is crowded into hours: old habits of thought and action are violently broken; novelties, which at first sight inspire dread and disgust, become in a few days familiar, endurable, attractive. Many men of far purer virtue and higher spirit than Clarendon were prepared, before that memorable year ended, to do what they would have pronounced wicked ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which has its counterpart in most American towns, each of which is two towns, one being certain well-defined and delimited areas where languages and Braces live amid conditions far removed from the American notion of what is endurable, and the other the "better part of town," sometimes smugly called "the residence section," where ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... matter she had yielded up the only things that mattered at all. And she knew now that, in spite of her clearness of vision, the worldliness which had ruined her life was still bound up in all that was essential and endurable in her nature. She still wanted the illusions as passionately as if she believed in their reality; she still winced as sharply at the thought of Patty's marriage and of all that Patty had given up. In the case of George, she admitted that it was her fault—that ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... lost something of its poignancy, the light of earlier and happier memories had begun to struggle with and to soften its thick darkness, and even that duty which he had confronted with such an effort had become an endurable habit. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... activity, was condemned to seek such amusements as the customs of the place afforded, and these all led to drinking. He and his friends drank when they were together to make society merrier, and when they happened to be alone they drank to make solitude endurable. Had they drunk light wines like French peasants, or beer like Germans, they might have lasted longer, but their favorite drink was brandy in hot strong grogs, accompanied by unlimited tobacco. They dined in the middle of the day, and had the spirit decanters and the tobacco-box on the table ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... dear, I'll bring up a can of nitro-glycerine to-morrow and blow the whole establishment into the middle of futurity. Meanwhile, let us see if anything can be done to make it endurable a few ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... spend the whole summer with them. My greatest terror is, lest the queen, from what Mr. Smelt hinted, should make me promise myself to her for a length of years. What can I do to avoid that? Anything that has a period is endurable but what can I object that will not sound ungrateful, to the honour she is doing me and meaning me? She has given the most highly flattering reasons for making this application, in preference to listening to that of others; she has put it upon terms of commendation the most soothing; she is, indeed, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... thing, however, which made their present situation more endurable. The war in Lombardy made farther progress impossible. They could not be permitted to pass the borders into Venetia. Even if they had been perfectly well they would have been compelled to wait there ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... war. It is impossible to imagine Sigrun, or Wagner's Sieglinde, taking her revenge on a faithless lover; from no lack of spirit, but simply because revenge would have given no comfort to either. To Brynhild it is not only a distinct relief, but the only endurable end; she can forgive when ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... courage, grew first unfit to mount on horseback, and then unable to attend the councils of war which were from time to time held by the Crusaders. It was difficult to say whether this state of personal inactivity was rendered more galling or more endurable to the English monarch by the resolution of the council to engage in a truce of thirty days with the Sultan Saladin; for on the one hand, if he was incensed at the delay which this interposed to the progress of the great enterprise, he ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... tradition, and of the very best kind, has died with this excellent old lady; one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness, and freshness of mind and body, made old age lovely and desirable. In the general case, it seems scarce endurable. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... anything. Morgan says that even the New England summer is endurable when you learn to dress warmly enough. We come to endure pain and loss with equanimity; one thing and another drops out of our lives-youth, for instance, and sometimes enthusiasm—and still we go on with a good degree of enjoyment. I do not say that Miss Forsythe ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from age; but the alto-relievos, and especially those above the doors, stand out in almost perfect condition. These ornaments are rather fine of their kind. There is, throughout the whole of this west front, a beautiful keeping; and the towers are, here, somewhat more endurable—and therefore somewhat in harmony. Over the north-transept door, on the outside, is a figure of the Virgin—once holding the infant Jesus in her arms. Of the latter, only the feet remain. The drapery of this figure is in perfectly good taste: a fine specimen ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... only formidable when the government against which they are directed is already despised and detested. As long as an administration is endurable the majority of citizens prefer to bear with it, and will assist in repressing violent attempts at its overthrow. Their patience, however, may be exhausted, and the disgust may rise to a point when any change may seem an improvement. Authority is no longer shielded ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and two tents. It seemed as if we were going for a picnic. But it was necessary that we should be well provided with all sorts of things, as our journey would be through the Boschland, where fever and horse-sickness play havoc with man and horse in summer. In winter it is endurable for a few months only, so the country is very scarcely populated and almost uncultivated, and in winter the Boers trek there with their cattle from the bare, chill Hoogeveld. I had always longed to see that part of ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... incorruptible integrity of his character and the sagacity of his plans.[875] Elevated to the highest judicial post at a critical juncture, he accepted a dignity for which he had little ambition, only that he might the better serve his country. What he could not remedy he resolved to make as endurable as possible. It was not within the power of a single virtuous statesman to allay the storm and quiet the surging waters; but by good-will, perseverance, and nerve, he might steer the ship of state through many ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird |
