"Supportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at quite a supportable degree. With an involuntary shudder, I reflected on what the heat must have been when the volcano of Sneffels was pouring its smoke, flames, and streams of boiling lava—all of which must have come up by the road we were now following. I could imagine the torrents of hot seething stone darting ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... grow peevish, and discontented, suspicious of those set over them, and of one another; and the kindest treatment, and most careful attention to every circumstance that can render their situation supportable, are therefore required, to prevent their being very unhappy. And nothing surely can contribute more powerfully to soothe the minds of persons in such unfortunate and hopeless circumstances, than to find themselves under the care and protection of persons of gentle manners;—humane dispositions;—and ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... life, in this his eclipsed state, is one of constraint, anxiety, continual liability; but after the first months are well over, it begins to be more supportable than we should think. He is fixed to the little Town; cannot be absent any night, without leave from the Commandant; which, however, and the various similar restrictions, are more formal than real. An amiable Crown-Prince, no soul in Custrin but would run by night or by day to serve him. He drives ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour. A prig is a tedious individual who, having made ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... the gruesome is so unfortunate that unless his hero's future fate be already irrevocably fixed in manuscript one would like to remind the author that essays in this kind are the easiest form of all literary effort and the least supportable. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... itself, yet still must have been a great addition to the other. Now to these let us add some acute pains of body, the loss of his fortune, blindness, banishment; supposing, then, each separate misfortune to occasion a separate additional grief, the whole would be too great to be supportable. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of a duck in a farmyard drain becomes in a wonderful way supportable when you tackle it as cheerfully as that. It comes to the Australian as a shock, at the first introduction—the Manning River country after the Manning River flood has subsided is, as a New South Welshman suggested, the nearest imitation that he has ever seen. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Charlotte for my wife, I daresay I should grow tired of my happiness in a week or two, and go out some night to look for a place where I could play billiards and drink beer. Is there any woman upon this earth who could render my existence supportable ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the top of the heads of the party in the boats. Still their spirits did not flag. Jack and Adair, indeed, had been pretty well seasoned to the heat of the coast of Africa, where, if not greater, it was often far less supportable. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... comb. The old women, and the very poor, dress in the same manner, save that their habiliments are more coarse and the colours less in harmony. Amongst them misery appears beneath the most revolting aspect; whilst the poorest Gitano preserves a certain deportment which would make his aspect supportable, if his unquiet and ferocious glance did ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... not deprive me of the only hope that can make life supportable. I must be free, or I must die. Your commander loves gold above all things. Surely I can purchase my liberty from him at some price, and however unreasonable it may be, I am willing to satisfy his demand. Tell me, I entreat of you, what sum ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... the most detrimental all round. Never confess! Never, never! An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely. And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely. The only thing which makes it supportable for a while is curiosity. You smile? Ah, but it is so, or else people would be sent to the rightabout at the second sentence. How many sympathetic souls can you reckon on in the world? One in ten, one in a hundred—in a thousand—in ten thousand? Ah! What a sell these confessions are! What ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... trick grows into habit, and habit is a second nature. A secret idea of fame makes his forbearance of happiness supportable to him: for he has now the self-satisfaction of considering himself raised to that highest pinnacle of fashionable refinement which is built upon apathy and scorn, and from which, proclaiming himself superior to all possibility ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... decently competent and peaceful weeks for close upon two years; happy in a big brown moor behind him, and an incomparable burn by his side; happy, above all, in some work—for at last I am at work with that appetite and confidence that alone makes work supportable. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said to be very good; but when only half-way, the rain came down in such torrents that we were glad to return to the inn for shelter. For two hours the downpour lasted, but it cooled the air and rendered the return journey a little more supportable; and when we arrived at the house, we also arrived at the decision that never again to a picnic, as far as we were concerned, should thinness and rotundity ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... purchasing of each other ten millions' sterling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the 'science' of the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... had an attack of gout, in consequence of working at the boats instead of going out. He bore it with his usual philosophy—trying to read or write whenever the pain was supportable. It happened during the Easter vacation, and Stephen used to sit up late into the night to keep his ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... had begun to believe, that the life of pleasure had cares of its own, hardly less supportable than those which crushed the poor to the very earth? Was the daily round of abundance, of lights and music and wine and women—was it but the basest of shams, scarce deceiving those who practised it? His brief experience seemed to answer ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... witticisms, which abruptly destroy the pathetic. That he abounds with images of too florid a kind; affected turns; conceits and frivolous thoughts; which, far from being adapted to his Jerusalem, could hardly be supportable in his 'Aminta.' So that all this, opposed to the gravity, the sobriety, the majesty of Virgil, what is it but tinsel ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mamma, to find you have such courage; I exhort you to redouble it! All ends in this world; so we may hope this accursed War will not be the only thing eternal there. Since death has trussed up a certain CATIN of the Hyperborean Countries, our situation has advantageously changed, and becomes more supportable than it was. We must hope that some other events [favor of the new Czar mainly] will happen; by which we may profit to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... so often urged as an additional cause for aggravating the sense of annoyance experienced by those wedded but unsuited to each other, is, in my opinion, one of the strongest motives for using every endeavour to render the union supportable, if not agreeable. If a dwelling known to be unalienable has some defect which makes it unsuited to the taste of its owner, he either ameliorates it, or, if that be impracticable, he adopts the resolution ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner |
