"Bearable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... modified their structure a lot—suppose it had been fifty times as great as it is? What would they have been like? Also, their atmosphere is very similar to ours in composition, and their temperature is bearable. It is my opinion that atmosphere and temperature have more to do with evolution than anything else, and that the mass of the ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... he had not been married before, but the same rule no doubt held good of marriage. If he held on to it, something more bearable would come of it. Then one could be out of the house a good deal, and there was the regiment. He began to see his way through marriage as a man sees his way through a gap in an awkward fence. The unfortunate part of it was that he couldn't get through the gap unless ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... watching a black wall of cloud covered with fleecy masses, which rests on the bank to our right, and seems half inclined to sweep over us with one of those refreshing pelts of which we had a succession last night. It is this habit of showers which renders the vicinity of the Line more bearable than the summer heat of other parts within the Tropics. However, the cloud sticks to the shore, so I have come down to write ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... grind!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "Say, Parry, I don't know what's got into you, but I want you to come home with me for the Easter holidays. It'll do you good. We'll be on the Hudson, you know, and we'll manage to make life bearable somehow." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... face, though; they served to make a horribly monotonous journey more bearable, and on an average he was in grief, some way or another, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... might have run away and settled down somewhere abroad.... But do you still believe that a situation like that would have proved agreeable in the long run, or even bearable? ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... perhaps. [He looks at his watch.] By the way, there is time for a drive round the town and a cup of tea at the Zoo. Quite a bearable band there: it does not play any patriotic airs. I am sorry you will not listen to any more permanent arrangement; but if ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... that case, take him as companion in his flight. If Mr. Jervoise and Harry also left the country, it would be vastly more pleasant for both his father and himself. Where they would go to, or what they would do, he had no idea, but it seemed to him that exile among strangers would be bearable, if he had his friend with him. It would not last many years, for surely the often talked-of landing could not be very much longer delayed; then they would return, share in the triumph of the Stuart cause, and resume their life at Lynnwood, and reckon with those who had brought this foul charge ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... fourth day upon the desert, and we had not sustained the smallest inconvenience; the heat, even at noon, being very bearable, and the sand not in the least degree troublesome. Doubtless, at a less favourable period of the year, both would prove difficult to bear. The wind, we were told, frequently raised the sand in clouds; and though the danger of being buried beneath ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... sweet to her, and with a rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes—there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife. This was what she had been expecting, and what she had not got. To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... composure, if the Czechs did not happen to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own. If the Irish had the same, their national dislike—so far as it exists—might be expected to become as bearable as the Germans have found the feeling of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is it directed against Englishmen, or against an English official system? The answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such questions as these favour the conclusion ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... having been too entirely occupied to leave much room for such studies. Yet somehow her song touched the doctor's heart. He forgave her entirely that walk with the curate. He went in softly, less impatient than usual with her crazy Quixotism. A child—a sick child especially—was a bearable adjunct to the picture. A woman could be forgiven for such necessary ministrations—actually, to tell the truth, could be forgiven most follies she might happen to do, when one could have her to one's self, without the intervention of such dreary ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... But he is lame, and his hair is the color of a warming-pan. Young girls are queer; still, I don't think that Cesarine—And then her mother wants to see her the wife of a notary. Alexandre Crottat can make her rich; wealth makes everything bearable, and there is no happiness that won't give way under poverty. However, I am resolved to leave my daughter mistress of herself, even if it seems ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... to speak, this important element of musical utterance has been dragged through the mud; and modern composers, in their efforts to raise it above the commonplace, have gone to the very edge of what is physically bearable in the use of tone colour and combination. While this is but natural, owing to the appropriation of some of the most poetic and suggestive tone colours for ignoble dance tunes and doggerel, it is to my mind a pity, for it ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... romance. One section of the book is a trifle too hilarious, coming perilously near to farce, but underlying the steady humour of it all is a perfectly consistent, even saddening, criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has imagination without ability; life is made bearable for him chiefly by the means of his poor little dreams and poses; he sees himself momentarily in the part of a detective, a journalist, a South African millionaire, any assumption to disguise the horrible reality of the draper's assistant; and yet there is ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... how to. Every time he pulls the lever marked 'release' he only releases hot steam. There are two kinds of steam in the bath, 'bearable' and 'scarcely bearable'; he has released them both. By this time ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... hiding from him what was going on. Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs. Strether, on his side, set himself to walk again—he had his relief in his pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of restlessness might ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... very, very tired and his head ached violently. Between the flies, the heat and the uncomfortable bed, it was not a happy home; but the kindness of the sisters and the other wounded men who came to him occasionally, went far towards making it all bearable. There were men worse than he in that marquee, men in agony and near to death, with torn, septic wounds, but sticking it out without ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... tapestry need not be a great genius. Harmony, repose, grace, and tender colouring are the qualities most valuable to such an artist. Battle-pieces, and other exciting and awful subjects, are only bearable in apartments that are used for state occasions, or for hanging corridors and anterooms. They are painful to ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... I, so much older and more experienced than you, cannot but deplore with all my heart, and I can well understand it if you have lost that joyousness in the fulfilment of your duties which alone often makes these duties bearable. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... I did not feel sure whether I had the right to speak of it as an alleviation. I meant—the only thing that makes life bearable at all is the trying to do right; and, when one has failed in doing it, to get back to the right path as soon as possible, leaving the sin ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... very well understand," now resumed M. Vigneron, "it by no means amuses me to stay here, kicking my heels, while my wife and my son go back to Paris without me. They have to go, however, for life at the hotel is no longer bearable; and besides, if I kept them with me, and the railway people won't listen to reason, I should have to pay three extra fares. And to make matters worse, my wife hasn't got much brains. I'm afraid she won't be able ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it is so little injured after having been at the bottom of the sea. You will find Macdonald a very agreeable and original person. As to spending the summer in Rome, you may make yourself quite easy, for the heat is very bearable, the thermometer varying between 75 deg. and 80 deg. in our rooms during the day, which are kept in darkness, and at night it always becomes cooler. Thank God, we are all quite well, and Somerville particularly so; he goes out during the day to amuse himself, and the girls paint in the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... humanely kind, his lot would have been bearable, but they starved him and held him down when he wished to rise; and they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which they might easily have done by the simple expedient of throwing it over the ship's side into the sea. ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Paula. "Nothing can be more truly merciful than to render life bearable to such hapless beings. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... should confirm himself in his opinion that he had been right, then would any answer be necessary? He might just acknowledge the letter, after the fashion which has come up in official life, than which silence is an insult much more bearable. But he did not wish to insult, nor to punish her further. He would willingly have withdrawn the punishment under which she was groaning could he have done so without self-abasement. Or he might write as she had done,—advocating his own cause with all his ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... him,—enough to save him from having recourse to their aid. His brother had supplied him with small sums of money, and from time to time a morsel of good luck had enabled him to gamble, not to his heart's content, but still in some manner so as to make his life bearable. But now he was back in his own country, and he could gamble not at all, and hardly even see those old companions with whom he had lived. It was not only for the card-tables that he sighed, but for the companions ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... clearly visible and which look fascinatingly like my beloved Sierra del Cristal, I turned my face to the wall of Mungo, and continued the ascent. The sun, which was blazing, was reflected back from the rocks in scorching rays. But it was more bearable now, because its heat was tempered by a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Sabbath stands at the head of twelve tractates on festivals. Another tractate treats of "commixtures," which are intended to make the Sabbath laws more bearable. The Jerusalem Talmud devotes 64 folio columns, and the Babylon Talmud 156 double folio pages, to the serious discussion of the most minute and senseless regulations. It would be difficult to understand how any persons but maniacs or idiots could have concocted ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... especially as represented by her Excellency Marie-Sophie-Hedwige- Zenaide-Honorine-Pia Rubomirska, Dowager Princess Conti. Ever afterwards she associated purple velvet and bare feet with the idea of financial catastrophe, knowing in her heart that even ruin would seem bearable if it could bring her such magnificent indifference to the details of ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... shore, which was a few days after; but they kept telling me that he was better and better, and that I should soon see him, but that it disturbed him to talk with any one. Oh, what a grief it was, when I learned that I had lost my old ship-mate, that had made an irksome situation so bearable by his kind assiduities; and to think that he was gone, and I could never repay ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in this short study to analyze the specific forms of retardation which the Church exhibited to all of these branches of learning, whose only endeavor it was to search for the truth, to state the facts, and to alleviate and make more bearable man's sojourn on this earth. However, a few of the many instances of retardation on the part of the Church will be ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... elder, his sponsor, his protector, with every right to direct him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility and headstrong folly. If the fellow had been old, weak, or in any way inferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, a sage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindly reasonable authority to which only a fool could fail to attend, and which for that very reason ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some submission? The mistake of rabid theorists lies in their supposition that the assertion of superiority by one person necessarily inflicts wrong on another, whereas it is only the mastery obtained by certain men over others that makes the life of the civilized human creature bearable. The very servant who is insolent while performing his duty only dares to exhibit rudeness because he is sure of protection by law. All men are equal before the law. Yes—but how was the recognition of equality enforced? Simply by the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... too pessimistic, Alan, if I were you," the girl was saying. "Mrs. Lancaster, given her own way and plenty of money, may be quite bearable, if not charming, to live with, and Doris is evidently bent ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... joy mingled with the cold kindness of her cousins and their sharp reproaches, lasted three months. Sylvie's refusal to let her go to her little friends, backed by the necessity of beginning her education, ended the first phase of her life at Provins, the only period when that life was bearable to her. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... wanted for every regiment in the service. Her eyes light upon one wired in space, labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage," where, while medical necessaries are housed elsewhere, are "the dainties, the special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds," which are to make life bearable to the wounded men, and she stops to think how the shade of Florence Nightingale would have ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... annoying flies. Only one there was who actively responded to the outrage at Homestead,—Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable. Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act, his attempt on the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... successfully treated cases of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 deg. C.).—Allg. med. cent. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... condition, and his resolve to change it. I do not know now what I said, but it appeared to me that he ought not to change it, and that change would be for him most perilous. I thought that with a little care life might become at least bearable with his wife; that by treating her not so much as if she were criminal, but as if she were diseased, hatred might pass into pity, and pity into merciful tenderness to her, and that they might dwell together upon terms not harder than those upon which many persons who have made mistakes in youth ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... and hold by the instincts, clearly manifested in childhood, but clouded and overwhelmed in our later struggles with the world. The essential thing is the cultivation of our 'moral being,' the careful preservation and assimilation of the stern sense of duty, which alone makes life bearable and gives a meaning ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... attempted to carry either wine or spirits, as a beverage, he would require a whole troop of followers for nothing else. Our greatest luxury in travelling was tea or coffee. We never once carried sugar enough to last a journey, but coffee is always good, while the sugarless tea is only bearable, because of the unbearable gnawing feeling of want and sinking which ensues if we begin to travel in the mornings without something warm in the stomach. Our drink generally was water, and if cool, nothing can equal it in a hot climate. We usually ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... some relief had arrived to reduce the parental anxiety to bearable proportions. A letter, dropped from nowhere, bearing the metropolitan postmark, came to the King's hands. It gave only the barest, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... other world, but is only gradually accustomed to the altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity of light bearable ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... other case. If we have hearts full of light, and souls at rest in Christ, and the wealth and blessedness of a tranquil gladness lying there, and filling our being; work will be easy, endurance will be easy, sorrow will be bearable, trials will not be so very hard, and above all temptations we shall be lifted, and set upon a rock. If the soul is full, and full of joy, what side of it will be exposed to the assault of any temptation? If the appeal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sun. One cause of this may be, that distance lends enchantment to the view, and that the history of the past, like a landscape travelled over, loses in review all the rugged and wearisome annoyances that rendered it scarcely bearable in the journey. But it is hardly worth while to speculate upon the causes of an absurdity which a little candid retrospection will do more to dissipate than whole folios of philosophy. We can easily understand a man who sighs that he was not born ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... is the only time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively. Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it the welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour that is bearable by its freedom from pain and annoyance with a full consciousness of its value. We shall hardly be able to do this if we make a wry face over the failure of our hopes in the past or over our anxiety for the future. It is the height of folly ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... conviction into the heart that one is not alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's instruction in the novitiate seems childish, yet why is it more childish than a hundred other things? Only because one is not accustomed to look at life from the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... creation. No one seemed to be planning anything beyond that Saturday afternoon. The general notion seemed to be that if The Towers won, the rapture of that victory would make any trial thereafter bearable; and if The Towers lost—well, torture and death ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... of adapting himself to the conditions of his home in New York were well-nigh dissipated. But a certain natural timidity, joined with the still complete uncertainty he felt as to what his true course should be, made him dissemble his disquiet so long as it was bearable. After a month or two, by a mutual agreement between his brothers and himself which exonerated him from much of the manual labor which they still shared with the men in their employment, he devoted himself to an occupation more accordant ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... own hovels rather than in the Poorhouse. Their bedding consisted of dirty straw, in which they were laid in rows on the floor; even as many as six persons being crowded under one rug; and we did not see a blanket at all. The rooms were hardly bearable for filth. The living and the dying were stretched side by side beneath the same miserable covering! No wonder that disease and pestilence were filling the infirmary, and that the pale haggard countenances ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... a man of the first ability as a layer-down of definitions, as the Stoics think. But they are all pretty much alike: they give us only common notions, some one way, and some another). But what is Chrysippus's definition? Fortitude, says he, is the knowledge of all things that are bearable, or an affection of the mind which bears and supports everything in obedience to the chief law of reason without fear. Now, though we should attack these men in the same manner as Carneades used to do, I fear they are the only real philosophers; for which of these definitions is there ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... she was not so badly married. Her husband was as good as any other man. He had become quite bearable. Of all that she read in the ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences, that of their married life was the most vague. She found a few isolated traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting and fastidious ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... often struck down by the heat, and sigh with all their hearts for the bracing frosts of higher latitudes. But those who have the means of bringing to bear on their comforts the innumerable contrivances which the ingenuity of wealth has devised in the East, indeed, make its climate not only bearable, but one of the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... have come, of course, because of Jon; or, if not, at least to get something out of her. And June felt just then that to assist somebody was the only bearable thing. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Valley was about the limit of discomfort; only those who have been there at that season can have any idea of what it is like. If only our turn had been in the winter, when according to all accounts the weather is bearable! Needless to say that as much work as possible was done in the early morning and evening, but even this was extremely trying for all. Fortunately, water was available from a small stream just outside ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... out-lived his soldier-contemporaries, his children, his power to ride to hounds, his pretty taste in wine, his fencing, dancing, flirting, and all that had made life bearable—everything, as he said, but his gout and his liver (and, it may be added, except his ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... that her name was Sarah Bragley, that she was a widow, and that she had no kith or kin in the world as far as she knew. These facts redoubled the pity of the girls, and they mentally resolved that as long as they were at Lakeview Hall they would do all they could to make life more bearable for the frail and forlorn woman who had been brought into their lives in a way so ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... way under his troubles if it had not been for this friendship; but life became bearable when he found some one to whom he could pour out his heart. The first time that he breathed a word of his difficulties, the good German had advised him to live as he himself did, and eat bread and cheese at home sooner than dine ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a great relief to burst into tears, or be disagreeable to some one. I don't know why, but I had the most homesick longing to see Mr. van Buren. It seemed as if, had he come with us, everything would have been right, or at least bearable. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... were spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect everybody else to have them, but his theory of life exacted that they should be held the chief virtues. He was so conscious of their value that he ignored all those minor qualities in himself which rendered him not only bearable but even lovable; he was not aware of having any sort of foibles, so that any error of conduct in himself surprised him even more than it pained him. It was not easy to recognize it; but when he once saw it, he was not only willing but ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... was the 'all pervadingness,' as she called it in her own mind, of Aunt Jane that chiefly worried her, the way that the little lady knew everything that was done, and everything that was touched in the house; but as long as Valetta took refuge with herself, and grumbled to her, it was bearable. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... such. I could not consent, for, if we should have been estranged from Austria, we should necessarily have fallen into a dependence on Russia, unless we were satisfied with standing entirely alone in Europe. Would such a dependence have been bearable? Formerly I had believed it might be, when I had said to myself: "We have no conflicting interests at all. There is no reason why Russia should ever cancel our friendship." At least I had never contradicted my Russian colleagues when they expounded such theories to me. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... is first banished to the island of Gyarus, but when the Prince pleads for him, and he is backed by the intercession of a Vestal Virgin of sanctity,—corresponding to a Christian nun or abbess of exemplary piety,—Silanus is removed to the more bearable place of exile, the island of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... smash-up of the house of Elliott, Mr. Burleson. If you feel a bit friendly towards that house, you will advise me how I may sell 'The Witch.' I don't mind telling you why. My father has simply got to go to some place where rheumatism can be helped—be made bearable. I know that I could easily dispose of the mare if I were in a civilized region; even Grier offered half her value. If you know of any people who care for that sort of horse, I'll be delighted to enter ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... youth felt he had good reason to be in the dumps this afternoon. There was nothing desirable in this place—everything undesirable—except Necia. Her presence in Flambeau went far towards making his humdrum existence bearable, but of late he had found himself dwelling with growing seriousness on the unhappy circumstances of her birth, and had almost made up his mind that it would be wise not to see her any more. The tempting vision of her in the ball-dress remained vividly in his ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... placed in the room formerly occupied by the children. This pleased him; the ghosts of Mabel and Vi were more bearable than the other ghosts. He looked in to see that all he required had been provided, and then he walked over the premises outside, old recollections smiting him like whips at every turn. He went into the stable and ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... such little secrets, to that which your vulgar looker-on feels who comes but to eat the ices, and stare at the ladies' dresses and beauty! There are two frames of mind under which London society is bearable to a man—to be an actor in one of those sentimental performances above hinted at; or to be a spectator and watch it. But as for the mere dessus de cartes—would not an arm-chair and the dullest of books be better ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... playing of that part, of which every sound sleep is a rehearsal. The thought of it is mournful to the enjoying soul, but not terrific; and even the mournfulness ceases in the realization. He uttered a piece of cruel madness who said, "Hell is more bearable than nothingness." Is it worse to have nothing than it is to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... make some show of having applied his mind in a confused and blundering way, without being cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought school much more bearable under this modification of circumstances; and he went on contentedly enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education was ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... town. Nan missed him every minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life—which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable—and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... if a life With large results so little rife, Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth, Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream that falls incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... hut the old squaw sits by her hunter lord, and puffs at the corn-cob sweetness, and how by lonely ways the traveler rests and thinks of home, and in the blue smoke greets once more the faces of the loved, perhaps forever gone. He sees how the Esquimaux, with his hollow Walrus-tooth, makes bearable the stifling squalor of his den; or, sterner and graver still, some item of historic lore mingles rudely with his dreams, and elbows sharply the airy spirits of his smoke-engendered thoughts. Softly tremble in the delicate blue mist and the azure ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... impatience of a long-delayed start, we did not think of the hardships of the future, and in fair weather, when the stay on deck in the brisk breeze was extremely pleasant, as on that first morning, existence on board seemed very bearable; but when it rained, and it rained very often and very hard, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... closely watched by the Bourbonists, who dreaded danger from every side except the real point, and who preferred trying to hunt the Bonapartists from place to place, instead of making their life bearable by carrying out the engagements ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tell you that we are likely to find as the cause of your discomfort something nearly as precious as gold, it may be a trifle more bearable." ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... a coward concerning them. The pot-hunter held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the flooded prairie the willow-trees ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... my friend Brunow!" he exclaimed. "Sir, I am delighted to meet you. And Brunow is here again? What news! And do you stay long? Oh, once again life will be bearable. In this dull hole, sir, I pledge you my most sacred word of honor, a man has but one contemplation; his thoughts are all towards suicide. Figure for yourself the life we lead here: the commandant a bachelor of sixty, and "—he lowered his voice and bent laughingly ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... holiday at Easter, from the Thursday night to Monday night, and I have all but got her to promise that she'll come over here. Wouldn't it be fun to let her see the Black Country? You remember her talk about it. I could get her a room, and if it's at all bearable weather, we would all have a day somewhere. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... Mr. Huntley, and his opinion requested: more as a form of courtesy than anything else, for Hamish had made up his mind upon the point. A thoroughly affectionate and dutiful son was Hamish Channing; and he believed that the tidings could be rendered more bearable to his father and mother by a messenger, than by any other mode of communication. The excuse that Constance and Arthur had, throughout, found for Hamish in their hearts was, that he had taken the bank-note out of latent affection to Mr. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... responsible to a responsible functionary. To be responsible to every fanatical ignoramus who chooses to prosecute him for exhibiting a cast of the Hermes of Praxiteles in his vestibule, or giving a performance of Measure for Measure, is mere slavery. It is made bearable at present by the protection of the Lord Chamberlain's certificate. But when that is no longer available, the common informer must be disarmed if the manager is to ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... while without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our first interview, I making a show of arranging papers on my desk. At length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, I turned ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... hand when treating the versical portion, which may represent a total of ten thousand lines, I have not always bound myself by the metrical bonds of the Arabic, which are artificial in the extreme, and which in English can be made bearable only by a tour de force. I allude especially to the monorhyme, Rim continuat or tirade monorime, whose monotonous simplicity was preferred by the Troubadours for threnodies. It may serve well for three or four couplets but, when it extends, as in the Ghazal-cannon, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... sigh of relief. If Todd was with him life would still be made bearable for his uncle. Perhaps, after all, a winter with Tom Coston was the wisest thing he ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is—until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I must do as he did—invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well, that was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... There is a want of heart about him, a want of fixed principles—a degree of profligacy, of selfishness, of fickleness, caprice and ill-temper, and an excess of vanity, which all his courtly address and savoir faire cannot hide. What would be insufferable in another, is in him bearable, and even interesting and amusing: such is the charm of manner. But all this cannot last: and I should not be surprised to see Frattino, a few years hence, emerge from his foreign frippery, throw aside his libertine folly, assume ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... sometimes very manifest advances, such as any medical man would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now, when a man is positively suffering discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling, he is no proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor can appreciate. Tooth-ache extorts more groans ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... few occasions on which such talks had ended, by reason, truly, of some mere wanton freak, in unconditional release.—Preposterous indeed that the only acts of his life hitherto viewed with self-contempt, were beginning to seem the only ones bearable ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... had led her alone beside this resting-place: that was chance, or it was God. But now it seemed that otherwise it would henceforward not have been bearable. For with this first near touch of death, there had come, strangely hand in hand, her first vision of the Internal. The look of this spirit was not toward time, and over the body of this death there had descended the robe of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... grows wild," he added slowly. "It peps them up. It makes the monotony and the weariness bearable. And then, suddenly, they break. They hate the machines and the city and everything they ever knew or did. It's a sort of delayed-action psychosis which goes off with a bang. Some of them go amuck in the city, using their belt-weapons until they're killed. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... purser with a supply of snuff-boxes. One little comfort was allowed, namely, cocoa for breakfast. But the chief solace was rum, cheap, new, and fiery, from the West Indies. This and the rope-end formed the nexus of the crew. As for the pay, from which alone the sailor could make his lot bearable, it had not been increased since the reign of Charles II. Thanks to the Duke of York, that of the army had been raised from 8 1/4d. to 1s. a day, though not in proportion to the cost of living, the net gain being only 2d. a day. The sailor alone was forgotten, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... let us drink his health. Do you know Lady Julia Knighton?" asked Vivian of his neighbour. "This Hall is bearable to dine in; but I once breakfasted here, and I never shall forget the ludicrous effect produced by the sun through the oriel window. Such complexions! Every one looked like a prize-fighter ten days after a battle. After all, painted glass is a bore; I wish the Marquess would have it knocked ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... him to-day, with his unsuccessful romance," continued Lavretsky. "To be young and to want knowledge—that is bearable. But to have grown old and to fail in strength—that is indeed heavy. And the worst of it is, that one doesn't know when one's strength has failed. To an old man such blows are hard to bear. Take care! ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... thanks for the infinitely gracious and affectionate way with which you and the Prince have treated me during my stay in London.[25] It was a melancholy time, that of my arrival. By the sympathetic view which you took of my situation, most gracious Cousin, it became not only bearable, but even transformed into one that became proportionately honourable and dignified. This graciousness of yours has undoubtedly contributed towards the change of opinion which has resulted in my favour, and so I owe to you, to the Prince, and to your ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... never shown the slightest intention of fulfilling since the first month I was with you. You have never taken me to see a patient, you have never given me any instruction or advice whatever. Beside this, you must know that your wife treats me in a manner that is no longer bearable. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... ached, but afterwards I got used to the jolting and felt no more aches. Only the lack of sleep, the continual worry over the luggage, the jolting and the fasting brought on spitting of blood when I coughed, and this depressed my spirits, which were none too grand before. For the first few days it was bearable but then a cold wind began to blow, the windows of heaven were opened, the rivers flooded the meadows and roads, I was continually having to change my chaise for a boat. You'll read of my struggles with the floods and the mud in the article I enclose. I did not mention in it that ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... have the pleasure of hearing you shot first," retorted Raffles, through his teeth, "and that alone will make them bearable. Come on, Bunny, let's drive the swine along and get ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. And Byron's style is "jolter-headed jargon;" His verse is "only bearable in prose." So living poets write of those that ARE gone, And o'er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows; And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began, By owning you ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... actors, feeling the repulsiveness of the passage, have made it. It must occur, too, on the open stage. And there is not, I think, a sufficiently overwhelming tragic feeling in the passage to make it bearable. But in the other two scenes the case is different. There, it seems to me, if we fully imagine the inward tragedy in the souls of the persons as we read, the more obvious and almost physical sensations of pain or horror do not ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... can he laugh you out of believing in death? When your little child dies, and you look at the loving eyes closing for the last time, what comfort has your doubting friend to give you? Not a word. He leaves you alone with your dead, and he has robbed you of the only hope which makes death bearable—the resurrection unto eternal life. You come to your own dying bed; is there one of these doubting, scoffing faith-destroying friends who can bring peace or calm to your last hours? Will it be any comfort to you to hear them say that "there is nothing new, nothing true, and that ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... fine words, but when it comes to be earnest, you want to take to your heels. Why are you standing loitering there?" she continued. "Step out. No one will take the bundle off again." As long as he walked on level ground, it was still bearable, but when they came to the hill and had to climb, and the stones rolled down under his feet as if they were alive, it was beyond his strength. The drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and ran, hot and cold, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... cook's shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. 'I puff the prostitute away,' " says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his pipe. "There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable; no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and learning ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man: and generally speaking we see that neither can men put up with chaste wives, nor wives with loving husbands, nor friends with one another, if they be ill-tempered to boot. So neither marriage nor friendship is bearable with anger, though without anger even drunkenness is a small matter. For the wand of Dionysus punishes sufficiently the drunken man, but if anger be added it turns wine from being the dispeller of care and inspirer of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty. She had never learned to live with her own thoughts, and to be confronted with them through such hours of lucid misery made the confused wretchedness of her previous vigil seem easily bearable. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... character is perhaps sufficiently described in this essay and in "Dream-Children." He was a well-to-do official in the South-Sea House, succeeding John Tipp as accountant. Crabb Robinson found him too bluff and noisy to be bearable; and he once knocked Hazlitt down in a dispute about painting. He died on October 26, 1821, to his brother's great grief, leaving Charles everything. He married late in life a Mrs. Dowden. Probably she ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... with Lafe in the shop. In hours like these they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The quietude of these precious Sabbath moments made the week, with its arduous tasks, bearable ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... that she seized her head in both hands as if to save it from being torn off her shoulders. "The drop given was fourteen feet." No! that must never be. She could not stand that. The thought of it even was not bearable. She could not stand thinking of it. Therefore Mrs Verloc formed the resolution to go at once and throw herself into the river off one of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... equally disquieting. To rule this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said in her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can manage while you're away—especially if she ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... so much in degree that it makes an effect of endless variety. Yet it is all one same joy, it is the joy of angels reduced to such degree as makes it bearable to flesh: the soul knows that it is the joy of angels that she is receiving the first time that she has it given to her: immediately on receipt of this joy she comprehends the mode of heavenly living; she knows it is but the outer edge that ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... a ray of light, however feeble, in the hold, he thought his condition would have been more bearable, for then he could have faced the lifeless clay and looked at it; but to know that it was there, within a foot of him, without his being able to see it, or to form any idea of what it was like, made the case terrible indeed. Of course he drew back from it as far as the little ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... du monde celui de la musique est le plus desagreable!" was my ever-recurring thought. Happily, this agony did not last long, and was replaced by the choral singing of Brahmans and nautches, which was very original, but perfectly bearable. The wedding was a rich one, and so the "vestals" appeared in state. A moment of silence, of restrained whispering, and one of them, a tall, handsome girl with eyes literally filling half her forehead, began approaching one guest after the other in perfect silence, and rubbing their faces with ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... blackguards here are degenerate, the topping gentry stockbrokers; the passengers too many to insure your quiet, or let you go about whistling or gaping,—too few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping, thickest winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's books at one's fire by candle, one is soothed into an oblivion that one is not in the country; but with the light the green fields return, till I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into St. Giles's. Oh, let no native Londoner ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... tedious sketch of the history of Israel, with which they were presumably as well acquainted as he, and then reviled them in the most insulting terms as "stiffnecked and uncircumcized." Finally, after boring and annoying them to the utmost bearable extremity, he looked up and declared that he saw the heavens open, and Christ standing on the right hand of God. This was too much: they threw him out of the city and stoned him to death. It was a severe way of ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... are both to be rescued from your misery, and when I am to have the exquisite satisfaction of having my house completely turned upside down for your mutual benefit," said Esther. "I trust it will be as soon as possible, as we cannot rationally expect that either of you will be bearable until it is all over, and you find yourselves ordinary mortals again. Come now, out with it. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... live!—and if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream which falls incessantly, The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... console himself. Society, the crudest organization on earth, laughed to itself about him. He had known how to live before his marriage; now that the marriage had proved a failure, he would still know how to make life bearable. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... unable to raise any cabal against Janice and Amy, but quite the contrary, made the situation only a degree more bearable for the two friends. Although the other girls did not join Stella Latham in mourning the poor girl who lived in Mullen Lane, the latter felt deeply the fact that she was considered different from ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... being, solitary and sometimes morose. I would come and sit staring at the ocean, meditating on tilings in general, but chiefly on things connected with cripples, asking myself, as now, whether life would be bearable ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... his cards well and transformed himself from an encumbrance into a son with wealth at his command, the tragedy which she saw looming in front of her might have been avoided or at the worst whittled down to easily bearable proportions. With money behind one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly to the simple question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not have ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... when I came, at a far later date, to read The Wild Duck, memories of the embarrassing household of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, with his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every compromise that makes life bearable. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the other, the Persian imperial practice mitigated its bad effects far more than the Assyrian had done. Free from the Semitic tradition of annual raiding, the Persians reduced the obligation of military service to a bearable burden and avoided continual provocation of frontier neighbours. Free likewise from Semitic supermonotheistic ideas, they did not seek to impose their creed. Seeing that the Persian Empire was extensive, decentralized and provided with imperfect means of communication, it could subsist only by ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... to live contentedly amongst such vulgar surroundings, and still show their beaming yellow faces wherever they have a chance. It was difficult in Albert Street to feel that spring and summer meant anything else than heat and dust and discomfort. It was more bearable in the winter, Iris Graham thought; but when the warm bright weather came it was strange to remember that somewhere it was pleasant and beautiful—that there were flowers blooming, and birds singing from ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... the bitterness of life, is the sense of wrong, the want of intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand life, life becomes bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you understand it, everything changes. When you realise its meaning, its value, you can put up with the difficulties. And our work with regard to those around us is to bring that knowledge, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... occasion to test the comfort of this bed in its primitive state, for our servants had brought with them everything that could render our quarters bearable if there were any foundation ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... The heat was perfectly bearable. Involuntarily I began to think of its heat when the lava thrown out by Snfell was boiling and working through this now silent road. I imagined the torrents of fire hurled back at every angle in the gallery, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... to make more bearable the pain of those gripping claws; but the hurt was easier to bear when he saw that the girl was more carefully treated. She was close ahead as his captors hustled him from this room into others and yet others, all ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... himself, but the kind of thing. I wish he would cease his explanations—I didn't want to hear them. I have never wanted to know how things are worked; preferring to take the world at its face value. Callan's revelations had been bearable, because of the farcical pompousness of his manner. But this was different, it had the stamp of truth, perhaps because it was a little dirty. I didn't want to hear that the Foreign Minister was ever so remotely mixed up in this business. He was only a symbol to me, ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... interest you to know that Nansen used every available modern invention to help make his voyage successful and bearable. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... not imagine that often words are the same as actions He does not bear ill-will to those whom he persecutes He is not intelligent enough to doubt He studied until the last moment Her husband had become quite bearable His habit of pleasing had prolonged his youth I feel in them (churches) the grandeur of nothingness I gave myself to him because he loved me I haven't a taste, I have tastes It was too late: she did not wish to win Knew that life is not worth so much anxiety nor so much hope ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... unimportant or artificial institution. Few of the current analyses of strikes or labor violence make use of the basic standards of human desire and intention which control these phenomena. A strike and its demands are usually praised as being law-abiding, or economically bearable, or are condemned as being unlawful, or confiscatory. These four attributes of a strike are important only as incidental consequences. The habit of Americans thus to measure up social problems to the current, temporary, and more or less accidental scheme ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Just here it is bearable, because we are near the governmental headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur—not the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the 'cracker' or the mountaineer dialect occurs naturally in an American story, it often gives telling effects of local color and of shading. But the negro or 'cracker' story per se can be made bearable only by the pen of a master; and even then it may be very doubtful if that same pen had not proved keener in portraiture, more just to human nature in the main, had the negro or the 'cracker' been the mere episode, acting ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... conflict with the Demon, spirit against spirit.... The contact with the Demon is then perceived on the surface of the soul, under the form of a burn at once spiritual and sensible.... If the soul hold good in its union with God, if it be strong, the pain, however sharp, is bearable; but if the soul commit any slight imperfection, even inwardly, the Demon makes just so much way, and carries his horrible burning more forward, until by generous acts the soul can repulse ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... but no words would come; explanations were beyond her powers, and she left the room, shutting the door behind her. A passion of tears would have made the situation bearable, but when you are the lady of the house and unexpected company is coming to tea, and you have but one servant, you have to deny yourself ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... held, equipped with everything needed and wanted to turn them into independent giant fortresses, with a population not too dissatisfied with its lot. When Earth government didn't count the expense, life could be made considerably better than bearable almost anywhere. ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... little of this tendency to mourn with those who mourn in all mankind. It is not difficult to bear another's woe—and then there is always a grain of mitigation, even in the sorrow of the afflicted, that makes their tribulation bearable. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... and explained our lack of tents and almost every other thing the white man generally travels with as due to haste. Heaven only knew what lies Kazimoto told those credulous folk, to the perfectly worthy end of making our lot bearable, but we were fed after a fashion, and lodged after a worse one all along our road. And who should send in reports about us—and to whom? Obviously white men with a prisoner, marching in such a hurry ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... mind that he would be very attentive to her, no matter how displeasing and uninteresting she might be: it was sure to be a time of trial to his old friend, and he would help all he could to make the visit as bearable as possible. Everybody knew of the niece's existence who had known the Prince family at all, and though Miss Prince had never mentioned the unhappy fact until the day or two before her guest was expected, her young cavalier had behaved with most excellent ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett |
