"Insupportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... besides the pear-oil, 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 ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... youth was made to bear, As if a punishment of after-life Were fall'n upon man here, so new it is To flesh and blood, so strange, so insupportable." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... where some rusty chains were brought out, the rings of which were thrust over his ankles: they proved much too small, and the rust prevented the bars from turning in the sockets, so that the pain was insupportable. He was rudely carried and thrown into the carriage, and thus arrived in an almost insensible condition ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Thus the day wore on—luncheon and dinner occupying a good deal of time, for, in spite of the heat, the midshipmen retained their appetites. The heat increased as the sun rose. If it was hot on deck it was hotter still in the cabin, which the stifling air and the cockroaches rendered almost insupportable. Towards evening they came in sight of the curious island of Saba, having the appearance of a high, barren, conical-shaped rock rising directly out of the ocean. As they got nearer, a few huts were seen at ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... even when an apparent necessity of their discussion arrives in the course of life. The present reserve between Hermione and Vere rendered even the idea of any plain speaking about the revelation of Peppina quite insupportable to the mother. She could only pretend to ignore that it had ever been made. And this she did. But now that she knew of it she felt very acutely the difference it had made in Vere. That difference was owing to her own impulsive ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... work; but the coolies did it much better than horses could have done. Once we came to a travelling bungalow, and stopped a few minutes to tie up some of our broken springs. After this we were very tired, and the last thirteen miles seemed almost insupportable. At last we entered the verdure of Mahabaleshwar at the summit, 4,780 feet above sea-level but the inaccessibility of the place is compensated for by its interest when you arrive there, just as Palmyra ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... small eyes were shining with unusual brilliancy. He certainly felt deeply the loss of his money; but the idea that he had been swindled for the benefit of some clever rascal was absolutely insupportable to him. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Almira's roof, life at home became insupportable. Mrs. Quimby said it was Almira herself, not the life. Clash followed clash; there came sneers, tears, squabbles, rows, and at last practical banishment. Old Quimby could stand it no longer. Almira went to live with her prospective mother-in-law, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... almost the same by Valerie. It is undoubtedly this quality of perfect ease and unconscious insolence which for some unaccountable reason is attractive in Englishmen. If it were assumed it would be insupportable impertinence, but as you know, Mamma, it is not in the least. They are perfectly unconscious of their behaviour; it is just that there is one woman they want to speak to in a room, so that is all they ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... I wonder where that comes from. I found it once in Charron, quoted without reference, and it has often been in my mind—a dreary truth, well worded. At least, it was a truth for me during many a long year. Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion; in cases numberless, this it must be that saves from suicide. For some there is great relief in talking about their miseries, but such gossips lack the profound solace of misery nursed in silent brooding. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... 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 put forth proposals ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... behind me. I took a few strides 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
... a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to which they ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. But who supports things as they are? Things as they are have become insupportable. If you make any of the constitutional changes that have been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as Englishmen now know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem it ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... they are set a going by some object in view, or, though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul, by its impetuosity, to such violent, eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. Such were these earnest wishings that but one man had been saved. I believe I repeated the words, "O that it had been but one!" a thousand times; and my desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words my hands would clinch together, and my fingers would press the palms of my ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... equal fury. The laity made many complaints against the two frequent practice of land being left to the church without a licence from the state, which increased the power of the clergy, already too great, and rendered their insolence insupportable. In consequence of this, the state made several injunctions against lay-persons disposing their lands in that manner. Another cause of their quarrel was, that the Venetians had sent to Rome, several articles of complaint against two priests, the abbot of Nervesa, and a canon of Vicenza, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... of making insupportable bores most interesting. This was an art in which the delicate Miss Austen excelled, too; but Dickens's methods compared to hers are like those of a scene painter when compared to those of an etcher in colours. There ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... are more at our ease," said the sportsman, as the balloon ascended; "the reflection of the sun on those red sands was getting to be insupportable." ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... I do not,' replied Venetia, with firmness. 'I can easily conceive that the mention of my father may for various reasons be insupportable to my mother; it is enough for me that I am convinced such is the case: my lips are sealed to her for ever upon the subject; but I cannot recognise the necessity of this constraint to others. For a long time I was kept in ignorance whether I had ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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, and whither the family ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Rhoby Harris, in her madness, gave voice to dreams and imaginings of the most hideous sort. At times her screams became insupportable, and for long periods she would utter shrieking horrors which necessitated her son's temporary residence with his cousin, Peleg Harris, in Presbyterian Lane near the new college building. The boy would seem to improve after these visits, and had Mercy ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... completely surrounded by lofty hills, in such wise that the direct rays of the sun beat upon it at midday, while as the sun goes down its rays are reflected from the mountains, in front, behind, and all around, rendering the place insupportable. The rays of the sun are most fierce when they are reflected, rather than direct, nor are they themselves pernicious, as may be observed among the snows on high mountains. Your Holiness is not ignorant of this. For this reason the rays of the sun shining ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... habit of impressing their virtues upon others which was quite beyond all human endurance. Placidity was their note; provoking placidity. I felt sure it must have been of a woman of this type that the famous phrase was coined—"Elle a toutes les vertus—et elle est insupportable." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... I waited for letters might justly be attributed to contrary winds, I could not bear the delay, and was twenty times upon the point of returning thither at all hazards. At length, however, several letters arrived at once, and from the most insupportable of my afflictions I was then relieved; for they acquainted me that the horrors of parricide were not in reserve for me. They informed me also, that as soon as the wound was healed, a journey would be made to England, where my unhappy sister was to be received ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... little toleration for the man of inferior brain, and, although he did not underrate his power for mischief, he relied upon his own wit to circumvent him. He had disposed of this one by warning Santa Ana, and he concluded to be annoyed by him no further. Besides, as a brother-in-law, he would be insupportable except at the long range ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... expectancy, waiting with a dread that was almost insupportable for the music that Piers was about to make. They were close to the open French window of the music-room, but there was no light within. Piers was evidently sitting there silent in the darkness. Her pulses were beating violently. Why did he sit so still? ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... a strange effect upon the mind of Mark Hurdlestone. It cheated him of a part of his revenge. He had expected that the loss of Elinor would have stung Algernon to madness; that his existence would have become insupportable without the woman he loved. How great was his mortification when, neither by word nor letter, nor in conversation with his friends, did his injured brother ever revert to the subject! That Algernon did ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... longer on my fair visitor's complaisance, but if she have not found the gloom of this apartment insupportable, it would be a charitable action to brighten it ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bijou residence in the heart of the most fashionable quarter. Here she pondered for a short time upon the doubtful unkindness of fate which had deprived her of a husband whom she despised, and of a home which his presence had made insupportable. But she soon roused herself to face her new lack of responsibility, and to enjoy it. At first, she moved cautiously. There were numerous sympathisers who urged her to defy the world, such as it is, and to show herself everywhere entirely careless of what people might say. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... not speak. She was wrestling with the most insupportable sensation of mingled misery and revolt, and she seemed to hear words as clearly spoken as though the speaker were actually by her side—"He does not love you. It is not ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... pounds of metal as there were to cast, so many pounds of coal were there to burn. Thus there were 68,000 tons of coal which projected in the face of the sun a thick curtain of smoke. The heat soon became insupportable within the circle of furnaces, the rumbling of which resembled the rolling of thunder. The powerful ventilators added their continuous blasts and saturated with oxygen the glowing plates. The operation, to be successful, required to be conducted with great rapidity. On ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... laughter and sneers. When their carts were sent to fetch the necessaries of 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 found. From this date the ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... good Conscience, may in many Respects be Morally 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, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... to be wondered that sooner, or later the Jesuits made themselves insupportable by their intrigues in all the countries where they were established.[178] Even to the Papacy itself they proved too irksome to be borne. The Company showed plainly that what they meant by obedience to Rome was obedience to a Rome controlled and fashioned by themselves. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cross-bars to the others, and to these lashed the pole they had left in readiness, thus completing the grating across the tunnel. As they worked the smoke from the fire below curled up round them. A few months before Godfrey would have found it almost insupportable, but by this time he had, like the natives, become so accustomed to it that it affected him very little. Still he said to Luka: "You had better break off the hot ends of the sticks so as to have a red fire ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... home, Hughie would go to school for a couple of hours each morning. Alma could have wished it any other school than Mary Abbott's, but the thought was no longer so insupportable as when she suffered under her delusion concerning the two children. Now that she had frequently seen Minnie Wager, she wondered at the self-deception which allowed her to detect in the child's face a distinct resemblance to Harvey. Of course, there was nothing of the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... silence and the gleam of hooded lights irresistibly suggest reading? Certainly night-time has a mystic affinity for literature, and it is strange that the Esquimaux have created no great books. Surely, for most of us, an arctic night would be insupportable without O. Henry and Stevenson. Or, as Roger Mifflin remarked during a passing enthusiasm for Ambrose Bierce, the true noctes ambrosianae are the ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... 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 ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... then become too painful to his infirm mind, although it was useless to tell him so, as by this time he was out of hearing. 'Yes,' said Richardson meditatively to himself, 'the truth has at last become insupportable to this unhappy man.' Right, it had so. And in one minute more it became insupportable even to the virtuous Richardson, when the coachman revealed the odious extent of the truth, viz., that the fare now ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... back to his own family, more excited, but not worse than before; and finding in the family circle everything as he has left it, the urgency of Abel, who wishes to make him offer a sacrifice, becomes altogether insupportable. More say we not, excepting that the motivation of the scene in which Abel perishes is of the rarest excellence, and what follows is equally great and priceless. There now lies Abel! That now is Death—there was so much talk about it, and man knows about it as ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... relation, it is true, with great 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 will fall below your ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... and one not to be trusted. He was accordingly treated with indifference and silent reserve. This to a mountaineer, who, during a long period of years, had met every "pale face" as a brother, was insupportable usage. In all haste he finished his business, relinquished his contemplated journey through the States, and started to return to his home in New Mexico. While upon the road, he accidentally fell in with a friend; and, in reply to the question, where ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... don't know here—not until we have been married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love that doesn't pass away, no matter how long a ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... horrid weight 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 ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... all her stories. Sure, if there be any truth in the old observation, your cheeks glowed notably; and 'tis most certain that if I were with you, I should chide notably. What do you mean to be so melancholy? By her report your humour is grown insupportable. I can allow it not to be altogether what she says, and yet it may be very ill too; but if you loved me you would not give yourself over to that which will infallibly kill you, if it continue. I know too well ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... him the power to enjoy these material comforts; unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent darkness, and his more subtile senses were roused, and brought to a state of quivering tension, which was almost insupportable. His wife moved, and he felt that she had directed her eyes towards him, though he could not see her; and he winced instinctively, seeking to be first to break the silence, but unable to find a timely word to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... a villainous humour. I had been having an over- dressed dinner in a stuffy restaurant, and had gone from there to a suffocating theatre, where, by way of amusement, I saw a play in which blood and lies were the least of the horrors. The theatres over there are insupportable; the atmosphere is pestilential. People sit with their elbows in your sides; they squeeze past you every half-hour. It was one of my bad moments; I have a great many in Europe. The conventional perfunctory ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... a strong N.E. wind, they took their departure from Cape de Verde, and continued their course for six weeks, without coming to anchor or handing a sail. In this long passage, they had some days in which the heat was almost insupportable, and the crew began to murmur excessively on account of being at short allowance of water. On this occasion one of the swabbers got into the hold, and, being extremely thirsty, pierced a cask of brandy, of which he pulled, so heartily that he was soon intoxicated to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... cloud created by the entire truth was upon her, making everything black and wretched around her. She had asked herself a question or two, and had discovered that she had no love for her husband, that the kind of life which he intended to exact from her was insupportable to her, and that she had blundered and fallen in her entrance upon life. She perceived that her father had already become weary of Mr. Kennedy, and that, lonely and sad as he would be at Saulsby by himself, it was his intention to repudiate the idea of making a home ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... insurmountable as they fall altogether upon 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 quality ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... People were jostled, crushed, trampled on, and cried out at each encounter. From far they stretched their arms to dip their fingers in the holy water, but getting nearer, saw its color, and the hands retired. They scarcely breathed; the heat and atmosphere were insupportable; but the preacher was worth the endurance of all these miseries; besides, his sermon was to cost the pueblo two hundred and fifty pesos. Fans, hats, and handkerchiefs agitated the air; children cried, and gave ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... from the strain that the overtaxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and the subconscious 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. The men on the Selache knew ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... horrid tortures! That it should come to this! To this!—Perfidious, worthless spirit, and this thou hast concealed from me!—Stand! ay, stand! roll in malicious rage thy fiendish eyes! Stand and brave me with thine insupportable presence! Imprisoned! In hopeless misery! Delivered over to the power of evil spirits and the judgment of unpitying humanity I—And me, the while, thou wert lulling with tasteless dissipations, concealing from me her growing anguish, and leaving ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... little shutter remains closed, while the sound of spurs, swords, and voices cross each other in the corridor, sometimes near, then dying away into the distance. A few moments more of anxious waiting and agony almost insupportable, then I raise my arm determined to break the window, when a new noise from the outside causes a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... more. Mechanically he returned to Siena, to Siena which it was impossible to conceive without his friend Checco; but when he realised the empty house, the empty town, he found the place he had so loved insupportable, and went to spend his long solitary winter writing, reading, translating, breaking in horses, leading a slave's life to pass the weary time, at Pisa. In April 1785 Mme. d'Albany obtained permission to quit Bologna, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... host; but thoughts of flight, Companions of chill fear, from heaven infused, Possess'd the Grecians; every leader's heart Bled, pierced with anguish insupportable. As when two adverse winds blowing from Thrace, 5 Boreas and Zephyrus, the fishy Deep Vex sudden, all around, the sable flood High curl'd, flings forth the salt weed on the shore Such tempest rent the mind of every Greek. Forth ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... in Germany, 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
... in the woods nor lesuries where they found any foot or hand thereof, and many days after they eat not of the herbs that were touched or handled by man. These bulls were so wild, that they were never taken but by slight and crafty labour, and so impatient, that after they were taken they died from insupportable dolour. As soon as any man, invaded these bulls, they rushed with such, terrible press upon him that they struck him to the earth, taking no fear of hounds, sharp lances, or other most penetrative weapons."—Boetius, Chron. Scot. Vol. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... as quick as my Indians, who, like me, hastened to get clear of the insupportable humidity in which we ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... sciences, which made him equal to every undertaking, and his untiring energy, which enabled him to surmount every obstacle, would have won at last a glorious success for his grand enterprise, had not all his fine qualities been counterbalanced by a haughtiness of manner which often made him insupportable, and by a harshness towards those under his command, which drew upon him an implacable hatred, and was at last the cause of his death." [Footnote: ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... gaiety, which Howard envied. He asked her opinion, he deferred to her, he made her come and sit next to him, he praised Jack and Howard, and at the end of the luncheon he filled Mr. Sandys with an almost insupportable delight by saying that the next time he could visit Cambridge he hoped he would stay at the Lodge—"but not unless you will promise to bring Miss Sandys as well—Miss Sandys is indispensable." Howard felt indeed grateful to the gallant ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... myself, and from that moment flattery was at an end. I now rather aimed at setting him right, than at receiving his absurdities with submission: to flatter those we do not know is an easy task; but to flatter our intimate acquaintances, all whose foibles are strongly in our eyes, is drudgery insupportable. Every time I now opened my lips in praise, my falsehood went to my conscience; his lordship soon perceived me to be very unfit for his service: I was therefore discharged; my patron at the same time being graciously pleased to observe that he believed I was tolerably good-natured, and had not ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... sinner for whom no punishment was adequate. Long did I toss from side to side as I considered my position, while expecting every moment to be visited with the divine wrath—to be struck with sudden death, perhaps!—an insupportable thought! Then suddenly the reassuring thought occurred to me: "Why should I not drive out to the monastery when the morning comes, and see the priest again, and make a second confession?" ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... and the captain came not. Randolph found the inactivity insupportable. He knew not where to seek him; he had no more clue to his resorts or his friends—if, indeed, he had any in London—than he had after their memorable first meeting in San Francisco. He might, indeed, be the dupe of an impostor, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... an obligation, which had brought inevitable ruin on us all. He begged me, whatever might be the event of the ensuing morning, not to suffer regret or unavailing sorrow for his fate, to increase the anguish of my heart, which he greatly feared was already insupportable. ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... portmanteau, portable, port arms. More often, however, they are wooed than themselves do the pleading: comport, purport, report, disport, transport, passport, deportment, importance, opportunity, importunate, inopportune, insupportable. From our knowledge of the two families, therefore, we should surmise that if any marriage is to take place between them; an ex must be the suitor. The surmise would be sound. There is such a term as export, but ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... hard at him, and shook his head and laughed in a way that would have been insupportable in a house, and told him, "I hev narra ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... some who, on the death of their relations, have grown stupid with the insupportable sorrow; and of one, in particular, who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon his spirits that by degrees his head sank into his body, so between his shoulders that the crown of his head was very little seen above the bone of his shoulders; and by ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... advanced the heat increased, and the mosquitoes became perfectly insupportable. Nothing could save one from the attacks of these little torments. Almost all other insects went to rest with the sun: sand-flies, which bite viciously during the day, went to sleep at night; the large bull-dog, whose bite is terrible, slumbered in the evening; but the mosquito, the long-legged, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enlarging view of spiritual regeneration has come to include the redemption of the environment so that it shall be an aid to better living instead of an almost insupportable hindrance, so also a newer and infinitely greater scope is daily coming to the realm of healing science—that of prevention of disease and stamping out of scourges rather than merely the healing of individuals after ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... without the protection afforded them during the war, they must have been a prey to the power of France; that without the compensation made them by Parliament, the burden of the expense of the war must have been insupportable." In their address to the King they make the same acknowledgments, and at the conclusion promise to evidence their gratitude by every expression of duty ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... silent. Strange to say, his thoughts were not fixed upon the speaker's words, but upon the speaker's personality. The latter's absolute assurance he considered offensive, in fact insupportable. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... 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
... of right and wrong, which make intercourse difficult. A sensitive conscience is no addition to the amenities of the dinner-table. But when a man is willing to counter a deadly sin with a shrug of the shoulders, when between white and black he can discover no insupportable contrast, the probabilities are that he will at least humour your whims and respect your prejudices. And so it is that the Andalusians make very agreeable acquaintance. They are free and amiable in their conversation, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... of the hand was all that passed, save a long, earnest look of the eyes, and an hour must have passed over them in the almost insupportable heat. There was not a breath of air, and the poor fellows felt as if they were being literally scorched up, and that before long it ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... occasionally. But my proper vocation, as I well know, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... now that you have not suspected me, and yet in what condition do I find myself? Because an old woman has chosen to talk scandal about me, I am placed in a position in my own house which is disgraceful to you and insupportable to myself. This man has been in the habit of coming here on Sundays, and will, of course, know that we are at home. You must manage it as you please. If you choose to receive ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... called the black-hole, 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
... would, at you command, think of him with favour, is the more my aversion. You 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
... into the reason why Philip II gave up his previous relations with England and sided with the Queen of Scots, we shall find it mainly in the fact that the victory of Protestant ideas in England exercised a counter-action which was insupportable for the government he had established in the Netherlands. But that he gave Mary no help in her troubles, though information was once collected as to how it might be done, may also be traceable to the disturbances that had broken out in the Netherlands, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... 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 ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... "busy" book-collectors who intrust the selection of their books to secretaries or librarians, and thus sacrifice the keenest enjoyment of this captivating pursuit. Of all absurdities, this seems the most insupportable. It would be far more sensible to have your secretary select your friends, because if you should happen not to like these, you could abandon them without ceremony or expense. Why not also attend the opera and your various ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... exclaimed, "that unfortunate rencounter! Great Heavens, what if I stand here a murderer, with the blood of a fellow-creature, hurried, I fear, in the very midst of his profligacy, into eternity! The thought is insupportable; and I know not, unless I can strictly preserve my incognito, whether I am at this moment liable, if apprehended, to pay the penalty which the law exacts. The only consolation that remains for me is, that the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... courage which steadily inquires, not what representation of the facts 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 by an unexampled exodus. The New World opened its arms to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... be told; his brother exacted it and so did the situation. Further waiting, further hiding of the truth would be insupportable after this. But oh, the bitterness of it! No wonder that she turned away from those frenzied, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... "anything she asked for"—as they give whatever he may wish to eat to a condemned convict. But the Host was brought into the prison without ceremony, without accompanying candles or vestment for the priest. There are always some things which are insupportable to a man. Brother Martin could bear the sight of the girl's anguish, but not to administer to her a diminished rite. He sent again to demand what was needful, out of respect for the Holy Sacrament and the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... opened and amid general silence Beatrice came forward. Mrs. Birks rose quickly and met her. Mrs. Baxendale understood at a glance what had brought her niece here. Agitation had grown insupportable. It was not in Beatrice's character to lie still whilst others decided matters in which she had supreme interest. The more difficult her position the stronger she found herself to support it. The culmination of the drama could not be acted with her ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... more ado, again took her seat in the coach for Orleans, which was to leave on the morrow. But this was not the least of her trials. It seemed as if the contemplated voyage was to bring upon her a series of the saddest and most insupportable humiliations. As there was no female travelling with her, and as she evidently possessed nothing but the clothing she wore, and the package she carried, her companions of the coach made her feel that they regarded her as an adventuress, who ought not be admitted into honest ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... his prison, or what he could possibly be about—if those dark curtains were 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
... exquisite pathos of his voice as, from the corner of the hold where we lay, we could hear him reading the Morning and Evening Prayers of the Church and leading the hymn. These prevented these long weary wakeful days and nights from being absolutely insupportable.' ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as glad to see you as your sister can be," Gerald put in. "If she has fidgetted, when you had only gone a week; you can imagine what I should have to bear, before the end of a month. I should have had to move into barracks. Life would have been insupportable, here." ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... By a 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 medicines. These torments kept him in a languishing state a full ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... some food, he managed to get out on the roof through the trap-door. There he spent three days, coming down at night, till she was able to put up her new chintz curtains, and here in the garret he had remained ever since, sometimes fairly patient, sometimes finding his lot insupportable, and railing at fate, at Marie, and at Providence. He had had a few narrow escapes, but his wife was as cunning as a fox when he was concerned, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... told him; 'you will not get well here.' Elena, too, was fretting with impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and his emaciation. She often looked with involuntary terror at his changed face. Her position in her parents' house had become insupportable. Her mother mourned over her, as over the dead, while her father treated her with contemptuous coldness; the approaching separation secretly pained him too, but he regarded it as his duty—the duty of an offended ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 his domestic troubles had led to his extended discussion of the question of divorce. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... knew not where—somehow, but I knew not how—by some beings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages—was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... brought from Europe. He recanted, in bitterness of feeling, his early political principles, and began to sigh for the charms of refined society. Discontent stole into his domestic circle, and the idea of educating his two interesting boys in the desert became insupportable. ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... authority, and I frequently left the whist-table, or broke off in a song, to hurry over to the doctor's chambers and spout Homer and Hesiod. I suffered on in patience, till at last the bore became so insupportable that I told my sorrows to my friend, who listened to me out, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to him who has deprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and his destined course, being neither compelled so to do by public judgment, by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable disgrace, but merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of a timorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life, is ridiculous; for it is our being, 'tis all we have. Things of a nobler and more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours; but it is against ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... creatures; by giving liberal salaries and unlimited power to the prefects of the different departments, he amassed both troops and pay to support them. The tyrannic measures for levying these became at last insupportable; the people were rising in the villages, and by force of arms rescuing their companions; and it is very probable that he might have found, latterly, a want of men; but for years he has had at his disposal three hundred thousand men annually. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 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 ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen |
