"Insufferable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known to possess—the merit of being sometimes able to see the good qualities of persons who do not possess the advantage of being related to them by blood. The families whose members all admire each other, are families saturated with insufferable conceit. You happen to speak of Shakespeare, among these people, as a type of supreme intellectual capacity. A female member of the family will not fail to convey to you that you would have illustrated your meaning far more completely if you had referred her to "dear Papa." ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... comfortable, as a place of residence. 'I am sorry to hear it, my lord,' replied the Countess. 'And why sorry, madam?' 'Because the place will ill repay your trouble; and were it even a paradise, it would be insufferable at such a ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... insufferable weariness would lift awhile he could enjoy the quiet, absurd, heedless talk, and this very friendly topsy-turvy effort to ease his mind and soothe his nerves. He might even take an interest again ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... his head silently in an ecstasy of impatience for the story to continue. Judith and Sylvia smiled at each other with the insufferable complacence of auditors who know the end ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... looked, it must have had, nevertheless, a garishness and artificiality which would offend the artistic eye. When newly constructed, the Roman temples in the time of the emperors must have been oppressive, reflecting the hot sunshine from their snowy cellae and pillared porticoes with an insufferable glare. Marble—unlike sandstones, clay-slates, and basalts, which are kindred to the earth and the elements, and find themselves at home in any situation, all things making friends with them, mosses, lichens, ivies—is a dead, cold material, and does not harmonise with surrounding ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... said Jock; "but I say, mother, don't go making him cockier. You know he's only fit to be stitched up in one of Jessie's little red Sunday books, and he must learn to keep a civil tongue in his head, and not be an insufferable little donkey." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when they're hunted down. The ones that roar are quite insufferable, and the ones that don't are ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... nervous strain of being the Napoleon of Wall Street had had the effect of increasing to a marked extent the portentousness of Bailey's always portentous manner. Ruth rebelled against it. There was an insufferable suggestion of ripe old age and fatherliness in his attitude which she found irritating in the extreme. All her life she had chafed at authority, and now, when Bailey set himself up as one possessing it, she showed the worst side of herself ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... kindness' sake with a little gracious bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R—— petted till he didn't know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants. And of all the amateur-and-water ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... associates. The women, who were sober, observing by my looks that I was getting excited, requested me to withdraw. I did so, but was followed by the chief to the next hut, which I quitted immediately; I found myself still pursued by the same insufferable insolence. My philosophy being unequal to so severe a trial, I turned upon my tormentor, and seizing him by the throat, dashed him to the ground, and left him there speechless. I then made for a hut a short distance apart from the others, belonging to a tete de boule, where ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... literature a distinctive character among the nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the Doctor, that there is no greater mistake than that which a grave person falls into, when he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... "your unexampled generosity, and the invincible fidelity of these heroic men, have compelled me to accept the life I had resolved to lose under these walls, rather than resign them. But virtue is resistless, and to it do I surrender that pride of soul which made existence insufferable under the consciousness of having erred. When I became the husband of King Edward's daughter, I believed myself pledged to victories or to death. But there is a conquest, and I feel it, greater than over hosts in the field; and here taught to make it, the husband of the princess ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... are insufferable. Go and talk outside. (He sits down again at the table, with his jaws in his hands, and his elbows propped on the map, poring over ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... her face pale with anger, "you are positively insufferable. Will you leave my room and ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the servants, however, had no parental string at which Mrs. Pilcher could tug, and the consequence was, that they decided that she was an insufferable bore. Old John, in particular, felt the ill effects of the heir of Applebite's appearance in the family, and to such a degree did they interfere with his old comforts, without increasing his pecuniary resources, that he determined one morning, when taking up his master's shaving water, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... exploit of our matchless captain was to capture, and execute, and quarter, and hang up on a gallows at the market- cross, the head and the hands and the feet of his oldest, most sworn, and most deadly enemy, one Self-love. So stout and so insufferable was our captain in the matter of Self-love that when it was proposed by some of his many influential friends and high-in-place relations in the city that the judgment of the court-martial on Self-love should be deferred, our stout soldier with the cuts on his face and in some other parts of his ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... chance customers. The regular attendants of either hunt were sufficiently distinguishable as well by the flat hats and baggy garments of the one, as by the dandified, Jemmy Jessamy air of the other. If a lord had not been at the head of the Flat Hats, the Puffington men would have considered them insufferable ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Beauseant. Here is the letter, which may serve as a sample of the epistolary style peculiar to lovers, a performance which, like the drawings prepared with great secrecy by children for the birthdays of father or mother, is found insufferable by ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... to all his profits, had restored my brother to his senses, and seeing that the mischief had been caused by his own insufferable pride, he rent his clothes and tore his hair, and lamented himself so loudly that the passers-by stopped to listen. It was a Friday, so these were more numerous than usual. Some pitied Alnaschar, others only laughed at him, but the vanity which had gone to his head had disappeared with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... exacts not an impossible law under eternal and insufferable pains, yet he imposes great holiness in unlimited and indefinite measures, with a design to give excellent proportions of reward answerable to the greatness of our endeavour. Hell is not the end of them that ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned, by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig—odious, insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! And insulted her—her! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, in my ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... things to Aurelia, although, if you are worthy to dine at her side, they are the very things you are longing to say. What insufferable stuff you are talking about the weather, and the opera, and Alboni's delicious voice, and Newport, and Saratoga! They are all very pleasant subjects, but do you suppose Ixion talked Thessalian politics when he was admitted ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... impassioned revery: all about that little wretch; all about the first portrait of Charmian and the likeness they had seen in it; all about what had happened since Ludlow began to criticise her work again. In the mere preparation for this review she found another's agency insufferable; she abandoned herself wildly to a vision which burned itself upon her in mass and detail, under a light that searched motive and conduct alike, and left her no refuge from the truth. Then she perceived, how at every moment since ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... deal of ruins and rubbish in the Eternal City. And as regards its sanitary condition, there may be a great deal of holiness in Rome, but there is very little cleanliness in it. When a shower falls, and the odour of the garbage with which the streets are littered is exhaled, the smell is insufferable. One had better not describe the spectacles that one sees every day on the marble stairs of the churches. The words of Archenholtz in the end of last century are still applicable:—"Filth," says he, "infects all the great places of Rome except that of St. Peter's; nor would this be excepted ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... long time I heard him moving among the lumber, and every moment seemed to me an age. At length I felt his hand upon my shoulder, and he placed, at the same moment, a bottle of water to my lips. Those only who have been suddenly redeemed from the jaws of the tomb, or who have known the insufferable torments of thirst under circumstances as aggravated as those which encompassed me in my dreary prison, can form any idea of the unutterable transports which that one long draught of the richest of all physical ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had not died in the Boeotian war. Thus ambitious spirits in a commonwealth, when they transgress their bounds, are apt to do more harm than good. For though Lysander's pride and assumption was most ill-timed and insufferable in its display, yet Agesilaus surely could have found some other way of setting him right, less offensive to a man of his reputation and ambitious temper. Indeed they were both blinded with the same passion, so as one not to recognize the authority ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... SIR,—I regard the insufferable LLOYD GEORGE as the most dangerous, the most malignant, the most incompetent politician who has ever attempted to misrule this country. The iniquity of the Coalition will make enlightened rulers like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... first time in her life doubts as to her father's capacity stirred within her. She attempted the poor consolation of an "acid tablet," and it was at once impounded by the watchful Mrs. Kingdom. Mean-time the reek of "bull's-eyes" was insufferable. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... suddenly to yield to the skill of a new physician; and by the administration of medicines which a man less stern or resolute might have trembled to adopt (so powerful and for the most part deadly was their nature), he passed from a state of almost insufferable torture to an elysium of tranquillity and ease. Perhaps, however, the medicines which altered also decayed his constitution; and it was observable that in two cases where the physician had attained a like success by the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dominican priest of a most amiable and heroic character. He first went to Hispaniola with Columbus in his second voyage, where he manifested an ardent but honest zeal, first in attempting to instruct the natives in the principles of the catholic faith, and afterwards in defending them against the insufferable cruelties exercised by the Spanish tyrants who succeeded Columbus in the discoveries and settlements in South America. He early declared himself Protector of the Indians; a title which seems to have been acknowledged ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... very funny; but as long as Jim is always bringing somebody over from the mill, I don't see how I can go to those places. You were lucky, my dear, to escape from the new Division Superintendent last night; he was insufferable to Jim with his talk of his friend the San Francisco millionaire, and to me with his cheap society airs. I do hate a ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... southwest prevailing at that season, accompanied by perpetual thunder and lightning, sweep over and destroy the houses. Whenever the weather was clear, the nights were cold, but during the day the heat was insufferable. Nor is this astonishing, for this region is near the equator, and the pole star is no longer visible. In that country the icy temperature during the night is due to the moon and other planets, while the sun and its satellites cause the heat during the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... to keep this turbulent offender in proper subjection without the severity of chains; but, after repeated promises of amendment on milder treatment, she had obliged the keeper to have recourse to this extreme by relapsing into the most flagrant and insufferable contempt of decency and order. Upon this information, HOWARD said mildly to the unhappy criminal, 'I wish to relieve you, but you put it out of my power; for I should lose all the little credit I have, if I exerted ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... the Blunderbuss's act with variations. She'd have been elected fast enough, after this, and there isn't a girl in the class who could do half as well on that committee. But as for having her and that insufferable little Betty Wales on, when I shall be left off, I ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... going to join the fresh-air brigade, Mr. Courage," she remarked. "I think you are very wise. We found the music-room insufferable." ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rejoined, looking frankly, pleadingly into his face. "You do not realize what it is to suffer the insolent vigilance of such as he; to feel that your every step is under surveillance; to feel his eyes ever upon you when you are within his sight. Oh, it is insufferable!" ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... period; and it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, or the whole story ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... careful,' I thought. The insane sniveling of this lodge brother distracted me. His arms came around me and he rested his head on me and wept. Insufferable ass! It was impossible to think. I remained with my eyes watching and repeating ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... tangled ranks of riverweed I pushed—till lo, God heard me! I came forth Where, 'neath the shoreless hush of region light, Through a new world, undreamed of, undesired, Beyond imagining of man's weary heart, Far to the white marge of the wondering sea This still plain widens, and this moon rains down Insufferable ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... madman's brain. However, the contestation is very amusing, and I shall be very sorry if it stops, now it is in so good a train. I should be well pleased, particularly, to see so seraphic a madman attack so insufferable a coxcomb as Walpole; and I think they are only fit ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked, if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts? We had nothing; they told us, as they would at a puppet-show, that it would not come that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... consumption of service, is a dominant incentive to the keeping of servants. So long as this remains true it may be set down without much discussion that any such departure from accepted usage as would suggest an abridged apprenticeship in service would presently be found insufferable. The requirement of an expensive vicarious leisure acts indirectly, selectively, by guiding the formation of our taste,—of our sense of what is right in these matters,—and so weeds out unconformable departures by withholding approval ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... disgust. "What on earth do I care for the contemptible puppy, that I should waste thought on him. What possessed the fellow to come whining around me to-night, and set me in a whirl of disagreeable thought? I ought to have knocked him down for his insufferable impudence in dragging me out publicly in that meeting." This he said aloud; but something made answer down in his heart: "Oh, it's very silly of you to talk in this way. You know perfectly well that Dr. Van Anden is not a contemptible puppy at all. He is ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... admirers; it seemed to me then that it would have been insufferable conceit to have even asked myself if it could matter to her. It was only in the light of after events that the possibility of my having been mistaken occurred to me. And I don't even now see that I could have acted otherwise——" Here Uncle Paul sighed a little. "We were the best ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... "Madame, you are unbearable!" He was very angry, and it infuriated him the more that she should stand so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow the proudest heads in France. "You have the pride of Satan, your greed is insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable, and you have the most false and poisonous ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... polished society and those of the lower orders. A man of position appearing intoxicated will always make a disagreeable impression on us; but a drunken driver, sailor, or carter will only be a risible object. Jests that would be insufferable in a man of education amuse us in the mouth of the people. Of this kind are many of the scenes of Aristophanes, who unhappily sometimes exceeds this limit, and becomes absolutely condemnable. This is, moreover, the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... very strangely. Her little dress was made of such heavy, fur-like material that one could see it was meant for the coldest winter weather, and for someone who disliked much outer clothing. The child's cheeks were glowing red, and from the insufferable heat whole streams of perspiration trickled down ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... her natural complexion—obsequies which not even her maid was permitted to attend. Consequently she was anything but pleased when her husband entered the room. Such procedure was out of all order and convenience. That he came in suddenly and without first knocking upon the door was insufferable. She turned herself ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the death of this excellent man we have lost a friend, whose loss to ourself we most sincerely mourn, though the grave was, to him, a welcome relief from an insufferable disease, that had made life wretched for years. Mr. Dwight was the son of Rev. Dr. Dwight, President of Yale College. He became pastor of Park-st. church, in Boston, while we attended it in boyhood, and it is our pride to record that we were so fortunate ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... perplexing questions arise on every side. Much of life is so repulsive and noxious— But there! what a fog-bank I am leading you into this crystal May evening! Most young girls would vote me an insufferable bore should I talk ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of good and evil, like all mankind,—nobler than their descendants in some attributes, less noble in others. The most strait-laced Massachusetts Calvinist of these days would have been disciplined by them for insufferable laxity, and yet their modern successor would count it utter shame, perhaps, to own a slave in his family or to drink rum-punch at an ordination,—which Puritan divines might do without rebuke. Not one of them has left on record a statement so broad and noble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sharp refusal, and matters were becoming so desperate that he would probably have left the place of his own accord before long, had not Mr. Raeburn himself put an end to a state of things which had grown insufferable. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the nth time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... all which was, that the carriage was ordered between three and four o'clock, and that in spite of the insufferable heat of the day the two invalids (so very differently disabled) were driven to the Central Park, were driven around it, heard Dodworth's Band perform half a dozen operatic selections as only that cornet-band can perform them, saw the loungers ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... pretty anger, "this is insufferable! 'T is your fault, Guilbert, you fool. Am I, then, to spend the day here ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... arguments which called Providence in question, and Bossuet believed that to champion Providence was the most efficient means of opposing the libertine tendencies of his day. "Nothing," he declared in one of his sermons (1662), "has appeared more insufferable to the arrogance of libertines than to see themselves continually under the observation of this ever-watchful eye of Providence. They have felt it as an importunate compulsion to recognise that there is in Heaven a superior force which governs all our movements and chastises our loose ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... "It's the worst trouble I've ever had. It would kill me to see him marry that man's daughter. I can't and won't resign myself to it. Why should I? Why should Dick choose, out of all the world, the one girl in it who would be insufferable to me. I can't give in about this. Much as Dick is to me I'll let him go sooner. I hope you'll see I'm right, Jim, but right or wrong, I've made up ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... that should be scrupulously avoided. An inveterate punster, though his play upon words may rise to the keenest wit, is yet an insufferable bore. No one feels secure in his society, or can guess what word may be torn out of a serious or brilliant remark to be tortured into a vulgar witticism, out of place ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... communication now made in behalf of the powers named, and for its part is confident that equal appreciation will be shown for its own earnest and unselfish endeavours to fulfil a duty to humanity by ending a situation, the indefinite prolongation of which has become insufferable." ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... secret with Ted!" declared Phyllis, obstinately. "He's nearly nineteen and he thinks he's the most important thing in creation, and he's perfectly insufferable in some ways, now. To have his advice asked in this thing would set him up worse than ever. I won't ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... longer talk to Lady Amelie, he was content to stand by himself and think over his own happiness. To him it was like a beautiful page from some old romance, that this lovely lady should have smiled upon him, and have laid her gracious hand upon him, calling him her knight. How insufferable the empty talk of the men around him seemed! Ah, if they knew how he was sworn to do ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... kitchen fires, only to glow the more consciously at sunset, and after nightfall to crown itself with imperishable stars. Wordsworth had that self-trust which in the man of genius is sublime, and in the man of talent insufferable. It mattered not to him though all the reviewers had been in a chorus of laughter or conspiracy of silence behind him. He went quietly over to Germany to write more Lyrical Ballads, and to begin a poem ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Institutions have been the means of concentrating, in divers parts of the metropolis, large libraries of useful books; which, it is to be hoped, will eventually suppress the establishment of what are called Circulating Libraries—vehicles, too often, of insufferable nonsense, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "This is insufferable!" he cried. It was evident that the crisis had come. While the Etheling faced him with a defiance that in its utter abandon was a little mad, a sensation as of bracing muscles and setting teeth went ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... their goods and substance. The concord or discord betwixt those that were appointed to rule ouer them, was all alike hurtfull vnto the subiects, the lieutenant oppressing them by his capteins and men of warre, and the procurator or receiuer by force and reprochfull demeanours, polling them by insufferable exactions. ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... preparations, and I left a note telling her I was sent on a mission by the king. At the Croix de Berny I met his Majesty returning from Verrieres. He threw me a look full of his royal irony, always insufferable in meaning, which seemed to say: "If you mean to be anything in politics come back; don't parley with the dead." The duke waved his hand to me sadly. The two pompous equipages with their eight horses, the colonels and their ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the Vatican. The Romagna was encouraged by it to break out into open and armed insurrection against the harsh rule of Julius II—who seems to have been rendered positively vindictive towards the Romagnuoli by their fidelity to Valentinois. Thus had the Romagna fallen again into the old state of insufferable oppression from which Cesare had once delivered it. The hopes of the Romagnuoli rose in a measure, as the alarm spread among the enemies of Cesare—for Florence and Venice shared now the anxiety of the Vatican. Zurita, commenting ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... much firm and resolute courage in this affair as greatly to excite everybody's admiration. But from that time onwards he was also completely changed. The sober and industrious youth became a bragging, insufferable bully. He was always drinking and rioting, and fighting about all sorts of childish trifles, until he was run through in a duel by the Senior[7] of an exclusive corps. I merely tell you the story, cousin; you are at liberty to think what you please about it But to return to the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... down, '—though we certainly don't expect it—nobody will be better pleased than we.' Whereas, the world would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... spot to be with him. And then she sighed, with that vague feeling of dissatisfaction with herself. She felt crude and awkward and dull of wit. Her mother, Marthy, Ward—all the persons she knew—were crude and awkward and ignorant beside Charlie Fox. And she had had the temerity, the insufferable effrontery, to criticize him and patronize him over those ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... fault, before we pass on. In spite of the horror and misery that pervade all of his later work, there is in it much less of actual melodrama than here, and rarely, I should say never, that sort of brutality, that useless insufferable violence to the feelings, which is the last distinction between melodrama and true tragedy. Now, in NOTRE DAME, the whole story of Esmeralda's passion for the worthless archer is unpleasant enough; but when she betrays herself in her last hiding-place, herself and her wretched mother, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spreading, by putting the patients apart from the rest in the most airy births. Many were attacked with teazing coughs; others complained of violent pains in the head; and even the healthiest among us felt a sensation of suffocating heat, attended by an insufferable languor, and a total loss of appetite. But though our situation was for a time thus uneasy and alarming, we had at last the singular satisfaction of escaping from these fatal seas, without the loss of a single life; A circumstance which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... be calm. When I was a baby I loved you, but that is long ago. Today, Tom, you're an insufferable cad and I—well, I'm too much like you to have two of ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... first we sleep in linen "as white as the wings of the dove," in the second on pieces of smelly blankets; the first is redolent of ottar of roses, Shakib's favourite perfume, the second is especially made insufferable by that stench which is peculiar to every Hebrew hive. For these and other reasons, Khalid separates himself from his Semite fellow peddlers, and makes this time a bigger move than ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and women, and he had long exhausted both. As for female society, if they were ladies, it was expected that, in some form or other, he should make love to them, and he had no sentiment. If he took refuge in the demi-monde, he encountered vulgarity, and that, to Lord Montfort, was insufferable. He had tried them in every capital, and vulgarity was the badge of all their tribe. He had attempted to read; a woman had told him to read French novels, but he found them only a clumsy representation of the life which, for years, he had practically been leading. An accident made ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... as one struck, and gaped up at the tower. To see his stupid mouth open, Jehane's bosom heaved with pride well-nigh insufferable. Had any woman, since Mary conceived, such a lover as hers! 'Oh, Gilles, Gilles, go you on with your knife in your vest. What can you do, little oaf, against King Richard?' Gilles went in by the gate, and she let him go. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... with a force that made its metal ring upon the floor, and hastening after him, she stood before him; her dark eyes fixed upon his, streaming with insufferable and consuming fire, that seemed to burn through ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Began to steal—from old and young. Likewise Evander, and the truth Was like a bad taste on his tongue. Born thieves and liars, their affair Seemed only to be tarred with evil— The most insufferable pair Of scamps that ever cheered ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... make the earth a hell for its inhabitants. "The ministers," added the governor, "should pray oftener, and preach less." But he spake in all solemnity; there was not the ghost of a sense of humor in his whole insufferable carcass. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... half. He had been sculling madly for the first half of the afternoon and thinking idly (and still more madly) for the second half. He had gone to a supper where he was uproarious, and on to a debating club where he was perfectly insufferable, and the melancholy Smith was melancholy still. Then, as he was going home to his diggings he remembered the eccentricity of his friend and master, the Warden of Brakespeare, and resolved desperately to turn in to that ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... filled all the green plain with a rich amber light. The fantastic towers and trees of the distant city by the lake shone in his mellow lustre; the solitary island swam in a flood of gold, and the quaint edifice which crowned it blazed with insufferable splendour. As the eerie gloaming died in the west, and thin grey mists began to veil the outlandish scene, we realised to the full that we were all alone and friendless in an unknown world, and a deep sentiment of exile ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... danced in the rosy ripples of the declining sun. So, mooning and miserable, I lagged along the bank toward my bush-hut; and presently, to my sudden surprise, discovered the very lady of whom I had been thinking so intently—not dogged as usual by that insufferable Ensign, but in earnest conversation ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... simply a glorious time, and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the world. He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge but he was too dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there; his appalling energy would have been an insufferable reproach to mild ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... master Secretory Walsingham and to master Sanderson, as a rare thing to be found in those parts and farther the same was of an extraordenary saltnes. And therefore it is an idle dreame that the ayre should there be insufferable, for ourselues haue with the water of those seas made salt, because we desired to know whether the benefit of the sunne were the cause of this cogulation, what better confirmation then can there ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast —whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God—so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... trifling things, by which pleasure is given or pain occasioned to others. Indeed, it may be said that in self-sacrifice in the ordinary intercourse of life, mainly consists the difference between being well and ill bred. Without some degree of self-restraint in society a man may be found almost insufferable. No one has pleasure in holding intercourse with such a person, and he is a constant source of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... strong-featured Scot, has generally blown away that inauspicious bashfulness, which hangs a much longer time, commonly, on the faces of the southern students; such a one (if he fall not too egregiously into the contrary extreme, so as to become insufferable) may still be the more eligible person for a tutor, as he may teach a young gentleman, betimes, that necessary presence of mind, which those who are confined to a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... surprising that with all his talents he was totally without honest resources for amusing himself. He was born bored; and he was so accustomed to live out of himself, that it was insufferable to him to return, incapable as he was of trying even to occupy himself. He could only live in the midst of the movement and torrent of business; at the head of an army for instance, or in the cares that arose out of the execution of campaign projects, or in the excitement and uproar of debauchery. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... time, the King got rid of that little she-dwarf, named Mexica, in whose insufferable talk and insufferable presence the Queen took delight. But the sly little wretch escaped during the journey, and managed to get back to the princess again, hidden in some box or basket. The Queen was highly delighted to see her again; she pampered her secretly in her private cabinet with the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... gone over on swift horses; but yet, when we reached the borders of the lake we were quite exhausted, and our hearts failed us. The heat of the smoke was insufferable, and sheets of blazing fire flew over us in ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... the street came the busy sound of day: at other times how insufferable he had found it! and now how joyous it seemed that men should bestir themselves, and turn to all sorts of occupations! There was a sound of crumbling snow: and how nice to have a house and a blaze upon the hearth! "And the evening and the morning were the first ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... dull, ceaseless, insufferable torment of thirst was added to the aching weariness which came from the motion of the camels. The sun glared down upon them, and then up again from the yellow sand, and the great plain shimmered and glowed until they felt as if they were riding over a cooling sheet of molten metal. Their ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about Rainie's size, as sharp as a needle, and possesses the remains of a brown shirt and a ragged kitchen duster as turban. I am very fond of little Achmet, and like to see him doing tableaux vivants from Murillo with a plate of broken victuals. The children of this place have become so insufferable about backsheesh that I have complained to the Maohn, and he will assemble a committee of parents and enforce better manners. It is only here and just where the English go. When I ride into the little villages I never hear the word, but am always offered ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... mischief and sudden death. He was an English terrier, fawn-colored; his mother's name VAMP (Vampire), and his father's DEMON. He was more properly daft than mad; his courage, muscularity, and prodigious animal spirits making him insufferable, and never allowing one sane feature of himself any chance. No sooner was the street door open, than he was throttling the first dog passing, bringing upon himself and me endless grief. Cats he tossed up into the air, and crushed their spines as they fell. Old ladies he ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... parlor maid reappeared without her badges of office, and was duly presented to the rector of the church, who made no sign, save a twinkle of his eye, of having met her in another, and humbler capacity, but shook hands and talked to her without that insufferable air of patronage which elder people at times seem to delight to ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... second.[54] You will see a small attempt on a shred of paper in the book; but though Dr. Blacklock commended it very highly, I am not just satisfied with it myself. I intend to make it a description of some kind: the whining cant of love, except in real passion, and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the preaching cant of old Father Smeaton, whig-minister at Kilmaurs. Darts, flames, cupids, loves, graces, and all that farrago, are just a Mauchline—a ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... It is in this privately exalted way that we bear in short the burden of our obloquy, our failure, our resignation, our sacrifice of what we should have liked, even if it be a matter we scarce dare to so much as name to each other; and above all of our insufferable reputation for an abject meekness. We're really not meek a bit—we're secretly quite ferocious; but we're held to be ashamed of ourselves not only for our proved business incompetence, but for our lack of first-rate artistic power as well: it being now definitely on ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... exist after a fashion and are carefully treated, the author's principal object is to depict—in direct contrast to Mr. B. and Lovelace—a "Good Man"—the actual first title of the book, which he wisely altered. This faultless and insufferable monster is frantically beloved by, and hesitates long between, two beauties, the Italian Clementina della Porretta and the English Harriet Byron. The latter of these carries him off (rather because of religious difficulties than of any great predilection ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Molly, with a stamp of her sandalled foot, "it is not possible to guess worse! He is more insufferable to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... learned that the only way to build a business that will last is to lay its foundation on the Golden Rule, and many a man who might otherwise sidetrack the principles of integrity holds by them for this reason. "Honesty," declared one of the most insufferable prigs America ever produced, "is the best policy." He was right. Prigs usually are. It is only because they are so sure of it themselves ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... separation - here is, indeed, a projected escalade of heaven; here are, indeed, labours for a Hercules in a dress coat, armed with a pen and a dictionary to depict the passions, armed with a tube of superior flake-white to paint the portrait of the insufferable sun. No art is true in this sense: none can "compete with life": not even history, built indeed of indisputable facts, but these facts robbed of their vivacity and sting; so that even when we read of the sack of a city or the fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Fenton is insufferable with his insolent bearing and behaviour, and you encourage him in his familiarity. I heard you were taking tea with him and his wife yesterday. I must beg you never to do such a thing again as long as you are under ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... she was quite capable of proclaiming her sin in Altavilla when there was a gathering of people. The count got more and more alienated from this woman, who upset all his moral, theological, and social ideas, and finally inspired him with dread. This turned to terror and insufferable foreboding, that made him long for his liberty, especially after Amalia smilingly made a certain ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... furniture and a number of portraits, complete the present equipment of Azay-le-Rideau. Among the portraits that interested us was one of Catherine de Medicis by Clouet, and another by the same artist of Francis I, as he so often appears in his portraits, "with the insufferable smile upon his lips that curl upward satyr-like towards the narrow eyes, the crisp close-cut brownish beard and the pink silken sleeves and doublet." Near by, in strong contrast to the sensual face of Francis, hangs ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... and never believed that persons belonging to our determination ought to be roasted. The incense of the stake, that was so sweet in ecclesiastical nostrils three hundred years ago, and also in vulgar nostrils wherever the vulgar happened to be of the orthodox persuasion, has become an insufferable stench to the more refined noses of the nineteenth century, which, nevertheless, are rather partial to the odor of the gallows. Miss Strickland and other clever historians may dwell upon the excellence of Mary Tudor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gesture.... Shut me up in a dungeon—I'll shout so loud that I shall be heard for a mile round, or I'll starve myself, so that there shall be a still heavier weight on their black consciences. Kill me—and my ghost will return. All my acquaintances tell me: 'You are a most insufferable man, Pavel Ivanich!' I am proud of such a reputation. I served three years in the Far East, and have got bitter memories enough for a hundred years. I inveighed against it all. My friends write from Russia: 'Do not come.' But I'm going, to spite them.... Yes.... ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... left the room, while Jack raged in helpless fury upon the sofa. It was insufferable to be treated as if he were a boy who could be ordered about against his will. When John Allen Ferguson Melland said a thing, he meant it, and not all the old men in the world should move him from it, as Bernard Farrell would find out to his cost ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the company of Claire was becoming insufferable to Mary and Shelley. At least for a time, it was desirable to have a change. We find Mary sorely puzzled in her diary at times, as on March 11 she writes—"Talk about Clara's going away; nothing settled. I fear it is hopeless. She will ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... congregations of the Edinburgh churches. As nearly as I can judge, it is intellectual rather than emotional; but it is not a tribute paid to eloquence alone, it is habitual and universal, and is yielded loyally to insufferable dullness when occasion demands. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... again at the right moment; while the rest still hold their instrument under their left arm, and look about them. Thus the point is greatly weakened, if not entirely missed. I invoke the attention and vigor of orchestral conductors to this insufferable habit. It is, however, so rooted that they will only ensure its extirpation by making a large number of violinists amenable for the fault of a single player; by inflicting a fine, for example, upon a whole row, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... precisely such as a vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would especially dread, and which only true virtue and magnanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have endured the loss of freedom; but to be led in triumph through the streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Caesar with dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art; but "to be chastised" by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured Octavia—"rather ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... nothing much the matter with the men on either side, taken in the main, who hated one another on that far-pushed frontier. Even the insufferable incompetents who held the rotting reins of control were such because circumstance had blinded them. There was not a man among the highly placed ones even who would have deliberately placed his own importance or his own opinion in the scale against India's welfare. There ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods, Till exultation burst in one wide voice Like music from Elysian winds. And thou Ascend beside me, veiled in the light Of the desire which makes thee one with me, 35 Thetis, bright image of eternity! When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might! God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames, The penetrating presence; all my being, Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 40 Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, Sinking through its foundations:' even then Two mighty spirits, mingling, made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... horses in a southerly direction; but the heat was now so great, that it became almost insufferable, and at last the horses stood still. They dismounted and drove their horses slowly before them over the glowing plain; and now the mirage deluded and tantalized them in the strangest manner. At one time Alexander ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... excitement reaches its highest pitch. For no reason I begin crying and burying my head in the pillow. At such times I am afraid that some one may come in; I am afraid of suddenly dying; I am ashamed of my tears, and altogether there is something insufferable in my soul. I feel that I can no longer bear the sight of my lamp, of my books, of the shadows on the floor. I cannot bear the sound of the voices coming from the drawing-room. Some force unseen, uncomprehended, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... galling; unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious; troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome; plaguing, plaguy[obs3]; awkward. importunate; teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking. intolerable, insufferable, insupportable; unbearable, unendurable; past bearing; not to be borne, not to be endured; more than flesh and blood can bear; enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... suddenly become an insufferable menagerie. Mysterious inspectors come and go, and commercial travellers of unappetizing looks and habits are far more frequent than formerly. But I shall regret the earth-convulsing laughter of the Greek doctor, who has latterly taken to putting ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... not mine; I only consented because Miss Lawton had been kind to me, and I desired to aid her in her trouble, if I could. But that he—that I—should be suspected and watched, and treated like criminals, oh, it is insufferable. To-day, also, I leave the Anita Lawton Club. You shall find some one else to play detective for you—you and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... a note of smugness that spoils Trilby; in fact Little Billee, "frock-coated, shirt-collared within an inch of his life, duly scarfed and scarf-pinned, chimney-pot-hatted, most beautifully trousered, and balmorally booted," is the most insufferable picture of a hero of a romance. This person compromises the effect of the charmingly haunting presence of Trilby herself, and of the great-hearted gentleman in Taffy. There is, moreover, the failure ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls. As "every one" was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I thought with joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the freshening breeze, the sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company—that at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the place was! The ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... them deadly when they're single, But deadlier in the duologue, When the insufferable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... murder of his companion; and yet each day that it remained, it was endangering his own life, by the extremely offensive condition to which it was reduced. When, at last, the people from the boat effected a landing, they found the whole building filled with the most insufferable odour, and the dead body in such a state that it was impossible to remove it to Plymouth for interment: they therefore consigned it to the sea; but it was a long time before the rooms could be purified ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... thereby, they are invested with claims upon their party, and suffer indefinite dreams of political eminence to be awakened in their bosoms. I have seen a fellow draw his hat fiercely down over his brow, and strut about, with insufferable importance, on the strength of having been thoroughly kicked by ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... elegant manner and easiness of behaviour are acquired gradually and imperceptibly. No man can say "I'll be genteel." There are ten genteel women for one genteel man, because they are more restrained. A man without some degree of restraint is insufferable; but we are all less restrained than women. Were a woman sitting in company to put out her legs before her as most men do, we should be tempted to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... not make him unusually uneasy. He had acquainted himself in the morning with a resume of the journals. Public opinion seemed favorable to the Vaudrey ministry, except in the case of some insufferable radical organs, and with which he need not in anyway concern himself, read the report. Vaudrey did not remember that it was in almost these very terms that the daily resume of the press expressed itself on ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... was the drowsy buzz-z-z of an August noon. A cabbage butterfly sailed by. The creature's insufferable airs annoyed him. The fate of Nelson, the life of a noble lad, these were nothing to it, curse it for ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... her way of speaking, Athalie made a parade of an insufferable humility, although, or rather because, she knew it hurt Timea. If the latter asked for anything, Athalie rushed to fetch it with an alacrity like that of a black slave who fears the whip. She never spoke in a natural tone, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Schontz, smiling. "Here you are, more than married; you will be insufferable, you will be always wanting to get home, there will be nothing loose about you, neither your clothes nor your habits. And, after all, my Arthur does things in style. I will be faithful to him ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac |
