"Bearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so badly married. Her husband was as good as any other man. He had become quite bearable. Of all that she read in the ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences, that of their married life was the most vague. She found a few isolated traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting and fastidious impression. The time had not seemed long and had left nothing ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... true he had not been married before, but the same rule no doubt held good of marriage. If he held on to it, something more bearable would come of it. Then one could be out of the house a good deal, and there was the regiment. He began to see his way through marriage as a man sees his way through a gap in an awkward fence. The unfortunate part of it was that he couldn't get through ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... mysteries and terrors that may lie behind this fact or this fable, that no doom or horror conceivable and to be defined in words could ever adequately solve this riddle; that no reality of dreadfulness could seem caught but paltry, bearable, and easy to face in comparison with this vague ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... conditions of his home in New York were well-nigh dissipated. But a certain natural timidity, joined with the still complete uncertainty he felt as to what his true course should be, made him dissemble his disquiet so long as it was bearable. After a month or two, by a mutual agreement between his brothers and himself which exonerated him from much of the manual labor which they still shared with the men in their employment, he devoted himself to an occupation more accordant to his mind. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... pipes were bearable that night, as he poured out some whisky for the ancient piper, and received his blessings now instead of a ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... to those matters—whether it was sweeping, settling quarrels, cooking, writing letters, petitioning "Old Griff," shaving, pulling teeth, or what not. Each prisoner contributed his knowledge and experience to make life bearable for all. The camp was a democracy, but Germany didn't seem to object. If the prisoners wished to dig a drain trench or a refuse pit, they asked for shovels. And sometimes they got them. Prisoners, ragged and forlorn, came to be known by the most dignified titles. There was the "consulting ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the country, it would be vastly more pleasant for both his father and himself. Where they would go to, or what they would do, he had no idea, but it seemed to him that exile among strangers would be bearable, if he had his friend with him. It would not last many years, for surely the often talked-of landing could not be very much longer delayed; then they would return, share in the triumph of the Stuart cause, and resume their life at Lynnwood, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank, whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distant as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his ears for days.... and to think of all which echoed through those vaults of fire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!—was it possible! Millions upon millions burning forever for Adam's fall .... Could God be ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... for ever the guileful slaughter of thy Father, accursed deed?—Electra. I know your kind and tender friendship, yet will never be dissuaded.—Cho. Yet what groans and prayers can raise thy sire from the doomed pool of Hades? you go from woes bearable to woes beyond bearing.—Elec. It is weak to forget parents so lost; rather for me the nightingale that ever wails 'Itys,' or Niobe weeping in stone.—Cho. Thou art not the only one who feels sorrow: there are thy sisters, and another now mourning in a youth obscure, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... friend of my friend Brunow!" he exclaimed. "Sir, I am delighted to meet you. And Brunow is here again? What news! And do you stay long? Oh, once again life will be bearable. In this dull hole, sir, I pledge you my most sacred word of honor, a man has but one contemplation; his thoughts are all towards suicide. Figure for yourself the life we lead here: the commandant a bachelor of sixty, and "—he lowered his voice and bent laughingly ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... his sponsor, his protector, with every right to direct him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility and headstrong folly. If the fellow had been old, weak, or in any way inferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, a sage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindly reasonable authority to which only a fool could fail to attend, and which for that very reason ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... given you the true portrait—the true likeness—of the man without religion. Were you given to see a devil and the soul of an infidel at the same time, you would find the sight of the devil more bearable than that of the infidel. For St. James the Apostle tells us, that "the devil believes and trembles."—(Chap. ii. 19.) Now the Public School system was invented and introduced into this country to turn the rising generations into ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... a life With large results so little rife, Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth, Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream that falls incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... very well understand," now resumed M. Vigneron, "it by no means amuses me to stay here, kicking my heels, while my wife and my son go back to Paris without me. They have to go, however, for life at the hotel is no longer bearable; and besides, if I kept them with me, and the railway people won't listen to reason, I should have to pay three extra fares. And to make matters worse, my wife hasn't got much brains. I'm afraid she won't be able ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... remember with relief those few occasions on which such talks had ended, by reason, truly, of some mere wanton freak, in unconditional release.—Preposterous indeed that the only acts of his life hitherto viewed with self-contempt, were beginning to seem the only ones bearable to remember! ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... just a little of this tendency to mourn with those who mourn in all mankind. It is not difficult to bear another's woe—and then there is always a grain of mitigation, even in the sorrow of the afflicted, that makes their tribulation bearable. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... how by lonely ways the traveler rests and thinks of home, and in the blue smoke greets once more the faces of the loved, perhaps forever gone. He sees how the Esquimaux, with his hollow Walrus-tooth, makes bearable the stifling squalor of his den; or, sterner and graver still, some item of historic lore mingles rudely with his dreams, and elbows sharply the airy spirits of his smoke-engendered thoughts. Softly tremble in the delicate ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Now when the whole city is wild over the author of 'Arivana' and your presence is demanded everywhere, you want to run away from all the glory and triumph, and hide yourself in a little, dark hole which is only bearable in midsummer. Such an idea ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... she could turn nowhere for relief from constant heartache and the sickening monotony of her thoughts. She could not have Chris; she could not give him up. Hours with him were only a degree more bearable than ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... observation and comparison of results, can soon learn to form quite a correct idea of the heat of her oven by the length of time she can hold her hand inside it without discomfort, but since much depends upon the construction of stoves and the kind of fuel used, and since the degree of heat bearable will vary with every hand that tries it, each person who depends upon this test must make her own standard. When the heat of the oven is found to be too great, it may be lessened by placing in it ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... ordinary, well-behaved youngster, except that his face hinted at possibilities he couldn't have fulfilled, and except for his dash of narrow rebellion. I don't see how, to such a stormy creature as Emily, he could have been bearable. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in the first numb apathy of the shock, it had seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. Nothing could make the dreadful state of affairs more bearable; but now she acknowledged to herself that some things did help. How wonderfully comforting Phil's assurance of sympathy had been; the silent assurance of that firm, tender hand-clasp. It was easier to be ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... through the side of her love for Morel. Before, while she had striven against him bitterly, she had fretted after him, as if he had gone astray from her. Now she ceased to fret for his love: he was an outsider to her. This made life much more bearable. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... on Mrs. Barton's rejecting all arrowroot but hers, which was genuine Indian, and carried away Sophy and Fred to stay with her a fortnight. These and other good-natured attentions made the trouble of Milly's illness more bearable; but they could not prevent it from swelling expenses, and Mr. Barton began to have serious thoughts of representing his case to a certain charity for the relief of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... eager and intent, he told us how at one time he had gone up a hill that faced the house in which he lived. A hard rain was driving, he fell at every step up the slippery steepness, but at every step the beauty of it became more and more wondrous, hardly bearable. The little village sank lower and lower, and about him were soft hills, graceful and verdant, a stretch of water lying dark under the clouded sky, and the mountain gray and watchful in the distance. It was then, in the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... our fourth day upon the desert, and we had not sustained the smallest inconvenience; the heat, even at noon, being very bearable, and the sand not in the least degree troublesome. Doubtless, at a less favourable period of the year, both would prove difficult to bear. The wind, we were told, frequently raised the sand in clouds; and though ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... now my misery— love's yearning No more unspeakably torments my heart, Yet bearable alone through thee, my being— All thou art not is idle, stale and dying, Colourless, ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in her world. He was flirting, of course, he was only half ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... three degrees cooler than Hell. It was somewhere over the Lunar Appenines and the sun bored down from an airless sky like an unshielded atomic furnace. The thermal adjustors whined and snarled and clogged-up until the inside of the space sled was just bearable. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... treated cases of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 deg. C.).—Allg. med. cent. Zeit., ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... in Europe still unaware of the Gillem Board Report and its liberalizing provisions, and little being done to encourage within the Army the sensitivity to racial matters that makes life in a biracial society bearable. Until the recommendations of the board were carried out and discrimination stopped, they warned the secretary, the Army must expect racial ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. 'I puff the prostitute away,' " says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his pipe. "There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable; no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and learning which had got me no small name in our college. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... given way under his troubles if it had not been for this friendship; but life became bearable when he found some one to whom he could pour out his heart. The first time that he breathed a word of his difficulties, the good German had advised him to live as he himself did, and eat bread and cheese at home sooner than dine abroad at such a cost. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to his, and he saw that her eyes were moist and that her face was pale. The momentous thing had been prettily said, as if only a touch of fun and a touch of commonplace could make the sacredness of it bearable to either. In that second he forgot everything. Indifference melted, vanished, and he took her in his arms with a feeling he had never known before. How long they stood there he could not have told, but the voice of the priest ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... however, some relief had arrived to reduce the parental anxiety to bearable proportions. A letter, dropped from nowhere, bearing the metropolitan postmark, came to the King's hands. It gave only the barest, yet ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... that part, of which every sound sleep is a rehearsal. The thought of it is mournful to the enjoying soul, but not terrific; and even the mournfulness ceases in the realization. He uttered a piece of cruel madness who said, "Hell is more bearable than nothingness." Is it worse to have nothing than it is to have infinite ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a gale and under the trees the temperature was quite bearable. The Resident had already gone out of sight over the rim of the basin, having exhausted the neighbourhood of the tank and being desirous of searching farther afield. Wargrave and Raymond now followed him but soon separated, the latter making for the cultivation ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... want of intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand life, life becomes bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you understand it, everything changes. When you realise its meaning, its value, you can put up with the difficulties. And our work with regard to those around us is to bring that knowledge, and by that ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, yet why is it more childish than a hundred other things? Only because one is not accustomed to look at life from the point of view of the convent. As a guest, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Lake George on a particularly cold day, she found to her surprise a wealthy Quaker, whom she had met at the Albany convention, so solicitous of her comfort that he placed heated planks under her feet, making the long ride much more bearable. He turned up again, this time with his own sleigh, at the close of one of her meetings in northern New York, and wrapped in fur robes, she drove with him behind spirited gray horses to his sisters' home to stay over Sunday, and then to all her meetings in the neighborhood. It was pleasant to ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... lesser sisters to the vulgar menagerie. She belonged to the proper street—at the proper time of day. Any one acquainted with the species would have known at once that this private-car trip to Deadwood was to please the prosperous-looking gentleman with the side whiskers, and that it was made bearable only by the two smooth-shaven individuals ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... fellows need to keep you going—faith, love, hope. I consider all that trash. The thing is simply this: humanity lies in its death throes and we're merely trying to make the agony as bearable as ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... thought through the whole enormous mortification of having to explain to those to whom I had mentioned it that it was quite a mistake. I found that all this, when I came to look at it, was by no means so dreadful as it seemed—quite bearable in short—and then I laughed at myself and have cared nothing about the whole concern ever since. In truth...I do not think that I am in the proper sense of the word ambitious. I have an enormous longing after the highest ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... that day, as we were far from home, and the afternoon was shortening fast. The retraite was sometimes long when we had miles of hard road before us, until we arrived at the farm or village where the carriage was waiting. When we could walk our horses it was bearable, but sometimes when they broke into a jog-trot, which nothing apparently could make them change, it was very fatiguing after ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... no time. It is passable on the flat; just bearable going up hill, but dreadful going down a fairly steep incline. The wretched beasts assumed a kind of hopping, jerky motion on their front legs, with a good deal of spring in their knees, which bumped the rider ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... her father's Greek dictionary and spread the sacred pages of symbols and figures before her. She smoothed the sheets with a mixture of affectionate amusement and hope. Would other eyes look on them with her one day? The thought, long intolerable, was now just bearable. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... you have ever let the sun go down upon your wrath, and so given place to the devil, then you know something at least of what eternal death is. You know how, in such moments, there is a worm in the heart, and a fire in the heart, compared with which all bodily torment would be light and bearable; a worm in the heart which does not die: and a fire in the heart which you cannot quench: but which if they remained there would surely destroy you. So intolerable are they, that you feel that you will actually and really die, in some strange unspeakable ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... that no person wishes to be vanquished by another in respect of anything. The only one whose victory or superiority, however, is bearable or, rather, prayed for, is the son. Hence, the Rishis wish unto Krishna a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... were warmly dressed in furs, for which seals and aquatic bears had paid the price. Evenly heated by all its electric equipment, the Nautilus's interior defied the most intense cold. Moreover, to find a bearable temperature, the ship had only to sink just a few meters beneath ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... sister, it is the only burden bearable—the only burden that can be borne of mortal! Under any other, the lightest, he must at last sink outworn, his ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... youth addressed as Sam, "might elicit a smile of incredulity upon the cheek of the parasite of pleasure; but there are moments in life when History fortifies endurance: and past study renders present deprivation more bearable. If our pecuniary resources be exiguous, let our resolution, Dick, supply the deficiencies of Fortune. The muffin we desire to-day would little benefit us to-morrow. Poor and hungry as we are, are we less happy, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... November came. School was decidedly more bearable now, in the opinion of Genevieve, perhaps because it was a rainy month; but Genevieve preferred to think it was because of Miss Hart. It was strange, really, how much Miss Hart had improved as a teacher!—all the school agreed to that. Even Tilly ceased to call ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... many making directly towards me. To be surrounded, even in daylight, by such creatures would have been especially unpleasant, but in the dusk, when I could scarcely see them, the sensations I experienced were scarcely bearable. I felt inclined to shriek out at the top of my voice, but I restrained myself, and began slashing away right and left with my stick. Some I killed, but the others being more nimble than the rattlesnakes, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... flung away." Calvert looked up startled, but not being able to read her face, which was concealed, he dropped his head again, and she went on: "If it is possible for you to make this sacrifice, everything I can do to make it bearable shall be done—we need never see each other again—I can follow d'Azay to ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... be going home then and it will not signify. Remember, Mr. Graham, I shall expect you to come forward in great strength for blindman's buff." As he gave her the required promise, he thought that even the sports of Christmas-day would be bearable, if she also were to make one of the sportsmen; and then ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... gold-lover. He had declined to submit to familiar caresses in former years, but on such an occasion as the present, he felt that common propriety demanded the sacrifice of himself to some extent. He therefore allowed Annie to kiss him, and found the operation—performed as she did it—much more bearable than he had anticipated; and when Annie exclaimed with a burst of enthusiasm, "Oh, dear, dear papa, I did feel such a dreadful longing for you when the waves were roaring round us!" and gave him another squeeze, he felt that ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... to visit Nepaul, and reside at Katmandu, was unusual, but bearable; the idea of a common beef-eater infringing the limits of a circle beyond which no British resident, much less traveller, had ever penetrated, was so monstrous a heresy on the part of the prime minister—so serious an infraction of a well-established ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... swept through him, and he sat down. He was going to make it! The cabin was hot, like a closed attic on a hot July day, but it was bearable. He got back to the port again and watched as Pegasus turned in lazy circles many miles in diameter. The earth was coming closer at a pretty good clip. He was almost comfortable now, knowing that Jerry Lipton had the rocket ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... The darkness was more bearable to Bobbie now that her hand was held in the large rough hand of the red-jerseyed sufferer; and he, holding her little smooth hot paw, was surprised to find that he did not mind it so much as he expected. She tried to talk, to amuse him, and "take ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our first interview, I making a show of arranging papers on my desk. At length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... rather for the improvement of intellect and feeling. There is enough pain and misery in the world, do not add hatred to it. Have the same mercy for other creatures which you expect for yourself. Trouble and danger are common to all. Things are only bearable if all combine to pull together, if the strong join hands with the weak and the hopeful with the timid. You will not be healed by envy and hatred, or by the goading on of your desires, but by love, by forbearance, by ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Switzerland, closely watched by the Bourbonists, who dreaded danger from every side except the real point, and who preferred trying to hunt the Bonapartists from place to place, instead of making their life bearable by carrying out the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of Round Table, Graal, and Guinevere's fault. The pure Graal poems, Joseph of Arimathea, the work of the abominable Lonelich or Lovelich, etc., deal mainly with another branch of previous questions—things bearable as introductions, fillings-up, and so forth, but rather jejune in themselves. The Scots Lancelot is later than Malory himself, and of very little interest. Layamon's account, the oldest that we have, adds little (though what little it does add is not unimportant) ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... be given power without responsibility, to England will belong responsibility without power. Nor will the unnatural subjection of a great, a flourishing, a wealthy, and a proud country to a weaker and poorer neighbour be rendered the more bearable by the knowledge that the ill-starred supremacy of Ireland means, in England, the equally unnatural and equally ominous predominance of an English faction, which, since it needs Irish aid, does not command England's confidence. Radicals or revolutionists will in the long run ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... indistinct ceremony, also in the heat, much more indistinct than the railway-station. My real wife's image—Rosey's, here—just takes the place at the altar where the other one should be, and prevents my getting at any recollection of her. It is the only thing that makes the dream bearable." ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... pervadingness,' as she called it in her own mind, of Aunt Jane that chiefly worried her, the way that the little lady knew everything that was done, and everything that was touched in the house; but as long as Valetta took refuge with herself, and grumbled to her, it was bearable. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his soldier-contemporaries, his children, his power to ride to hounds, his pretty taste in wine, his fencing, dancing, flirting, and all that had made life bearable—everything, as he said, but his gout and his liver (and, it may be added, except his ferocious, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... through the leaves and pass over me in fleeting gleams. I longed so much to see them again that I stole up to the surface, and lay down in the sunshine all amongst the white water-lilies and their great green leaves. But, ugh! how the sun burnt me there on the lake I It was scarcely bearable. Bitterly did I regret that I ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... always irritated him. He had none of Clayton's joy and understanding of it. To Clayton each sound had its corresponding activity. To Graham it was merely din, an annoyance to his ears, as the mill yard outraged his fastidiousness. But that morning he found it rather more bearable. He stooped where, in front of the store, the storekeeper had planted a tiny garden. Some small late-blossoming chrysanthemums were still there and he picked one and put ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from my Father than Ibsen. Yet when I came, at a far later date, to read The Wild Duck, memories of the embarrassing household of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, with his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every compromise that makes life bearable. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... bouts, by saying: "Well, John Calhoun, you have grown very arbitrary and headstrong since your experiences in the World War. I shall acquiesce since most of my time will be taken up on the lecture platform, advocating woman suffrage. I suppose I can find the place bearable during the heated term if you make yourself a little more agreeable. I wish I had married your brother-in-law, John Cornwall, when he asked me; he ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... was Friday. Conniston determined to work Saturday. Then he would have Sunday for rest. And when Sunday afternoon came he could quit if he felt that his aching body had not recuperated enough to make the following week bearable. But he had yet to learn that in the rush of busy days on the range there is no Sunday. For Sunday morning came and brought no opportunity to sleep until noon. Breakfast was ready at the usual dim hour, and the men went to work as they had on every day since he came to the Half Moon. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back impatiently on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... test the comfort of this bed in its primitive state, for our servants had brought with them everything that could render our quarters bearable if there were any foundation ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... bosom. The taking of the child he could gladly have forgiven. Any excuse would have satisfied his anger—anything was bearable, save to know that he had come on ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... more to the south, the heat, far from increasing, became more bearable. The air in the day was at 26 or 27.5 degrees; and at night, at 23.7. The water of the Orinoco retained its habitual temperature of 27.7 degrees. The torment of the mosquitos augmented severely, notwithstanding the decrease of heat. We never suffered so much ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... shoulder with a roll of paper, as some actors, feeling the repulsiveness of the passage, have made it. It must occur, too, on the open stage. And there is not, I think, a sufficiently overwhelming tragic feeling in the passage to make it bearable. But in the other two scenes the case is different. There, it seems to me, if we fully imagine the inward tragedy in the souls of the persons as we read, the more obvious and almost physical sensations of pain or horror do not appear in their ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... said calmly. "I merely thought that my presence would not do much good. However," he added, glancing at Nejdanov with a smile, "I will stay if you like. Even death is bearable in good company." ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... coward concerning them. The pot-hunter held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the flooded prairie the willow-trees ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... concrete symbols. Now, if we maintain festivals and formalities for the healthy continuance and honour of a pastime or of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a festival—and a mighty one—in behalf of a faith which makes the corporate human existence bearable amid the menaces and mysteries that for ever threaten it,—the faith of universal goodwill and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... blinking dizzily, and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... a feeling of suffocation and closeness, due not alone, I believe, to the barred windows and the steaming radiator. The family resemblance that Mr. Lin Darton bore to Old Con threw into relief the former's honesty, and made more bearable his heavy sentimentalism, upon which Con had played as surely as on a bagpipe, sounding its narrow range with insistent evenness ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... been one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, though ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... whom does this paper belong? (Henry B. Brown.) 2. What is his character? (Horrid, but bearable.) 3. What kind of hair has he? (Heavy, burnished brown.) 4. What kind of eyes has he? (Heavenly, bright blue.) 5. What books does he prefer? (Handsomely bound biographies.) 6. What animals does he prefer? (Howling big bears.) 7. What is his chief occupation? ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... past; the climate along the Panama littoral was bearable, and the governor decided to pay official visits to the stations along the coast. The bishop thought the occasion favourable for a tour of pastoral inspection, and decided to go with his excellency. Other functionaries, with other duties to perform, hinted to the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... husband to do her best. She received from him a list of people to be invited, and, merely stipulating that she shouldn't be required to ask any one except the parson of the parish under a week, undertook to make the place as bearable as possible to so fastidious and distinguished a person as ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... bearable. Involuntarily I began to think of its heat when the lava thrown out by Snfell was boiling and working through this now silent road. I imagined the torrents of fire hurled back at every angle in the gallery, and the accumulation of intensely heated vapours ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Punkahs not necessary. This is the Head-Quarters of the Punjab Frontier force. A pity they do not have an English Regiment stationed here as it is a very pleasant place as regards climate. Snow in winter, and this the warmest time of the year quite bearable. Brigadier gone to the hills for the hot weather. Took in supplies of bread and butter and purchased a pair of chuplus or sandals for marching in, ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... of the ravages of this disease in civilized communities. Before the discovery by Robert Koch of the bacillus, we were helpless and hopeless; in an Oriental fatalism we accepted with folded hands a state of affairs which use and wont had made bearable. Today, look at the contrast! We are both helpful and hopeful. Knowing the cause of the disease, knowing how it is distributed, better able to recognize the early symptoms, better able to cure a very considerable portion of all early cases, we have gradually organized ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... original, and a few others who still believe that all the people can stand in the way of home-grown products is a ballad or a Te Deum. But what we want is an English composer with a soul. I'm getting quite sick of heads. They are bearable in literature. But when it comes to music, one's whole being ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Arkwright is one man in a million. I've been with him in times that show men's qualities. Don't judge men by what they are ordinarily. They don't reveal their real selves. Wait till a crisis comes—then you see manhood or lack of it. Life is bearable, at the worst, for any of us in the routine. But when the crisis comes we need, not only all our own strength, but all we can rally to our support. I tell you, Miss Severence, Grant is one of the men that ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... wild," he added slowly. "It peps them up. It makes the monotony and the weariness bearable. And then, suddenly, they break. They hate the machines and the city and everything they ever knew or did. It's a sort of delayed-action psychosis which goes off with a bang. Some of them go amuck in the city, using their ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... woman, with a good digestion and command of her temper, had managed to get through the world without much of that unhappiness which usually follows ill-assorted marriages. At home she managed to keep the upper hand, but she did so in an easy, good-humoured way that made her rule bearable; and away from home she assisted her lord's political standing, though she laughed more keenly than any one else at his foibles. But the lord of her heart was her brother; and in all his scrapes, all his extravagances, and all his recklessness, she ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... sat down on the grass with Captain curled at their feet, Soot solemnly listening on a tree and Nut and Shell nosing about close to them, it seemed to Mary that it would be scarcely bearable to leave such delightfulness, but when she began to tell her story somehow the look in Dickon's funny face gradually changed her mind. She could see he felt sorrier for Colin than she did. He looked up at the ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Guy, and then, that girl needs ten times the love and trust and honour yes, honour that was enough when she was only a mere wife if if the other life she chooses to lead is to be made even bearable. Do you understand? ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will advise me how I may sell 'The Witch.' I don't mind telling you why. My father has simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped—be made bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I were in a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know of any people who care for that sort of horse, I'll be delighted to enter into ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... more able to trace Him and to see that He has a way through all these winding and crossing paths. Faith does more than hold a man's hand in the darkness; it leads him into the light. It is the secret of coherence and harmony. It does not make experience merely bearable, it makes it luminous and instructive. It takes the separate or the tangled strands of human experience and weaves them into one strong cable ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... bear the reality, so it escaped into a neurosis. Maisie's behaving as though she wasn't married, so that her mind can say to itself that her marriage is incomplete because she's ill, not because Jerry doesn't care for her. It's substituted a bearable ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... resemble her mother in hasty moods, she was rather the subject of permanent impressions. Her mother's conduct had wounded her to the quick. She could no longer endure it, she thought. Hitherto, her father's love had rendered it bearable—but now, even that seemed powerless to keep her under the same roof as her mother. Where could she go? She would walk on, no matter in what direction; then, when she could walk no more, she might perhaps be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... me. They are bitter, cynical, and nearly always dyspeptic. They are near of kin to my Sympathy Seekers, who are pale, light-haired creatures, continually making appeals for sympathy. But my Sympathy Finders are very near and dear to me. They are generally silent, melancholy men. They are always bearable, unless they chance to be in love with some other woman, and make me, along with a dozen other people, their one and only confidant. Then is my life made a burden. I am privately interviewed on all occasions, the more inopportune the better. I am cornered and made a vessel for his pent-up ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... her life, thought Alice, as she and Endicott shared their can of tomatoes, had she tasted anything half so good. The rich red pulp and the acid juice, if it did not exactly quench the burning thirst, at least made it bearable, and in a few minutes she fell asleep protected from the all pervading dust by one of the wet blankets. The storm roared on. At the end of a couple of hours Bat rose and silently saddled his horse. "A'm gon' for fin' dat water-hole," he said, when the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... take an intelligent interest in the proceedings. Also they are not always thinking about the money. Perhaps the Kashmiris come next, though the Chinese run them very close. Some of the more expensive London women are bearable, but they are such harlots! The white women in the East are insupportable, and small wonder, for they consist of the dregs of the European and American markets. My list comprises English, French, German, Italian, Spanish-American, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the bitter truth was borne upon me in a flash. All my struggle had then been in vain. I had won my freedom but had lost all that would make life bearable. Even if I could win back through the desert, what had I now to compensate me for the horrible disfigurement that would make me shunned and despised a ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... I, "what can one do to relieve the monotony of this intolerable place? If the country about were agreeable—nay, if it were bearable! but as it is, I repeat, what is ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... been a ray of light, however feeble, in the hold, he thought his condition would have been more bearable, for then he could have faced the lifeless clay and looked at it; but to know that it was there, within a foot of him, without his being able to see it, or to form any idea of what it was like, made the case terrible indeed. ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... like that when you come home, Mr. Vancouver," said Mrs. Wyndham. "But nevertheless you come back and seem to find Boston bearable. It is not such a bad ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... is sad and unhappy, but over all are these simple, ineffable things. If the garden is an expression of God in the world, then the world and life are no longer meaningless. Even idleness becomes in some degree bearable because it is a part ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... favourite seat. "Then the azalea. The lovely rose-pink azalea; and after that—oh, I forget. But always something coming—something that we cannot afford to buy, but which has made our sitting-room delightful; and horrid Bridge Street a bearable place to live in. Now you have all been dying to find out who it is that has given us these delightful things; but I have always known; and at last I am going to ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... everything needed and wanted to turn them into independent giant fortresses, with a population not too dissatisfied with its lot. When Earth government didn't count the expense, life could be made considerably better than bearable almost anywhere. ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... the existence of either state, but on our belief in its existence. The fact that the denial of these and many similar beliefs would bring chaos into our spiritual and moral life, that it would extinguish hopes which often alone make life bearable, that it would issue for society at large in such a grey, meaningless, uninspired existence as Mr. F. W. Myers prognosticates in his admirable essay on "The Disillusionment of France," [2] all this and much more makes it our ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... common avenues of life. Without reference to myself, men of this land, let me tell you emphatically, dispassionately, and absolutely that war makes savages of men, and dethrones them from reason. It is too often sugarcoated with the word "patriotism" to make it bearable and men ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... uncertain as they fled from the flames that were following so fast. Ned fell headforemost into a thicket of the terrible Spanish bayonet and it was only the excitement of the hour that made the pain bearable. They floundered across the narrow swamp and into the marshy meadow often waist deep in the mud and more than once both of them fell flat in the water of the marsh. The narrow belt of timber which they first ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... to answer, but no words would come; explanations were beyond her powers, and she left the room, shutting the door behind her. A passion of tears would have made the situation bearable, but when you are the lady of the house and unexpected company is coming to tea, and you have but one servant, you have ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... said Delia, looking at him with great affection, "I'm glad you didn't go, for my own sake. You and music make Dornton bearable." ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... of cloud covered with fleecy masses, which rests on the bank to our right, and seems half inclined to sweep over us with one of those refreshing pelts of which we had a succession last night. It is this habit of showers which renders the vicinity of the Line more bearable than the summer heat of other parts within the Tropics. However, the cloud sticks to the shore, so I have come down to ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... observance, and the dirge of mourners, the wail of the "keener," and the songs of the banshee evolve naturally into being wherever the heart is sore oppressed. It was the slave-songs that made slavery bearable; and in the long ago, exiles in Babylon found a solemn joy by singing the songs of Zion. Chopin drank in the songs of Poland with his mother's milk, and while yet a child began to give them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... acquired by most of the residents in the Saxon mountains, which is a poor country, as the occupation of most of the inhabitants was mining, and it frequently happened that the wages were so low, and the means of sustaining life so expensive, that some other resource had to be found to make life more bearable. Barbara Uttmann's invention was thus a blessing to the country, and her name is held in high esteem. A monumental fountain is to be erected at Annaberg, and is to be surmounted by a statue of the country's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... don't suppose the man would bring his wife," shrieked Lady Blanche, who had been languishing in George's arms in the newly imported waltz for hours the night before. "The men are bearable, but their women—" ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the safety valve. However unflattering to national self-esteem it might be to see national legislation universally disregarded, the leakage of steam by evasion had made the tension bearable. The Act also opened to a number of subaltern executive officers, of uncertain discretion, an opportunity for arbitrary and capricious action, to which the people of the United States were unaccustomed. Already a justice of a circuit ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... by very fast during our stay at the island, where we found plenty of fruit, as many fish as we liked to catch, and abundance of large pigeons and other birds to help our larder. The climate was hot, but the breezes that came from the sea always seemed to modify the heat and make it bearable. Several storms occurred, during which the trees bent before the fury of the blast, and the waves piled the sands high with weeds and shells. The lightning was terrific and the thunder deafening. At times it was awful, and a curious scared feeling used at first to come over ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... If we send out obscure people, unknowing and unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter aggravation of the victim's suffering. Oppression and robbery are at all times evils; but they are more bearable, when exercised by persons whom we have been habituated to regard with awe, and to whom mankind for ages have been accustomed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... tramp of a wild beast in a cage, and if he compelled his aching limbs to cease for an instant, the twitchings which ensued almost amounted to convulsions, and he recommenced his walk as the lesser evil, and the more bearable fatigue. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... which benumbed my limbs and penetrated to my bones; and though I dismounted several times and tried to walk, uphill exercise was impossible in the rarefied air. The atmosphere was but one degree below the freezing-point, but at that height, a brisk breeze on soaked clothes was scarcely bearable. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... representation. Ann was suggested to me by the fifteenth century Dutch morality called Everyman, which Mr William Poel has lately resuscitated so triumphantly. I trust he will work that vein further, and recognize that Elizabethan Renascence fustian is no more bearable after medieval poesy than Scribe after Ibsen. As I sat watching Everyman at the Charterhouse, I said to myself Why not Everywoman? Ann was the result: every woman is not Ann; ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... went a shade paler. Arguing about his own veracity was even less bearable than he had thought; his manner all ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the doctrine of resistance would be more likely to practise 'the sacred duty of insurrection' than the other, from whom the doctrine had been concealed. Or, in other words, that the first would rise against oppression, when the oppression had reached a pitch which to the second would still seem bearable. The answer to Hume's proposition, interpreted in this way, would be that if the doctrine of resistance be presented to the populace in its true shape,—if it be 'truth,' as he admits,—then the application of it in practice should be as little likely ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage," where, while medical necessaries are housed elsewhere, are "the dainties, the special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds," which are to make life bearable to the wounded men, and she stops to think how the shade of Florence Nightingale would have paused at ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... carefully at first, choosing just the right words. "Thor is sleeping at the other house, and may continue to do so for some time. He seems to want to be there—as you can understand. Not only does he make it more bearable for Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy, but he gets a kind of assuagement to his grief in being near Claude. You needn't be surprised, therefore, if he remains a little longer—perhaps ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... think that either of the boys is going to make his fortune, recover Riversdale, and live there in peace and plenty, ease and indolence, ever after. That's a pretty poetical little romance, and serves to cheer the children, and make their sudden change of circumstance more bearable, but I know they will have to fight the battle of life each by himself, and quite unaided. Neither possesses a magic wand to conjure ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of escape could be attempted until after nightfall; he was too much the object of Hito's malicious attention for that. And escape meant escape from Varia, from stolen, memory-haunting visits, from all that just then made life bearable. Suspense and his own powerlessness turned him sullen; he went about his tasks under Hito's eye with a dogged surliness at which his fellow-slaves laughed in private and dared not challenge ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... a few days of the operation does not necessarily mean failure, as they often pass off again. Complete and permanent cure is not common, but the number and severity of the attacks are usually so far diminished that life is rendered bearable. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... pleases God, we shall certainly meet somewhere—say Paris, say London. We shall have money for it, which we had not this year; and now the disappointment's over, I don't care. The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and fireflies. There's an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini and say, 'I'm an Italian.' Certainly both light and love ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... fascinatingly like my beloved Sierra del Cristal, I turned my face to the wall of Mungo, and continued the ascent. The sun, which was blazing, was reflected back from the rocks in scorching rays. But it was more bearable now, because its heat was ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... beneficial; the great weakness and want of appetite have disappeared, and the recovery of the chief functions (she used to perspire continually) and a certain abatement of her incessant excitement, have become noticeable. The great enlargement of her heart will be bearable to her if only she keeps perfectly calm and avoids all excitement to her dying day. A thing of this kind can never be got rid of entirely. Thus I have to undertake new duties, over which I must try ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes |
