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Incurable   /ɪnkjˈʊrəbəl/   Listen
Incurable

adjective
1.
Incapable of being cured.  "An incurable addiction to smoking"
2.
Unalterable in disposition or habits.



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"Incurable" Quotes from Famous Books



... race. The gipsies do not assimilate with the thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble: they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, be it Catholic or Protestant. Notwithstanding that, the gipsy has an incurable habit of pilfering here as elsewhere; yet they can be trusted as messengers and carriers—indeed I do not know what people would do without them, for they are as good as a general "parcels-delivery company" any day; and certainly they are ubiquitous, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... do not, I pray you, permit yourself to believe that Athenians are smitten with so incurable a depravity. Do you not observe their discipline in all naval matters? Look at their prompt and orderly obedience to the superintendents at the gymnastic contests, (26) their quite unrivalled subservience to their teachers in the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... child. His father, Sir Felix Glyde, had suffered from his birth under a painful and incurable deformity, and had shunned all society from his earliest years. His sole happiness was in the enjoyment of music, and he had married a lady with tastes similar to his own, who was said to be a most ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... believe, Brenton? For any man is bound to have some shreds of belief; that is, as long as he keeps out of the nearest asylum for the incurable insane." ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... your intention, the thing would have done. But he replied smartly to your speeches, and your pride and vanity got to work. You must answer smartly and sarcastically in turn, and you see what's come of it. You forgot the knave in the wit; and the mistake was incurable. Why tell him that you wanted to pick his pocket, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... truth lie a long future of dominion, and once or twice they were to recover no inconsiderable portion of the broad lands which had formerly been the heritage of the Roman people. But the Roman Empire at Rome was stricken with an incurable malady. The three sieges and the final sack of Rome by Alaric (410) revealed to the world that she was no longer "Roma Invicta", and from that time forward every chief of Teutonic or Sclavonic barbarians who wandered with his tribe over ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... merely a foreign body, indifferent to the great British and imperial issues confided to it, but a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to discredit it in its authority over Ireland, and to make more and more palpable and incurable the incompetence for Irish business whereof they accuse it. Several modes of doing this are open to them. They may, as some of the more actively bitter among them did in the Parliaments of 1874 and 1880, obstruct business by long ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... rich,—that he lost self-respect, and the respect of all with whom he came in contact, except the few "kindred spirits" who relished the flow of wit, and little regarded the impure source whence it issued. The evil seemed incurable; it was indulged not only at noon and night, but in the morning. He was one of the eight editors engaged by Mr. Murray to edit the "Representative" during the eight months of its existence. I was a reporter on that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... extensive powers, would have appeared not so much the minister, as the colleague of his sovereign. [41] Valerian justly dreaded an elevation so full of envy and of suspicion. He modestly argued the alarming greatness of the trust, his own insufficiency, and the incurable corruption of the times. He artfully insinuated, that the office of censor was inseparable from the Imperial dignity, and that the feeble hands of a subject were unequal to the support of such an immense weight of cares and of power. [42] The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... to which all the world has a pretence, though few espouse it who are willing to secure either their estates or reputations: and these Hells may fairly be considered as so many half-way houses to the Fleet or King's Bench Prisons, or some more desperate end. The love of play is the most incurable of insanities: robbery, suicide, and the extensive ruin of whole families, have been known to proceed from this unfortunate and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... that all golf clubs have extensive bars! It is not hard to understand why men who realize that they have become incurable victims of the insidious habit of golf should wish to drown the thought in drink. But in Birmingham they can't do it—not, at least, at bars. Alabama has beaten her public bars into soda fountains and quick-lunch rooms, and though her club bars still look like real ones, the drinks ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... others had Hop-o'-my-thumb, Bluebeard, Cinderella, as childhood friends, mine were Venus and Apollo, Hercules and Lackoon. My husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... (so virulent and disgraceful to all the parties), Hogarth's health visibly declined. In 1762, he complained of an internal pain, the continuance of which produced a general decay of the system, that proved incurable; and, on the 25th of October, 1764, (having been previously conveyed in a very weak and languid state from Chiswick to Leicester Fields,) he died suddenly, of an aneurism in his chest, in the sixty-seventh ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... have had better instruction than I had at Winchester. These trifles were published about three months ago, but I purposely did not send you a copy then. You are enjoying your holiday deep in the country, and may be inclined to pardon that incurable old idler, your godfather and former tutor, for a waste of time which perhaps you would not forgive when you are teaching in London. Verse-making is out of fashion now. Goodbye. I should like to spend a week with you wandering through those Devonshire ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... was afflicted with dry-rot. The mischief had begun not last term or the term before. Years ago it had begun to eat into the place, and every year it grew more incurable. Occasional efforts had been made to patch things up. A boy had been now and then expelled. A master had now and then "resigned." An old rule had now and then been enforced. A new rule was now and then instituted. But ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... lax, much more indolent, much more sensuous, than our deliberately virtuous Young Liberals. I didn't want to be reminded of that, just when I was in full effort to realise the finer elements in their composition. Margaret classed them and disposed of them. It was our incurable differences in habits and gestures of thought coming ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... the fortunate sex. Men are such incurable dreamers that they even dream women to be worse preys of the delusive habit than themselves. But I trust you found my story sufficiently wide-awake ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... Renault bore on tranquilly, "there's a new form of mental disease you might call 'pavementitis'—the pavement itch. When the patient has it badly, so that he can't be happy when removed from his customary environment, he is incurable. A man isn't a sound man, nor a woman a healthy woman, who can't stand alone on his own two legs and be nourished intellectually and emotionally away from the herd.... That young fellow who has just gone out was a bad case of pavementitis when he came to me,—couldn't ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... are two army hospitals now remaining. I went to the largest of these (Douglas) and spent the afternoon and evening. There are many sad cases, old wounds, incurable sickness, and some of the wounded from the March and April battles before Richmond. Few realize how sharp and bloody those closing battles were. Our men exposed themselves more than usual; press'd ahead without urging. Then the southerners fought with extra ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... the thick wavy hair, veiled dark eyes under straight eyebrows, and with an inward gaze which when disengaged and arriving at one seemed to issue from an obscure dream of books, from the limbo of meditation, showed himself extremely gracious to him. Renouard guessed in him a man whom an incurable habit of investigation and analysis had made gentle and indulgent; inapt for action, and more sensitive to the thoughts than to the events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-ironic without a trace of acidity, and with a simple manner which put people at ease quickly. They had a long conversation ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... of their poor inarticulate old hearts, is a comfort, if one chance to think of it.—Of "distressed needlewomen" who cannot sew, nor be taught to do it; who, in private truth, are mutinous maid-servants come at last to the net upshot of their anarchies; of these, or of the like incurable phenomena, I hear nothing in Berlin; and can believe that, under this King, Indigence itself may still have something of a human aspect, not a brutal or diabolic as is commoner in some places.—This is one of Friedrich's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... my family now," she answered at last. "They have all their own interests, their own loves, apart from mine; would a letter or two a year from them make up after all for the risk of misery I should be running—for the terrible, helpless, hopeless, incurable misery of an unhappily married woman, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... advantage of the Restoration and forced her to continue a life of solitude. Though families bury their internal dissensions with the utmost care, enter behind the scenes, and you will find in nearly all of them deep, incurable wounds, which lessen the natural affections. Sometimes these wounds are given by passions real and most affecting, rendered eternal by the dignity of those who feel them; sometimes by latent hatreds which slowly freeze the heart and dry all tears when the hour ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... public lectures. No one will ever give me credit for my literary honesty. Merely by plundering you I might have been as learned as three Schlegels in one, whereas I mean to remain a humble Doctor of the Faculty of Social Medicine, a veterinary surgeon for incurable maladies. Were it only to lay a token of gratitude at the feet of my cicerone, I would fain add your illustrious name to those of Porcia, of San-Severino, of Pareto, of di Negro, and of Belgiojoso, who will represent in this "Human Comedy" the close and constant alliance between Italy ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... XVI. paid the penalty of his folly with his life. If he had been a wise ruler he would still be on the throne, and France would have escaped the fury of the Revolutionists. France is sick; in any other country this sickness might be remedied, but I would not wonder if it proved incurable in France. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... to tell him that he must shift for himself. As for the effect upon the individual, it is a lowering medicine, making the patient gradually dependent upon the drug, and bringing him finally to the incurable invalidism of surly apathy. To change Patrick Henry's fiery peroration slightly: Give me liberty or in the end you give me moral ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... things, most excellent Sir, which has caused and still causes us much injury, as it concerns both the souls and the peace of mind of these wretched natives, is our incurable greed, which is so deeply rooted in our hearts. The eyes of the understanding are so closed in that respect that only God could uproot it from our hearts. May our Lord remedy it according to His knowledge of what is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... woman, poor, weak, ceremonially unclean, friendless, who for twelve years had been suffering from an incurable disease and who knew that by no human power could her ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... in the same accusation. What more offensive and unpalatable truth could be presented to mankind than this on which Jesus constantly insists, that sins of temper are much more harmful than sins of passion, that they spring from a more incurable malignancy of nature, that they produce far ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson

... through which she now moves. The keenest observers, beholding her as she at present appears, would detect nothing in her face or figure, her manner or her costume, in the slightest degree suggestive of impenetrable mystery, or incurable misfortune. And yet, she happens to be the only person in Mr. Blyth's household at whom prying glances are directed, whenever she walks out; whose very existence is referred to by the painter's neighbors with an invariable accompaniment of shrugs, sighs, and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... shall I say—material infirmities, for if at last you succeed in attaining the limits of contemplation, you risk the ruin of your body for ever. Experience seems to show, in effect, that the deified soul acts on the constitution and brings incurable troubles." ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... methods of using the essence of life, that is impregnated with the disease you wish to inflict—you may infect people with all kinds of incurable ailments. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was received in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the authority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed. He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of the incurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished by austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, no outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour. Such quantities of provisions had been landed from the fleet, that there was in every house ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... this avowal of mine is an evidence of the cunning and the astute obstinacy of these wretched creatures, and of their capacity to carry out a design. After a year's experience, I sent Cocoleu away, declaring, and certainly believing, that he was incurable. The fact is, he did not want to be cured. The country-people, who observe carefully and shrewdly, were not taken in; they will tell you, almost to a man, that Cocoleu is bad, but not an idiot. That is the truth. He has found out, that, by exaggerating his imbecility, he could live without work; ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... beautiful sea-side village on the shores of the Firth of Clyde, I received a note from a friend reminding me that an old football chum was still on the sick list, and making little or no progress towards recovery. In fact, his life, which had recently been enfeebled by an incurable malady, was slowly but surely drawing to a close. Last time I saw him he referred to the fact that he had some MS. which he wished Mr. John M'Dowall, his successor in the secretaryship of the S.F.A., and myself, to read over, and when this came into my mind I resolved to repair ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... attempt to search into the existing records and procedures on insanity, to collect its legal interpretation, such investigation would probably be a waste of his time, the source of abundant, and perhaps of incurable error; but to these inconveniences he will not be subjected in attentively considering your Lordship's judgments, of which I have availed myself on the present occasion, and which, having been taken down at the time ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam

... of Mr. Gladstone with a conviction that the hour was appropriate for doing something to remove the causes of the discontent that made Ireland restless.....While many public instructors lost themselves in vain shriekings over the wickedness of Fenianism, and the incurable perversity of the Irish people, one statesman was already convinced that the very shock of the Fenian agitation would arouse public attention to the recognition of substantial grievance, and to the admission that the business ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... wine register with entries in it of a quarter of a century back; a mouldy bottle of Worcester sauce, still boasting on its label that it would impart a relish to viands otherwise dull; and some charming Dresden china fruit-dishes, adorned with cheerful shepherds and shepherdesses, incurable optimists, persistently pleased with themselves and their surroundings through all the days and nights of all the cold silent years that they had been smiling at each other in the dark. On the round ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... dipsomaniac, and is diseased and insane. The alcoholic may become the dipsomaniac; but the child who is the victim of a transmitted taint is without doubt a dipsomaniac and not an alcoholic. He is insane. It may not be an incurable form of insanity; nor need it be a very acute form; but insanity it is, and therefore he cannot be called an immoral man because he drinks, although he is guilty of immoral conduct. Heredity has not invaded the moral sphere. It has given the man a diseased nervous ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... martyrdom, the martyr began to shine forth with miracles, restoring sight to the blind, walking to the lame, hearing to the deaf, language to the dumb. Afterwards, cleansing the lepers, making the paralytic sound, healing the dropsy, and all kinds of incurable diseases; restoring the dead to life; in a wonderful manner commanding the devils and all the elements: he also put forth his hand to unwonted and unheard-of signs of his own power; for persons deprived of their eyes merited by his merits to obtain new members. But some {215} who presumed ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... secretion of the saliva has usually been reckoned substantially incurable. Fasting, cold water treatment, exercise and fruit diet may be relied on to prevent, cure or alleviate it, where this is possible, as ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... of that name, that is I, see myself as a man of sixty-two, with a bald head, with false teeth, and with an incurable tic douloureux. I am myself as dingy and unsightly as my name is brilliant and splendid. My head and my hands tremble with weakness; my neck, as Turgenev says of one of his heroines, is like the handle of a double bass; my chest is hollow; my shoulders narrow; ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the background!' And that is the problem I wish to put before my American millionaire—the problem of what I will call our lunatic- asylum stage of civilization. Mind you, this condition is all very well so long as we can say that the lunatics are incurable—that there is nothing we can do but shut our ears to their howling, and go ahead with our tennis. But suppose the idea were to dawn upon us that it is only because we played tennis all day that the lunatic- asylum is crowded, then ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... make Mrs. Maginnis believe that. She regards it as one of the most remarkable cures of a wholly incurable ailment ever heard of. The day after Phillida's last visit she sent her a check for three ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... skill sufficed to the simple duties of their household. They lived content and hopeful, till, whether from sitting still too much, or some other cause, Caroline became ill, and soon the physician pronounced her spine to be affected, and to such a degree that she was incurable. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... suppose I'm an incurable romantic. You see, I hate to see you go." Academician Amschel Mayer was a man in early middle years; Dr. Leonid Plekhanov, his contemporary. They offset one another; Mayer thin and high-pitched, his colleague heavy, slow and ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... incurable evils of a long state of slavery is the distrust begot in those who have undergone it, though it is also the defence and instinctive protection of weakness. Along with his admiration for the First Consul and ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... have been little less than fatal the country recovered with a readiness and a rapidity that was amazing. Men who in their youth heard their elders speak with despair of the calamity that had befallen their country lived to old age to learn that the wound was not incurable, and that England was greater, richer, prouder, and more powerful than she had ever been before. If she had lost the American colonies she had learned a lesson in the loss. The blow that might have stunned only served to rouse her to a greater sense ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... are naturally ignorant and vicious—perhaps 95 per cent. All studies of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this viciousness. They are poisoned by the prevailing delusion that the lower orders of men are angels. This is nonsense. The lower orders of men are incurable rascals, either individually or collectively. Decency, self-restraint, the sense of justice, courage—these virtues belong only to a small minority of men. This minority never runs amuck. Its most distinguishing character, in truth, is ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... no longer live at Potsdam or at Sans-Souci; even Berlin seemed dangerous: in a fit of that incurable perturbation which formed the basis of his character and made him commit so many errors, he had no longer any wish but to leave Prussia, only he wanted to go without embroiling himself with the king. "I sent the Solomon of the North," he writes to Madame Denis on the 13th of January, 1753, "for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... place Ferrari—leave upon the mind a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of nature, and great command of technical resources are here (as elsewhere in Ferrari's frescos) neutralized by an incurable defect of the combining and harmonizing faculty so essential to a masterpiece. There is stuff enough of thought and vigor and imagination to make a dozen artists. And yet we turn away disappointed from the crowded, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... offices of Government after the mode prescribed in the American Constitution, by frequent Elections of the People. They may indeed be deceived in their choice; they sometimes are; but the Evil is not incurable; the Remedy is always near; they will feel their mistakes, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... been among them to judge what faculties their unhappy social position leaves to them unimpaired. But it seems to me, that no experiment on a sufficiently large scale can have been tried for a sufficient length of time to determine the question of their incurable inferiority. Physiologists say that three successive generations appear to be necessary to produce an effectual change of constitution (bodily and mental), be it for health or disease. There are positive physical defects which produce positive mental ones; the diseases of the muscular and nervous ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... poet found what he had so often sought in his crises of despair—a companion in suicide. Through Adam Mueller he had become acquainted with Henrietta Vogel, an intelligent woman of romantic temperament, who was doomed by an incurable disease to a life of suffering. She listened eagerly to Kleist's suggestions of an escape together from the intolerable ills of life. The two drove from Berlin to a solitary inn on the shore of the Wannsee, near Potsdam; here Kleist wrote a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... has lost the enthusiastic love, which the large part of the nation bore him; this loss is irreparable, and the conduct he is induced to adopt renders it more and more incurable. In the Provinces, as for instance, Overyssel, Utrecht and Guelderland, where he was the most absolute, they are still more alienated, irritated, and disgusted with abuses, than in this. I do not say that this will ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... seeking to carry its message of healing into the houses of the suffering poor in large cities, where hunger, exposure and foul airs open wide the door to fevers and all deadly diseases, nor yet into the hospitals for contagious or incurable affections. In the presence of such realities it would prove, as its votaries probably understand, a too-painful mockery. Intelligently analyzed, therefore, this new revelation amounts to nothing more than a quite striking proof of the remarkable influence of the mind over ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... have been adequate for me; I am afraid I have an incurable habit of rebelling against the orthodox dogma beloved of clergymen, but Clare is more docile, less 'tameless and swift ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... Street. This was built in 1870 upon part of what were formerly the Rectory grounds, which by a special Act the Rector was empowered to let for the purpose. Parallel to Cheyne Row is Lawrence Street, and at the corner, facing the river, stands the Hospital for Incurable Children. It is a large brick building, with four fluted and carved pilasters running up the front. The house is four stories high and picturesquely built. In 1889 it was ready for use. The charity was established by Mr. and ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... life had been spent in finding out the secrets of nature. This being, becoming acquainted with the cause of the boy's grief and of his solitary, miserable condition, began to comfort him by telling him that no grief was incurable, no desire that heart could conceive unattainable. He discoursed of the hidden potent properties of nature, unknown only to those who seek not to know them; of the splendid virtue inherent in all things, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... made to the city in which he made it. The rich citizen is always anxious that the poor citizen shall be relieved. It is a point of honor with him to raise the character of his municipality, and to provide that the deaf and dumb, the blind, the mad, the idiots, the old, and the incurable shall have such alleviation in their misfortune as skill and ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... lines are found,—lines which sad memory brings back to the minds of many an unfortunate who, according to the dictates of the medical science of today, is pronounced incurable—a sufferer from one or other of the so-called chronic diseases—and in dire need of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular magistracies in the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is indeed their greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For there is a material distinction between that corruption by which particular points are carried against reason (this is a thing which cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is of less consequence), and the corruption of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... to various causes; but the general impression seems to be that it arises, in most cases, from the eating of unripe bread-fruit and Indian turnip. So far as I could find out, it is not hereditary. In no stage do they attempt a cure; the complaint being held incurable. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... had now befallen him had only bound her more firmly to the man she loved. She felt that she belonged to him indissolubly, and the leech's positive assurance that his blindness was incurable had only increased the magic of the thought of being and affording tenfold more to the man bereft of sight than when, possessing his vision, the world, life, and art belonged to him. To be able to lavish everything upon the most beloved of mortals, and do whatever her warm, ever-helpful heart prompted, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... man's—Edward Leeford's—mother came to me. He had left her, when only eighteen; robbed her of jewels and money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to London: where for two years he had associated with the lowest outcasts. She was sinking under a painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before she died. Inquiries were set on foot, and strict searches made. They were unavailing for a long time, but ultimately successful; and he went back ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... at a piano singing—a beautiful girl dressed in blue, with bare arms. I glanced inquiringly at Vera. "Yes," said she, nodding her head, "zat is one of ze saddest cases here. Her lover was killed in a duel on ze bridal-eve, and she became insane. She is quite incurable." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... large to be such an inconvenient and painstaking process, that the children who are allowed to lay a foundation for personality—to say "I" in its disagreeable stages—seem to be confined, for the most part, to either one or the other of two classes—the Incurable or the Callous. The more thorough a child's nature is, the more real his processes are, the more incurable he is bound to be—secretly if he is sensitive, and offensively if he is callous. In either case the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... not our Saviour feed five thousand persons with a few loaves and fishes? how could that be? by His power. How could water become wine? by His power. And so now, that same Divine power, which made water wine, multiplied the bread, gave water power to heal an incurable disease, and made oil the means of gifting David with the Holy Spirit, that power now also makes the water of Baptism a means of grace and glory. The water is like other water; we see no difference by the ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... cure for everything when that is cured. No ill in our neighbours, if we be right in ourselves, will ever seem hopeless to us; but while we stand wrapped in our own selfishness, our neighbour may well seem incurable; for not only is there nothing in us to help their redemption, but there is that in ourselves, and cherished in us, which cannot be forgiven, but must be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... less real value than that for which they were made; and to substitute cunning and speculation, for honest and regular industry. Yet the majority had persevered in this demoralising system. The depreciation had reached eleven for one; and the evil was almost deemed incurable, when the fortunate circumstance of a reimbursement in specie, made by parliament for colonial expenditures on account of the expeditions against Louisbourg and Canada, suggested to Mr. Hutchinson, speaker of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... church's walls; when they are divided, no wonder they crumble to atoms, if there is no skilful physician to heal them. It is sad when there is no balm in Gilead, and when there is no physician there. Hence it is, that the wounds of churches become incurable, like the wounds of God's people of old, either not healed at all, or else slightly healed, and to no purpose. May it not be said of many churches this day, as God said of the church of Israel, That he sought for a man among them that should stand in the gap, and ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan

... incurable. All that can be done is to pay careful attention to the shoeing, and so prevent the condition from being aggravated. In trimming the foot the sole should not be touched; the frog, too, should be left alone, and the wall pared only so far as ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... that his young and candid eyes were in the presence of a passion profound, tyrannical and mortal, discovering its own existence, astounded at feeling itself helpless and dismayed at finding itself incurable. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... man, that art the authour of the loathedst crime five ages have brought forth, and hear me speak; curses more incurable, and all the evils mans body or his Spirit can receive be ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... soon wearied of their society, that he had no power of sustained communion with the good. The unfallen were for him the unapproachable. Therefore he had gravitated by taste and temperament to the women of the underworld. There his incurable fastidiousness drove him to the pursuit of a possible perfection, distinction within the limits, the ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... Walravens?" I inquired, fancying that I had discovered in the incurable grief of bereavement, a key to that same aged ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... be finished, it appears to the judicious to have redundancies, they shall be lopped off, if possible; but this is very difficult to do, when a man has written with thought; and this defect, whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception. If you see Coleridge before I do, do not speak of this to him, as I should like to have his judgment unpreoccupied by such an apprehension. I wish much to have your further opinion of the young Roscius, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... counsels yielding to celibacy, which is exactly as sensible as advising a dog to forget its fleas. Here, as in other fields, I do not presume to offer a remedy of my own. In truth, I am very suspicious of all remedies for the major ills of life, and believe that most of them are incurable. But I at least venture to discuss the matter realistically, and if what I have to say is not sagacious, it is at all events not evasive. This, I hope, is something. Maybe some later investigator will bring a better ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... set sail from Gallicia for Belgium, clearly showed in more than one of his nails the fleet leaving the port of Corunna, and soon after dreadfully tossed by a tempest. Thus this man, who could also cure the wounds of others by his words alone, rendered his own spiritual state incurable by any one." ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... a sympathetic expression. "You punsters are incurable," he said. "I'm glad you're taking it so well. We don't intend any harm ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For this reason I am very much troubled when I see the talents' of humour and ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man. There cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit, than to stir up sorrow in the heart of a private person, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... grudged and envied, and called monarchy and despotism, now was proved to have been the saving of the State; such an amount of corrupt dealing and wickedness suddenly broke out in public affairs, which he before had crushed and forced to hide itself, and so prevented its becoming incurable through impunity and license. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... Netherlands, or turned into a diverting novel or pasquinade by the wits of his own wandering Court, was likely to have the aspect of horrid ingratitude and infamous treachery among the English gentry, and would inflict a deep, perhaps an incurable wound upon his interests, among the more aged and respectable part of his adherents. Then it occurred to him—for his own interest did not escape him, even in this mode of considering the subject—that he was in the power of the Lees, father and son, who were always understood to be ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... of knowledge to lay in a stock, And not remain in ignorance incurable;— To study Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Locke, And other fabrics ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... to incurable vice of method, and there are fervent disciples of Rousseau now living who will regard one's craving for method in talking about men as a foible of pedantry, we may briefly remark on one or two detached objections to Rousseau's story. To begin with, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... let them stand in laziness, or kept them dirty, or didn't give them water enough. They'd get some disease, anyway. If a person owns an animal, let him take care of it, and it's all right. If it shows signs of sickness, shut it up and watch it. If the sickness is incurable, kill it. Here's a sure way to prevent hydrophobia. Kill off all ownerless and vicious dogs. If you can't do that, have plenty of water where they can get at it. A dog that has all the water he wants, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... among infants, by the abuse of calomel and other medicines, which procure momentary relief but end by producing incurable disease; and it has often excited my astonishment, to see how recklessly remedies of this kind are had recourse to, on the most trifling occasions, by mothers and nurses, who would be horrified if they knew the nature of the power they are wielding, and the extent of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... there then? I suppose you mean that she is dying of an incurable disease or has lost her mind. But do not imagine that I care to pry further into that. I never had the least idea that you had—— Oh, I don't know what to believe! . . . ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... tempers and her caprices, at her fastidiousness and expensiveness, from an altered standpoint, her whole character seems to be illuminated with new light. He no longer finds her charming when she has an incurable restlessness and melancholy: her pretty negations of the facts life present to her begin to seem to him the product of a mind undisciplined by any actual knowledge that she is "a human creature, subject to the same laws as other human creatures." He has hitherto considered that her scorn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... sequel is something that excels follows interrupts precedes yields 71 72 Ceaseless means boisterous diminished discontented ended incessant 72 73 Emphatic means forcible frantic incurable pernicious reluctant 73 74 To subvert means to overturn shorten sling sojourn spurn 74 75 To be infamous is to be doubtful polished shameful ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley

... visit each other without his consent. The mildest punishment for breaking such decrees was banishment to Syria. Nasir inspired them with fear rather than with love and respect, and, as soon as it was known that his illness was incurable, no one paid any further attention to him. He died as a pious Moslem and repentant sinner in the presence of some of his servants. His burial, which took place by night, was attended by a few emirs, and only one wax candle ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... if not upon higher ground, at least in a more interesting position. As he mingles with the gay assembly, or visits the crowded ball, he knows the latent ills, the hidden, yet incurable disorders of the laughing throng by which he is encircled; he sees premature death lurking under the hectic flush on the cheek of the lovely Fanny, and trembles for the fate of the kind-hearted Emily, as he beholds her mirthfully joining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various

... of as many causes of wars as poverty and barbarism, since the folly and wickedness of men are incurable, there remains but one good action to be done. The wise man will collect enough dynamite to blow up this planet. When its fragments fly through space an imperceptible amelioration will be accomplished in the universe and a satisfaction ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... over me that Maitland had found himself suffering from some incurable disease and had taken the quickest means ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... he was afflicted with an immense and incurable arrogance which caused him to resent the implication, by whomsoever offered, that he was worse off than other people. It was Snarley's distinction that he was able to maintain, and carry off, as much pride on eighteen shillings a week ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... of care and apprehension which lay heavy on the feeble shoulders of the Athenian general. He was naturally a weak man, haunted by superstitious terrors, irresolute, easily cast down; and this infirmity of character was aggravated by a painful and incurable disease. There was no longer any question of laying siege to Syracuse: he himself was now besieged, and it was all he could do to maintain his position within his defences, and keep the sea open for the conveyance ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... age of sixteen. She was plain, decidedly, but sweet-tempered in the extreme. Her mouth was good, and her eyes were good, and her colour was good, but her nose was a snub,— an undeniable and incurable snub. Her mother had tried to amend it from the earliest hours of Lucy's existence by pulling the point gently downwards and pinching up the bridge,—or, rather, the hollow where the bridge ought to have been,—but all in vain; the infant turned up its eyes when the operation was going on, and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... to a white than black; and when the eye is rolling in its socket, it admits a little particle of light as through a chink. And though your physician may kindle a small ray of hope, yet I make up my mind to the malady as quite incurable; and I often reflect, that as the wise man admonishes, days of darkness are destined to each of us. The darkness which I experience, less oppressive than that of the tomb, is owing to the singular goodness of the Deity, passed amid the pursuits of literature and the cheering salutations ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... place of debarkation for a crusade "quia terra est infirma" Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain: "In this region once so fair, now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates a population which is yearly diminishing, has nothing to oppose to the scourge but incurable apathy, and will end by disappearing altogether," etc. (Voyage, p. 65.) Cilician Armenia retains its reputation for sport, and is much frequented by our naval officers for that object. Ayas is noted for ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... proceeded. "I have known now for some time that this malady was incurable. I think that I would not have it otherwise, for I am very tired. I am old too—much older than even you can comprehend. I have undergone the suffering of a lifetime, and I am too tired to suffer much more. But—look you, Max—I do not want to make suffer ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... Edward VI.) "shall in time be established . . . and never be redressed, neither shall there for ever be an end of this controversy in England," wrote Knox's party to the Senate of Frankfort. The religious disruption in England was, in fact, incurable, but so it would have been had the Knoxians prevailed in Frankfort. The difference between the Churchman and the Dissenter goes to the root of the English character; no temporary triumph of either side could have brought Peace ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... a long time. The master of the family, in particular, notwithstanding all the assistance which art could give him, never recovered his health; but died miserably, after having almost three years languished under a most tedious and incurable malady." ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... thousand falsehoods to clear up one. All this preys upon his inmost vitals, while perhaps with another, whom he has slandered, he is involved in a quarrel, and it terminates in a settled hatred; and a third case becomes an incurable distemper of rancour and revenge. Here is a man who by slander has rendered his existence wretched. He is like the troubled ocean ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... the doctor and Aunt Elizabeth, my husband and I, on our way to take the cars for "The Happy Family," when suddenly Tom clapped his hands to his pockets and announced that he had forgotten—he must send a telegram. Coming away in such a hurry, he must telegraph to the Works. Tom is an incurable telegrapher (I have long cherished the conviction that he is the main support of the Western Union Telegraph Company), and we all followed him to the nearest office where he could ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... strange dawn as of grey and pale silver. And of this ultimate resignation or certainty it is even less possible to write; it is something stranger than hell itself; it is perhaps the last of the secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some incurable anguish there will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment. It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the future; this is complete and of the present. It is not faith, for faith ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... everywhere. He resumed his duties on his return, but was soon obliged by illness to relinquish them, and, from that time forward, he was never again well. His weakness took the shape of a cutaneous disease of the most irritating and incurable form, and though he made one or two attempts at re-commencing his usefulness, it was sadly in vain. He resided secludedly in New-York during the latter years of his life, giving to books and scholarship what mind he could withdraw from pain, and, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... of them have escaped insults, many have suffered death, and all have been, or are, vile slaves, at the mercy of the whip of some upstart beggar, and trampled upon by men started up from the mud, of lowest birth and basest morals. If their revolutionary mania were not incurable, this truth and this evidence would retain them within their duty, so corresponding with their real interest, and prevent them from being any longer borne along by a current of infamy and danger, and preserve them from being lost upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... bitter? 4. For that tongue, which just now praised God, next, as far as in it lies, dishonours Him by lying. 5. In consequence, liars are shut out from the possession of heavenly beatitude. 6. That too is the worst evil of lying, that that disease of the mind is generally incurable. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind and disgusting distortions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... him in Norway. The prayer for Glum's discomfiture, which one of his early adversaries had offered to Frey, then takes effect, when the protecting luck has been given away. The fall of Glum is, however, nothing incurable; the change in his fortune is merely that he has to give up the land which he had extorted from his adversary long before, and that he ceases to be the greatest man in Eyjafirth, though continuing to be a man of importance still. His honour and ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker



Words linked to "Incurable" :   sick person, curable, diseased person, unalterable, incurability, inalterable, incurableness, sufferer



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