"Insupportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself; but she could not patiently bear the sorrows of others, especially of her sisters; and again, of the two sisters, the idea of the little, gentle, youngest suffering in lonely patience, was insupportable to her. Something must be done. No matter if the desired end were far away; all time was lost in which she was not making progress, however slow, towards it. To have a school, was to have some portion of daily leisure, uncontrolled ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was very hot. The thermometer stood at 10 degrees F. at 4 P.M., but the still air made it almost insupportable. By the time the load was hauled up out of the basin, we were ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. She was from that time delivered from the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... the existence of the person whom she includes within her. Hardly is she entranced when she is metamorphosed; her face is no longer the same; her eyes, indeed, remain closed, but the acuteness of the other senses compensates for the loss of sight. She becomes gay, noisy, and restless to an insupportable degree; she continues good-natured, but she has acquired a singular tendency to irony and bitter jests.... In this state she does not recognise her identity with her waking self. 'That good woman is not I,' she says; 'she ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... preachers brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew daily more insupportable. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... offensive, for want of cleanliness and from an immense population; such numbers are continually in the streets, that there is no quiet or good air in the town. The darkness is extreme, and the dissipation apparently very great; the oppression of our spirits at some periods is almost insupportable; and yet I am at times very sensible of the calming influence of divine love, with a sense that, having acted to the best of our judgment, we must resign ourselves to wait for the return ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... sailors, accustomed to spend their leisure in taverns, found the dull routine of existence in Chicora insupportable. Besides, their commander irritated them by undue severity. The crisis came when he hanged a man with his own hands for a slight offence. The men rose in a body, murdered him, and chose Nicholas ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... such forms insupportable; trampled on such forms;—we have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the over-taxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and the sub-conscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax, the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. That is, at least, on board ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... pressing on his aching eyes, and upon his throbbing head. His pillow seemed undulating beneath him, and everything swimming around him; but when, to crown the whole, he was roused from a momentary nap by the insupportable—the loathed importunities of Mrs. Squallop, that he would just sit up and partake of three thick rounds of hot buttered toast, and a great basin of smoking tea, which would do him so much good, and settle his stomach—at all events, if he'd ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... ungracious breaking of the first two parliaments was wholly imputed to the Duke of Buckingham; and of the third, principally to the Lord Weston, then high treasurer of England. And therefore the envy and hatred that attended them thereupon was insupportable, and was visibly the cause of the murder of the first (stabbed to the heart by the hand of an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... I passed in Iceland was one of the finest the inhabitants had known for years. During the month of June the thermometer often rose at noon to twenty degrees. The inhabitants found this heat so insupportable, that they complained of being unable to work or to go on messages during the day-time. On such warm days they would only begin their hay-making in the evening, and continued their work half ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... to take a distinguished position in Paris, and this residence will be insupportable to him. He will require a ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... to observe the bubbles it is possible that the young ensign could have followed the enemy trail. Twice or thrice Dave believed that he had picked up glimpses of bubbles with the searchlight, but at last, with a sigh, he gave orders to shut off speed and drift. Inaction became wellnigh insupportable after a few moments and Darrin called ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... thus reconciled to herself, found, that no evil is insupportable, but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She sat, from morning to evening, recollecting all that had been done or said ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... your friend will have found the little inn so insupportable, that he too will join us. Listen to that sigh of poor Nina's and you'll understand what it is ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... worse than useless. With a little of her old artistic egoism, Katherine valued her brother's career very much as a thing of her own making, and the idea of another woman meddling with it and spoiling it was insupportable. It was as if some reckless colourist had taken the Witch of Atlas and daubed her all over with frightful scarlet and magenta. But the trouble at her heart of hearts was the certainty that Audrey, that creature of dubious intellect and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... that he expressed this by silence made my heart yearn toward him for the first time since I recognized him as my brother. I tried to stammer some excuse. I was glad when the darkness fell again, for the sight of his bowed head and set features was insupportable to me. It seemed to make it easier for me to talk; for me to dilate upon the purity, the goodness which had robbed me of my heart in spite of myself. My heart! It seemed a strange word to pass between us two in reference ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 swear, enough to gag a maggot. shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing; dreadful, fearful, frightful; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Rembrandts which he examined from time to time, half secretly; and if it be true that the loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening the enthusiasm ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... mother. The farewell of the two men was sad and touching, for a long time must elapse before they met again. Monte-Leone had resolved to leave Naples for some time. The proximity of Sorrento lacerated his heart, and to see her he loved the wife of another would to him be insupportable. Taddeo was aware of the reasons why the Count had determined to travel, and had he no mother he would also have been ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... to the twins whether there was sunshine or storm in the house; their heads were always full of tricks, and when at times their father's storming grew too insupportable and they deemed it more prudent to, hide behind the stove, they made up for it there ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... Lima he found affairs in a worse state than ever. The tyrannical conduct of the officer he had left in charge had provoked an uprising that made his position insupportable. Conscious that his mission had come to an end and certain that, unless he gave way, a collision with Bolivar was inevitable, San Martin resolved to sacrifice himself lest harm befall the common cause in which both had done such yeoman service. Accordingly he resigned ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... rose and knew Henry was gone till the following summer, she wished she could have laid down again and slept away the whole long interval. Her sisters' peevishness, her father's austerity, she foresaw, would be insupportable now that she had experienced Henry's kindness, and he was no longer near to fortify her patience. She ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... she declared in her deposition), was found to be quite dried up; the bone, which had been rotted and putrified, was restored to its former condition; all the stench, proceeding from it, which had been so insupportable that by order of the physicians and surgeons she was separated from her companions, was changed into a breath as sweet as an infant's; and she recovered at the same moment her sense ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... France, and England very soon found his yoke insupportable. It was hard for them to be directed by an Italian minister resident at Assisi, a small town quite aside from the highways of civilization, entirely a stranger to the scientific movement concentred in the universities of Oxford, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... We had no home. One of our children was born in a lodging at Derby, with a workhouse, if I recollect aright, behind and a penitentiary in front. But the irksomeness of my new duties was what I felt most, and during the first year or so it was sometimes insupportable." ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... glared at us from either side of an aquiline nose, which betrayed his Burmese descent, did not increase our confidence in the man as he stretched out his bony hands over the fire as if for warmth, although outside the hut we had found the heat almost insupportable. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... The mental calmness felt by every one who, secluded from the tumult of the world, as I was at that time, devotes himself to the faithful fulfilment of duty, rendered it comparatively easy for me to accommodate myself patiently to a condition which a short time before would have seemed insupportable. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... situation at present was indeed very dismal, even to those who preserved the blessing of health; to the sick, whose crippled limbs were tortured with excessive pain, it was insupportable. The ocean about us had a furious aspect, and seemed incensed at the presumption of a few intruding mortals. A gloomy melancholy air loured on the brows of our shipmates, and a dreadful silence reigned amongst us. Salt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... circumstances. I shall come soon enough to the story of my own misery. I have already said, that one of the motives which induced me to the penning of this narrative, was to console myself in my insupportable distress. I derive a melancholy pleasure from dwelling upon the circumstances which imperceptibly paved the way to my ruin. While I recollect or describe past scenes, which occurred in a more favourable period of my life, my attention is called off for ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the mother of the family, who is living in a flat, or, worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one set of utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making the living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly insupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. Such a woman, rather than the prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high standard of ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... River. When I said that the bill would justify a revolution and would produce it, I spoke of its principle and its practical consequences. To this principle and those consequences I would call the attention of this House and nation. If it be about to introduce a condition of things absolutely insupportable, it becomes wise and honest men to anticipate the evil, and to warn and prepare the people against the event. I have no hesitation on the subject. The extension of this principle to the States contemplated ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... The precise annual sum cannot be known in advance; it doubtless will vary in different years. Still it is something to know that in the last year—a year of almost unparalleled pecuniary pressure—it amounted to more than forty thousand dollars. This annual income, in the midst of our almost insupportable difficulties, in the days of our severest necessity, our political opponents are furiously resolving to take and keep from us. And for what? Many silly reasons are given, as is usual in cases where ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... people, and known as having distinguished talent. Now, all this would seem to me delightful if you had an income of fifty thousand francs; but, in your position, you must absolutely have an occupation which will enable you to live, and free you from the insupportable weight of dependence on others. From this day forward, my dear child, you must look to this end alone if you would find it possible to pursue honorably the career you have chosen. Otherwise constant embarrassments will so limit your genius, that you ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... for her—how had he passed these months, she wondered? To tell the truth, Claudius had been so desperately busy that the time had not seemed so long. If he had been labouring in any other cause than hers it would have been insupportable. But the constant feeling that all he did was for her, and to her advantage, and that at the same time she was ignorant of it all, gave him strength and courage. He had been obliged to think much, to travel far, and to act promptly; and for his own satisfaction he had kept up the illusion ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... curse could be imposed on man than the complete gratification of all his wishes without effort on his part, leaving nothing for his hopes, desires or struggles. The feeling that life is destitute of any motive or necessity for action, must be of all others the most distressing and insupportable to a rational being. The Marquis de Spinola asking Sir Horace Vere what his brother died of, Sir Horace replied, "He died, Sir, of having nothing to do." "Alas!" said Spinola, "that is enough to kill any general ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... temperature to the other with impunity. Let an inhabitant of Quebec suddenly arrive in Cuba in February, and he would suffer from languor and exhaustion; after becoming acclimated to this tropical climate, let him suddenly return to Quebec in January, and the severity of the weather would be almost insupportable. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... having been thus presented, and a day fixed for the final determination of the question, our feelings became almost insupportable: for we had the mortification to find, that our cause was going down in estimation, where it was then most important that it should have increased in favour. Our opponents had taken advantage of the long delay, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... gratify the vanity, and pride, and luxury of the women, and of the young fops who admire them, that we owe this insupportable grievance, of bringing in the instruments of our ruin. There is annually brought over to this kingdom near ninety thousand pounds worth of silk, whereof the greater part is manufactured. Thirty thousand pounds more is expended in muslin, holland, cambric, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... spite of the state of degradation into which he had fallen. But the general's struggles with his own weakness never lasted very long. He was, in his way, an impetuous man, and a quiet life of repentance in the bosom of his family soon became insupportable to him. In the end he rebelled, and flew into rages which he regretted, perhaps, even as he gave way to them, but which were beyond his control. He picked quarrels with everyone, began to hold forth eloquently, exacted unlimited respect, and at ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... objection that Shakspeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the most hateful atrocity—that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror—I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... sleeping and waking, since she had parted with him on the beach the evening previous. At the sound of every horse's feet she started, and her heart beat quicker. But he came not that day, and as evening approached, her disappointment became almost insupportable; she tried to frame excuses for him; he had never been to the house; perhaps he had, by a very natural mistake, gone to her uncle's house in town, instead of that where she now was, and which was rather more than a mile from St. Blas, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... move? To the black hunter, there lying in ambush, the suspense was becoming all but insupportable. With an interest far more intense than that of the boy did he watch the nimble fingers of the young Indian, as the whittling task went on—the heavy-footed seconds creeping draggingly by, and made, by the suspense, to seem as long as minutes. At last the hatchet was handled and delivered to the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... make favor with their Iroquois enemies by abusing their French friends,—declaring them to be sorcerers, who had bewitched, by their charms and mummeries, the whole Huron nation, and caused drought, famine, pestilence, and a host of insupportable miseries. Thereupon, the suspicions of the Mohawks against the box revived with double force, and they were convinced that famine, the pest, or some malignant spirit was shut up in it, waiting the moment to issue forth and destroy them. There was sickness ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... again; the sun was at hand to bathe the world in the light and gladness alone fit to typify the radiance of Robert's thoughts. The clouds that formed the shore of the upper sea were already burning from saffron into gold. A moment more and the first insupportable sting of light would shoot from behind the edge of that low blue hill, and the first day of his new life would be begun. He watched, and it came. The well-spring of day, fresh and exuberant as if now first from the holy will of the Father of Lights, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Office to our Army in France, were unknown; bare rations washed down by a limited allowance of water were our only form of food; everyone suffered more or less from dysentery, spread by the millions of flies which settled on every mouthful we ate and made life almost insupportable by day. No Man's Land was one vast litter of unburied corpses. Yet no man's spirit ever wavered and all ranks remained as bright, as hopeful and as cheerful as on the day of the first great landing. If shells were scarce, complaints were non-existent; all were upheld by the wonderful ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... home until he has accumulated an insupportable load of ennui, and then he sallies forth to distribute it ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... during which he remained constantly in the dormitory, where everything was rolling and crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of lamentations and imprecations, and he thought that his last hour had come. There were other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of insupportable heat, of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched hours, during which the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the planks, seemed all dead. And the voyage was endless: sea and sky, sky and sea; ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... thought that under the plaited tresses of this young girl's shapely head was a brain seething in revolt, or that the silken laces of her bodice muffled the beatings of a heart suffocated by the luxurious dulness of a life which she now told herself had become insupportable. Cicely had thought a great deal since her visit to London and Muriel's wedding, and had arrived at this conclusion—that she was suffocating, and that her ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... scarcely short of an embrace from Hamilton, who expressed himself as surprised as pleased at his appearance, and in whose glistening eyes, as well as the friendly looks of those around, Louis experienced some relief from the almost insupportable sense of dulness that had oppressed him ever since his entrance into the house. But now, the doctor having opened his book, the young gentlemen were obliged to separate and form into their places. Hamilton kept Louis by him, and Louis ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar-school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... ill wish on the fingers o' the laundress. She had starched the muslins!—a circumstance, I am perfectly certain, unheard of in the memory o' man, and a thing which my mother ne'er did. It was stiff, crumpled, and clumsy. I vowed it was insupportable. It was within half an hour o' the time o' gaun to the chapel. I had tried a 'rose-knot,' a 'witch-knot,' a 'chaise-driver's knot,' and a 'running-knot,' wi' every kind o' knot that fingers could twist the neckcloth into, but the confounded starch made every ane ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... from time to time Oscar was content to live in the Chalet Bourgeat; but when the days began to draw in and the weather became unsettled, the dreariness of a life passed in solitude, indoors, and without a library became insupportable. He was being drawn in two opposite directions. I did not know it at the time; indeed he only told me about it months later when the matter had been decided irrevocably; but this was the moment when his soul was at stake between good and evil. The question was whether his wife would come ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... had never in her life taken any note of time,—never felt it lag heavily on her hands; but it appeared to her now that these interminable days of vacation would never come to an end. She passed one of them with Edith and Rufus Malcome, and this was by far the most insupportable of any. "She loved Edith dearly," she said; "but could not endure the childish prattle and frivolity ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... considerable period. Such at least is the story, which we see no reason to question, in regard to several of the early Popes. But no large number of persons could have existed within them. The closeness of the air would very soon have rendered life insupportable; and supposing any considerable number had collected near the outlet, where a supply of fresh air could have reached them, the difficulty of obtaining food and of concealing their place of retreat would have been in most instances insurmountable. The catacombs were always places ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting—was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again I had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... light-hearted, a gleam of brilliant colour thrown across their grey life. She loved poetry too, the hills, the sunsets, and those long walks across the purple moorland. It was a wonderful companionship into which they had drifted. He was her refuge in a life which she frankly declared to be insupportable. She was a revelation to him—the first he had had—of delicate femininity, full ever of suggestions of that wonderful world beyond, of which at that time he had only dared to dream. It was she who had kindled his ambitions, who had preached to him silently, but with convincing eloquence, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... it found in the family, as in so many others in that State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the Union, the others savagely hostile. This unhappy division begot an insupportable domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and brother left home with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal army not a hand was laid in his, not a word of farewell was spoken, not a good wish followed him out into the world whither he went ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... side with those of mechanics, without requiring a mechanical interpretation for them. Thus the purely mechanical view of nature was gradually abandoned. But this change led to a fundamental dualism which in the long-run was insupportable. A way of escape was now sought in the reverse direction, by reducing the principles of mechanics to those of electricity, and this especially as confidence in the strict validity of the equations of Newton's mechanics was shaken by the experiments with beta-rays ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... many times before it becomes insupportable. All that day and night, and the next day, he suffered its pangs; and then it became ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... in one place of "Mrs. ——, an insupportable bore; her neck and arms were as naked as if she had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... in every family, we suppose, who think of educating their own children, are employed some hours in the day in reading, writing, business, or conversation; during these hours, children will naturally feel the want of occupation, and will, from sympathy, from ambition and from impatience of insupportable ennui, desire with anxious faces, "to have something to do." Instead of loading them with playthings, by way of relieving their misery, we should honestly tell them, if that be the truth, "I am sorry I cannot find any thing for you to do ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... settled accurately upon my shoulders, was snatched tight about my throat, and with a feeling of insupportable agony at the base of my skull, and a sudden supreme knowledge that I was ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... happy constitution, yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government,—which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable,—he would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "oh, yes—to fly away with when he's tired of his play. Of course it was a man who conceived the idea of wings, otherwise Cupid would have been insupportable." ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... the suspicion became insupportable. Her ears were pitched to a painful intensity of listening and her eyes were fastened ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... rather to play with the sentimental than act from the animal passion; their corruption of manners leading them to promiscuous concubinage; or, in fine, the extravagant luxury of the times, which too often renders a family an insupportable burden—whatever may be the cause it becomes necessary, in order to counteract it and produce an additional incitement to the marriage state, that a premium be given with the females. We find in the history of the earliest ages of the world ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... he saw them pleased with the facility of his concessions, he observed to them, that, since amity was now in effect restored between them, it were better on both sides to dismiss their forces, which otherwise would prove an insupportable burden to the country. The archbishop and the earl of Nottingham immediately gave directions to that purpose: their troops disbanded upon the field: but Westmoreland, who had secretly issued contrary orders to his army, seized the two rebels without resistance, and carried them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... be an insupportable place for women, if he had! But whatever the moral aspect of the matter is in general, circumstances arise which alter the point, and that is where the absurd ticketing system hampers suitable action. A thing is ticketed 'dishonourable.' ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... shorter rivals, which also require continuation by stockings to complete the purpose of clothing the leg. Buttons at the knee are a great nuisance, and probably were what chiefly contributed to the melancholy determination of a certain gentleman in the last century, who found his existence insupportable, and put an end to it with his own hand. Life, he said, was made up of nothing but buttoning and unbuttoning; and so he shot himself one morning in his dressing-gown and slippers, before the intolerable burden of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... hours they were deprived of even this guidance: for the meridian sun gives no clue to the points of the compass. They did not much feel the disadvantage; as at noon-tide the hot tropical atmosphere had become almost insupportable, and the heat, added to their fatigue from incessant toiling through thicket and swamp, made it necessary for them to ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... him, and Leontine a daughter; but to the unspeakable grief of the latter, his young wife (in whom all his happiness was wrapt up) died in a few days after the birth of her daughter. His affliction would have been insupportable, had he not been comforted by the daily visits and conversations of his friend. As they were one day talking together with their usual intimacy, Leontine, considering how incapable he was of giving his daughter a proper education in his ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... follow than to lead Fathers conceal their affection from their children Fault not to discern how far a man's worth extends Fault will be theirs for having consulted me Fear and distrust invite and draw on offence Fear is more importunate and insupportable than death itself Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself Fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? Fear was not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing Fear: begets a terrible ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... packed together, with scarcely room for the inhabitants to stir; open cesspools continually sending up their poisonous exhalations, and in hot or wet weather so infesting the air as to render it almost insupportable; smoke from the factories and steam-vessels, which, when the wind is westerly, covers the town, blackening the buildings, soiling goods, and, mixing with the other gases already generated, forming one general conglomeration of deleterious vapours; the state of ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... quarrelling, and took a delight and interest in their disputes and battles. As this was an amusement which he could enjoy without any sort of exertion, he soon grew so fond of it, that every day he returned to the stable yard, and the horse block became his constant seat. Here he found some relief from the insupportable fatigue of doing nothing, and here, hour after hour, with his elbows on his knees, and his head on his hands, he sat, the spectator of wickedness. Gaming, cheating and lying soon became familiar to him; and, to complete his ruin, he formed ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... scorn of all—feelings of defiance and terror, striving at mastery; and, in one corner, a brooding image of despair, kept from the brink of the precipice only by the entreaties of some fiercer principle of hate. She felt life to be insupportable. Why did she live? This question came to her repeatedly. The demon was again at ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... smother when I went up to the rails; and, to cap all, that old Mrs. Godfrey, who weighs at least three hundred, came and knelt close by me, and just completely crushed all one side of my flounces; I was provoked and indignant; this, added to the intense heat, was almost insupportable; but here I am again, thank God. O, Althea, you look so cool and comfortable; won't you come, please, and fan me a minute—untie my hat, and take away my gloves and scarf, they are like so many fire-coals. It is too bad to ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the gardens of Riviera hotels, listening to exhilarating bands, and admiring the outline of the Esterels against the cloudless blue of the sky, the drab London streets assumed a dreariness which was almost insupportable. Also, though she would not acknowledge it to herself, she was achingly disappointed, because something which she had sub-consciously been expecting did not come to pass. She had expected something to happen, but nothing happened; all through February the weeks dragged on, unrelieved by ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... half frantic, Fairfax! To be baffled by such an impossible accident, after having acted my part with such supreme excellence, is insupportable! But the hag Vengeance shall not slip me! No! I have fangs to equal hers, ay and will fasten her yet! I have been injured, insulted, frustrated, and fiends seize me ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the taste of suche licour, which nourishing my hope in pleasure, may quenche the fier that doth consume me: otherwise I see no meanes possible but that I am constrayned, either to lose my good wittes (whereof already I feele some alienation) or to ende my dayes with extreme anguishe, and insupportable hartes sorowe. Alas, I know well that I shall loose my time, if I attempt to pray the Emperour my father to giue me Alerane to husbande, sith he doth already practise a mariage betwene the king of Hungarie and me: and also that Alerane (although he be a Prince ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... doubtless alienated what little affection she had for him. He seems to have sought low company even after his marriage, and Lady Byron has intimated that she did not think him altogether sane. Living with him as his wife was insupportable; but though she separated from him, she ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... people. Nor was this all. A Sakasa-bashira knew how to make all the affairs of a household go wrong,—how to foment domestic quarrels,—how to contrive misfortune for each of the family and the servants,—how to render existence almost insupportable until such time as the carpenter's blunder should be ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... I told as plump fat lies as you would wish to hear. I said I "was obliged to go into Hollingford on business," when the truth was there was no obligation in the matter, only an insupportable desire of being free from my visitors for an hour or two, and my only business was to come here, and yawn, and complain, and lounge at my leisure. I really think I'm unhappy at having told a story, as children ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... good, and yet want most of the Virtues, that are peculiar to Christianity, and, if the Gospel speaks Truth, necessary to Salvation. A Man may be continent and likewise never drink to Excess, and yet be haughty and insupportable in his Carriage, a litigious Neighbour, an unnatural Father, and a barbarous Husband. He may be just in his Dealings, and wrong No body in his Property, yet he may be full of Envy, take Delight in Slander, be revengeful in his Heart, and never known to have forgiven an Injury. ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... my father, "but it's just as I feared. She's got all the ideas of her father's family. She talks of nothing but God and the Bible and of her religion, and that's insupportable ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... nor chimneys were to be seen, as winter is here replaced by a very mild rainy season. The heat in summer is often said to be insupportable, the temperature rising to more than 36 degrees Reaumur. To-day it reached ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... all over America, for their multitude, the troublesomeness of their buzzing and the venom of their stings, which occasion an insupportable itching, and often form so many ulcers, if the person stung does not immediately put some spittle on the wound. In open places they are less tormenting; but still they are troublesome; and the best ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... minds! How often in the summer twilight poor Charlotte had lingered here in restful solitude after the day's burdens and trials with "stupid and impertinent" pupils! How often, with weary feet and a dreary heart, she had paced this secluded walk and thought, with longing almost insupportable, of the dear ones in far-away Haworth parsonage! In this sheltered corner her other self—Lucy Snowe—sat and listened to the distant chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes. Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... insupportable in the cabin below; so he ordered his steward to bring up his bedding. He had lain down for half an hour, grown restless, and had begun to walk the deck in his bath-slippers. He had noted the still white figure forward, where ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... fraternization was spread by Freemasonry; numbers at first cherished a hope that the Revolution would preserve a pure moral character, and were not a little astonished on beholding the monstrous crimes to which it gave birth. Others merely rejoiced at the fall of the old and insupportable system, and numerous anonymous pamphlets in this spirit appeared in the Rhenish provinces. Fichte, the philosopher, also published an anonymous work in favor of the Revolution. Others again, as, for ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... with serious thoughts; never amuse it with those trifles which absorb the attention of persons of your age. Do not think that those serious thoughts badly become your youth; that they would deprive you of a part of your comfort, rendering you wearisome to others and insupportable to yourself; that they would give you a pedantic and affected air which would lead others to believe that you despised them; that every age has its peculiar tastes and customs, and that it would be an act of uncalled-for ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... between his eyes, and once there came that rather helpless raising of his hand to his forehead. Then, too, she observed the compression of his lips, and the occasional dilation of his nostrils. Each observation carried conviction, and the weight upon her heart grew almost insupportable. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... endurance of the pain, and in racking my brains considering what was best to be done, the intolerable sensations began by degrees to subside and grow less and less; but the heat, although nearly insupportable, was more easily endured. That horrible night was a long one—and long will it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... 'This is insupportable!' said Emily; 'Theresa, you know not what you say. Sir, if you respect my tranquillity, you will spare me from the continuance ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... left it behind, and was astonished when shortly afterward he stumbled into it to the knees. He had a distressful stitch in his side, which, though he had been conscious of it for several hours, was growing almost insupportable. Sometimes he called to Grenfell, who seldom answered him, just to break the oppressive silence. It seemed to enfold and crush him in spite of the clamor of the creek which indeed he scarcely heard. No man, he fancied, had crept through those solitudes before; ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... After an insupportable delay Mrs. Tams reappeared, out of breath. Dr. Yardley had just gone out, but he was expected back very soon and would then ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... years be complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental Europe—France and Russia. They could by united action crush British power both by land and by sea. To dash this brimming cup from his lips was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently, of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... perception that a grown person could do wrong, and that person his dear Gilbert. As if the grave countenances were insupportable, he gave a long-drawn breath, hid his face on his mother's knee, and burst into an agony of weeping. He was lifted on her lap in a moment, father and mother both comforting him with assurances that he was a very good boy, and that papa was much pleased with him, Mr. Kendal even putting the cannon ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up the word hesitatingly—"knowing that life would be insupportable to me if I could not be ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... his own reflections, began to muse over his secret attachment. Everything seemed to combine—not alone the little teasing attentions of the queen, but also the queen-mother's interruptions—to make the king's position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings of his heart. At first, he complained of the heat—a complaint merely preliminary to others, but with sufficient tact to prevent Maria Theresa guessing his real object. Understanding the king's remark literally, she began to fan him with her ostrich ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... married Mary Powell, the daughter of a Cavalier; and, taking her from the gay life of her father's house, he brought her into a gloom and seclusion almost insupportable. He loved his books better than he did his wife. He fed and sheltered her, indeed, but he gave her no tender sympathy. Then was enacted in his household the drama of the rebellion in miniature; and no doubt ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... rather than spoke their thankfulness and relief, the miller's eyes being moist as he turned aside to calm himself; while Anne, having first jumped up wildly from her seat, sank back again under the almost insupportable joy that trembled through her limbs to her ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... never raised and he never looked at the outer world. Once or twice a face had appeared, but it was always the keen, thin face of Mr. Ogden; and Rose's curiosity, growing by what it fed on, began to get insupportable. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... begin to flourish a great change takes place. The sedentary habits of the desk and the loom render the exertions and hardships of war insupportable. The business of traders and artisans requires their constant presence and attention. In such a community there is little superfluous time; but there is generally much superfluous money. Some members of the society are, therefore, hired to relieve the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Chinese inns. I should not have made any remark upon this awful hovel had not the man laid a scheme to charge me three times as much as he should—a scheme, be it said, in which my boy took no part. It was truly a fearful den, where man and beast lived in promiscuous and insupportable filth. The dung-heap charms the sight of this agricultural people, without in the slightest wounding their olfactory nerves, and these utilitarians think there is no use seeking privacy to do what they regard as beneficial ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... complicated machinery of natural laws. It may be that I shall not come back. But I wish to take with me your promise that if I have not returned at the end of two years or you have received no reason for my detention, you will believe that I am dead. There would be but one insupportable drop in the bitterness of death, the doubt of your faith in my word and my love. Are you too much of a woman to curb your imagination in a ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... things considered, for the wilderness had already the advantage of first attack—and of a hostage. The fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily increasing weight of oppression that finally became insupportable. ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... have virtue, capacity, and good conduct," says La Bruy,re, "and yet be insupportable; the air and manner which we neglect, as little things, are frequently what the world judges us by, and makes them decide ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... miserable. The foul and poisoned air of the dens in which thousands live predisposes to a longing for stimulant. Fresh air, with its oxygen and its ozone, being lacking, a man supplies the want with spirit. After a time the longing for drink becomes a mania. Life seems as insupportable without alcohol as without food. It is a disease often inherited, always developed by indulgence, but as clearly a disease as ophthalmia ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... as a thunderstroke to Othello, who now plainly saw that he was no better than a murderer, and that his wife (poor innocent lady) had been ever faithful to him; the extreme anguish of which discovery making life insupportable, he fell upon his sword, and throwing himself upon the body of his dear ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... away from the tree they returned to me in full force, and my reflections were certainly of no very cheering or consolatory nature. I rode on, however, most perseveringly. The morning slipped away; it was noon, the sun stood high in the cloudless heavens. My hunger had now increased to an insupportable degree, and I felt as if something were gnawing within me, something like a crab tugging and riving at my stomach with his sharp claws. This feeling left me after a time, and was replaced by a sort of squeamishness, a faint sickly sensation. But if hunger was bad, thirst was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... thou me? what wouldst thou, Peleus' son?" To whom Achilles, swift of foot, replied: "Son of Menoetius, dearest to my soul, Soon, must the suppliant Greeks before me kneel, So insupportable is now their need. But haste thee now, Patroclus, dear to Jove: Enquire of Nestor, from the battle field Whom brings he wounded: looking from behind Most like he seem'd to AEsculapius' son, Machaon; but his face I could not see, So swiftly past the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... seen the world. How many things to excite the ambition of a schoolboy! Augustus was impatient for the moment when he might "be what he admired." The drudgery of Westminster, the confinement, the ignominious appellation of a boy, were all insupportable to this young man. He had obtained from his father a promise, that he should leave school in a few months; but these months appeared to him an age. It was rather a misfortune to Holloway that he was so far advanced ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the dress rehearsal, he led her, after an hour of almost insupportable repression, to the rear of the auditorium, in the region made gloomy by the shelving gallery overhead. Dropping into the seat beside her, he blurted out, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... from these fits, he expressed no surprize; but pressing his hand to his head, complained, in a tremulous and terrified tone, that his brain was scorched to cinders. He would then betray marks of insupportable anxiety. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... gaze from the telephone and looked at her hands. She could not meet the insupportable expression ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... to acknowledge that we were lost! We were on an Indian trail, and the bushes grew so low that at almost every step I was obliged to bend my forehead to my mule's neck. This increased the pain in my head to an almost insupportable degree. At last I told F. that I could not remain in the saddle a moment longer. Of course there was nothing to do but to camp. Totally unprepared for such a catastrophe, we had nothing but the blankets of our mules, and a thin quilt in which I had rolled some articles necessary for ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... make something of the sentences read backwards. The Dictionary was her final resource, and she managed to pass many tedious hours working straight through it page after page. She had got as far as M, and life was becoming insupportable, when about the middle of the day, on Monday, she was startled by a cautious and stealthy noise, and also by a shadow falling directly on her page. She looked up quickly; there was the round and radiant face of Maggie ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... dropsy also his body was grossly disfigured; for although his upper parts were exhausted, and dried to a skeleton, covered only with dead skin; the lower parts were swelled up like bladders, and the shape of his feet could scarcely be perceived. Torments and pains insupportable, greater than those he had inflicted upon the christians, accompanied these visitations, and he bellowed out like a wounded bull, often endeavouring to kill himself and destroying several physicians for the inefficacy of their ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... took no share in it, and was soon afterwards killed by a fall from a stage, which he had erected for the purpose of retouching some of his frescos. Nor did Spagnoletto experience a better fate; for, having seduced a young girl, and become insupportable even to himself from the general odium which he experienced, he embarked on board a ship; nor is it known whither he fled, or how he ended his life, if we may credit the Neapolitan writers. Palomino, however, states him to have died in Naples ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... killing, when I crost you so? O insupportable, and touching losse! Vpon what sicknesse? Bru. Impatient of my absence, And greefe, that yong Octauius with Mark Antony Haue made themselues so strong: For with her death That tydings came. With this she fell distract, And (her Attendants ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... habitations gave one the idea of being in a house of ground glass, and their newness made them look clean, comfortable, and wholesome. Not so the more substantial bone huts, which, from their extreme closeness and accumulated filth, emitted an almost insupportable stench, to which an abundant supply of raw and half-putrid walrus' flesh in no small degree contributed. The passages to these are so low as to make it necessary to crawl on the hands and knees to enter them; and the floors of the apartments were in some places so slippery, that ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... heavy upon me. I will tell you some day—if ever I am strong enough for so many words, and if you will hear me out patiently—the whole story of my temptation; how I struggled against it, and only gave way at last when life seemed insupportable to me without ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the window, at its commencement, to avoid the possibility of hearing, what was not probably intended to reach the ears of a third person. "Would any but a favored lover," he thought, "be admitted to such an interview?" The idea was insupportable; he traversed his apartment with perturbed and hasty steps, and it was not till long after De Valette retired, that he sought the repose of his pillow, and even then, in a state of mind which completely banished slumber from ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... life; Whose failing, while her Faith to me remaines, I should conceal, and not expose to blame 130 By my complaint; but strict necessitie Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, Least on my head both sin and punishment, However insupportable, be all Devolv'd; though should I hold my peace, yet thou Wouldst easily detect what I conceale. This Woman whom thou mad'st to be my help, And gav'st me as thy perfet gift, so good, So fit, so acceptable, so Divine, That from her hand I could suspect no ill, 140 And ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... we were fighting." Had the disappearance of the box concerned himself alone Cleggett's sense of disaster might have been less poignant. But the thought that his own carelessness had enabled the enemy to get possession of a thing likely to involve Lady Agatha in further trouble was nearly insupportable. He gritted his teeth and clenched ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... whom her Inclinations alienated her, she was for distinguishing herself from all that had gone before her, and reducing the Monarch to go through the entire Play of Love. But such a formal Method was insupportable to him, for being used to conquer upon the very first Appearance of his Desire, his Heart was for some Time distracted with strong Conflicts between Love and Resentment, without a decisive Victory on either Side. Sometimes he looked upon the Resistance of his new Mistress, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... The disgrace to be thus outwitted by a novice, an infant in stratagem and contrivance, added to the violence of my passion for her, will either break my heart, or (what saves many a heart, in evils insupportable) turn my brain. What had I to do to go out a license-hunting, at least till I had seen her, and made up matters with her? And indeed, were it not the privilege of a principal to lay all his own faults upon ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... yet for a season bright moments of confidence—"stand still ye watches of the element," that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord—but fate and retribution say no—I hear the mischievous titter of Maria—the witty taunts of Sir Toby—the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight—the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... them, and rejoice in their beauty. But what is your surprise while, as you are flowing along so happily, you suddenly encounter a steeper slope, longer and more dangerous than the first! Then the torrent recommences its tumult. Formerly it was only a moderate noise; now it is insupportable. It descends with a crash and a roar greater than ever. It can hardly be said to have a bed, for it falls from rock to rock, and dashes down without order or reason; it alarms every one by its noise; ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... contend against a resolution. She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, so far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze. Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find difficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... a restraint which, of course, increased his zest for light and liberty, and in the first moment of freedom—a moment greatly accelerated by his own strenuous efforts in the shape of squalling, bawling, roaring, and stamping, unparalleled and insupportable, even in that mansion of din—in the very instant of freedom he was off again; he ran away from work; he ran away from school; certain to be immersed in his dismal dungeon as soon as he could be recaught; so that his whole childhood became a series ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... something of the fabulous tale of the wren sitting upon the eagle's wing, and he had applied it to a linnet. Gibber's familiar style, however, was better than that which Whitehead has assumed. Grand nonsense is insupportable[1180]. Whitehead is but a little man to inscribe verses ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... defamed with so much ardor, the father of beautiful Fanny Hafner, Baron Justus himself. The renowned founder of the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate' was a small, thin man, with blue eyes of an acuteness almost insupportable, in a face of neutral color. His ever-courteous manner, his attire, simple and neat, his speech serious and discreet, gave to him that species of distinction so common to old diplomatists. But the dangerous adventurer was betrayed by the glance which Hafner could ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pleasures that are at God's right hand, it is needful to have senses and a taste that correspond thereto. The swine trample pearls under their feet. The elevated discourse of a philosopher is insupportable to a stupid mechanic; and an ignorant peasant, introduced into a circle of men of learning and taste, is disgusted, sighs after his village, and declares no hour ever appeared to him so long. It would be the same to a man who is not ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... will win applause, but simply what the facts are. And undoubtedly it is true that all considerate men in England have been compelled to contemplate the possibility of over-population, of an insupportable pauperism, of a burden of helpless numbers which shall sink the whole nation into abysses of starvation with all its horrible accompaniments. It is but a few years since Ireland escaped unexampled death by famine only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... sovereignty, founded by Thierry, first Count of Holland, A.D. 868, continued till the year 1417, when it passed, by surrender, to the Duke of Burgundy. In 1534, being oppressed by the Bishop of Utrecht, the people ceded the country to Spain. The Spanish tyranny being insupportable, they revolted, and formed the republic called the United Provinces, by the Union of Utrecht, 1579. When they were expelled the Low Countries by the Duke of Alva, they retired to England; and having equipped a small fleet of forty sail, under the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... position, and feared that he might possibly, from selfish, ignoble reasons, seek an alliance with Judge Harris' only daughter, knowing that the family was one of the wealthiest and most aristocratic in the State. Life had seemed dreary enough before; but, with this apprehension added, it appeared insupportable, and she was conscious of a degree of wretchedness never dreamed of or realized heretofore. Not even a sigh escaped her; she was one of a few women who permit no external evidences of suffering, but lock it securely in their ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... life, lynch-pins were loosened; in more than one case the draught oxen were houghed; the provisions, when received, were mouldy and unwholesome. At last sickness broke out, with stories of poison; then the tension became insupportable. The Voizin chief, too proud to go to his neighbours, summoned them to him; the messenger was murdered. This assassination, of which the natives denied all knowledge, was met by prompt reprisals; three Perelle fishermen were hung on the spot where the body was ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... cannot, indeed you cannot, think, how my whole soul resists him!—And to talk of contracts concluded upon; of patterns; of a short day!—Save me, save me, O my dearest Mamma, save your child, from this heavy, from this insupportable evil—! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Toinette, you are insupportable with your snuff-box. One would say a marquise of the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... His reflections became insupportable. He thought successively of becoming a monk, of enlisting as a soldier, and of getting drunk—ere he reached the corner of the Rue Royale and the Boulevard. Chance favored his last design, for as he alighted in front of his club, he found himself face ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... also an apple-oil, which, according to my analysis, is nothing but valerianate of amyloxide. Every one must recollect the insupportable smell of rotten apples which fills the laboratory whilst making valerianic acid. By operating upon this raw distillate produced with diluted potash, valerianic acid is removed, and an ether remains behind, which, diluted in five or six times its volume of spirits ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... named Androcles, who was so ill treated by his master that his life became insupportable. Finding no remedy from what he suffered, he at length said to himself:—'It is better to die than to continue to live in such hardships and misery as I am obliged to suffer. I am determined, therefore, to run away from my master; if I am taken again, I know that I shall be punished ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... you would deceive yourself. I swear it was Eugenia, her shadowy arms were stretched between the lifted dagger and the prostrate youth; while her swift dark eye flashed on mine with brightness insupportable: such was her dreadful look, when, with her bleeding infant clinging to her breast, she sprang ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... himself compelled to allow the Arab troops incorporated into his army their barbarous tam-tam music, lest they revolt. The measured beat of the drum sustains the soldier in long marches which otherwise would be insupportable. The Marseillaise contributed as much toward the republican victories of 1793, when France was invaded, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... this meeting, and asked him whence he came, whither he was going in such haste, and why he was alone. He smiled upon me with his usual complacency, and said, 'Remember that when you were in Gascony the tempestuous climate was insupportable to you. I also am tired of it. I have quitted Gascony, never to return, and I am going to Rome.' At the conclusion of these words, he had reached the end of the garden, and, as I endeavoured to accompany ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... there, and told them a tale, and showed every sign of walkin' right out again without askin' them a thing. They couldn't even tell us to go to hell, because it looked like we didn't care what they said. It was insupportable, Willis! Characters that make trouble, Willis, do it to feel important. And we'd left them without a thing to tell us that was important enough to mention—unless they told us about the Cerberus. We had 'em baffled. They needed to say something, and that ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... great depression also, when life was nothing but a burden and she would weep without knowing why. On these occasions Nick was invaluable. He had a wonderful knack of banishing those tears, and in his cheery presence the burden was never insupportable. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... opened the door and left, but Borgert undid one of the windows and let the pure autumn air stream in. The odor of these poverty-stricken wretches was insupportable to him. Disgusting! He took from a carved cabinet on the wall a large perfume bottle, and sprinkled a good portion of its contents upon the costly rugs and the upholstery of his furniture. Then he rang the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... more—and around me reigned the silence of death; the ice whereon I stood boundlessly extended itself, and on it rested a thick, heavy fog. The sun stood blood-red on the edge of the horizon. The cold was insupportable. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... from the stresses he had suffered in that awful business of watching the regiment march out. He felt that if only he could be "in it" he could equably endure any of these things that were happening and that would get worse; if he had just to stand by and watch them his portion would be insupportable. England! Other people whom he knew could not possibly feel it in the way he felt it. His history with its opening sentence, "This England you live in is yours", had arisen out of his passionate love for all that England meant to him. In all Shakespeare there was no passage that moved him in ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... but blessed to thee, thou mayest be benefited thereby; for verily these things are not such as are ordinary and of small concernment, but do absolutely concern thee to know, and that experimentally too, if ever thou do partake of the glory of God through Jesus Christ, and so escape the terror and insupportable vengeance that will otherwise come upon thee through His justice, because of thy living and dying in thy transgressions against the Law of God. And therefore, while thou livest here below, it is thy duty, if thou wish thyself happy for the time to come, to give up thyself to the studying ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ever marshy, notwithstanding the insupportable heat, disappears beneath an inextricable mass of creepers, ferns, and tufted reeds, of a freshness and vigor of vegetation almost incredible, reaching nearly to the top of the ajoupa, which lies hid like a nest ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... be seen, the supply from our little well continued undiminished; and it proved more than enough for our wants during the whole of the drought. I even ventured to provide the distressed birds and animals with some means of quenching their insupportable thirst. A few yards from the well I constructed a large wooden trough, which I kept filled with water; and each day it was visited by the most extraordinary flocks of birds of every size and variety of plumage—from emus down to what looked ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... world devoid of others of his kind. While the girl and he had been among the ruins of Manhattan, or even on the Hudson, they had felt some contact with the past; but here, Stern's eye looked out over a world as virgin as on the primal morn. And a vast loneliness assailed him, a yearning almost insupportable. that made him clench his fists and raise them to the impassive, empty sky that mocked him with its ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... establishments which may have been designed solely with a view to enforcing a pure and pious manner of living, but are undoubtedly open to the suspicion of having been deliberately calculated to make the monastic life insupportable and so to encourage the religious houses to efface themselves by voluntary surrender—a course which was ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes |
