"Intolerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dr. Johnson said, that I am often hurt when, I dare say, he means no harm: and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a timid boy, which to Boswell (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. His wife too, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion of practical ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... like Hegel's such pusillanimous twaddle sounds simply loathsome. Bounds that we can't overpass! Data! facts that say, "Hands off, till we are given"! possibilities we can't control! a banquet of which we merely share! Heavens, this is intolerable; such a world is no world for a philosopher to have to do with. He must have all or nothing. If the world cannot be rational in my sense, in the sense of unconditional surrender, I refuse to grant that it is rational at ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... road. The trance of stillness was not broken. He turned back into the green shade. . . . He would not delay in Hurda. He would not linger. His friend Cadman had been gone for some days. Yet about going there was a new and intolerable pain. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... aggressive and authoritative, and he used his high position to advance his private interests. He was a disciplinarian, a bureaucrat averse to novelties and hostile to enthusiasms. He anticipated Talleyrand's maxim "Surtout pas de zole," and to be nagged at by a meddlesome friar was intolerable to him. Such men were probably no more consciously inhuman than many otherwise irreproachable people of all times, who complacently pocket dividends from deadly industries, without a thought to the obscure producers of their wealth or to the conditions of moral and physical ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... child drinks it greedily. I can hear it suck the fluid. Then the woman herself staggers to her feet, rises with dreadful illness upon her, and all through the hot stuffy night in the close air of the loft growing momentarily more fetid, unwholesome, intolerable—she rises to be violently sick over and over again. It seems an indefinite number of times to one who lies awake listening, and must seem unceasing to the poor wretch who returns to her bed only ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... he records the "intolerable change of thought" with which it now comes to his "long-sobered heart." Perhaps "The Forsaken Merman" should be added to these; but the grief here is more nearly approaching to gloomy submission and the sickness ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... serpent, so called because those bitten by it suffered from intolerable thirst. (Greek, dipsa, "thirst.") Milton refers to it in Paradise Lost, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... she did her best to crush the young girl to the pavement with her intolerable flat-lidded eyes. When Jehane saw her stand on the steps of the church amidst the pomp of Normandy and England—three archbishops by her, William Marshal, William Longchamp, the earls, the baronage, the knights, heralds, blowers of trumpets; when at her example ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Thirlstone, perceiving the king so much molested with ecclesiastical affairs, and with the refractory disposition of the clergy, advised him to leave them to their own courses; for that in a short time they would become so intolerable, that the people would rise against them, and drive them out of the country. "True," replied the king; "if I purposed to undo the church and religion, your counsel were good; but my intention is to maintain both; therefore cannot I suffer the clergy to follow such a conduct, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the path by the tripping feet of the donkeys was almost intolerable to him. It must surely wake the deepest sleeper. They were now on the last ascent where the mountain-side was bare. Some stones rattled downward, causing a sharp, continuous sound. It was answered by another sound, which made both Gaspare and Maurice ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... grandees to support it.[612] The punishments "implied confiscation of property. Thus whole families were orphaned and consigned to penury. Penitence in public carried with it social infamy, loss of civil rights and honors, intolerable conditions of ecclesiastical surveillance, and heavy pecuniary fines. Penitents who had been reconciled returned to society in a far more degraded condition than convicts released on ticket of leave. The stigma attached in perpetuity ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... some obscure way the question seems to be involved in that other of the function of the Blessed Virgin as the fount of mercy and compassion, and at this time when the cult of the Mother of God had reached its highest point of potency and poignancy anything of the sort seemed intolerable. ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... of civil service reform, and he followed the traditions of the Department of State by retaining the experienced clerks. Mr. Bayard has no appreciation of humor or fondness for political intrigue, and department drudgery would be intolerable to him were it not for his passionate fondness for out-door exercise. A bold horseman, an untiring pedestrian, and enthusiastic angler, and a good swimmer, he preserves his health, and gives close attention to the affairs ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... rules, especially if they are numerous and minute, become unsuited, at least in part, to the altered circumstances of the society, and probably bear hardly on many of the individuals composing it. When this condition of things is beginning to be intolerable, there often arises the social reformer, and what is the course which he pursues? He endeavours to shew how unsuitable the rules have become to attain the ends which they were originally intended to compass, in how much better a manner other rules would attain these objects, how grievously ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... world reputed rich and happy, and the Squire despised Elinor when her person was no longer coveted by his rival. His temper, constitutionally bad, became intolerable, and he treated his uncomplaining wife with such unkindness, that it would have broken her heart, if the remembrance of a deeper sorrow had not rendered her indifferent to his praise or censure. She considered his kindest ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... so crowded that schoolmaster Blom had to stand close to the engine; the heat at his back was intolerable; his morning coat was being covered with grease spots, while he stood, with his gaze rivetted on the untidy head of a servant girl and endured the rancid smell of the hair-oil. But he did not see a single face ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... table, you have the honour to be included in my company, and to my face you have the audacity to advise me to become a thief—the worst kind of thief that is conceivable, a thief of spiritual things, a thief of ideas! It is insufferable, intolerable! I have been, I fear, deeply mistaken in you, monsieur; just as you appear to have been mistaken in me. I am not the scoundrel you suppose me, sir, and I will not number in my company a man who dares to suggest that I should ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... that Derek was not coming back. The enforced waiting increased Felix's exasperation. Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain. To watch her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety, became intolerable. At last he got up and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Split that the last occasion of a disagreement between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life, she thought, had she so longed to murder Sissy as at this minute. She—Split—had no time to waste besieging the impregnable fortress of Sissy's mulishness, when the hardening process had really set in. There never was time enough on Saturdays to do half what one planned, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... another body was burning, would put their own there to be burnt also; or perhaps, if the pile was prepared ready for a body not yet arrived, would deposit their own upon it, set fire to the pile, and then depart. Such indecent confusion would have been intolerable to the feelings of the Athenians ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... positive loathing for his office, to which he had gone with such high hopes and enthusiasm of late. There was no work for him to do there any longer, and the sight of his drawing-table and materials would, he knew, be intolerable in ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... de Grandlieu returned to France with the Royal family, she came to Paris, and at first lived entirely on the pension allowed her out of the Civil List by Louis XVIII.—an intolerable position. The Hotel de Grandlieu had been sold by the Republic. It came to Derville's knowledge that there were flaws in the title, and he thought that it ought to return to the Vicomtesse. He instituted proceedings for nullity of contract, and gained the day. Encouraged by this success, he used ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... remembered the' practice of Langsdorff in similar cases, and used the lancet, a heroic treatment he would never have accomplished had his master been conscious. The fever ebbed, and in a few days Rezanov was able to continue the journey by shorter stages, although heavy with an intolerable lassitude. But his will sustained him until he reached Yakutsk, not at the end of twenty-two days, but of thirty-three. Here he succumbed immediately, and although his sickbed was in the comfortable home of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... of optimism. It resolves the whole scheme, which regards the world as the best that could possibly be made, into a loose, vague, and untenable hypothesis. It is true, the good man would infinitely prefer this hypothesis to the intolerable gloom of atheism; but yet our rational nature demands something more solid and clear on which to repose. Indeed, the warmest supporters of optimism have supplied us with the lofty sentiments of a pure faith, rather than with substantial ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Magellan had served with much credit in India, under the famous Albuquerque, and thought that he merited some recompence for his services; but all his applications were treated with coldness and contempt by the great, which was intolerable to a person of his spirit. He associated, therefore, with men of like fortunes, whose merits had been similarly neglected, and particularly with one Ray Falero, a great astronomer, whom the Portuguese represented ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... chest grew intolerable, and depending upon my being asleep he yielded to complaint, and groaned very much. Emma roused me and told me she feared he was suffering very much. I had slept half an hour. I went and stood near him, and he then ceased to complain, and said, "Oh, it was only a little twitch." ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... which have moved the hearts of nations or are the precious stones and jewels of great authors partake of the nature of idioms: they are taken out of the sphere of grammar and are exempt from the proprieties of language. Every one knows that we often put words together in a manner which would be intolerable if it were not idiomatic. We cannot argue either about the meaning of words or the use of constructions that because they are used in one connexion they will be legitimate in another, unless we allow for this principle. We can bear ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... they sang songs of peace and contentment. Bard, scald, minstrel, gleeman, with their heroic rhymes and long metrical romances, gave way in the evolution of song and harmony to the ballad-monger with his licence. However, in turn they became an intolerable nuisance, and a wag wrote of ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... sister above mentioned died without sickness, and appeared in dying to have had a foretaste of the joys to come. On the other side, the abbess was struck with a terrible disease, which took all her body, as it were, in pieces, and made her suffer intolerable pains; yet even those pains were less cruel to her, than those inward torments which God at the same time inflicted on her. She endured all this with wonderful patience and resignation; being well assured, that in the whole series of these dispensations ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... taken away, four murders occurred, two of white Union men, and two of negroes. (He informed me subsequently that the perpetrators were in custody.) He goes on to say: "There is no doubt whatever that the state of affairs would be intolerable for all Union men, all recent immigrants from the north, and all negroes, the moment the protection of the United States troops were withdrawn." General Osterhaus informed me of another murder of a Union man by a ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... live; she became better, and then in a mood of passionate tenderness she wrote her first little love-letter to Joe. She went about, doing her school-work and bearing the weight of intolerable lonely days, and he had written twice, just a word to her, a word of delay. What kept him? What was he doing? She read of his testimony at the inquest and became indignant because he blamed himself. Who was to blame for such an ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... use her every weapon, with a minimum of danger to her sister ships; and yet, when the gigantic main projectors were operated along the axis of the formation, from the entire vast circle of the cone's mouth there flamed a cylindrical field of force of such intolerable intensity that in it no conceivable substance could ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... The certainty that she would have to be deprived of his presence for the greater part, at all events, of her life came over her with intolerable anguish, and with it she felt a presentiment of the future struggle to be waged against the profound instinct which drew them, with all the strength of a river's current, toward ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... those men, who, he says, made themselves "all white with Aristotle!" You should read how they said to him—and we quote from books of the time: "Young man, you must learn before you teach; and unless one is a Scaliger or a Heinsius that is intolerable!" Thereupon Corneille rebels and asks if their purpose is to force him "much below Claveret." Here Scuderi waxes indignant at such a display of pride, and reminds the "thrice great author of Le Cid of the modest words ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... indeed was the life led by those five persons shut up in that large house, right away from all sights and sounds from the world without. The silence and the solitude at last became well-nigh intolerable, and when Bridget had recovered from her attack of illness and was going about briskly again, Joan took the opportunity of speaking her mind to ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not upon the sand as the white man's boot. I did but come to ask my lord if he will not rest at all. Midnight is long past, and the day must bring its labors. Will not The Sword sheath for a while his intolerable splendor in sleep, while his ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... of events has been so rapid, and the embarrassments they produce from every quarter is [sic] so intolerable, that, weakened as my brain has been by nervous spasms of giddiness, I hardly keep my senses. Cool judgment is required; and I can only take steps in a state of agitation—repent; and there is something more to be repented of. I shall not long stand it; but, in the meantime, what mischief ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... should usurp his father's place overwhelmed Douglas with horror and shame; the prospect was intolerable; so were other matters; for instance, his monotonous office life, the want of variety and fresh air. For exercise, he belonged to a neighbouring gymnasium, but this was not sufficient for a country-bred, energetic ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... to consult him as to the proper redress for an intolerable insult and wrong he had just suffered. He had been in a dispute with a waiter at the hotel, who in a paroxysm of rage and contempt told the client "to go to ——." "Now," said the client, "I ask you, Mr. Choate, as one learned in the law, and as my legal adviser, what course under these circumstances ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... probably well contented that we had not taken more than the turkey's egg. The mosquitoes were a little troublesome after sunset and in the early part of the night; but, after that time, it was too cold for them. The flies were a much greater nuisance; at times absolutely intolerable, from the pertinacity with which they clung to the corners of our eyes, to the lips, to the ears, and even to the sores on our fingers. The wind was generally from the eastward during the morning, with cumuli; but these ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... the right of appeal there is a chance of acquittal. Otherwise the right of appeal would be a sham and an insult more intolerable, even, than that of the man convicted of murder to say why he should not receive the sentence which nothing he may say will avert. So long as acquittal may ensue guilt is not established. Why, than are men sentenced before they are proved guilty? Why are they ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... part of the country which formed the territory of Conception, were indignant at being again subjected to the intolerable yoke of the Spaniards, and had recourse to the Araucanians for protection. Caupolican, who seems at this time to have remained in almost entire inaction, either ignorant of the proceedings of the Spaniards, or from some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... again for the fiftieth time, for the hundredth time, the old, intolerable burden of anxiety growing heavier month by month, year by year. It seemed to her that a shape of terror, formless, intangible, and invisible, was always by her, now withdrawing, now advancing, but always ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Corinthian sculptor's of the acanthus leaf, can be found in anything like the same strength in other races, or if so stubbornly folded and starched moni-plies of irritating kindliness, selfish friendliness, lowly conceit, and intolerable fidelity, are native to any other spot of the wild earth of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... we feel that their adverse interference in matters which so vitally affect us has long since become intolerable? ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... them by day, and at night the mosquitoes made an affliction well-nigh insufferable. The women and children could not sleep, the horses groaned all night under the clouds of tormentors which gathered on them. Early as it was, the sun at times blazed with intolerable fervor, or again the heat broke in savage storms of thunder, hail and rain. All the elements, all the circumstances seemed in league to warn them back before it was too late, for indeed they were not yet more than on the threshold ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... And the man, that thought a little afore he could reach to the stars of heaven, no man could endure to carry for his intolerable stink. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... excessively hot, for it lay (as it still lies) in a well, surrounded by hills, "without any intervals to admit the refreshing gales." It was less marshy than Nombre de Dios, but "the sea, when it ebbs, leaves a vast quantity of black, stinking mud, from whence there exhales an intolerable noisome vapour." At every fair-time "a kind of pestilential fever" raged, so that at least 400 folk were buried there annually during the five or six weeks of the market. The complaint may have been yellow fever; (perhaps the cholera), perhaps pernicious fever, aggravated ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... secrecy; yet did I now take especial care not to invest either this attempt at the miraculous, or its concomitant failure, with anything like narration. It was, however, an act of devotion that had a vile effect on my lungs, for it gave me a cough that was intolerable; and I never felt the infirmities of humanity more than in this ludicrous attempt to get beyond them; in which, by the way, I was nearer being successful than I had intended, though in a different sense. This happened a month before I started ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... it all, like a passion, like a hidden illness, their impatience, their intolerable longing to ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... in the empty bed, with a sudden smooth motion, slipped from the bed and took up a position, with outspread arms, between the two beds, and in front of the door. Parkins watched it in a horrid perplexity. Somehow, the idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have borne—he didn't know why—to touch it; and as for its touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen. It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what its face was like. Now it ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... she replied, compressing her lips to keep back the intolerable pain, and half-closing her eyes to show the fine lashes. Declining the proffered help, she extricated her foot, picked up her autumn branches, and turned away. She was intensely averse to anything that could be construed as a flirtation, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... because the last knot in the tangle will not come straight—good gracious, how like a pun that sounds! How much longer must I smile upon these wretches? How much longer must I conceal my real feelings? I will put my forces into action, and make my last, desperate venture, for this is becoming intolerable. I must force, or buy, this secret from Edward Percy, at the cost of his safety, or my fortune, if ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... we should not desire to hold the Southern States as provinces, for that would fatally exasperate, and tend to perpetuate the contest, increase our expenses, destroy our wealth and revenue, render our taxes intolerable, and endanger our free institutions. When the rebellion is crushed, we should seek a real pacification, the close of the war and its expenses, a cordial restoration of the Union, and return of that fraternal feeling, which marked the first half century of our wonderful progress. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... baffles all description. They could not by any means rid themselves of sheep, goats, and fowls, with their train; in spite of all their attempts to remove them, they were determined to be their companions, and this grievance, added to the tongues of a hundred visitors, made their situation all but intolerable. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... afternoons—the dull, early dark, autumn afternoons—which for some weeks had been enlivened by the expectation, sure two or three times a week to be fulfilled, of Major Graham's "dropping in"—that the aching pain, the weary longing, grew so bad as to be well-nigh intolerable. ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... still: he welcomed religious exiles from other parts of Germany; he settled thousands of immigrants on the raw lands; he saved his money, economized to the last pfennig, was prudent in a worldly sense, and to the end of his life remained intolerable foe of idleness. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... succeeding to Sir Charles Bassett, deceased without issue. This chafed the childless man, and gradually undermined a temper habitually sweet, though subject, as we have seen, to violent ebullitions where the provocation was intolerable. Sir Charles, then, smarting under his wound, spoke now and then rather unkindly to the wife he loved so devotedly; that is to say, his manner sometimes implied that he blamed her for their ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... even that of libertinage, and even ungovernable passions; yet suppressed by the very same means which keep the rest of us in order: early training—necessity—circumstances—fear of consequences; till there comes an age, a time when the restraint of years becomes intolerable—and infatuation irresistible ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... than this place. That will not be my reason for wishing to avoid it; but the change of conversation; the fear of becoming a mere ruffian; and of imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or, giving way insensibly to the temptations of power, till I become proud, insolent and intolerable;—these considerations will make me wish to leave the regiment before the next winter, and always if it could be so after eight months duty; that by frequenting men above myself I may know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn some civility and mildness ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... mouth, "may be endured in the vigorous and lusty; but in a person lying at the very point of death such hardihood is intolerable." ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... every sacred principle of law and order, they could disappear at will, apparently invisible and invulnerable to the officers of the peace and the guardians of the public safety? It was incredible, it was monstrous, degrading, nay, intolerable, and a remedy would have to be found either in the reorganisation of an inefficient police force or in the resignation ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... reports a case where an officer, holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel, could not tolerate a breakfast in which this odious article was wanting; but, as a savage retribution invariably supervened within an hour or two upon this act of insane sensuality, he came to a resolution that life was intolerable with muffins, but still more intolerable without muffins. He would stand the nuisance no longer; but yet, being a just man, he would give nature one final chance of reforming her dyspeptic atrocities. Muffins, therefore, being laid at one angle ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... ecclesiastics. To the Turks, the Montenegrin tribes and the Albanian tribes of the mountains—who had also their own Bishops —were but insubordinate tribes against whom they sent punitive expeditions when taxes were in arrears and raids became intolerable. The Montenegrins descended from their natural fortress and plundered the fat flocks of the plain lands. They existed mainly by brigandage as their sheep-stealing ballads tell, and the history of raid and punitive expedition is much like ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... called aloud, in a manifest disorder, "Zounds! this is the essence of a whole bed of garlic!" That he might not, however, disappoint or disgrace the entertainer, he applied his instruments to one of the birds; and when he opened up the cavity, was assaulted by such an irruption of intolerable smells, that, without staying to disengage himself from the cloth, he sprang away, with an exclamation of "Lord Jesus!" and involved the whole table in havoc, ruin, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... willing to do everything in order, and therefore began with her cousin Muskerry, on account of her rank. Her two darling foibles were dress and dancing. Magnificence of dress was intolerable with her figure; and though her dancing was still more insupportable, she never missed a ball at court: and the queen had so much complaisance for the public, as always to make her dance; but it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... second cousin—Fie, fie, if you please. To miss it, indeed! Ah, how we wished that we had missed it. But we had no such luck. There were we broiling through a hot, hot August, broiling away at this intolerable stew of Iskis and Fuskis, and all to no end or use. Granted that too often it is, or it may be so. But here we are safe. Who can fancy or feel so much as the shadow of a demur, when peregrinating Rome, that we might ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... withdraw from the land of his birth, and renounce all duty of allegiance with all claim to protection. This they themselves had done. Remaining in England, they acknowledged the obligatory force of established laws. Because those laws were intolerable, they had emigrated to a new world, where they could organize their government, as many of them originally did, on the basis of natural rights and ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... is committed which the law can touch, yet that any moral reform should take place appears to be quite out of the question. I was assured by well-informed people, that a man who should try to improve, could not while living with other assigned servants; — his life would be one of intolerable misery and persecution. Nor must the contamination of the convict-ships and prisons, both here and in England, be forgotten. On the whole, as a place of punishment, the object is scarcely gained; as a real system of reform it has failed, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that country. There are hills, rounded, blunt, burned, squeezed up out of chaos, chrome and vermilion painted, aspiring to the snowline. Between the hills lie high level-looking plains full of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in a blue haze. The hill surface is streaked with ash drift and black, unweathered lava flows. After rains water accumulates in the hollows of small closed valleys, and, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... many of them were old man-o'-war's men, and all would have been glad of berths in the United States navy; but the sight of the red flag of Great Britain waving above their heads, and the thought that they were serving a nation with which their country had just fought a bloody war, were intolerable. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... which remained swollen and very hard, all spotted as if with flea-bites; and they could not walk on account of the contraction of the muscles, so that they were almost without strength, and suffered intolerable pains. They experienced pain also in the loins, stomach, and bowels, had a very bad cough, and short breath. In a word, they were in such a condition that the majority of them could not rise nor move, and could not even be raised ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... pronounced. She was a coward. He had seen her run, screaming in genuine fright, from a ground squirrel. She was meek and unresisting, to the point of weakness. He had seen her endure unprovoked anger and undeserved rebuke from her mother, and intolerable slights from Tom, that would surely have aroused retaliation had there been a spark of combativeness in her gentle heart. That she was tender and loving could be seen in every glance of her eyes, in every feature of her face, in every ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... the greatest horror of resting on literature alone as his main resource; and he was not a man, nor was Lady Scott a woman, to pinch and live narrowly. Were it only for his lavish generosity, that kind of life would have been intolerable to him. Hence, he reflected, that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercial undertaking, managed by a man he could trust, he might gain a considerable percentage on his little capital, without so embarking in commerce as to oblige him either to give up his status as ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... for Trirodov into a blue, fathomless height. Elisaveta's love grew stronger; to grow stronger was its desire, and it wished to surmount all intolerable obstacles. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... and stared gloomily into the fire; then he suddenly pulled himself together rather sharply, for the door behind him had slowly swung open. This was intolerable! The parlor-maid had again and again been told that, whatever might have been the case in her former places, no door in Mr. Tapster's house was to be opened without the preliminary of a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... somewhere and nowhere; for though we knew what we intended to do, we did really not know what we were doing. We went forward and forward by a northerly course, and as we advanced the heat increased, which began to be intolerable to us, who were on the water, without any covering from heat or wet; besides, we were now in the month of October, or thereabouts, in a southern latitude; and as we went every day nearer the sun, the sun came also every day nearer to us, till ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... country—the richest in natural resources the world ever saw—is worse than lost if it be not soon placed under the protection of a free constitution. Instead of being, as it ought to be, a source of wealth and power, it will become an intolerable burden upon the rest ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... waste spaces, while the very thought of little valleys underneath copses full of bracken and foxgloves was a torment to me and every summer in London the longing grew worse till the thing was becoming intolerable. So I took a stick and a knapsack and began walking northwards, starting at Tetherington and sleeping at inns, where one could get real salt, and the waiter spoke English and where one had a name instead of a number; and though the tablecloth might ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... smallest work for the country—the whole thing inflicted by the Sanitary Board—a purely local and irresponsible body, with its eternal round of red tape. A good thing it is indeed that such a monstrous and intolerable abuse should have been abolished! The only reason it lasted so long is, that it brought in a revenue to the members of the board. To begin with, they filled the inn they kept under the title of "Lazaretto" by force, and then they sold the disinfectants. "Gentlemen," ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... discovery. They had been one of the chief prizes at stake in the struggle between the French and the British for the possession of the continent, and they had been of so much value that a British statute of 1775 which cut off the New England fisheries was regarded, even after the "intolerable acts" of the previous year, as the height of punishment for New England. Many Englishmen would have been glad to see the Americans excluded from these fisheries, but John Adams, when he arrived from ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... that positively terrified Mrs. Timorous at the very thought of setting out with Christiana that morning was that intolerable way in which Christiana had begun to go back upon her past life as a wife and a mother. Christiana could not hide her deep distress, and, indeed, she did not much try. Such were the swarms of painful memories that her husband's ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... States had imposed upon them—to secede from the Union; to tell them that in that year the leader of the South, Calhoun, urged an English gentleman, to whom he had fully explained the position of the South, and the intolerable tyranny which the North inflicted upon it, to be the bearer of credentials from the chief persons of the South, in order to invite the attention of the British Government to the coming event; that on his death-bed (Washington, March 31, 1850), he called around him his ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... large anodyne, which I frequently repeated. During the first day he took upward of an ounce of laudanum; and tepid anodyne fomentations were also applied to those parts nearest the seat of his pain. Yet were his sufferings during the whole of the day almost intolerable. [3] ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... entertain us, and lectured us unceasingly upon his virtue and his wisdom, dwelling greatly on the propriety and good policy of always speaking the truth. This spectacle of veracity became intolerable after a while, and I was goaded to say: "Oh then, if you never tell lies, you expect to go to Paradise." "Not at all," answered Antonino compassionately, "for I have sinned much. But the lie doesn't go ahead" (non va avanti), added this Machiavelli of boatmen; yet I think he was mistaken, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... stolen, the whole of the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a man was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender money as an equivalent, would have been to repeat the outrage with the intolerable aggravations of supreme insult and impiety. Compute the value of a MAN in money! Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled from such outrage and blasphemy. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double, would ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Things were becoming intolerable. Roland had a certain amount of nerve, but not enough to enable him to bear up against this sinister persecution. Yet what could he do? Suppose he did beware to the extent of withdrawing his support from the royalist movement, what then? Bombito. If ever there was a toad under the harrow, he was ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... thought of One Perfect Infinite Being, omnipotent, ever-present, who reads his heart, who is "about his path, and about his bed, and spies out all his ways."[1111] He instinctively catches at anything whereby he may be relieved from the intolerable burden of such a thought; and here the imperfection of language comes to his aid. As he has found it impossible to express in any one word all that is contained in his idea of the Divine Being, he has been forced to give Him ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... be in four places at once. Worst of all, tobacco would not taste in the darkness. The arrogance of the man had disappeared, and in its place were settled despair that Torpenhow knew, and blind passion that Dick confided to his pillow at night. The intervals between the paroxysms were filled with intolerable waiting and the weight ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... moved on, continuing to march without once stopping to rest during the whole of the night. Of the fatigue of a night march none but those who have experienced it can form the smallest conception. Oppressed with the most intolerable drowsiness, we were absolutely dozing upon our legs; and if any check at the head of the column caused a momentary delay, the road was instantly covered with men fast asleep. It is generally acknowledged ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... irresponsibility are dangerous elements in governments which assume to be representative, and are a constant menace. If this whole question of equal political rights of women is considered in the light of common sense and common justice, the sooner will the present intolerable wrong be wiped out and self-government be put upon a broader ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... course, it was foolish and wrong, but human nature is the same in all ages, and in the last extremity we fall back by instinct on those methods which men have from the beginning adopted to save themselves from intolerable wrong and dishonour, or, be it admitted, to bring ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... plunged into her room. The moment I drew the blanket-thickness from my eyes I knew blindness and a modicum of what Bert Rhine must have suffered. Oh, the intolerable bite of the sulphur in my lungs, nostrils, eyes, and brain! No light burned in the room. I could only strangle and stumble for'ard to Margaret's bed, upon which ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... they safe on board, or were they captured or killed in the fracas? I hardly dared to ask the skipper who still sat at the table, with a most dolorous face, arranging the vials and gallipots. At last the suspense became intolerable. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... one rather below the average, the uneducated, as St. Augustin says the weaker, mind and that in England is, at least artistically, a narrow mind and a vulgar being. And it may of course be alleged that the music in our hymn-books which is intolerable to the more sensitive minds was not put there for them, but would justify itself in its supposed fitness for the lower classes. 'What use,' the pastor would say to one who, on the ground of tradition advocated the employment ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... posts from the sea to the northern extremity of Dorset. At five in the morning of the seventh, Grey, who had wandered from his friends, was seized by two of the Sussex scouts. He submitted to his fate with the calmness of one to whom suspense was more intolerable than despair. "Since we landed," he said, "I have not had one comfortable meal or one quiet night." It could hardly be doubted that the chief rebel was not far off. The pursuers redoubled their vigilance and activity. The cottages scattered over the heathy country on the boundaries ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quinces for flavouring many sauces. This fruit has the remarkable peculiarity of exhaling an agreeable odour, taken singly; but when in any quantity, or when they are stowed away in a drawer or close room, the pleasant aroma becomes an intolerable stench, although the fruit may be perfectly sound; it is therefore desirable that, as but a few quinces are required for keeping, they should be kept in a high and dry loft, and out of the way of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... day under a vague sense of impending trouble—the result, no doubt, of that intolerable threat of her father's, against which she was, after all, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Columbus had been sent back with tokens of the queen's displeasure, and Ximenes would not permit the importation of Africans. But the traffic went on, and the Indies were saved. Under Charles V 1000 slaves were allotted to each of the four islands. It did not seem an intolerable wrong to rescue men from the devil-worshippers who mangled their victims on the Niger or the Congo. Las Casas himself was one of those who advised that the negro should be brought to the relief of the Carib, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... for another hour, his thirst became intolerable again; and, when he looked at his bottle, he saw that there were only five or six drops left in it, and he could not venture to drink. And, as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he saw a little dog lying on the rocks, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... acted upon we should certainly no longer be distressed by that intolerable and never-ceasing tremolo which now so frequently mars many, in other respects, fine voices. It is a curious, and at first sight unaccountable, circumstance that this great fault is specially noticeable amongst French singers. But at the ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... was glad when he left. He gave place to a Norwegian sailor, who had lost half an ear in a drunken brawl, and who proved to be quarrelsome, cursing Jurgis because he moved in his bunk and caused the roaches to drop upon the lower one. It would have been quite intolerable, staying in a cell with this wild beast, but for the fact that all day long the prisoners were ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... reflection and Basil decided to risk immediate departure; delay and uncertainty were at all times hateful to him, and at the present juncture intolerable. At once he quitted the house (not having ventured to speak the name of Veranilda), and in an hour's time the covered carriage from Puteoli, and another vehicle, were in waiting. The baggage was brought out; then, as Basil stood in the hall, he saw Aurelia come forward, accompanied by a slight ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... that it was intolerable for Minucius, who was the only man who could fight, to be put under guard lest he beat the enemy; intolerable that the territory of the allies should have been given up to ravage, while the dictator protected his own farm with the legions of the Republic; and, finally, proposing, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... were received the letters containing that final record of his life, which took from the hearts of those who loved him best the intolerable bitterness, because it told that he had not only dreamed his dream—he ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... all, the word Simpleton, which had been applied to her pretty freely by young ladies at school, and always galled her terribly, inflicted so intolerable a wound on Rosa's vanity, that she was ready to burst: on that, of course, her stays contributed their mite of physical uneasiness. Thus irritated mind and body, she burned to strike in return; and as ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... that the same Muse shall write no more for him. The piece, in short, is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago, as to sale." There is much to the same effect in the worthy little printer's correspondence; but enough has been quoted to show how intolerable to the super-sentimental creator of the high-souled and heroic Clarissa was his rival's plainer and more practical picture of matronly virtue and modesty. In cases of this kind, parva seges satis est, and Amelia ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... agitated—and like a humble bicolored quadruped of the Rose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air—so the poet, laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness so intolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity to the ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... villages of the country all over, spit on this example given by New York and Washington. My friend N——, progressive, enlightened and therefore a true Russian, is amazed and displeased with such an intolerable flippancy. During the Crimean war, no one danced in Russia from the Imperial palace down to the remotest village; the people's indignation would have prevented any body—even the Czar, from such a sacrilegious display of recklessness when the country's ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... of a stitch or required the assistance of a hammer. This was a state of things not to be endured. I soon grew as poor as a rat, and, having a wife and children to provide for, my burdens at length became intolerable, and I spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the most convenient method of putting an end to my life. Duns, in the meantime, left me little leisure for contemplation. My house was literally besieged from morning till night, so that I began to rave, and foam, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Broken Family. The prevalence of divorce, however, it must here be said, demonstrably proves two things—one that men and women now feel themselves at moral and social liberty to seek divorce when longer living together seems to them intolerable, and that women are using their new freedom and economic independence to make marriage conditions more to their liking. They are setting a standard respecting desirable husbands, not always wisely, often selfishly, but in the long run and large way to ends of greater equality of demand in ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... down; but at this I was not at all surprised, being convinced, from the peculiar state of my feelings, that I had slept, as before, for a very long period of time, how long, it was of course impossible to say. I was burning up with fever, and my thirst was almost intolerable. I felt about the box for my little remaining supply of water, for I had no light, the taper having burnt to the socket of the lantern, and the phosphorus-box not coming readily to hand. Upon finding the jug, however, I discovered it to be empty—Tiger, no doubt, having ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... more powerful than the "stump" or the pulpit today, and but little less forceful than the newspaper as a means of exposing intolerable conditions and ushering in new and better knowledge, the stage is not the place for propaganda. The public goes to the theatre to be entertained, not instructed—particularly is this true of vaudeville—and the writer ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... experience some shock of disappointment when, after 200 pages of the most heroical endeavoring, David fails in the end to save James Stewart of the Glens. Were the book concerned wholly with James Stewart's fate, the cheat would be intolerable: and as a great deal more than half of Catriona points and trembles towards his fate like a magnetic needle, the cheat is pretty bad if we take Catriona alone. But once more, if we are dealing with The Memoirs of David Balfour—if we bear steadily in mind that David Balfour is our concern—not ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the harbour and the island beyond he waited and waited in his lodgings for an answer that did not come. The suspense grew to be so intolerable that after dark he went up the High Street. He could not resist calling at Joanna's to learn ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... potted meat-tins, an uneatable rabbit-pie, and all the vegetable refuse of your household, into your dust-bin, and that it should not have been "attended to" for upwards of two months, is quite sufficient to account for the intolerable odour of which you and all your neighbours on that side of the street have had reason to complain; but, as you seem to think nothing but an epidemic fever, caused by the nuisance, will rouse the Authorities, you might, by throwing in a pound or two of phosphate of lime, the same quantity of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... order to avoid observation, and the marks of veneration which the people lavished upon them as soon as they set eyes on the two saints (as they always called them), they chose the most unfrequented streets they could find. The heat grew intolerable. The sultry air seemed on fire, and not a breath stirred it. Exhausted with fatigue, their mouths parched with thirst, they reached the church of St. Leonardo; and holding each other's hands, approached the brink of the river, in order to cool ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... lives in the open air; and it needed no more than our brief experience for us to realize what one so often reads of those who do actually live their lives out-of-doors, gypsies, sailors, cowboys and the like—how intolerable to them is a roof, and how literally they gasp for air and space in the confined walls ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... flower and the plant that bears it, a development to be wrought out, a perfection to be achieved. For this end certain conditions are necessary, or helpful: certain others prejudicial, or altogether intolerable. In fact, that plant has a progressive nature, and therewith is a subject of good and evil. Good for that plant is what favours its natural progress, and evil is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Africa, and the fuel used is the dried manure of cattle pressed into slabs about fifteen inches long, eight inches wide, and three inches thick. The smoke from the fires is very dense, and soon fills the air with a pungent odour, which is not unpleasant in the open, but would be simply intolerable in a building. The coffee is soon made, and the simple meal begins; it consists of "rusks," a kind of bread baked until it becomes crisp and hard, and plenty of steaming hot coffee. I never saw any people so fond ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales |
