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Insufferable   Listen
adjective
Insufferable  adj.  
1.
Incapable of being suffered, borne, or endured; insupportable; unendurable; intolerable; as, insufferable heat, cold, or pain; insufferable wrongs.
2.
Offensive beyond endurance; detestable. "A multitude of scribblers who daily pester the world with their insufferable stuff."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insufferable" Quotes from Famous Books



... muscles of the strong-featured Scot, has generally blown away that inauspicious bashfulness, which hangs a much longer time, commonly, on the faces of the southern students; such a one (if he fall not too egregiously into the contrary extreme, so as to become insufferable) may still be the more eligible person for a tutor, as he may teach a young gentleman, betimes, that necessary presence of mind, which those who are confined to a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... understood the reason this brute was sent in charge of him, and he knew that his journey was to be one of insufferable agony. Oh, for one moment of freedom again! If it cost him his life he would ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... up to him and told him brutally that I disbelieved in him and in everything he believed in, explaining that I wanted nothing on false pretences. My attitude surprised him, but he was kind (still with that insufferable air of being a really first-class good man), and he bade me have something to eat. I took it and went, feeling that I had no place ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... laws; not only should I be afraid of taking a holiday from them, I should also feel it painful to try to do so. In a word, I have a conscience as well as a fear of gaol. Yes, I know it by experience. How often have I tried to take holidays, to get away from myself, my own boring nature, my insufferable mental surroundings!" Mr. Scogan sighed. "But always without success," he added, "always without success. In my youth I was always striving—how hard!—to feel religiously and aesthetically. Here, said I to myself, are two tremendously ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... anguish suggested by sheer force of multiplication, by the diminishing perspective of the beds, by the clear light and nakedness of the great hall that sets these repeated units of torture in a world apart, a world of insufferable space and agonizing time, ruled by some inhuman mathematics and given over to pure transcendent pain. A sufficiently large ward full of wounded really does leave an impression very like that. But the one true thing about this impression is its transcendence. It is utterly ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... offer my earnings to Ernest, lest he should be annoyed. So I had quietly used it for household expenses, and it had held out till about the time of Martha's marriage. Ernest's injustice was just as painful, just as insufferable as if he had known this, and I now burst out with whatever my rasped, over-taxed nerves impelled me to say, like ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... successes, the extremists in Kyoto induced the sovereign to issue an edict in which, after speaking of the "insufferable and contumelious behaviour of foreigners," of "the loss of prestige and of honour constantly menacing the country," and of the sovereign's "profound solicitude," his Majesty openly cited the shogun's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... applies to Benvenuto Cellini—bully, assassin, insufferable egoist, and so forth, as well as artist. If he had not been sufficiently in love with his own swashbuckler rascality to write his amazing autobiography, how dim to our imaginations, comparatively, would have been the world of the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... useless, worn out and better off dead. But never mind me. My mind is still alive. It still thinks. I wish it didn't. I wish it crawled around like my body. But seeing that it does, talk to me as if it were a mind belonging to somebody else and not to the insufferable Winkelberg." ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... glorious form, that light insufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont at heaven's high council-table To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and, here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... open-air preaching in the Forest, but were violently attacked and driven away. He thus proceeds to describe the circumstances which led to the erection of Holy Trinity Church:—"At one of the places which I am accustomed to visit, where the heat and crowd have at times been almost insufferable, the colliers, aided by two or three neighbouring farmers, offered to build a large room for the better accommodation of greater numbers. This, for obvious reasons, was declined; but it led me earnestly to wish that the Foresters ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... fled from by a fool. To the nethermost corner of his soul, he cursed himself for what he had done, and for all he had left undone. He would go to her on his knees. He would implore her to impose on him insufferable penances. There was no penance, how bittersweet soever, could make him a little ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... said Jock; "but I say, mother, don't go making him cockier. You know he's only fit to be stitched up in one of Jessie's little red Sunday books, and he must learn to keep a civil tongue in his head, and not be an insufferable little donkey." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to his country, who dared to give utterance to an honest, candid thought. These fellows were so backed on by the local authorities, that the general feeling being also pretty much in their favour, their insolence was in many cases almost insufferable. Few men chose to enter the lists with them, because they had no chance of fair play, nor any probability of arguing the question with any degree of candour or liberality; and as a man must have either put up with flat ignorant contradiction, and open premeditated insult, or ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... so fatal to all his profits, had restored my brother to his senses, and seeing that the mischief had been caused by his own insufferable pride, he rent his clothes and tore his hair, and lamented himself so loudly that the passers-by stopped to listen. It was a Friday, so these were more numerous than usual. Some pitied Alnaschar, others only ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... pettifogger of the courts said, that he would lay a plaint of false imprisonment against Lucifer. "You shall now have cause enough to complain," said the Fiend, "and yet never have an opportunity of seeing a court with your eyes." Then, putting on his red cap, Lucifer, with an arrogant, insufferable look, said, "take the justices to the dungeon of Pontius Pilate and Mr. Bradshaw, who condemned king Charles. Parch the lawyers in company with the murderers of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, {100} and their double-tongued brethren, who dispute with one another, for no other purpose ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... of office, and was duly presented to the rector of the church, who made no sign, save a twinkle of his eye, of having met her in another, and humbler capacity, but shook hands and talked to her without that insufferable air of patronage which elder people at times seem to delight to ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... some one about Mr Travers. His poor wife has enough to bear. I can't trouble her. The man is insufferable; he upsets the whole house. His nurse has just been to me in tears. Nothing will please him. He rings his bell all day, and half the night, and for nothing—literally nothing! Just an excuse to give trouble. We have honestly done our best—more than our best. With such a patient ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and pour into the sea with unparallelled uproar. Raging winds from the south and southwest prevailing at that season, accompanied by perpetual thunder and lightning, sweep over and destroy the houses. Whenever the weather was clear, the nights were cold, but during the day the heat was insufferable. Nor is this astonishing, for this region is near the equator, and the pole star is no longer visible. In that country the icy temperature during the night is due to the moon and other planets, while the sun and its satellites ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... less than satire. And indeed a provocation is almost necessary, in behalf of the world, that you might be induced sometimes to write; and in relation to a multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the world with their insufferable stuff, that they might be discouraged from writing any more. I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I have been the public mark for many years. I am vindictive enough to have repelled force by force if I could imagine that any of them had ever reached me: but they either shot at ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... take up their quarters, about the farmstead during winter or in the open fields during summer, brown rats are an insufferable nuisance. There is no courtesy or kindness in the nature of the rat; no nesting bird is safe from his attacks, unless her home is beyond his reach in some cleft of a rock that he cannot scale or in some fork of a tree that he cannot climb. He is a cannibal—even the young ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... deyvle's name, Hawk, have you and Nickleby been talking about?' said the young man. 'I neyver heard such an insufferable riot. Croak, croak, croak. Bow, wow, wow. What has it ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... nameless, homeless, friendless wretch. The law which takes care of you, the law which takes care of all legitimate children, casts her like carrion to the winds. It is your law—not hers. She only knows it as the instrument of a vile oppression, an insufferable wrong. The sense of that wrong haunts her like a possession of the devil. The resolution to right that wrong burns in her like fire. If that miserable girl was married and rich, with millions tomorrow, do you think she would move an inch from her purpose? ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... that the nervous strain of being the Napoleon of Wall Street had had the effect of increasing to a marked extent the portentousness of Bailey's always portentous manner. Ruth rebelled against it. There was an insufferable suggestion of ripe old age and fatherliness in his attitude which she found irritating in the extreme. All her life she had chafed at authority, and now, when Bailey set himself up as one possessing it, she showed the worst side ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... silence, he wrote no reply to this letter. A fortnight elapsed; he strengthened himself in stubbornness, aided by the catarrh, which many bottles of whisky would not overcome. When his solitary confinement grew at length insufferable, he sent for Narramore, and had not long to wait before his friend appeared. Narramore was rosy as ever: satisfaction with life beamed from ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... cried in pretty anger, "this is insufferable! 'T is your fault, Guilbert, you fool. Am I, then, to spend the day here ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... that they were doing something useful once more. For three days Mrs. Britling had to feed her new lodgers—the kitchen motors had as usual gone astray—and she did so in a style that made their boastings about their billet almost insufferable to the rest of their battery. The billeting allowance at that time was ninepence a head, and Mr. Britling, ashamed of making a profit out of his country, supplied not only generous firing and lighting, but unlimited cigarettes, cards and games, illustrated newspapers, a cocoa ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... With all my faults—and they are legion—I'm good-natured, and do not intentionally hurt people's feelings. What a fine proof of that I gave you in my insufferable stupidity!" ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... English Sparrow! What an insufferable chatterbox, what an incurable scold, what a voluble and tiresome blackguard is this little feathered cockney. There is not a sweet or pleasant word in ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... 'That man is insufferable! Extremely like Mrs. Martindale! Servants' gossip! How could I go and ask him? John has perfectly spoilt a good servant in him! But John spoils everybody. The notion of that girl sending him on her messages! John, who is ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... always shot at; but at a village called Lakona, the people were friendly, and five scholars had come from thence, so the Bishop ventured on landing for the night, and a very unpleasant night it, was—the barrack hut was thronged with natives, and when the heat was insufferable and he tried to leave it, two of his former scholars advised him ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... expression on your part of a better frame of mind. But even Christian Charity has its limits. The continued presence of that wretch under your roof is, you will permit me to remark, not only a monument of your own weakness, but a perfectly insufferable insult to Me." ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... more, eh?" he sneered, too mad to raise his voice to the more convenient bellow which seemed to soothe him as much as it distressed his listener. "Well, you've got a fool's mate in Sir George Covert, the insufferable dandy! And all you two need is a pair o' Panzas and a brace of windmills. Bah!" He grew angrier. "Bah, I say!" He broke out: "Damnation, sir! Go ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... grows odious unto all good men, the members whereof became insufferable in their pride, covetousness, self-ends, laziness, minding nothing but how to enrich themselves. Much heart-burning now arose betwixt the Presbyterian and Independant, the latter siding with the army, betwixt whose two judgments there was ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... sort of metre I would choose, this I think you will hardly guess: no other than ottave rime. All the rest, except iambic, are become insufferable to me. And how beautifully might the earnest and the lofty be made to play in these light fetters! What attractions might the epic substance gain by the soft yielding form of this fine rhyme! For, the poem must, not in name only, but in very deed, be capable of being sung; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... insufferable weariness would lift awhile he could enjoy the quiet, absurd, heedless talk, and this very friendly topsy-turvy effort to ease his mind and soothe his nerves. He might even take an interest again in ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... sorry, I get so interested in myself that I thrust myself into the front of every discussion in the most insufferable way. [Reginald, with an exclamation of disgust, crosses the kitchen towards the study door]. But, my dear Rejjy, are you quite sure that Miss Bridgenorth is going to be married? ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... you and Mrs. Whately'd make the second handsomest couple in this town." He giggled at his own joke. "But say now, Baronet, it's took you an awful time to make up your mind. What's been the matter?" His familiarity and impudence were insufferable ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... it—nobody will be better pleased than we.' Whereas, the world would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only aggravating ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... of Europe until that moment, but that laughing, caressing light in Nat Bonnell's eyes was insufferable. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... witty, but only succeed in being pert, are insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated, and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the camel and the giraffe are comic, ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... has pounced on me has neither taste nor feeling; the sight of fetters still gives him a start; crack a whip in his neighbourhood, and his ears tingle; the treadmill is an abode of awe to him. He is now insufferable—insults his new equals, and whips his old fellows to see what that side of the transaction feels like. He ends by finding a mistress, or taking to the turf, or being cajoled by parasites; these have only to swear he is handsomer than Nireus, nobler than Cecrops or Codrus, wiser ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... into the common insufferable cant of taking all occasions to disparage the heathen philosophers, I hope you will differ from some of your brethren, by first enquiring what those philosophers can say for themselves. The system of morality to be gathered out of the writings or sayings of those ancient sages, falls ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... yesterday for the Mayo family, with what result you know, except that I haven't told you that the presumptuous dolt made love mawkishly to me all the evening. Yes, actually! Did you ever hear of such impertinence? Oh, the man is simply insufferable, Ruth. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... associating with its apparent watchfulness the well-known fidelity of the dog, they called it the "dog-star," and they worshipped it. It was in far later periods and in other countries that the appearance of the dog-star was regarded as the signal of insufferable heat or ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... this world, deprived even of that melancholy solace which letters or messages could give: that the bitterness of her sorrows, still more than her close confinement, had preyed upon her health, and had added the insufferable weight of bodily infirmity to all those other calamities under which she labored: that while the daily experience of her maladies opened to her the comfortable prospect of an approaching deliverance into a region where pain and sorrow are no ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... shouted sometimes at dinner, drinking his beer, and slapping the table with his hand. 'You think, maybe, you're as silent as a sheep, so you must be all right.... Oh, no! You'll please look at me like a sheep too!' My position became a torture, insufferable,... my heart was growing bitter. Something dangerous began more and more frequently to stir within it. I passed nights without sleep and without a light, thinking, thinking incessantly; and in the darkness without ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... you are growing insufferable," she cried. "Simply because I mention the club, you assume that I am—angling—for a man that—that has been decently polite to me. I have never been invited to marry Mr. Park. And you give me low advice about ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... she saw Alfieri again. The quiet work which had seemed so natural and easy while he was sure of seeing his lady every day, had become quite impossible to him. He felt that he ought to remain in Florence, that he ought not to follow her to Rome. But Florence had become insufferable to him; and he determined to remove to Naples, because to get to Naples it was necessary to pass through Rome. The melancholy barren approach to the Eternal City, which, three years before, had inspired Alfieri with nothing but ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... name indeed; for he is the greatest case of monopoly in conversation I ever met with or heard of. He is insufferable, unpardonable. He did nothing but talk, talk, talk, to the almost absolute exclusion of every ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... doored hospitality the invitation seemed only natural. The evening meal was brought in from a neighboring hotel, and the two men dined before an open fire, Samson eating in mountain silence, while his host chatted and asked questions. The place was quiet for New York, but to Samson it seemed an insufferable pandemonium. He found himself longing for the velvet-soft quiet of the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... fowls are heard in air; then swoops amain The covey well nigh in that instant, rends The food, o'erturns the vessels, and a rain Of noisome ordure on the board descends. To stop their nostrils king and duke are fain; Such an insufferable stench offends. Against the greedy birds, as wrath excites, Astolpho ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... make the earth a hell for its inhabitants. "The ministers," added the governor, "should pray oftener, and preach less." But he spake in all solemnity; there was not the ghost of a sense of humor in his whole insufferable carcass. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... Gods, Till exultation burst in one wide voice Like music from Elysian winds. And thou Ascend beside me, veiled in the light Of the desire which makes thee one with me, 35 Thetis, bright image of eternity! When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might! God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames, The penetrating presence; all my being, Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 40 Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, Sinking through its foundations:' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... exclaimed with sudden emphasis. "He is rough and ill-mannered; I have seen him the worse for wine, sometimes he is insufferable! I ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... approached the bottom, I discovered by the aid of the little light that came from above the nature of this subterranean place, it seemed an endless cavern, and might be about fifty fathom deep. I was annoyed by an insufferable stench proceeding from the multitude of bodies which I saw on the right and left; nay, I fancied that I heard some of them sigh out their last. However, when I got down, I immediately left my coffin, and getting at a distance from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... women, and he had long exhausted both. As for female society, if they were ladies, it was expected that, in some form or other, he should make love to them, and he had no sentiment. If he took refuge in the demi-monde, he encountered vulgarity, and that, to Lord Montfort, was insufferable. He had tried them in every capital, and vulgarity was the badge of all their tribe. He had attempted to read; a woman had told him to read French novels, but he found them only a clumsy representation of the life which, for years, he had practically been leading. An accident ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... fields, at the sky, at the larks quivering in the warm air. From the time he had woken up on the previous morning at Yefrem's he had not slept, though he had lain on the stove without moving; at first he had wanted to drown in vodka the insufferable pain of humiliation, the misery of frenzied and impotent anger ... but the vodka had not been able to stupefy him completely; his anger became overpowering and he began to think how to punish the man who had wronged him.... He thought of no one but Naum; the idea of Lizaveta Prohorovna never entered ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... but the minister had a surprising height as he stood in the moonlight, and there was that something strange and spiritual about him that seemed to meet the intention and disarm it. His jaw dropped, and he could not utter the words he had been about to speak. This was insufferable—! But there was that raised hand. It seemed like some one not of this world quite. He wasn't afraid, because it wasn't in him to be afraid. That was his pose, not afraid of those he considered his inferiors, and he did not ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... know not, they have not, they acknowledge not; nay, they despise him in his saving and soul-ascertaining illuminations; and the workings of that mighty power to them-ward who believe, is to the men of this new mould (because they have not found it) an insufferable fancy, to be exploded with a disdain and indignation, which discovers what spirit actuates them ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... bud, and what fruit it may bear I cannot tell; for this insufferable humour, of haunting the court, is so predominant, that she has hitherto broken all her assignations with me, for fear of missing her ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... the floor and tread upon in our spirit of surfeit. To take our education at their hands and use it to devise ways by which we can continue to live on them, seems disquieting even to a pagan conscience. It ought to be insufferable to a sense of social responsibility ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... said quietly. "To insult and threaten a woman! You are nothing but an insufferable bully, and a cowardly murderer. You murdered a man on the Lotus whose little finger held more true manhood, bravery, and worth than the whole of your great, hulking carcass. You are only fit to strike ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... assigned them, they were forthwith declared traitors and their property was confiscated. After a long series of years, by merely keeping in force the first sentence pronounced upon them, Cosimo had the cruel satisfaction of seeing the whole of that proud oligarchy die out by slow degrees in the insufferable tedium of solitude and exile. Even the high-souled Palla degli Strozzi, who had striven to remain neutral, and whose wealth and talents were devoted to the revival of classical studies, was proscribed because to Cosimo he seemed too ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... must not merge into conceit and blind self-satisfaction. The superior, patronizing air of many Americans, their insufferable boasting and dogmatism, does more, perhaps, to prejudice foreigners against us than any other thing. We must teach international good manners, a becoming modesty, a generosity toward the prejudices of others, and a recognition of our ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... day; in the first we sleep in linen "as white as the wings of the dove," in the second on pieces of smelly blankets; the first is redolent of ottar of roses, Shakib's favourite perfume, the second is especially made insufferable by that stench which is peculiar to every Hebrew hive. For these and other reasons, Khalid separates himself from his Semite fellow peddlers, and makes this time a bigger ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... night aboard of the Thames, preferring her spacious accommodations to those of the hotels in such a hot season, when the rain poured in torrents; but sleep was out of the question, for the climate of Sierra Leone could scarcely be more insufferable than the atmosphere then ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... tongue for another year if he would take out his wages in talking. I could not have more of it in that case than I have had the last six months. After money, the thing that man loves best is certainly the sound of his own voice; and a most insufferable egotist! No,—I have been talking with a man who wants to take the whole farm for two years upon shares—that will clear me ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... other hand, and turning our faces outward, we are not much better prepared for an emergency. We are a conceited nation, but insufferable national conceit never yet won a battle. We are given to shouting rather than shooting. Americanism to-day consists chiefly of standing up while the Star Spangled Banner is being played by a brass band, and of shooting off rockets on our national holiday. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... said, "we were never in bondage to any man," and therefore the yoke of bondage would be insufferable to us, but slaves are accustomed to it, their backs are fitted to the burden. Well, I am willing to admit that you who have lived in freedom would find slavery even more oppressive than the poor slave does, but then you may try this question ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... which sat erect in the doorway, looking at me with its frightful goggling green orbs, like one of those monstrous imps that torment some of Teniers' saints! I am one of those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, at any time an insufferable annoyance. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... .. < chapter xxxviii 26 DUSK > By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it. My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that .. I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... down next to the old lady, and the room, from which the older guests were quietly disappearing, was enthusiastically cleared for dancing. The air, close already, became absolutely insufferable now; the men's collars wilted, the girls' flushed faces streamed perspiration. But the cool side-porch was accessible, and the laughter ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... occasions his writings are rescued from utter contempt and derision solely by the beauty and purity of the English. We find, we confess, so great a charm in Mr. Southey's style, that, even when be writes nonsense, we generally read it with pleasure except indeed when he tries to be droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he tells us that Bishop Sprat was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... with an insufferable prolixity of speech-making. There were belts to wipe out the memory of the slain; belts to clear the sky, smooth the rivers, and calm the lakes; a belt to take the hatchet from the hands of the Iroquois; another to take away their ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... ugliest of the many old and ugly ladies who took up my case when I left Major Milroy's service have just called, announcing themselves, with the insufferable impudence of charitable Englishwomen, as a deputation from my patronesses. It seems that the news of my reconciliation with Armadale has spread from the servants' offices at the great house, and has reached ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... written about the insufferable situation of the Russian Jews, these serfs of the twentieth century, chained to "the Pale of Settlement," somewhat like the Roman colons, "glebae adscripti." The tragic history of late years and the epoch through which we are ...
— The Shield • Various

... most of the gentlemen at that! "Preposterous!" said one. "Ridiculous!" said another. "Insufferable presumption!" cried ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... and Hosayn (a fortlet, not the P. N. Al-Husayn) to Husayn. As for the short e in such words as "Memluk" for "Mamluk" (a white slave), "Eshe" for "Asha" (supper), and "Yemen" for "Al- Yaman," I consider it a flat Egyptianism, insufferable to an ear which admires the Badawi pronunciation. Yet I prefer "Shelebi" (a dandy) from the Turkish Chelebi, to "Shalabi;" "Zebdani" (the Syrian village) to "Zabdani," and "Fes and Miknes" (by the figure Imalah) to "Fas and Miknas,", our ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... 'Fenton is insufferable with his insolent bearing and behaviour, and you encourage him in his familiarity. I heard you were taking tea with him and his wife yesterday. I must beg you never to do such a thing again as long as ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... was sometimes Gobi, sometimes Sahara, but always an infinite stretch of sand that floated up and up in a stifling layer, like the tide. Rudolph, desperately choked, continued leaping upward against an insufferable power of gravity, or straining to run against the force of paralysis. The desert rang with phantom voices,—Chinese voices that mocked him, chanting of pestilence, intoning ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... cold water," commented Madge stiffly. Then, taking pity on the discomfited young man, she smiled faintly and said, "I should not blame you for your friend's rude remarks, but I am still very angry with her. Her conduct was insufferable." ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... comparatively short time you will be a priest, I do hope you won't, without his experience, try to imitate Father Rowley too closely in his summary treatment of what I have already I hope made myself quite clear in believing to be in this case a most insufferable young man. Don't misunderstand this letter. I have such great hopes of you in the stormy days to come, and the stormy days are coming, that I should feel I was wrong if I didn't warn you of your attitude towards the merest trifles, for I shall always judge you and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... example also we haue, and that most notorious, of Gabriel Prateolus the Jesuit, who hauing neuer beene in England, nor yet vnderstanding the English toong, blusheth not to say that the translation of the English bible hath in it a thousand faults. O singular and insufferable impudencie, when men passe not what they vomit and cast vp out of a full gorge surfetting with malice and rancour! But what shall we say, [Sidenote: Horat. in art. poet.] Omne ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... the insufferable LLOYD GEORGE as the most dangerous, the most malignant, the most incompetent politician who has ever attempted to misrule this country. The iniquity of the Coalition will make enlightened rulers like LENIN and TROTSKY blush ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... his early education was defective; for on all occasions, when speaking with us, he says, 'Yes, Monsieur le Comte!' or 'Certainly, Madame la Comtesse!' as if he were a servant. Yet withal, he has a peculiar pride, or perhaps I should say insufferable vanity. But his great fault, in my eyes, is the scoffing tone he adopts, when the subject ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... fixing these garments. The hat would not sit as he was accustomed to have it, owing to the bruise on his head, and he stood like a woman petulant with her milliner before the glass; now pressing the hat down till the pain was insufferable, and again trying whether it presented him acceptably in the enforced style of his wearing it. He persisted in this, till Mrs. Boulby's exclamation of wonder admonished him of the ideas received ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "Pompous, insufferable parvenu," thought Clarissa, to whom this desire on Mr. Granger's part seemed only an odious eagerness to exhibit his wealth. She little knew how much sentiment there was involved in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... girl goes like that," said his lordship with an insufferable air of omniscience, "you ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... Dama Margherita, to whom Her Majesty is honey-sweet!" she added, as her glance rested on Eloisa; and growing hot as she dwelt upon the thought, she went on—"she hath a manner quite insufferable—she, who hath not more right than I to rule this court. If one were to put the question to our knights—'an Iblin or a de Montferrat?' would it make a pretty tourney for ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... of Mrs. Page. Previously in the parlor alone with their games they had overturned a chair; the boys had let more or less of their hoodlum spirit shine forth. But when circumstances could be possibly magnified to warrant it, the girls made the boys victims of an insufferable pride, snubbing them mercilessly. So in the dining-room they resembled a class at Sunday-school, if it were not for the subterranean smiles, gestures, rebuffs, and poutings which stamped the ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... has taken a holiday and come with me out of friendship, out of generosity," thought the doctor with vexation; "nothing could be worse than this friendly supervision. I suppose he is good-natured and generous and a lively fellow, but he is a bore. An insufferable bore. In the same way there are people who never say anything but what is clever and good, yet one feels ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... himself wondering how the young fop would look sitting in a pool of muddy water. How insufferable the young fellow's manners were! He sat quite close to Maimie, now and then whispering to her, evidently quite ignorant of how to behave in church. And Maimie, who ought to know better, was acting ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... upon the body is measured by the difference in the actual and sensible temperatures, as recorded by the dry and wet bulb thermometers. When both stand nearly together as they are apt to do in a humid atmosphere, the heat becomes insufferable. In the dry climate of Arizona such a condition cannot occur. The difference in the two instruments is always great, often as much as forty degrees. For this reason, a temperature of 118 degrees F. at Yuma is less oppressive than 98 degrees F. is in New York. A low relative humidity gives ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... when he was almost worn out, having spent the greater part of many nights reading instead of sleeping, in order to avoid the frightful visions, he happened to mention his insufferable condition to Osdeven. Far from ridiculing his rival, Osdeven, with great earnestness, encouraged him to relate everything that had happened to him in his sleep; and when Nielsen had done so, exclaimed, "I'll tell you what it is—these dreams you have are not ordinary nightmares; ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... less because he had much money to spend. It added nothing to him if he had much, it took nothing from him if he had little.' A sharp fellow who worked, and a stupid fellow who was idle, were both of them in good odour enough, but a stupid boy who presumed to work was held to be an insufferable solecism.[25] ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... thought how narrowly she had escaped, poor girl, from lunching with that insufferable pill Teddy—or was it Edgar?—he felt quite weak. Recovering himself, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... icy spasm seemed to contract his heart, . . seized by a sudden insufferable anxiety, he stared like one spell-bound into Sah-luma's wide-open, fixed, and glassy eyes. Dead eyes! ... yet how full of mysterious significance! ... What—WHAT was their weird secret, their imminent meaning! ... Why did their dark and frozen depths appear to retain a strange, living undergleam ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... a beggarly one shilling and sixpence a day. One of this discontented pair, Abel Handy, had been put into the hospital by Mr. Harding himself; he had been a stonemason in Barchester, and had broken his thigh by a fall from a scaffolding. (Dr. Grantly had been very anxious to put into it instead an insufferable clerk of his at Plumstead, who had lost all his teeth, and whom the archdeacon hardly knew how to get rid of by other means.) There was living at Barchester a young man, a surgeon, named John Bold, and both Mr. Harding and Dr. Grantly were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... mistress," said Madame Schontz, smiling. "Here you are, more than married; you will be insufferable, you will be always wanting to get home, there will be nothing loose about you, neither your clothes nor your habits. And, after all, my Arthur does things in style. I will be faithful to ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... child at the time), in full expectation that it was for Virginia, he encountered so much of ungrateful and abusive treatment, after the brethren met at Southampton,—especially at the hands of the insufferable Martin, who, without merit and with a most reprehensible record (as it proved), was chosen over him as "governor" of the ship,—that he was doubtless glad to return from Plymouth when the SPEEDWELL broke down. He and his family appear, therefore, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast —whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God—so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... don't know whether they have learned anything from his misfortunes, but I am bound to say that the court does not seem to have taken the lesson, in the slightest degree, to heart; and their arrogance is just as insufferable as it was before ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... I have, Nan. I'm a spoiled child, I admit it. You and Dad spoil me, and all my friends do, too. I'm made to believe that the sun rises and sets in silly little Patty Fairfield, and it has made me a vain, conceited, selfish, insufferable Pig! That's what it ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... four, the shadow of the buttonwood will fall into this poor animal's pasture. Four hours and a half of torture, rendered more painful by the contemplation of the luxuries of her remote companions! It is insufferable!" ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... volitions?—may he not enjoy life, exult in freedom, and pursue as he will the path of blessedness? If not, why was he so created and endowed? Why the mysterious, awful attribute of will? To be a source, profound as the depths of hell, of exquisite misery, of keen anguish, of insufferable torment! Was man, formed "according to the image of Jehovah," to be crossed, thwarted, counteracted; to be forced in upon himself; to be the sport of endless contradictions; to be driven back and forth forever between mutually repellant forces; and all, all "at the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... in the North, but only in the East; while apart from this, the original by Gozzi, which formed the basis of the work, undoubtedly bore an oriental character. It was with the utmost indignation that I opposed the insufferable turban and caftan style of dress, and vehemently advocated the knightly garb worn in the early years of the Middle Ages. I then had to come to a thorough understanding with the conductor, Stegmayer, on the subject of my score. He was a remarkable, short, fat man, with fair curly hair, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... "He's that insufferable kind of creature who thinks himself irresistible," June went on. "Micky has often told me the way he brags about his so-called 'conquests.' Conquests, indeed! What are they but a few poor ignorant girls hoodwinked by his handsome face and smooth tongue? Dozens of ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... however, is more insupportable to men of sense, than an empty formal man who speaks in proverbs, and decides all controversies with a short sentence. This piece of stupidity is the more insufferable, as it puts on the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... execution, in the reign of Louis XVIII., she attended a performance of "Le Comedien d'Etampes," one evening at the Gymnase, when she laughed immoderately at the comical part played by Perlet. At the same time, Castanier, also present at this mirthful scene, but harassed by Melmoth, was experiencing the insufferable doom of a cruel hidden drama. [Melmoth Reconciled.] Her next appearance is at a famous orgy at the home of Frederic Taillefer, rue Joubert, in company with Emile Blondet, Rastignac, Bixiou and Raphael de Valentin. She was a magnificent ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... unable to appreciate either the beauty of the scenery or the incidents of travel. I can, in fact, remember nothing of our journey now, except the wearisome and interminable jolting over bad roads and the insufferable heat. It was the middle of August in an exceptionally warm summer, and after passing Genoa the heat became almost tropical. There was no relief even at night, for the warm air hung stagnant and suffocating, and ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas. He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the first noble in the land. Mayenne's chosen role was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into the open of passion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man lived—unless, indeed, he ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... assistant district attorney known to memory—with the aid of his little book. He could lasso and throw any galloping criminal, however fierce, with a gracefully uncoiling rope of deadly adjectives. On all of which he properly prided himself until he became unendurable to his fellows and insufferable to Peckham, who would have cheerfully fired him months gone by had he had a reason or had there been any other legal esoteric ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... are becoming insufferable, for we have had no rain, save in very homoeopathic doses, during the three weeks that we have been here. The shrubs and bushes by the roadside look so piteous under their weight of dust, that I feel half inclined to try the effect of a feather brush upon their drooping leaves; and Bernard, who ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... had the highest esteem for this circle, and Anna with her special gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... Shakespeare's latest period; and it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, or the whole story is unnecessary ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... practice, it would easily become universal. It is, however, very possible that mere horror of the heats of day-time may have been the original ground for it. The ancients appear to have shrunk from no hardship so trying and insufferable as that of heat. And in relation to that subject, it is interesting to observe the way in which the ordinary use of language has accommodated itself to that feeling. Our northern way of expressing ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... dinner. Upon our return to our inn, to dress, we were annoyed by a nuisance which had before frequently assailed us. I knew a man, who in a moment of ill humour, vented rather a revengeful wish that the next neighbour of his enemy might have a child, who was fond of a whistle and a drum! A more insufferable nuisance was destined for us; the person who lodged in the next room to mine, was a beginner (and a dull one too) upon the trumpet. It was general Ruffin, whom I have mentioned before, forcing from this brazen tube, sounds which certainly would have set a kennel of hounds ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... Henry, Philip, or Pius; while Philip justly urged that no prince in Christendom permitted license. "Let them well understand," said his Majesty, "that since others who live in error, hold the opinion that vassals are to conform to the religion of their master, it is insufferable that it should be proposed to me that my vassals should have a different religion from mine—and that too being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies and miracles, while all others are deception. This must be arranged with the authority of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... as melons in the market" under the walls of Rome, while the Castel Sant' Angelo was tricked out like a Christmas tree with quartered corpses—a man who told the authorities, when they complained of the insufferable stench of the dead, that the smell of living iniquity was far worse. Such a man was wanted. Therefore, in 1810, Murat gave carte blanche to General Manhes, the greatest brigand-catcher of modern times, to extirpate the ruffians, root and branch. He had just ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... Agamemnon makes apology and gives gifts of atonement. Such, plainly, is the unwritten feudal law, which gives to the Over-Lord the lion's share of booty, the initiative in war and council, and the right to command; but limits him by the privilege of the peers to renounce their fealty under insufferable provocation. In no Book is Agamemnon so direfully insulted as in the First, which is admitted to be of the original "kernel." Elsewhere the sympathy of the poet occasionally enables him to feel ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... really bad article in the number, and that is insufferable: nor do we think it the less a nuisance because it inflicts upon ourselves individually a passage of maudlin compliment about our bring a most 'ingenious critic' 'and prose poet,' with some other things of a similar kind. We thank for his good word no man who ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... of voices, not to be differentiated by the human ear, the ewe knows the note of her little one with very remarkable certainty, and the lamb the answering cry of its dam. With this sound ringing in his ears, and daily becoming more and more insufferable from monotony and increase, the sheep-man rides out in the morning among his Mexicans, and returns to camp at night aweary, with haply a couple of little ones abandoned by their mothers in his arms, to be brought up on that pis-aller ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... walk their horses in a southerly direction; but the heat was now so great, that it became almost insufferable, and at last the horses stood still. They dismounted, and drove their horses slowly before them over the glowing plain; and now the mirage deluded and tantalised them in the strangest manner. At one time, Alexander pointed with delight (for he could ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... say; and it might happen that an insufferable guest (who never got asked again) would object that the hymn part was unusual ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various

... Luxemburg would but come! I might, at least, learn how I stand at court, and find out why the king returned to the Louvre by an unusual route. Heavens! how long will I be able to smile upon these hateful bores? How long sustain the burden of this insufferable lie?" ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... vast deal of ruins and rubbish in the Eternal City. And as regards its sanitary condition, there may be a great deal of holiness in Rome, but there is very little cleanliness in it. When a shower falls, and the odour of the garbage with which the streets are littered is exhaled, the smell is insufferable. One had better not describe the spectacles that one sees every day on the marble stairs of the churches. The words of Archenholtz in the end of last century are still applicable:—"Filth," says he, "infects ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... the company present, thus spoke, 'How shall I enough praise and admire the gentle Mignon for having put in my power to justice on this execrable wretch, and freeing you all from an insufferable slavery, and the whole country from their terror?' Then reaching the monster's own sword, which hung over his couch, his hand yet suspended over the impious tyrant, he thus said, 'Speak, wretch, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... her and say to her what he could not say before all these people. He thought of a very good reason why she had chosen this occasion to proclaim her authorship of the famous anonymous novel. She had been so humiliated, poor child, by the insufferable rudeness of that Western girl that she naturally wished to make good. And how modest and unselfish she had been to make the attempt to exalt another author when she herself was so much greater. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... put his conscience out of peril, as Bucer represented the case to me. Much less would I ever have advised that there should be a public marriage, to which (though he told me nothing of this) a young princess and young countess should come, which is truly not to be borne and is insufferable to the whole empire. But I understood and hoped, as long as he had to go the common way with sin and shame and weakness of the flesh, that he would take some honorable maiden or other in secret marriage, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... by this time became insufferable; my mouth was parched and inflamed; a sudden dimness would frequently come over my eyes with other symptoms of fainting; and my horse, being barely able to walk, I began seriously to apprehend that I should perish of thirst. To relieve the burning pain in my mouth or throat, I chewed the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... . I cannot get on with Books about the Daily Life which I find rather insufferable in practice about me. I never could read Miss Austen, nor (later) the famous George Eliot. Give me People, Places, and Things, which I don't and can't see; Antiquaries, Jeanie Deans, Dalgettys, etc. . . . As to Thackeray's, they are terrible; I really ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... impatient with the civilized Philistine, but is willing to speak to him in a language all his own, hoping indeed to tune his tongue one day to something less uncouth. None can sympathize more cordially than the writer does with Durtal in his horror of unauthorized devotions, of insufferable vernacular litanies, of nerveless and sickly hymns, of interminable "acts of consecration" void of a single definite idea, more especially when these things are brought into the very sanctuary itself, with stole and cope and every apparent endeavour ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... than most of them," Aemilia said, "for he puts on no airs, and is just like a merry, good tempered lad, while if a young Roman had done but a tithe of the deeds he has he would be insufferable. We must get Pollio to take us tomorrow to see the other Britons. They must be giants indeed, when Beric, who says he is but little more than eighteen years, could take Pollio under his arm and walk ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... What an insufferable animal Farley was, to be sure!—with the love of a woman like Ardea Dabney failing to keep him on the hither side of common decency! Would Ardea break with him, now that she knew the truth? Tom shook his head. Not ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... the bucolic cock who has communed only with nature and known no envious longings to outshriek the morning milkman or the purveyor of catfish. And he who is thus afflicted perhaps may be justified if he regards "the cock, that trumpet of the morn," as an insufferable nuisance, whose only excuse for existence is that he is pleasant to the eye and the palate when, bursting with stuffing, he lies, brown and crisp, among the gravy, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... questioningly. She opened her lips to say more, but changed her mind and in an altered tone declared, "My dear boy, if you understood fully what I'm driving at you'd be insufferable." Laying her warm hand over his, she continued: "You resent what you call my 'motherly way,' but if I were sixteen and you were forty it would be just the same. Women who are afflicted with that sex appeal become men's playthings; the man who possesses it always remains a 'boy' to the woman ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... man is born as he is born. And he can as easily add a cubit to his stature as add kindliness to his heart. The feat never has been done, and never will be done. And yet we blame those who have not kindliness. We have the incredible, insufferable, and odious audacity to blame them. We think of them as though they had nothing to do but go into a shop and buy kindliness. I hear you say that kindliness of heart can be "cultivated." Well, I hate to have even the appearance ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... oddest compound," continued her cousin, "so gay and comical, and so little given to be shocked and scandalised at the wicked ways of others; or to find fault and lecture; or, in short, to do any of the insufferable things that your good people are so addicted to. I really don't know what ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... forests of Guiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops, and commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on greegree worms and fed upon by mosquitos, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot at by those exceedingly unattainable gentlemen, "still longed for, never ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... Insufferable! Horrible! I would rather have seen the man perish at my feet; I would rather have died: I would have remained unmarried all my life rather than have submitted ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... sensible of his deplorable situation, without any means of procuring food, or prospect of finding water. Oppressed with excessive thirst, he travelled on without having seen a human habitation. It was now become insufferable; his mouth was parched and inflamed, a sudden dimness frequently came over his eyes, and he began seriously to apprehend that he should perish for want of drink. A little before sunset, he climbed a high tree, from the topmost branches of which he took a melancholy survey of the barren ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... beaten a march out of some old tub for kindness' sake with a little gracious bow at the end! Don't you remember my telling you about that wisp of an organist whom Mr. R—— petted till he didn't know his shock head from his clumsy heels, and the insufferable airs he gave himself at their party over the piano, and the audience, and the lights, and silence, and what he would or would not play to the elderly merchants. And of all the amateur-and-water performances!!! I have heard enough good playing to ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... dismantled huts, for the most part mere burrows with roofs of interlaced boughs that were now smoking amid the ashes of the fires. Not a sign of disorder, nor even of the rapidity with which so great an army had been moved; not a scale of armour left behind—only the insufferable stench of a barbarian camp, of offal and refuse piled or scattered about, of dead beasts and of dead men—the sick and wounded who had yielded to sword or disease during the last ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... rode across the prairie, where a year ago I had hunted several herds. At the time we enjoyed the aspect of a myriad of buffaloes, which were grazing peacefully over the prairies. Now we rode past myriads of decaying cadavers and skeletons, which filled the air with an insufferable stench. The broad plain which, a year ago, had teemed with animals, was nothing more than a ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... many handfuls of dirt. But it is impossible altogether to lose sight of the peasant in Beethoven and Gluck; Spohr had more than a trace of the successful shopkeeper; Spontini's assertion often became mere insufferable bumptiousness. Besides, they all won their positions through being the best men in the field, and they held them with a proud consciousness of being the best men. But in Handel we have a polished gentleman, a lord amongst lords, almost a king amongst kings; ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... she remembered that she had an engagement to dine out this evening, but the thought was insufferable. Eustace, who was to have accompanied her, must go alone. Having given the necessary orders, she went to her room, meaning to sit there until dinner. But she grew restless and impatient; when the first bell rang, she made a hurried change of dress, and descended to ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... was she going to put up with this life? The irony of the whole position was insufferable. Geoffrey's ejaculation for instance when she had invited him to her sitting-room after breakfast that he might look for a book he had lent her—"My word, Helena, what a jolly place!—Why, this was the old school-room—I remember ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... passage, and thus one had a fine view as far as Lido. At that trying moment I did not care much for the view; but later on I found that a sweet and pleasant wind came through the window when it was opened, and tempered the insufferable heat; and this was a true blessing for the poor wretch who had to breathe the sultry prison air, especially in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... profession, m'sieu, not mine; I only consented because Miss Lawton had been kind to me, and I desired to aid her in her trouble, if I could. But that he—that I—should be suspected and watched, and treated like criminals, oh, it is insufferable. To-day, also, I leave the Anita Lawton Club. You shall find some one else to play detective for you—you ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander



Words linked to "Insufferable" :   intolerable, unsufferable, unbearable, unacceptable



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