"Discomfort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two coarse pieces of linen, to eat bad food, to sit on hard benches for hours under an open heaven which lets down occasionally a mild shower—this is what the Germans call Stimmung and others call "local color" and what I call discomfort. Still, it is one of the things one must do once in ten years. For a European to say, "I have not been to Oberammergau," is like an American saying, "I have never ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... one heartfelt discomfort which disturbed and troubled sometimes the sweetest moments of his life. Queen Blanche, having got her son married, was jealous of the wife and of the happiness she had conferred upon her; jealous as mother ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... her with sedulous care. He had natty bush dodges for minimising the discomfort of the hot, dusty train journey. He manufactured a windsail outside the carriage window, which brought in a little breeze during the airless heat of mid-day. He contrived to get cool drinks and improvised for her head a cushion out of his rolled up poncho, a silk handkerchief ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Blake had said, he and his partner had, on one occasion, gone up in a military airship from Governor's Island, to make some views of the harbor. The experience had been a novel one, but the machine was so big, and they flew so low, that there was no discomfort or danger. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... listen to the conversation of their elders and to take an interest in art and literature. Outdoor exercise, riding, fishing, hunting, and driving formed part of their education; they were taught from the first to endure cold and discomfort without complaint or murmur. The religious teaching they received had a deep and lasting influence upon the two boys, both at that time and in later years. But they had a thoroughly happy boyhood and did not suffer from a lack of companions. After their confirmation their ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... population! Our poor surplus population," and I broke off another large portion. It filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction that there was such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave way to an irrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I had been living vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no longer as a planet from which I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as a possible refuge from human destitution. I think I forgot the Selenites, the mooncalves, the lid, and the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except to keep him in exile. He had not accorded with them; and perhaps half the secret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to politics. It is the opinion of some, that the married couple were not sorry to part; others think that the wife remained behind, solely to scrape together what property she could, and bring up the children. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... evening meal, and perform such domestic duties as may be needful. On these occasions I have frequently passed amongst or halted by them, and have been surprised at the air of content and good-humour commonly prevailing in their rude camps, despite of the apparent discomfort and privation to which ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of fact we see nothing whole, neither life nor art. We are so made, in soul and in sense, that we can deal only with parts, with points, with degrees; and the endeavor to compass any entirety must involve a discomfort and a danger very threatening ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... state of matters in the steerage. There the difference in comfort was not proportioned to the difference in passage-money. There was no velvet, not much light, little space to move about, and nothing soft. In short, discomfort reigned, so that the unfortunate passengers could not easily read, and the falling of tin panikins and plates, the crashing of things that had broken loose, the rough exclamations of men, and the squalling of miserable children, affected the nerves of ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... a Crowd of all Ranks, Fortunes, and Circumstances that have come over to our Church, who were formerly our inveterate Enemies, and are now perfectly united to us, both in our religious and political Interests: This is not only a great discomfort, and weakening to the Popish Party, but a considerable Encouragement and Strength, to all who wish well to the Protestant Religion in Ireland. As the Papists are now quite depriv'd, of all Men of Fortune, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... humidity in summer is about 73 per cent; in Salt Lake City, about 35 per cent. At a high summer temperature evaporation from the skin goes on slowly in New York and rapidly in Salt Lake City, with the resulting discomfort or comfort. Similarly, evaporation from soils goes on rapidly under a low and slowly under a high ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However, the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot the nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the men from the hubs of existence had led us to regard them all as hardened by a keener struggle than ours, and critical, if not suspicious, of those who were satisfied to endure greater physical toil and discomfort than they for so much smaller material return. In the Labrador even a dog hates to be laughed at, and the merest suspicion of the supercilious makes a gap which it is almost impossible to bridge. But Norman Duncan created no such gap. He was, therefore, an anomaly to us—he was away below the surface—and ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... granted the poor Frenchman permission to enjoy his pipe, a privilege of which he made haste to avail himself. It was an ill-timed charity, to be sure, but I could well afford to submit to the temporary discomfort in the fulness of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... day, the wind having dropped again, more sail was set, and when the word was given to go aloft he went up with the rest; and although he was of little practical use in loosing the gaskets, he soon shook off his first feelings of discomfort and nervousness on seeing how carelessly and unconcernedly the men on each side of him did their work, and before he had been many days at sea was as quick and active aloft as any of the hands on board ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... cut European fashion; but often it was made of an extremely fine yellow-tinted expensive material, called pina (vide p. 283). Some few of the native jeunesse doree of Manila donned the European dress, much to their apparent discomfort. The official attire of the headman of a Manila ward and his subordinates was a shirt with the tail outside the trousers, like other natives or half-breeds, but over which was worn the official distinction of a short Eton jacket, reaching to the hips. All this is now changing, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... however, limited the amount of service to be exacted with great precision, so that it was in the nature of a moderate personal tax. No Peruvian was to be required to change his place of residence, from the climate to which he had been accustomed, to another; a fruitful source of discomfort, as well as of disease, in past times. By these various regulations, the condition of the natives, though not such as had been contemplated by the sanguine philanthropy of Las Casas, was improved far more ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... wanted to cross over to Dives, WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR would never have sailed from that place for the invasion of England. Dull as he might have found Dives, yet I am sure the Conquering Hero would have preferred returning to Paris, to risking the discomfort of the crossing. By the way, the appropriate station in Paris for Dives would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... two hands, which still rested upon her shoulders, began to lean heavily upon them, to press them, to grip them till she suffered a physical discomfort that almost ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... pronounce an opinion. Nothing tells us that the bite of the Tarantula may not provoke, in weak and very impressionable people, a nervous disorder which music will relieve; nothing tells us that a profuse perspiration, resulting from a very energetic dance, is not likely to diminish the discomfort by diminishing the cause of the ailment. So far from laughing, I reflect and enquire, when the Calabrian peasant talks to me of his Tarantula, the Pujaud reaper of his Theridion lugubre, the Corsican husbandman of his Malmignatte. Those Spiders might easily deserve, at least partly, their ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... his son Fiovo and his nephew Sanguineo were with him attempting to comfort him; he was pointing out that it is little use trying to comfort a man who is, and has been for twelve years, enduring such extreme discomfort. They were interrupted by a messenger who announced the return of the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... of battle, when, if ever, fresh troops would renew our confidence and insure success. While riding rapidly forward to meet Meagher, who was approaching at a double quick step, my horse fell, throwing me over his head, much to my discomfort, both of body and mind.... Advancing with Meagher's brigade, accompanied by my staff, I soon found that my forces had successfully driven back their assailants. Determined, if possible, satisfactorily to finish the contest, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... is bad sport, that riding, especially when one mounts such a beast as that, which stumbles and throws one off so as to nearly break one's neck. I will never ride on that animal again. Commend me to your cow: one may walk behind her without any discomfort, and besides one has, every day for certain, milk, butter, and cheese. Ah! what would I not give ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... for a moment, often only on the arm of a chair. At times he stops beside Julian, putting his hand on the latter's shoulder while speaking. Two or three times during the scene he puts his hand to the left side of his chest, in a manner suggesting discomfort of some kind. But this ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... nor guide; whose weight paralysed and whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and almost without consciousness of existence. Thot, Isis, and Horus applied themselves in the case of Osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and constraint entailed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... "for speed combined with discomfort I suppose we can hold up heads against any country. Seeing that you are dressed, I supposed that ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... anyone she had ever seen, and the idea of being subject to his authority for any length of time filled Bessie with dread. He hated her already; she knew that she would be far less happy in his care than she had ever been at the Hoovers', where, sometimes, it had seemed to her that the limit of discomfort and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... remove this feeling in either case, in the one he must change his patient's consciousness of dis-ease and suffering to a consciousness of ease and loss of suffering; while in the other he must change the patient's sense of sinning at ease to a sense of [20] discomfort in sin and peace ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... mahogany settle on one side and the green grandmother's chair on the other; the dull glow of old tapestry; flowers; the odor of mignonette; and Katrine herself, in a scarlet gown, delighted as a child at his coming. Perhaps it was the clatter and roaring and discomfort without which accentuated the peace and happiness within, and led him, more than he knew, to that precipitancy of conduct which ended disastrously for him. As he sat in the great green chair Katrine looked up at him from the settle, and something in the intensity of his ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... felt undressed when he was with them, and had realized that they knew of and were probably amused by his friendship for Lady Sellingworth. And he had hated their knowledge. Perhaps she had hated it too, although she had not shown a trace of discomfort. Or, perhaps, she had disliked his manner with Miss Van Tuyn, assumed to hide his own sensitiveness. And at that moment he thought of his intercourse with Miss Van Tuyn with exaggeration. It was possible that he had acted badly, had been blatant. But anyhow Lady Sellingworth had been very unkind. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... it would be a helpful contribution to their national defense if they blew up the lock and shattered the canal, as it was on Canadian soil. Accordingly this was done, of course without the slightest effect on the conflict then raging, but much to the discomfort and loss of the honest voyageurs and trappers of the Lake Superior region, whose interest in the war could hardly have ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Rains. The wet season begins in May and ends with November; for the last five years the average downfall has been 155 inches, five times greater than in rainy England. These five months are times of extreme discomfort. The damp heat, despite charcoal fires in the houses and offices, mildews everything—clothes, weapons, books, man himself. It seems to exhaust all the positive electricity of the nervous system, and it makes ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching us to declare with a new inflection, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," forget that there is another side to this argument. It is, of course, very alluring ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... cooling the houses will be based on the fact that at moderate depths in the sea the prevailing temperature is a steady one, not much above the freezing point of water. Almost every seaport town within the tropics—where white residents in their houses swelter nightly in the greatest discomfort from the heat—is in close proximity to deep ocean water, in which, at all seasons of the year, the regular temperature is only about thirty-four degrees Fahr. The cost of steel piping strong enough to withstand the pressure of the water in places which possess absolutely ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... Guava jelly, a pound of chocolates, a paper of ginger cookies, or whatever may appeal to one's aesthetic taste. This method of procedure, naturally, might necessitate recourse to the brown-wood family medicine closet. Certain discomfort might ensue. But was not the pleasure worth it? Again my mother arbitrarily took the matter into her own hands, disagreeing with me on fundamentals. She maintained that eating was not for pleasure simply, but for nourishment. Sundry unfortunate remarks were made ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the duel went on. Sometimes the heat of the mask almost suffocated her, and she could hardly resist the desire to tear it from her face. Yet, in spite of this discomfort, she was enjoying herself. This adventure was as novel to her as it was to him. Once she rose and approached the window, slyly raising the mask and breathing deeply of the cold air which rushed in through the crevices. When she turned she found that he, too, had risen. He was looking at the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... most readers, concerning which Miss Austen said, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,"—the history of the blunders of a bright, kind-hearted, and really clever girl, who contrives as much discomfort for her friends as stupidity or ill-nature ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... obstinately rebelled, and still rebels, against the unnatural constraint. It is time, therefore, to try a new system. Instead of continuing, as has been done for thousands of years, to force men and women, as it were, into badly fitting, unelastic clothes which cause intense discomfort and prevent all healthy muscular action, why not adapt the costume to the anatomy and physiology of the human frame? Then the clothes will no longer be rent, and those who wear them will be contented ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... already sufficiently regrettable, the end of which she shuddered to foresee. How passionately the fierce woman must have cursed the irony of her fate! But to this mental torment were soon to be added physical discomfort and indignity. A rumour reached the authorities in London that a scheme was afoot to effect her rescue. On Friday, 25th October, the Secretary of State having instructed the Sheriff of the county "to ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... or two sovereigns would remain to him otherwise, he travelled in a third-class carriage for the first time in his hitherto luxurious life. Its bare discomfort and unpleasant occupants (one was a very malodorous person indeed, and one a smoker of what smelt like old hats and chair-stuffing in a rank clay pipe) brought home to him more clearly than anything had done, the fact that he was a homeless, destitute ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... that at last she shrugged her shoulders and left things to take their chance, finding some consolation for her discomfort in the knowledge that Miss Layard, convinced that the rector's daughter was luring her inexperienced brother into an evil matrimonial net, could in no wise restrain her rage and indignation. So ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... I want. I want her to be uncomfortably heavy for the time, and then she will be the less likely to resent my great big Finn's introduction. It's only discomfort, you know, not pain; and we shall put it right in a couple ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Marian where Tita is concerned. Why should she advocate the game—she who is the embodiment of languor itself, to whom any sort of running about would mean discomfort? ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... legitimate reason for his annoyance this morning there ran a most foolish little fretting, a haunting discomfort. ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... presages of his coming ill, Not greatest cause of her discomfort were, She saw his blood from his deep wounds distil, Nor what he suffered could she bide or bear: Besides, report her longing ear did fill, Doubling his danger, doubling so her fear, That she concludes, so was her courage lost, Her wounded lord was ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and went back to the station. The sun was shining bright. He soon saw to his infinite discomfort that it was impossible to eliminate the picture of the melancholy woman from his inner eye. He went into a cafe and drank some whiskey. On the return journey an old woman sat opposite him who seemed to understand him. There ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... delirium tremens, of palsy, and of lunacy. It is but a fanciful advantage which they enjoy, for whom the immediate impunity avails only to hide the final horrors which are gathering upon them from the gloomy rear. Better, by far, that more of immediate discomfort had guaranteed to them less of reversionary anguish. It may be safely asserted, that few, indeed, are the suicides amongst us to which the miseries of indigestion have not been a large concurring cause; and even where nothing so dreadful ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the offence I had given her more than once, I did not know; for I feared that to call oftener might only occasion measures upon her part to prevent me from seeing her daughter at all; and I could not tell how far such measures might expedite the event I most dreaded, or add to the discomfort to which Miss Oldcastle was already so much exposed. Meantime I heard nothing of Captain Everard; and the comfort that flowed from such a negative source was yet of a very positive character. At the same time—will my reader understand me?—I ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... me from my brooding. "I wish, Mr. Cowles," said she, "that if you are strong enough and can do so without discomfort, you would ride with me each day ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... expectations were disappointed. The luxurious bed, the well-ventilated room, the delicious tranquillity of Venice by night, all were in favour of his sleeping well. He never slept at all. An indescribable sense of depression and discomfort kept him waking through darkness and daylight alike. He went down to the coffee-room as soon as the hotel was astir, and ordered some breakfast. Another unaccountable change in himself appeared with the appearance of the meal. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... sulphureous wave of heat half asphyxiated the swarms of people who were hurrying to and fro in that restless undetermined way which is such a predominating feature of what is called a London "season," and the general impression of the weather was, to one and all, conveyed in a sense of discomfort and oppression, with a vague struggling expectancy of approaching thunder. Few raised their eyes beyond the thick warm haze which hung low on the sooty chimney-pots, and trailed sleepily along in the arid, dusty ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... husband outside for his company. She looked round from the tub, and gave her son a nod by way of greeting, but did not open her mouth. Her little kitchen was full of steam, the floor swimming in soapsuds, the whole appearance of the place suggestive of confusion and discomfort. Walter picked his way across the floor, and sat down on the window-box, his ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... dull red, and no bigger than the moon, just as it does on a foggy morning in London. Perhaps after an hour or two of this choking heat the hot wind, with its cloud of dust, passes away southward, and we have a deliciously cool evening, which we enjoy all the more contrasted with the afternoon's discomfort. The longest time I have known the hot wind to last was two days, but it is usually over in a few hours. The colonials say that these winds are even of use, by blowing the insect tribes out to sea; and that but for them the crops would, in summer ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... bungalow, prettily placed in a clump of trees, seemed the abode of luxury to us after the discomfort of Ghari Habibullah, and we fondly hoped that, being now upon the main road which runs from Rawal Pindi to Srinagar, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... score of bricks came crashing about me. Not one touched. I seemed charmed. I could hear the shells screeching through the air a second before they burst near where I lay. Of bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me. But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of waiting—waiting—waiting for a shell to burst. Where would it drop? Would the next ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... me without more ado into a den of discomfort where sat a man with a great beard and such heavy overhanging eyebrows that I could hardly detect the twinkle of his eyes, keen and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... to get up a fire, but the wood would not burn. In this hapless condition the black boys began murmuring, wishing to go on, pretending, though both held opposite views, that each knew the way; for they thought nothing could be worse than their present state of discomfort. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... long ago I awoke with chattering teeth. 'This,' I said, 'is life; a miasma, cold, discomfort,' Yes, yes; a fever, a miasma, with phantoms fighting you—struggling to choke you—but now"—he paused, and fumbling in his pocket, drew out a cigarette case, which he opened, but found empty. A cigar the other handed him he took mechanically and lighted with scrupulous ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... boisterous wind rattled clown the chimney and shook the ill-fitting casement in its rotting frame. The clothes he had last worn were thrown carelessly about, unsmoothed, unbrushed; the scanty articles of furniture were out of their proper places; slovenly discomfort marked the death-chamber. And by the bedside stood a neighbouring clergyman, a stout, rustic, homely, thoroughly Welsh priest, who might have sat for the portrait ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... crashing together around us. The cabin was filled with people, quietly sitting, ready for they knew not what. But among all the seven hundred passengers there was no shrieking nor crying nor groaning, except from the little children, who were disturbed by the noise and discomfort. How well they met the expectation of death! Faces that I had passed as most ordinary, fascinated me by their quiet, firm mouths, and eyes so beautiful, I knew it must be the soul I saw looking through ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... service was, When his shrill outcry called me from my couch! For the young child, before the sense is born, Hath but a dumb thing's life, must needs be nursed As its own nature bids. The swaddled thing Hath nought of speech, whate'er discomfort come— Hunger or thirst or lower weakling need,— For the babe's stomach works its own relief. Which knowing well before, yet oft surprised, 'Twas mine to cleanse the swaddling clothes—poor I Was nurse to tend and fuller to make white; ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... have been created by the Quiet, or may have driven it off the field; but in either case his position is the same. He is one step nearer to the human nature which he cannot assume. He lives in the moon, Caliban thinks, and dislikes its "cold," while he cannot escape from it. To relieve his discomfort, half in impatience half in sport, he has made human beings; thus giving himself the pleasure of seeing others do what he cannot, and of mocking them as his playthings at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... I don't understand. If you've got to leave this pleasant place, and your friends who will miss you, and your snug homes that you've just settled into, why, when the hour strikes I've no doubt you'll go bravely, and face all the trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that you're not very unhappy. But to want to talk about it, or even think about it, till ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... done, in lamenting the lack of what we have forgotten, or going back after it: therefore I make it a rule when everything seems ready for a start—especially when going fishing—to sit five minutes in calm communion with my pipe, thinking matters over. It insures against much discomfort from treacherous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... a good deal of bush-fighting took place. The troops gradually got possession of several Maroon villages, but not till every hut had been burnt by its owner. It was in the height of the rainy season, and, between fire and water, the discomfort of the soldiers was enormous. Meanwhile the Maroons hovered close around them in the woods, heard all their orders, picked off their sentinels, and, penetrating through their lines at night, burned houses and destroyed plantations, far below. The only man who could cope with their peculiar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... wearing of earrings, finger-rings, bracelets; the elaborate dressings of the hair; the still occasional use of paint; the immense labour bestowed in making habiliments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort that will be submitted to for the sake of conformity; show how greatly, in the attiring of women, the desire of approbation overrides the desire for warmth and convenience. And similarly in their education, the immense preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, use is subordinated ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... of day they were far more willing to hearken to a composition, than hastily to make more assaults or entries." "But as the day increased so our men decreased, and as the light grew more and more, by so much the more grew our discomfort, for none appeared in sight but enemies, save one small ship called the Pilgrim, commanded by Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the success, but in the morning bearing with the Revenge was hunted like a hare among many ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... I never suffer it without more or less discomfort. But he who lives longest is most exposed to it. What you call dying is simply the last pain—there is really no such thing as dying. Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to escape. You lift the revolver ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... not easy to irritate. Mother coughed from the time she woke till the time she went to sleep—coughed and remembered old times and wept for Harry, who would at least have taken care not to expose her to such overwhelming discomfort. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... nature must shrink. He, whose needs were simple, as his tastes were comparatively coarse, could command the sybaritic luxury of a Roman patrician, while she, who could not lift her hand without betraying the habits of inborn refinement, was exposed not only to vulgar contact, but to a squalor of discomfort as odious as vice. The thought was a humiliation. Even if he had not loved her, it would have seemed almost the duty of a man of honor to step in between her and the cruel ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... servants; and by-and-by I began to see that Babette was egging on Karl to make more open love to me, and, as she once said, to get done with it, and take me off to a home of my own. My father was growing old, and did not perceive all my daily discomfort. The more Karl advanced, the more I disliked him. He was good in the main, but I had no notion of being married, and could not bear any one who ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Barker lay, a lurking discomfort, in his soul, though as the days passed the burden grew undeniably lighter; Sewell had a great many things besides Barker to think of. But when Sunday came, and he rose in his pulpit, he could not help casting a glance of guilty fear toward Miss Vane's pew and drawing a long ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... reminded of an old adage," she read, "to the effect that one should never cross a bridge before arriving at it. Since I bade good-by to you, up to this very evening, I have been plodding over a bridge that didn't exist, much to my own discomfort. You were with me when I received the message ordering me home to England, and I don't know whether or not I succeeded in suppressing all signs of my own perturbation, but we have in the Navy now a man who does not hesitate ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... shattered boats, and the ruin of all our port bulwarks forward of the deck-house. I fancy there was nothing extraordinary in the tempest; and, in a stout ship, with plenty of sea room, there is probably little real danger; but about the intense discomfort there could be no question. I speak with no undue bitterness, for of nausea, in any shape, I know of little or nothing, but—oh, mine enemy!—if I could feel certain you were well out in the Atlantic, experiencing, for just one week, the weather that fell ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the edge of a forest, and the trees creak and groan as they writhe in the heavy blasts. In occasional groups of pines there is sighing and moaning almost human in suggestiveness of trouble. Never had Nature been in a more dismal mood, never had she been more prodigal of every element of discomfort, and never had the hero of my story been more cast down in heart and hope than on this chaotic day which, even to his dull fancy, appeared closing in harmony with his feelings and fortune. He is going home, yet the thought brings no assurance of welcome and comfort. As he cowers ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Carpenter turned to them. "Then I say to you: Break down in your hearts and in the hearts of your fellows the worship of those base things which mastership has brought into the world. If a man pile up food while others starve, is not this evil? If a woman deck herself with clothing to her own discomfort, is not this folly? And if it be folly, how shall it be admired by you, to whom it brings ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... surrender. He had credited her with too much pride to succumb to flattery, which was to his taste impudently gross. But he was not yet old enough to allow that other folks might have tastes wholly unlike his own, and he had himself—it is perhaps the only trait of much delicacy in him—a shrinking discomfort under praise. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... trimming and decorating—cannot build a structure boldly from the bare earth. This necessity of finding a certain straw for their bricks, which must be picked up by the roadside, not only impedes the work of authorship, but must add greatly to their personal discomfort throughout the whole of their travels. They are in perpetual chase of something for the book. They bag an incident with as much glee as a sportsman his first bird in September. They are out on pleasure, but manifestly they have their task too; it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... boy observed, was liberal to a fault in large matters, but scrupulously and needlessly particular about small expenses. He would take the children on a foreign tour, and then practise an elaborate species of discomfort, in an earnest endeavour to save some minute disbursements. He would give his son a magnificent book, and chide him because he cut instead of untying the string of the parcel. Long after, the boy, disentangling his father's ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a man who tries to fool himself? Every man knows exactly how bogus he is and should admit it—to himself only. The man who, knowing his bogusness, refuses to admit it to himself—no matter what his attitude may be to the outside world—simply stores up trouble for himself, and discomfort and much else. There are many phases of personal understanding of oneself that need not be put in the newspapers or proclaimed publicly. Still, for a man to gold-brick himself is a ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... The heat, the steaming discomfort, and the confinement, together with the forced inaction, were very irksome; but everyone made the best of it, and there was little or no grumbling even among the men. All, from the highest to the lowest, were bent upon perfecting themselves according to their ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... four days it blew very hard from the west, with cold rain squalls, to the great discomfort of all hands, who could keep neither warm nor dry. On the fifth day (27th October) a frigate came in from the sea, and they at once attacked her, hoping to find shelter aboard her after the four days of wet and cold. The Spaniards ran her ashore ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... you see, they're oxygen breathers," the guide finished. "The atmosphere in the ship here is almost identical to our own—we could breathe it without any discomfort whatever." ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... in discomfort, and the mother threw herself upon her daughter's body, whose ends ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... like catchee HIM," Jim would say, pointing to a distant swan. Or Li Tee, hunting a striped water snake from the reeds, would utter stolidly, "Melikan boy no likee snake." Yet the next two days brought some trouble and physical discomfort to them. Bob had consumed, or wasted, all their provisions—and, still more unfortunately, his righteous visit, his gun, and his superabundant animal spirits had frightened away the game, which their habitual ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... deceit and the discovery of disagreeable facts; this sign should caution you to be on your guard, for malicious talking causes much discomfort and may ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... "Yes," said Mrs. Nuessler. "That's just what he wanted to do. But you see the other lad is much cleverer than Godfrey, and made so many jokes about all that he said, that at last Godfrey quite lost his temper, and so the discomfort in the house grew worse and worse. I don't know how it was, but my two girls mixed themselves up in the quarrel. Lina who is the gravest and most sensible took Godfrey's side of the argument, and Mina laughed and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... allowed me to put my hand under him and lift him gently out! Suddenly it occurred to me that I might paint him! The palette chanced to be at hand, so I began at once. In about two minutes the paddle gave a flop of discomfort as he lay on the rock; I therefore put him into a small pool for a minute or so to let him, breathe, then took him out and had a second sitting, after which he had another rest and a little refreshment in the pool. Thus in about ten minutes, I had his portrait, and put him back ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... suggested Souls in Khaki, but this admirable title had already been appropriated. Lastly, we decided on The Glory of the Trenches, as the most expressive of his aim. He felt that a great deal too much had been said about the squalor, filth, discomfort and suffering of the trenches. He pointed out that a very popular war-book which we were then reading had six paragraphs in the first sixty pages which described in unpleasant detail the verminous condition of the men, as if this were the chief thing to be remarked concerning ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... has the sense of disgrace which attends personal chastisement, as well as the discomfort of a forfeited good name, and the feeling of being down on the black books of the school authorities generally. On the other hand, he is sure to meet with a certain number of companions who, if they do not exactly ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... log of wood for a pillow, one might sleep as on one of the patent mattresses. The taste of the water is salty and pungent, and stings the tongue like saltpetre. We were obliged to dress in all haste, without even wiping off the detestable liquid; yet I experienced very little of that discomfort which most travellers have remarked. Where the skin had been previously bruised, there was a slight smarting sensation, and my body felt clammy and glutinous, but the bath ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... these great storms that I rode in one of the last covered wagons, one of the few tangible links between the pioneers of the past and the pioneers of the present—and a poignant, graphic reminder that men and women had endured storm and discomfort and disaster for decades as we were enduring them now, and as people would continue to endure them as long as the land ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... enter and disappear, while only the humbler sort remained to swell the crowd at the gate, I began to experience the discomfort and impatience which are the lot of the man who finds himself placed in a false position. I foresaw with clearness the injury I was about to do my cause by presenting myself to the king among the common herd; and yet I had no choice save to do this, for I dared not run ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... also perhaps certain misgivings touching too close an approximation to other chefs besides Milton and Shakespeare, for he refers to the "profound ideas" of Locke, to which he was introduced, to his vast discomfort, "in a most superb library in the midst of a splendid baronial hall." But the library of the Reform Club probably contained all this heterogeneous learning. Does the "Gastronomic Regenerator," out of respect to the fastidious sentiments ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... what should have been the resignation of her stepsisters and the glowing anticipation of her niece. Yet Aunt Rose hardly invited sympathy of any kind and the smile always lurking near her lips gave Henrietta a feeling of discomfort, a suspicion that Aunt Rose was not only ironically aware of what Henrietta wished to conceal, but endowed with a fund of wisdom and ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... preferentially to is being prepared. If there are any who, in their zealotry for the congruous, choose to adhere to the new form in its entire range of exchangeability for the old, let it be hoped that they will find, in Mr. Marsh's speculative approbation of consistency, full amends for the discomfort of encountering smiles or frowns. At the same time, let them be mindful of the career of Mr. White, with his black flag and no quarter. The dead Polonius was, in Hamlet's phrase, at supper, 'not where he eats, but where he is eaten.' Shakespeare, to Mr. White's thinking, in this wise expressed ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... magnetised iron, as also of a galvanic pile or battery, to remain unaltered. As their altitude increased their pulses quickened, though beyond feeling keenly the contrast of a colder air and of scorching rays of the sun they experienced no physical discomfort. At 11,000 feet a linnet which they liberated fell to the earth almost helplessly, while a pigeon with difficulty maintained an irregular and precipitate flight. A carefully compiled record was made of variations of temperature ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... of absorption. In other words, we are a composite of all our ideals. The vase of flowers, daintily arranged, on the breakfast table becomes the standard of good taste thenceforth, and all through life a vase of flowers arranged less than artistically gives one a sensation of discomfort. A traveler relates that in a hotel in Brussels he saw window curtains of a delicate pattern; and, since that time, he has sought in many cities for curtains that will fill the measure of the ideal he absorbed in that hotel. Beauty is not in the thing itself, but in the eye of the beholder, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... good as silver, and merrier." Yet for all his good spirits he kept a sharp lookout at certain bends of the mountain trail; not for assassins or brigands, for Concho was physically courageous, but for the Evil One, who, in various forms, was said to lurk in the Santa Cruz Range, to the great discomfort of all true Catholics. He recalled the incident of Ignacio, a muleteer of the Franciscan Friars, who, stopping at the Angelus to repeat the Credo, saw Luzbel plainly in the likeness of a monstrous grizzly bear, mocking him by sitting on his haunches and lifting ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Overton for Oakdale, on her Easter vacation. Miss Wharton had made no sign. Whether she had, for the time being, forgotten her words of that unhappy morning of several weeks past, or was coolly taking her own time in the matter, well aware of the discomfort of her victims, Grace could not know. She determined to lay aside all bitterness of spirit and lend herself to commemorate the anniversary of the first Easter with a reverent and open mind. But there ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... causeway must have been harder than it appeared, for Mr. Lovel fell into a doze. When he woke he had some trouble in collecting his wits. He felt no bodily discomfort except a little soreness at the back of his scalp. His captors had trussed him tenderly, for his bonds did not hurt, though a few experiments convinced him that they were sufficiently secure. His chief grievance was a sharp recollection that he had not supped; ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... youth, while egotism, on the other hand, is seldom absent. So far from realizing that the captain would have scorned such lowly game, Master Hardy believed that he lived for little else, and his Jack-in-the-box ubiquity was a constant marvel and discomfort to that irritable mariner. Did he approach a seat on the beach, it was Master Hardy who rose (at the last moment) to make room for him. Did he stroll down to the harbour, it was in the wake of a small boy looking coyly at him over his shoulder. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... half-naked crew. Once again he had to face an enervating equatorial heat that vitiated both mind and body. But he neither fretted nor complained. Some fixed inner purpose seemed to sustain him through every discomfort. Deep in that soul, merely filmed with its fixed equatorial calm, burned some dormant and crusader-like propulsion. And an existence so centered on one great issue found scant time to worry over the trivialities of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... seems to me a true one. But the case is widely different for you. The husks have fallen off, as a matter of fact, and the discomfort and sense of something wrong arose from your knowing that you were only striving desperately to clutch on to them, when the fine, strong bud was there, able and ready to take its proper share of sunshine and rain, and even to bear the cold winds of ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... of his suffering, and the voyage was very miserable to every one, though the weather was far from unfavourable, as the captain declared. Grisell indeed was so entirely taken up with ministering to her knight that she seemed impervious to sickness or discomfort. It was a great relief to enter on the smooth waters of the great canal from Ostend, and Lambert stood on the deck recognising old landmarks, and pointing them out with the joy of homecoming to Clemence, who perhaps felt less delight, since the joys of her life had only begun when she turned ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and stag hunts had no attraction for quiet men of business; forests stocked with wild beasts where vineyard and cornfield might have extended, would have seemed to them the very height of wastefulness, discomfort, and ugliness. Pacific and businesslike, they merely transferred to the country the habits of thought and of life which had arisen in the city. Not for them any imitation of the feudal castle, turreted and moated, cut up into dark irregular ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... such a miserable object that it would have been left behind had not the little party known that the General wanted it for a particular purpose; so it was strapped on to the back of Mr Rogers's saddle, to the great discomfort of the big bay, which immediately began ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... than they. It was lined on both sides with dense forest, and they walked along its bank about a mile until they came to a comparatively shallow place where they forded it in water above their knees. However, their leggings and moccasins dried fast in the midsummer sun, and, experiencing no discomfort, they ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were not happy,—not all happy, in the outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;—and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... as of most of our grievances, was misgovernment, producing poverty, discomfort, ignorance, and misrepresentation. The people were ignorant and in rags, their houses miserable, the roads and hotels shocking; we had no banks, few coaches, and, to crown all, the English declared the people to be rude and turbulent, which they were not, as well as drunken and poor, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... and soon returned in triumph to build a glorious fire, which drew all forlorn wanderers to its hospitable circle. A motley assemblage; but mutual danger and discomfort produced mutual sympathy and good will, and a general atmosphere of friendship ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... wet, and with his wings folded, so that he seemed naked, remained behind upon the frame of the window. "Come, poor little wet chicken as thou art," cried the elder fly; "thou wast complaining just now of having found in life only discomfort and cold; dost thou not see these rays of the sun? dost thou not perceive the perfume of this delicious food?" The young, inexperienced fly was disposed to take Piccolissima, the dictionary, and the barley sugar ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... bitter cold; the snow fell thick and fast, and froze as it fell; and the bleak winds moaned drearily among the naked trees. The forest streams were frozen from bank to bank, yet often too thin to bear the weight of the horses; which rendered their crossing painful and hazardous indeed. To add to the discomfort of our travellers, the horses, from poor and scanty fare, had become too weak to be able longer to carry their allotted burdens. Moved with compassion at their pitiable plight, Washington dismounted from his fine saddle-horse, and loaded his with a part ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... at Etaples, but at once ordered a chaise and post horses. Then, changing at every post house, and suffering vastly less discomfort than they experienced in the journey to Rye—the roads being better kept in France than they were on the English side of the channel—they arrived in Paris at eleven ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... south, and the rest north. For the latter I can provide food and transportation to points of their election in Tennessee, Kentucky, or farther north. For the former I can provide transportation by cars as far as Rough and Ready, and also wagons; but, that their removal may be made with as little discomfort as possible, it will be necessary for you to help the families from Rough and Ready to the care at Lovejoy's. If you consent, I will undertake to remove all the families in Atlanta who prefer to go south to Rough and Ready, with ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... purchased by Langlois. In this company Louis Philippe was a shareholder. In 1837, also, the Catholic missionary Pompallier was dispatched to New Zealand to labour among the Maoris. Such were the sea-routes of that day that it took him some twelve months voyaging amid every kind of hardship and discomfort to reach his journey's end. In New Zealand the fact that he showed Thierry some consideration, and that he and his Catholic workers in the mission-field were not always on the best of terms with their Protestant competitors, aroused ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... he could only find one white; the other had probably struck sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night in some wild tavern vanished utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that fled laughing from his grasp; positive discomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His perspiration had dried upon him; and though the wind had now fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour, improbable ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... they vie in discomfort and want of cleanliness, notwithstanding the post-prandial ablutions ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... water so that they floated right side upward, and face to face—in order that their tops should afford something in the nature of a smooth platform upon which the pair could recline with the minimum of discomfort—and in that position he firmly lashed the two together with the lashings still attached to them. Then he helped Miss Trevor to get out of her life-buoy and clamber up on the top of the fragile structure; finding, to his satisfaction, when he had done ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... mine to keep me in, like a baby, I lay still. But it was a dismal night indeed, and it was curious to see the change it had made in the faces of all the passengers yesterday. It cannot be denied that these winter crossings are very trying and startling; while the personal discomfort of not being able to wash, and the miseries of getting up and going to bed, with what small means there are all sliding, and sloping, and slopping about, are ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... through her opera-glass. In vain did she try to assume a dignified and thoughtful attitude, and fix her eyes on vacancy; she was overpoweringly conscious of being the object of general attention; she could not disguise her discomfort, and lapsed a little into provincialism, displaying her handkerchief and making involuntary movements of which she had almost cured herself. At last, between the second and third acts, a man had himself admitted to Dinah's box! It ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have been wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew has laid on the bed of sickness. I never shrink from personal discomfort: I ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as my eye ran over the clumsy carving which added to the discomfort of its high straight back and as I smelt the smell of its moldy and possibly mouse-haunted cushions. A crawling sense of dread took the place of my first instinctive repugnance; not because superstition ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... freedom. The rain came down in sheets, while peal on peal of thunder crashed and rolled. Francis shuddered and drew nearer the fire. The steam arose from her saturated garments, and rendered her uncomfortable. The old woman noticed her discomfort and said ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... ludicrous. He was very red in the face, whether from the cool November night or nervousness, and every movement, from the way he wrung his hands to the way he jerked his head to right and left, as though a vision drew him now to the door, now to the window, bespoke his horrible discomfort under the stare of so many eyes. He was scrupulously well dressed, and a pearl in the center of his tie seemed to give him a touch of aristocratic opulence. But the rather prominent eyes and the impulsive stammering manner, which seemed to indicate a torrent of ideas intermittently pressing ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... up to the scene—no other than Jan Verner. Jan had been sitting up with some poor patient, and was now going home. To describe his surprise when he saw the windows alive with nightcapped heads, and Mrs. Peckaby in her dripping discomfort, in her paint, in her state altogether, outward and inward, would be a long task. Peckaby himself undertook the explanation, in which he was aided by Chuff; and Jan sat himself down on the public pump, and laughed till he ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... minor symptoms which in adults are universally recognised to be dependent upon cerebral unrest or fatigue are of everyday occurrence in childhood. Broken and disturbed sleep, absence of appetite and persistent refusal of food, gastric pain and discomfort after meals, nervous vomiting, morbid flushing and blushing, headache, irritability and excessive emotional display, at whatever age they occur, are indications of a mind that is not at rest. In children, ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... unknowen serpents to the defence of the towne of Achon, which king Richard at length perceiuing eftsoones set upon them and so vanquished them, of whom the most were drowned and some taken aliue: which being once knowen in the citie of Achon, as it was a great discomfort to them, so it was a great helpe to the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... persistent uneasiness; while a couple of wandering cows, unmolested by the strangely restless dogs, passed and repassed the railroad crossing, bellowing monotonously. The horses at the station exhibited curious discomfort; and Donny de Mone's venerable nag "Ben Bow" astonished the community by pulling ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the door. Escape from such a situation was impossible; and as for self-violence, when that point was considered, Cuffe had coolly remarked: "Poor devil; hanged he must be, and if he should be his own executioner, it will save us the discomfort of having a scene on board. I suppose Nelson will order him to our fore-yard-arm as a jewel-block. I don't see why he cannot use a Neapolitan frigate for this job, too; they are ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... room which he occupied was of the commonest description, consisting of an iron bedstead, old and broken, which, with its hard bed, scanty covering and inverted camp-stool for a pillow, was painfully suggestive of discomfort and unrest. A large chest, which was used as a receptacle for food; a small deal table, and two or three unpainted chairs, completed the inventory of the contents of the chamber in which the greater portion of his time was ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... storm-darkened city. But they did not take the elevator downstairs. Instead, they climbed two or three flights up the emergency stairs. And to his humiliation Ross found himself panting and slowing, while the other man, who must have been a good dozen years his senior, showed no signs of discomfort. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... obeyed, following his commander towards the same ravine where, about four years before, they had seen poor Zeppa disappear among the recesses of the mountain. Redford felt a little surprise, and more than a little discomfort, at the peculiar conduct of his captain; but he comforted himself with the thought that if he should attempt any violence, there was a brace of pistols in his belt, and a cutlass at his side. He even ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... farther off, my gracious lord, Than this weak arm: discomfort guides my tongue And bids me speak of nothing but despair. One day too late, I fear me, noble lord, Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth. O! call back yesterday, bid time return, And thou shalt have twelve thousand ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... wicked sacrifice to the commonplace, though the mud-banks of other days invited the torrent to an easy overflow of whole quarters of the town, which were left reeking with the filth of the flood that overlay the filth of the streets, and combined with it to an effect of disease and of discomfort not always personally unknown to the lover of the picturesque. There used to be a particular type of typhoid known as Roman fever, but now quite unknown, thanks to the Tiber Embankments and to the light and air let into the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... scenes, and especially to go through them in your company," wrote Mr. Grote in January, "would be to me pre-eminently delightful; but, alas! my physical condition altogether forbids it. I could not possibly stay away from London, without the greatest discomfort, for so long a period as two months. Still less could I endure the fatigue of horse and foot exercise which an excursion in Greece must inevitably entail." The journey occupied more than two months; but in the autumn Mr. Mill was at ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... the names and memories of the Gracchi were treated, was partly due to a vague sense in the mind of the common man that they were the authors of the happier aspects of the system under which he lived, of the brighter gleams which occasionally pierced the clouds of oppression and discomfort; it was also due to the conviction in the mind of the statesman, often resisted but always recurring, that their work was unalterable. To undo it was to plunge into the dark ages, to attempt to modify it was immediately to see the necessity ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance, as the embrace had done in ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... my dear friend, your candid opinion about everything. I wished to be made better off, quite as much to improve your condition as well as for myself. * * * Two weeks ago, dear Lizzie, we were in that den of discomfort and dirt. Now we are far asunder. Every other day, for the past week, I have had a chill, brought on by excitement and suffering of mind. In the midst of it I have moved into my winter quarters, and am now very comfortably ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... no questions. His whole personality crumbled away, so to speak, till his daily life became a mere mechanical process of clothing the body, feeding the body, keeping it in good health so as to avoid physical discomfort, and, above all, doing nothing that could interfere with sleep. The professor did everything he could to lengthen the hours of sleep, ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... embarrassment, she had watched herself carefully—watched every instant—and in the end she had triumphed. With her growing ease, her old impulsiveness had returned to her, and with the wonderful adaptability of the Southern woman, she had soon ceased to feel a sense of discomfort in her changed surroundings. The instinct of class she had never had, and this lack of social reverence had helped her not a little in her ascent of the ladder. It is difficult to suffer from a distinction which one does not ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... was a slanderer. Full an hour passed before the Wynns could get away from the embarrassing hospitalities and politeness of the good villagers, who shook hands all round at parting in most affectionate style. As for Andy, much to his own discomfort, he was kissed ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... to Lucknow irresistibly forced upon our minds, how determined soever we might be to adhere to the traveller's first principle of making the best of everything. We left the station about dusk, upon a night in which the elements seemed to have combined to cause us as much discomfort as possible, and the violence of the storm about midnight compelled us to take shelter in every tope of trees we came to, or, as it appeared to me, wherever the bearers thought we stood a good chance of being struck by the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... course was soon made public, and angered his friend Doctor Portman not a little: while it only amused Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. Pendennis, she was almost distracted when she heard of the squabble, and of Pen's unchristian behaviour. All sorts of wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance, seemed to come out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had engaged; and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteris for a while,—anywhere removed from the woman who had brought him into so ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "for God's sake come and see what you can make of the woman downstairs. I can't get the discomfort out of my mind. I admit that things look as if we had made a mistake. But these gentlemen ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... quiescence, comfort, tranquillity, contentment, peace, serenity; unrestraint, informality, abandon. Antonyms: constraint, difficulty, discomfort, uneasiness, awkwardness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of the war I was annoyed by these would-be directresses of hospitals. They would intrude themselves into my wards, where they hesitated not to air their superior knowledge of all sickness, to inspire discomfort and distrust in the patients by expressive gestures, revealing extreme surprise at the modes of treatment, and by lugubrious shakes of the head their idea of the inevitably fatal result. While the kindly women, who, though already overburdened, would take from the wards of the hospital ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... gentleman. Subsequently, from his having sat so long over his wine without moving a leg, he indulged in the belief that he had reflected profoundly; out of which depths he started, very much like a man who has dozed, and felt a discomfort ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an unusually patient child, felt as if she could not bear the pain and discomfort of her strapped and splinted leg. Her mother and Trudy, and her father too, did all they could to alleviate her sufferings, but the uncontrollable tears welled up in the blue eyes and rolled over the fevered cheeks of ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... should be the object of the study of the past, and our historians of today very largely concern themselves with mistakes in policy and defects of system; fortunately for them such critical investigation under our changed conditions does not involve the discomfort and danger that attended it in the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... say it was a slow and often wearisome business, with the interest, to my mind, unfairly divided. On one side, the Thibetan side, there was picturesqueness enough, though not without discomfort too, for many a time the envoys must needs cross mountain-passes so deep in snow that a hundred Thibetans marched ahead treading it down, and not less often they must sleep in the rudest camps and eat the unsavoury cuisine of the country. But on the other, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... harder to all for living in needless discomfort, and that you will be gentler to all for constantly meeting tokens of your sister's affection. Had you sought these comforts for yourself, the case would be different; but, Robert, candidly, which of you is the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery. Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was some one behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the wall. All this, of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... given to promptitude of speech and action, and, once awakened to the serious state of Walter's health, physical and mental, he had resolved, at whatever discomfort to himself, to check the boy's undue mental precocity and substitute for it mere physical vigour. He was content with no half-measures, and he sent the lad at once to a preparatory school for Eton. At Eton he knew Walter's brain would have a rest. The effect was miraculous. ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... no less than Claggett Chew's cabin, the door of which had been left open so that Osterbridge Hawsey could watch the fight with the least possible discomfort. He sat, somnolent, in a comfortable chair, his long legs stretched out before him, smoking a clay pipe. His attention wandering, as it so often did, he failed to see the mouse who ran under his legs into the shadow beneath them. The frantic ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... in earnest adding to the ape-man's discomfort and disappointment. He was very angry; but as only direct necessity had ever led him to close in mortal combat with a lion, knowing as he did that he had only luck and agility to pit against the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pitying determination. Poor little devils, it was not their fault that they were born to be a menace rather than a help to mankind. He was sorry for their terror, while he dug back to where they huddled against the farthest wall of their nest. He worked fast that he might the sooner end their discomfort, and his forehead was puckered into a frown at the harsh law of life that it must preserve its existence at the expense of some other life. Yet he dug back and back, burrowing into the bank toward the whimpering. It was farther than he had thought, but the soil ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... day, Sieur de Poutrincourt resolved to return to our settlement on account of four or five sick and wounded men, whose wounds were growing worse through lack of salves, of which our surgeon, by a great mistake on his part, had brought but a small provision, to the detriment of the sick and our own discomfort, as the stench from their wounds was so great, in a little vessel like our own, that one could scarcely endure it. Moreover, we were afraid that they would generate disease. Also we had provisions only for going eight ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... that strange but almost universal desire of well-fed and comfortable people to go slumming. In his books men and women in fortunate circumstances had their curiosity satisfied—all the world went slumming, with no discomfort, no expense, and no fear of contagion. With no trouble at all, no personal inconvenience, we learned the worst of all possible worsts on this puzzling and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... well enough. He had an idea that he owed the consideration he received to Lieutenant Sazonoff. He was quite sure that General Mikail Suvaroff had nothing to do with it! And his journey, which might have been one of acute discomfort, ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... mysterious fashion, of the deep longing with which he longed for sight or sense of her, to assure him that—in spite of qualms and indecisions—he had chosen aright. Conviction grew that directly the veil of sleep fell he would see her. It magnified his insomnia from mere discomfort to a baffling inimical presence withholding him from her:—till utter weariness blotted out everything; and even as he hovered on the verge of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... several of these impressive lessons upon Mr. Smith. He had become so much horrified at their confusion, that I do believe he had fully reconciled himself to dust and dirt, as the better alternative. They were, to be sure, at some little cost of comfort to myself, and reflectively produced discomfort for him; for he traced, with a correctness which I could easier frown at than deny, many a week's indisposition to my house-cleaning phrenzy. And when a man's wife is sick, if, he is a man of feeling, he ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... sail was arranged, and they took dinner on board the boat, with any amount of hilarity and a good deal of discomfort. In the evening more dancing and vigorous attentions to both the young ladies, but without a shadow of partiality being shown by either of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... the second day the house was so densely packed that a messenger for a glass of water had to go out through a window. But in spite of all discomfort and the many standing, the audience maintained perfect order and gave the utmost attention throughout Miss Anthony's speech of two hours. Learning that she would remain in Lincoln over Sunday the people importuned her ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... explanations). Thus should the accomplishment of duty be understood as dependent on means. For the man of intelligence, having knowledge of means, succeeds in attaining to supreme felicity. As some man travelling along a road without provisions for his journey, proceeds with great discomfort and may even meet with destruction before he reaches the end of his journey, even so should it be known that ill acts there may not be fruits.[149] The examination of what is agreeable and what is disagreeable in one's own self is productive of benefit.[150] The progress ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag,—yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the heart of things,—at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,—even more fit to be a type of her class. Deeper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... article than a corset. As a Show Girl, it has been my lot to be provided with one of these fiendish devices of medieval days. It is too much. The corset must go. No woman could have experienced the pain and discomfort I have been subjected to this day without feeling entitled to the vote. Yet I dare say there are women who would gladly be poured into a new corset every day of their lives. They can have mine for the ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr. |
