"Insupportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entered into has failed, and every report sent home to government is useful only if it is assumed to be wrong in every particular; and yet the man is so puffed up with pride and arrogance that he is well-nigh insupportable. The Spaniards have fooled him to the top of his bent; it has paid them to do so. Through his representations the ministry at home have distributed millions among them. Arms enough have been sent to furnish nearly every able-bodied man in Spain, and harm rather than good has come of it. Still, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... badged him with the celibacy of a sort of twentieth-century monk, without the honor of the priestly vocation. From another girl it would have been bad enough, but from Jennie Woodruff—and especially on that quiet summer night under the linden—it was insupportable. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... head on a footstool, he tried to sleep, but the effort was vain. There was a want of air—a dreadful silence, as if he had been buried alive—no tinkling of water, or rustling of leaves, or roar of cataract. It was insupportable. He got up and tried to open the door, but the handle was a mystery which he could not unriddle. There was a window behind the dressing-table. He examined that, overturning and extinguishing the candle in the act. But that was nothing. The ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... went out without waiting for the end of the play. He did not return to Felicie's dressing-room for fear of meeting Ligny there, the sight of whom was insupportable, and because by avoiding it he could pretend to himself that Ligny ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... they had entered the little parlor, his friend cast himself into a chair, and throwing off his hat, wiped away the perspiration which, though a cold October evening, was streaming down his forehead. Thaddeus endured a suspense which was almost insupportable. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... too. It sounded very much as if I were Brutus also." He stirs his tea and stares round at the company. "It seems to me that I have met these conspirators before. That's what makes Boston insupportable. You're always meeting ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... "True knowledge and solid learning cannot but make woman as well as man more humble; ... and it must be owned that if a little superficial knowledge has rendered some of our sex vain, it equally renders some of theirs insupportable." With all the sex's frivolity, she adds, women have not been found to spend their lives on mere entia rationis splitting hairs and weighing motes like the Schoolmen. She concludes that men deprive women of education lest they should oust them "from those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... took her seat in the coach for Orleans, which was to leave on the morrow. But this was not the least of her trials. It seemed as if the contemplated voyage was to bring upon her a series of the saddest and most insupportable humiliations. As there was no female travelling with her, and as she evidently possessed nothing but the clothing she wore, and the package she carried, her companions of the coach made her feel that they ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... "He'll think I stole you away from him; he'll think I gave you the nervous prostration I hinted at. Heaven knows what he won't think! But, of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or—ludicrous about a grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll be off ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... our ladies drank sage or balm tea out of Irish ware, it would be an insupportable ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... not spirit enough to resent the indignity, I would at least not publish it to the world! Briefly, my opinion, which this book has only tended to confirm, is that Boswell was a vain, conceited prig, a fool of a jackanape, an insupportable sycophant, a—whatever mean thing you please; there is no word small enough to suit him. As to Johnson, he is a surly old bear; in short, an old brute of a tyrant. All his knowledge and attainments could not have made me tolerate him, I am sure. I could have ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... possibly be about—if those dark curtains were never raised and he never looked at the outer world. Once or twice a face had appeared, but it was always the keen, thin face of Mr. Ogden; and Rose's curiosity, growing by what it fed on, began to get insupportable. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... all. A Sakasa-bashira knew how to make all the affairs of a household go wrong,—how to foment domestic quarrels,—how to contrive misfortune for each of the family and the servants,—how to render existence almost insupportable until such time as the carpenter's blunder should be discovered ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... the house was insupportable; my anxiety about Oscar grew more than I could endure. I put on my hat, and ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the gaiety fizzled out, and after a while Mrs. Graham, finding the silence and her thoughts insupportable, left them and went ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... human nature revolts from the strain that the overtaxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and the subconscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax, the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... continued favourable to us as far as the Northern Tropic, was succeeded by a calm that lasted twelve days. The ocean, as far as the eye could reach, was as smooth as a mirror, and the heat almost insupportable. Sailors only can fully understand the disagreeableness of this situation. The activity usual on shipboard gave place to the most wearisome idleness. Every one was impatient; some of the men felt assured that we should never have a wind again, and wished ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... at this meeting, and asked him whence he came, whither he was going in such haste, and why he was alone. He smiled upon me with his usual complacency, and said, 'Remember that when you were in Gascony the tempestuous climate was insupportable to you. I also am tired of it. I have quitted Gascony, never to return, and I am going to Rome.' At the conclusion of these words, he had reached the end of the garden, and, as I endeavoured to accompany him, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... light-hearted, a gleam of brilliant colour thrown across their grey life. She loved poetry too, the hills, the sunsets, and those long walks across the purple moorland. It was a wonderful companionship into which they had drifted. He was her refuge in a life which she frankly declared to be insupportable. She was a revelation to him—the first he had had—of delicate femininity, full ever of suggestions of that wonderful world beyond, of which at that time he had only dared to dream. It was she who had kindled his ambitions, who had ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... object in view, or, though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul, by its impetuosity, to such violent, eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. Such were these earnest wishings that but one man had been saved. I believe I repeated the words, "O that it had been but one!" a thousand times; and my desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words my hands would clinch together, and my fingers would press the palms of my hands, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... of the sea together. As for ever marrying again, not in this life. I have had enough of it. My first husband was the sweetest saint out of heaven, and my second was some mean little demon that had sneaked his way out of hell; and I found both insupportable." She lifted her hat as she spoke, and began to pin it on her beautifully dressed hair. "Have no fear for me," she continued. "I am sure Basil watches over me. Some day I shall be good, and he will be happy." Then, hand in hand, they ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... and interest in their disputes and battles. As this was an amusement which he could enjoy without any sort of exertion, he soon grew so fond of it, that every day he returned to the stable yard, and the horse block became his constant seat. Here he found some relief from the insupportable fatigue of doing nothing, and here, hour after hour, with his elbows on his knees, and his head on his hands, he sat, the spectator of wickedness. Gaming, cheating and lying soon became familiar to him; and, to complete his ruin, he formed a sudden ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... close enough to observe the bubbles it is possible that the young ensign could have followed the enemy trail. Twice or thrice Dave believed that he had picked up glimpses of bubbles with the searchlight, but at last, with a sigh, he gave orders to shut off speed and drift. Inaction became wellnigh insupportable after a few moments and Darrin called ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... where—somehow, but I knew not how—by some beings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages—was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... I to Richards, heartily glad to be at last independent of the insupportable Yankee, and to be able to vex him a little in my turn. My hand was already on the latch; I opened the door, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... socially—angular. Take, for instance, the Prussians; they are saints compared with the French. They have every sort of excellence: they are honest, sober, hard-working, well-instructed, brave, good sons, husbands, and fathers; and yet all this is spoilt by one single fault—they are insupportable. Laugh at the French, abuse them as one may, it is impossible to help liking them. Admire, respect the Prussians as one may, it is impossible to help disliking them. I will venture to say that it would be impossible to find 100 Germans born south of the Main who would declare, on their ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of his life, or so I thought; and that he expressed this by silence made my heart yearn toward him for the first time since I recognized him as my brother. I tried to stammer some excuse. I was glad when the darkness fell again, for the sight of his bowed head and set features was insupportable to me. It seemed to make it easier for me to talk; for me to dilate upon the purity, the goodness which had robbed me of my heart in spite of myself. My heart! It seemed a strange word to pass between us two in reference to a Poindexter, but it was the only ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer's face. An apron would have done as much; and though I should have preferred even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely insupportable, like the mask. Was it the immovability of the mask? The doll's face was immovable, but I was not afraid of HER. Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused into my quickened heart some remote suggestion ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... more furiously irritated; in fact, Zobeide had no right to trifle with any man's curiosity in that ferocious extent; and a counter right arose, as any chancery of human nature would have ruled, to demand a solution of what had been so maliciously arranged towards an anguish of insupportable temptation. Thus, however, it happened that the mummy, who left such valuable legacies, and founded such bilious fevers of curiosity, was not seen by us; nor even ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... while, as you are flowing along so happily, you suddenly encounter a steeper slope, longer and more dangerous than the first! Then the torrent recommences its tumult. Formerly it was only a moderate noise; now it is insupportable. It descends with a crash and a roar greater than ever. It can hardly be said to have a bed, for it falls from rock to rock, and dashes down without order or reason; it alarms every one by its noise; all fear to approach it. Ah, poor ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... holy; the wrong's great, But pardon it, and thou shalt see in midst of ills A lofty joy remaining still. My death, The cruelest enemy could do no more Than hasten it. Oh surely men did never Discover death, for they had made it fierce And insupportable! It is from Heaven That it doth come, and Heaven accompanies it, Still with such comfort as men cannot give Nor take away. O daughter and dear wife, Hear my last words! All bitterly, I see, They fall upon your hearts. But you one day will have Some ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... every sound, were truly dreadful. I really and sincerely thought St. Julian's mountain was rent by one violent stroke, accompanied with a rough concussion, and that the rock would fall upon our heads by morning; while the agonies of my English maid and the French valet, became equally insupportable to themselves and me; who could only repeat the same unheeded consolations, and protest our resolution of releasing them from this theatre of distraction the moment our departure should become practicable. Mean time the rain fell, and such a torrent came ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... count. "It seems that we are to be forced into continuing to bear this burden, though it may bring us to ruin. What insupportable vanity Madame de Nervac betrays! You see what her kindness of heart ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... joys under Aunt Almira's roof, life at home became insupportable. Mrs. Quimby said it was Almira herself, not the life. Clash followed clash; there came sneers, tears, squabbles, rows, and at last practical banishment. Old Quimby could stand it no longer. Almira went to live with her prospective ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... vanity had disgusted him, and her uncontrollable temper had embittered to its very dregs the cup of his existence. Being naturally of a gloomy and melancholy temperament, this unfortunate union had rendered his life almost insupportable. Domestic happiness, to which he had looked forward with high-wrought anticipations, proved, in his case, to ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... looked round—the wood had vanished behind me. I took a few strides more—and around me reigned the silence of death; the ice whereon I stood boundlessly extended itself, and on it rested a thick, heavy fog. The sun stood blood-red on the edge of the horizon. The cold was insupportable. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Fostina, after parting with her brothers and Lewis Mortimer, to whom she had given her young heart's affections, was now almost insupportable. ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... he asked, "giving me a chance? I want no chance nor anything else from you. A man accepts nothing from one he hates. My feeling towards you is, I imagine, no secret to you. We are tied together, and you have done your best to make the bondage insupportable." ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... presentable relations besides those whom he will meet at Mrs. Newcome's, in Bryanstone Square. You must go to Bryanstone Square immediately we return to London. You must ask your cousins and their governess, and we will give them a little party. Mrs. Newcome is insupportable, but we must never forsake our relatives, Ethel. When you come out you will have to dine there, and to go to her ball. Every young lady in your position in the world has sacrifices to make, and duties to her family ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the world. How many things to excite the ambition of a schoolboy! Augustus was impatient for the moment when he might "be what he admired." The drudgery of Westminster, the confinement, the ignominious appellation of a boy, were all insupportable to this young man. He had obtained from his father a promise, that he should leave school in a few months; but these months appeared to him an age. It was rather a misfortune to Holloway that he was so far advanced in his Latin and Greek studies, for he had the less to ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... decent clothes; in this state he had nothing for his bed but a little damp and mouldy straw; around his waist was a chain which was fastened to the wall and barely permitted him to turn from one side to the other. No light was admitted into his cell. To increase his miseries, almost insupportable mental anguish was added to his physical suffering. He was made to believe that he was only saved for a public execution, while at the same time he was not permitted to know whether his family were still alive or had perished under the axe ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... from the tree they returned to me in full force, and my reflections were certainly of no very cheering or consolatory nature. I rode on, however, most perseveringly. The morning slipped away; it was noon, the sun stood high in the cloudless heavens. My hunger had now increased to an insupportable degree, and I felt as if something were gnawing within me, something like a crab tugging and riving at my stomach with his sharp claws. This feeling left me after a time, and was replaced by a sort of squeamishness, a faint sickly sensation. But if hunger ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Majesties would soon be made easy; for I had found a prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he had given orders to fit up with my own assistance and direction; and he hoped, in a few weeks, both empires would be freed from so insupportable an encumbrance. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... to their profession? If not, then each officer may define cruelty according to his own temper, and if it is not usual he will make it usual. Corporal punishment, imprisonment, the gag, the ball and chain, and all the almost insupportable forms of torture invented for military punishment lie within the range of choice. Third. The sentence of a commission is not to be executed without being approved by the commander, if it affects life ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... 'parturient mountain.' But it is only when we look at the chance of good from it that this proposition is 'muscipular.' Regarding it in every other aspect it is infinite, inasmuch as it makes the Constitution a well-spring of insupportable thralldom, and once more lifts the sluices of blood destined to run until it comes to the horse's bridle. Adopt it, and you will put millions of fellow-citizens under the ban of excommunication; you will hand them over to a new anathema maranatha; you will declare that ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... here belong to the most insufferable people on the face of the earth. The Claremonts, and the Edgefields, and the Bouveries, and the Sedleys, and a few more, are very well; but can anything in human form be more insupportable than the rest; for instance, that wretch ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... have found the little inn so insupportable, that he too will join us. Listen to that sigh of poor Nina's and you'll understand what ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fighting." Had the disappearance of the box concerned himself alone Cleggett's sense of disaster might have been less poignant. But the thought that his own carelessness had enabled the enemy to get possession of a thing likely to involve Lady Agatha in further trouble was nearly insupportable. He gritted his teeth and clenched his hands ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... perfect peace that I have this day enjoyed! The agony in the morning was almost insupportable. It seemed then utterly impossible for me to take up so heavy a cross as to follow my Saviour in the ordinance of baptism. The very thought was dreadful, and yet I knew that it was my duty. I felt that the anger of God would be kindled ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... regard to their young men, who do not care to marry, till they are arrived at full-ripe years, and for whom, on their return from their warlike or hunting expeditions, they think it necessary to provide such objects of amusement. They pretend withal, that they are subject to insupportable pains in their loins, if such a remedy is not at hand to relieve them. But once more you are to remember, that I am only speaking of those people not yet converted to Christianity, by which this licentiousness is not allowed. ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... discharge of the urine, and thus being the cause of great pain when the animal endeavoured to void it, or the faecal matter. The uterus was become of almost a black colour, swelled, softened, and exhaling an insupportable odour. Judging from this that the preservation of the uterus was impossible, and reckoning much on the good constitution of the patient, I warned the proprietor of the danger of its reduction, even supposing that ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... woman is not yet returned,—why, I cannot tell. Inquire immediately at Hoebel's in the Kothgasse, whether the Hoebel who belongs to this place set off from Vienna to Baden? It is really so distressing to me to depend on such people, that if life did not possess higher charms, it would be utterly insupportable in my eyes. You no doubt got my yesterday's letter, and the 2 florins for the chocolate. I shall be obliged to drink coffee to-morrow; perhaps after all it is better for me than chocolate, as the prescriptions of this B. [Braunhofer] have been repeatedly wrong. Indeed he seems ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... of the colon well nigh put a full stop to the patient's sufferings. The ductus communis choledochus again deluged the stomach, and with the customary consequences. The scene now, became almost insupportable. An aged nurse, who had, from the infancy of the patient, been his domestic, declared that she could hold out no longer. Poor creature! the tear of affection glistened in her eye; while her convulsed features betrayed uncontrollable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... a singular manner. But I think its ludicrous side never so affected me before. What is it in me that makes me always appreciate most keenly the ludicrous in seasons of the greatest solemnity and distress? The absurdity of his misapplication of the sacred text mingled horribly with a sense of the insupportable anguish I knew he was causing. And yet I knew ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... himself as well as in others. It was as mild a misanthropy, probably, as ever caressed the objects of its malediction. But I believe it was about the year 1900 that his sense of our perdition became insupportable and broke out in a mixed abhorrence and amusement which spared no occasion, so that I could quite understand why Mrs. Clemens should have found some compensation, when kept to her room by sickness, in the reflection that now she should not hear so much about "the damned human race." He told of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... became insupportable to her. She sprang up, opened the window, and sat down in the balcony outside, trying to find composure by looking down into the dark, still street. The voices of two men engaged in eager conversation reached her ear. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... when we took our departure, we were quite laden with flowers, good wishes, and messages for mutual friends in England. It was rather a hot journey down, and the train seemed full, but the scenery was lovely. As we approached Colombo the heat became greater, and in the town itself it was almost insupportable. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... "O, insupportable! O, heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of Sun and Moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration." —Act ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... the mathematician is spared that of demonstrating the absurdity of the convergence of parallel lines; yet the ancient Americans not only clung to their error with a blind, unquestioning faith, even when groaning under its most insupportable burdens, but seem to have believed it of divine origin. It was thought by them to have been established by the god Washington, whose worship, with that of such dii minores as Gufferson, Jaxon and Lincon ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... and we call the one-eyed race by the Scythian name Arimaspi, for in the Scythian language arima signifies one and spou the eye. The whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard and severe a winter, that there prevails there for eight months an altogether insupportable cold, so that if you pour water on the ground you will not make mud, but if you light a fire you will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Scythians who live within the trench travel ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... now, disregarding the family tie with Napoleon, was drawn by the current of German patriotism, as well as by self-interest, into the alliance against him. His imperious and arrogant domination was felt to be insupportable. But the circumstance that determined the course of Austria was the victory gained by Wellington at Vittoria, in Spain, over the French under Jourdan (June 21). The news of it turned the scale in the Austrian ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... now become almost insupportable; as, for the reason before assigned, every window and door was shut. However, this inconvenience, if it was severe, was luckily of short duration. A little after nine, their Majesties retired towards the door by which they had entered: and which, as it was reopened, presented, in the background, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... began to mimic and to caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints. Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had been at the head of the administration, there would have ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the middle ages. It would be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush so monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction upon which the Free church has laid the foundations of its own establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to an officer of a church, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... suffer more from the sun's rays than the elephant, whose nature prompts it to seek the deepest shade. Its dark colour and immense surface attract an amount of heat which becomes almost insupportable to the unfortunate creature when forced to carry a heavy load during the hot season in India. Even without a greater weight than its rider, the elephant exhibits signs of distress when marching after 9 a.m. At such times it is disagreeable, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... great it is in every other part! The management of the plot was so masterly, that the story proceeded without a pause or an improbability until the long fast of a month falling between the feasts of its publication became almost insupportable. It was a plot that grew naturally out of the characters, for humanity is prolific of events, and these characters are all human beings. They are not in the least anachronistic. They act and speak a great deal in the coarse fashion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... understand how often Rousseau's mind turned from the deadly drudgery of his present employment to the beatitude of former days. "What rendered my present condition insupportable was the recollection of my beloved Charmettes, of my garden, my trees, my fountain, my orchard, and above all of her for whom I felt myself born and who gave life to it all. As I thought of her, of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the policeman (who was professionally inclined to neatness), he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad himself in an exquisite summer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yellow flower in the button-hole, and, in short, became that elegant and rather insupportable person whom Gregory had first encountered in the little garden of Saffron Park. Before he finally left the police premises his friend provided him with a small blue card, on which was written, "The Last Crusade," and a number, the sign of his ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... his power to alleviate their distress. I was taken very ill with the dysentery. I know of no disease which brings a man down more rapidly. Two or three days weakened me so much that I could scarcely move; and with it came a despondency of mind that was almost insupportable. I had been for years a wayfarer in strange lands, but never, during the whole time, did I so forcibly feel the want of a home, and the solace and care of friends, as now. How did I long to be once more under my ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... been permitted. Nor was the cool morning, or evening, freshened by the never-failing breeze, selected for going ashore; but the very hottest time of day, when on this treeless, barren, granite island, the reflection of light and heat is almost insupportable: when Apollo darts his fiercest rays on those who wander to seek his fane, and Diana was unable to offer them any cool, shady retreat which, at such an hour, she would herself have loved so well. Yonder, under the soot-imbued awning of the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... frightful, and were not lessened when they stopped at a hut, where some rusty chains were brought out, the rings of which were thrust over his ankles: they proved much too small, and the rust prevented the bars from turning in the sockets, so that the pain was insupportable. He was rudely carried and thrown into the carriage, and thus arrived in an almost insensible condition ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured—not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, Uncle Victor!—but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your button-hole. That rose which you offered so readily to the shop-girls—that large, open-hearted ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... "An insupportable odour emanated from the bed. I lifted up the coverlid and took Balzac's hand. It was bathed in sweat. I pressed it, but he ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew all but insupportable. It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street, we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices. I ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... must pay her for her work. Tout n'est pas roses for these Eastern tyrants, not to speak of the unbridled license of tongue allowed to women and children. Zeyneb hectors Omar and I cannot persuade him to check her. 'How I say anything to it, that one child?' Of course, the children are insupportable, and, I fancy, the women ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... barbarity which these represented to me, greatly added to the affliction of my mind. My feelings became now almost insupportable. I was agonized to think that this trade should last another day. I was in a state of agitation from morning till night. I determined I would soon leave Bristol. I saw nothing but misery in the place. I had collected ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... gaze from the telephone and looked at her hands. She could not meet the insupportable ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... possible, to destroy the captured monarch. It was a day of intense and suffocating heat. Ten persons were crowded into the royal carriage. Not a breath of air fanned the fevered cheeks of the sufferers. The heat, reflected from the pavements and the bayonets, was almost insupportable. Clouds of dust enveloped them, and the sufferings of the children were so great that the queen was actually apprehensive that they would die. The queen dropped the window of the carriage, and, in a voice of agony, implored some one to give her a ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... sentimental than act from the animal passion; their corruption of manners leading them to promiscuous concubinage; or, in fine, the extravagant luxury of the times, which too often renders a family an insupportable burden—whatever may be the cause it becomes necessary, in order to counteract it and produce an additional incitement to the marriage state, that a premium be given with the females. We find in the history ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... representation of the facts will win applause, but simply what the facts are. And undoubtedly it is true that all considerate men in England have been compelled to contemplate the possibility of over-population, of an insupportable pauperism, of a burden of helpless numbers which shall sink the whole nation into abysses of starvation with all its horrible accompaniments. It is but a few years since Ireland escaped unexampled death by famine only by an unexampled exodus. The New World opened its arms ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... be easier. Beatrice had merely to say that she was suffering with a dreadful headache, that the atmosphere of the room was insupportable, and that she was going to try the purer air of ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the wicked." (Is. xi. 4; Luke xix. 27.) "His countenance as the sun shining in his strength," disclosed to the beloved disciple such splendor as to overwhelm him. The like display of divine majesty was insupportable to Saul of Tarsus when on his way to Damascus. (Acts xxvi. 13.) To the workers of iniquity, "our God is a consuming fire." (Heb. xii. 29.) It is a certain truth,—"The vengeance of the gospel is weighter than the vengeance of the law." (Heb. x. ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... The abominable cooking, the dawdling progress,—how was one to endure them? Especially when we had turned homeward, and were sluggishly repeating the ground already traversed, did the delay become almost insupportable. At length, on the 24th of August, we fairly said good-bye to Labrador, and came sweeping southward with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his icebergs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that Shakespeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the most hateful atrocity—that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror—I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the name of Shakespeare, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... but she is very ill; so, as we touched here on the voyage up channel, I landed her and myself, thinking to kiss, within a day, my darling Emmy. But I cannot get her out of bed this morning, and dare not leave her: though an hour's delay seems almost insupportable. If I possibly can manage it, I will bring the dear old faithful creature, wrapped in blankets, by chaise to-morrow. Tell my father all this: and say to him—he will understand, perhaps, though you may not, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... profligate persons of the kingdom without choice of rank or mind & with whom the subjects of conversation are only horses, drinking matches, bawdy houses, and in terms the most vulgar. The young nobility, who begin by associating with him, soon leave him disgusted with the insupportable profligacy of his society; and Mr. Fox, who has been supposed his favorite, and not over nice in the choice of his company, would never ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... as thunderstroke to Othello, who now plainly saw that he was no better than a murderer, and that his wife (poor innocent lady) had been ever faithful to him; the extreme anguish of which discovery making life insupportable, he fell upon his sword, and throwing himself upon the body of his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the weather that made Rockhold insupportable to me. But, sir, I have come a long way for a great ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... watching the regiment march out. He felt that if only he could be "in it" he could equably endure any of these things that were happening and that would get worse; if he had just to stand by and watch them his portion would be insupportable. England! Other people whom he knew could not possibly feel it in the way he felt it. His history with its opening sentence, "This England you live in is yours", had arisen out of his passionate love for ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... sent abroad in time for the French, German, or even Italian translation to appear on the same day as the original work, so that the longing continental public may not be kept waiting an instant longer than their fellow-readers in the English metropolis, which would be as tantalizing and insupportable as a little girl being kept without her new frock, when her sister's is just come home, and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house? To be sure, there is something in the taste of the times; a modern work is expressly adapted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... England, and fled from their native country because it was demanded. Thus, however incredible it may appear, blind fanatics became public legislators, and those who were unable to endure tyranny in England, became the most insupportable tyrants in America. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... touching, for a long time must elapse before they met again. Monte-Leone had resolved to leave Naples for some time. The proximity of Sorrento lacerated his heart, and to see her he loved the wife of another would to him be insupportable. Taddeo was aware of the reasons why the Count had determined to travel, and had he no mother he would also have been ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... he did not speak. He was desperately in love with Nyssia and jealous of Candaules. It was not, therefore, the fear of death alone that had induced him to undertake this bloody task. The thought of leaving Candaules in free possession of Nyssia was insupportable to him: and, moreover, the vertigo of fatality had seized him. By a succession of irregular and terrible events he beheld himself hurried toward the realisation of his dreams; a mighty wave had lifted him and borne him on in despite of his ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... that amount of intelligence and position which legitimately place him above most of the company into which he may go, he is seldom or ever welcomed as an acceptable conversationalist. But when he is a man below mediocre—a pedant—he is insupportable. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... sensuality that surround him,—that the curse of Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and writhe under awful visions of truths which no one around him will regard. In early life the associate only of the cultivated and the refined, Father Francesco could not but experience at times an insupportable ennui in listening to the confessions of people who had never learned either to think or to feel with any degree of distinctness, and whom his most fervent exhortations could not lift above the most trivial interests of a mere animal life. He was weary of the childish quarrels and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... must be attributed those insupportable chains which tyrants, which priests have forged for most nations. To error must be equally attributed that abject slavery into which the people of almost every country have fallen. Nature designed they should pursue their happiness by the most perfect freedom.—To error must be attributed those ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... come out on the other side. In the tenth case they just have either to make the best of it or to make a break.... Of course people always can throw up the sponge, even married people, if things are insupportable. The door isn't locked. But there's no point, I think, in having it ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... What he thought of me I do not know; I thought him a most hideous monster, and wished him anywhere but where he was. It seemed an age that I thus lay, not daring even to draw a breath. I felt at last that I must give up the contest. I prayed for mercy. The oppression on my chest became almost insupportable. Still I dared not move. The deadly reptile stretched out its head—slowly it began to uncoil itself—the dread sound of its rattle struck my ear. I felt that now I must muster all my nerve and resolution, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... means, for several days, to send his wife away; but she preferred dying with him and the children. He left a paper on the table, informing his friends, that his only motive for committing this rash action was to rescue his family from a situation, which he himself found insupportable. ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... count them up—nobody would have thought that under the plaited tresses of this young girl's shapely head was a brain seething in revolt, or that the silken laces of her bodice muffled the beatings of a heart suffocated by the luxurious dulness of a life which she now told herself had become insupportable. Cicely had thought a great deal since her visit to London and Muriel's wedding, and had arrived at this conclusion—that she was suffocating, and that her ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... at last the Master's second gift Was perfected within her, and she heard And understood the secret thoughts of men, A sadness fell upon her, and the load Of insupportable knowledge pressed her down With weary wishes to know more, or less. For all she knew was like a broken word Inscribed upon the fragment of a ring; And all she heard was like a broken strain Preluding ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... on, and cried out at each encounter. From far they stretched their arms to dip their fingers in the holy water, but getting nearer, saw its color, and the hands retired. They scarcely breathed; the heat and atmosphere were insupportable; but the preacher was worth the endurance of all these miseries; besides, his sermon was to cost the pueblo two hundred and fifty pesos. Fans, hats, and handkerchiefs agitated the air; children cried, and gave the sacristans a hard enough task ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... mourn for him, then?" said Hugo, when the pause that followed Brian's speech had become insupportable to him. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... almost the same by Valerie. It is undoubtedly this quality of perfect ease and unconscious insolence which for some unaccountable reason is attractive in Englishmen. If it were assumed it would be insupportable impertinence, but as you know, Mamma, it is not in the least. They are perfectly unconscious of their behaviour; it is just that there is one woman they want to speak to in a room, so that is all they see; the ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... reputation very troublesome, both to maintain and to undergo the consequences—it has dipped me in erudite correspondences—I receive letters every week that compliment my learning; now, as there is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man, except an unlearned one, this title Is insupportable to me; if' I have not a care, I shall be called learned, till somebody abuses me for not being learned, as they, not I, fancied I was. In short, I propose to have nothing more to do with the world, but divert myself in it as an obscure passenger—pleasure, virt'u, politics, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... learning of use to us, or not. Was not this a shame, that a philosopher should be thus directed by a cobbler? I'll be sworn, if it were known how many have suffered in this kind by false spelling since the union, this matter would not long lie thus. What makes these evils the more insupportable, is, that they are so easily amended, and nothing done in it. But it is so far from that, that the evil goes on in other arts as well as orthography. Places are confounded, as well for want of proper distinctions, as things for want of true characters. Had I not come ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... would come, and he felt that, upon the whole, this was the worst part of the performance. He could bear her anger or her sullenness with fortitude, but her lachrymose caresses were insupportable. He held her, however, in his arms, and gazed at himself in the pier glass most uncomfortably over her shoulder. "Oh, Jack," she said, "oh, Jack,—what is to come next?" His face became somewhat more lugubrious ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... had not always been a mere tyranny of the military class over the unarmed population. Like the Roman Empire, that of the Franks had forfeited respect and popularity by misgovernment, by feeble government, by insupportable demands on the personal service of the subject. The land-owner was a less exacting master than the Empire; often he could defend his tenants from imperial exactions. During the invasions of the Northmen and Hungarians, he was impelled ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... still ye watches of the element," that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord—but fate and retribution say no—I hear the mischievous titter of Maria—the witty taunts of Sir Toby—the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight—the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... knew already by heart, but found it slightly amusing trying to make something of the sentences read backwards. The Dictionary was her final resource, and she managed to pass many tedious hours working straight through it page after page. She had got as far as M, and life was becoming insupportable, when about the middle of the day, on Monday, she was startled by a cautious and stealthy noise, and also by a shadow falling directly on her page. She looked up quickly; there was the round and radiant face of Maggie glued to the outside of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... excuse you if you did," said Madame de Sainfoy, with a smile. "I find the country insupportable myself, but you see, as the fates have preserved to us this rat-infested ruin, we must make the best of it. I set you an example, Helene. I interest myself in restoring and decorating. If you were to help me, time would not ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... be cast out. I dreaded discovery. Your visit filled me with uneasiness, that, as the day wore away, reached intense anxiety, and finally arose to insupportable anguish and suspense. Then I went to listen at the door, only to hear whether your conversation concerned me—whether I was still to be left in peace or to be cast out upon the bitter cold world. Ah, do not blame me too much! Just think how I suffered!" ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... understand their —— nonsense and put their halting lines into proper form." "I was so appalled," said he, "when they set upon me with their 'ipics and their ipecacs,' that you might have knocked me down with a feather, sir. It was insupportable, and I fled away into France." As he went on, waxing drolly furious at the recollection of various editorial scenes, I could not help remembering Mr. Yellowplush's recommendation, thus characteristically expressed: "Take my advice, honrabble sir,—listen to a humble footmin: it's genrally best ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... sufferings the captives had endured upon the march, added to many insults and cruelties, to which they had been subjected, not only by the Mexican soldiers, but the officers having them in charge. These had grown altogether insupportable, at El ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. Then—how stop myself on that slope of hell?—then I no longer belonged to myself. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... than some others. I spent yesterday at Yallahs, received five candidates, on examination, for baptism, preached in the morning, and administered the Lord's supper to about a hundred members in the afternoon. The congregation was such as to make the heat almost insupportable. There were nearly as many outside the house as within, and many more would come, but they cannot hear without exposure to the sun all the time. This however will, I hope, be remedied in a few months, as we have now commenced the ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... insupportable; trampled on such forms;—we have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest soul into the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... administration, sometimes merely incapable, sometimes combining recklessness and corruption with incapacity, the treasury again became exhausted, the resources of the nation dwindled away, and the distress of all but the wealthiest classes became more and more insupportable. But for a time the attention of Marie Antoinette was drawn off from political embarrassments by the event which alone seemed wanting to complete her personal happiness, and to place her position and popularity on ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... secure a suitable souvenir of my visit I selected a well-preserved brick, which, by means of knotted handkerchiefs, I slung over my shoulder and so commenced the return journey. For three or four miles all went well, but after that the brick commenced to get rapidly heavier, until it became almost insupportable, while its constant tapping in the small of my back, caused by the jerky trot of the mule, was well-nigh intolerable. I tried to fasten it to the saddle, but, simple as it may seem, it would not hold, besides making the mule altogether unmanageable, so that after a ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... only attempts to throw off the yoke of French domination, which had become insupportable. All the left bank of the Elbe was immediately in a state of insurrection, and all the official persons took refuge in Hamburg. During these partial insurrections everything was neglected. Indecision, weakness, and cupidity were manifested everywhere. Instead of endeavours to soothe the minds ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne |
