"Insupportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before the miracle had fallen upon her cheek (as she declared in her deposition), was found to be quite dried up; the bone, which had been rotted and putrified, was restored to its former condition; all the stench, proceeding from it, which had been so insupportable that by order of the physicians and surgeons she was separated from her companions, was changed into a breath as sweet as an infant's; and she recovered at the same moment her ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,—whose speech is Song. Pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed;—it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who can speak their thought, not ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... whom the Jews thought were the last to be saved, first entered the kingdom of God."—Eleventh Hour, Tract, No. 4. "A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both."—Prov., xxvii, 3. "A man of business, in good company, is hardly more insupportable than her they call a notable woman."—Steele, Sped. "The king of the Sarmatians, whom we may imagine was no small prince, restored him a hundred thousand Roman prisoners."—Life of Antoninus, p. 83. "Such notions would be avowed at this time by ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... vaginal orifice of the urethra, preventing the discharge of the urine, and thus being the cause of great pain when the animal endeavoured to void it, or the faecal matter. The uterus was become of almost a black colour, swelled, softened, and exhaling an insupportable odour. Judging from this that the preservation of the uterus was impossible, and reckoning much on the good constitution of the patient, I warned the proprietor of the danger of its reduction, even supposing ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... inspection of their families, to whom their real characters are easily and perfectly known; for they seldom think it worth while to practise any disguise before those, whose good opinion they do not value, and who are obliged to submit to their most insupportable humours, because they are ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... sprang his leading and most effective qualities. He was never very ready to talk about himself, but when asked what he regarded as his master secret, he always said, 'Concentration.' Slackness of mind, vacuity of mind, the wheels of the mind revolving without biting the rails of the subject, were insupportable. Such habits were of the family of faintheartedness, which he abhorred. Steady practice of instant, fixed, effectual attention, was the key alike to his rapidity of apprehension and to his powerful memory. In the orator's temperament ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... heard—a roar like to the roar of his own cataracts in flood. Children cast themselves on the ground, and rolled back and forth cheering and whooping; strong men, their faces hidden in their clothes, swayed in silence, till the agony became insupportable, and they threw up their heads and bayed at the sun; women, mothers and virgins, shrilled shriek upon mounting shriek, and slapped their thighs as it might have been the roll of musketry. When they tried to draw breath, some half-strangled voice would quack out the word, and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... propriety violated," returned Mr. Effingham. "Let us pray that we may not be separated, for there will at least be a tender consolation in being permitted to share our misery in company. Should we be torn asunder, then indeed will the infliction be one of insupportable agony!" ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... book-collectors who intrust the selection of their books to secretaries or librarians, and thus sacrifice the keenest enjoyment of this captivating pursuit. Of all absurdities, this seems the most insupportable. It would be far more sensible to have your secretary select your friends, because if you should happen not to like these, you could abandon them without ceremony or expense. Why not also attend the opera and your various social functions by proxy, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... of my uncle, at all times irksome and repelling, after the death of his good wife became almost insupportable; while the insolence and presumption of his artful son, goaded a free and irascible spirit like mine almost to madness. The moral force of his mother's character, though unappreciated by him, had been some restraint upon his unamiable, tyrannical temper. That restraint was now removed, and Theophilus ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... must be attributed those insupportable chains which tyrants, which priests have forged for most nations. To error must be equally attributed that abject slavery into which the people of almost every country have fallen. Nature designed they should pursue their happiness by the most perfect freedom.—To error must be attributed ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... lost to him for ever. The dreadful grief which had so long brooded darkly over his life had come down upon him at last, and the pang had not been so insupportable as he had expected ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... rivals, which also require continuation by stockings to complete the purpose of clothing the leg. Buttons at the knee are a great nuisance, and probably were what chiefly contributed to the melancholy determination of a certain gentleman in the last century, who found his existence insupportable, and put an end to it with his own hand. Life, he said, was made up of nothing but buttoning and unbuttoning; and so he shot himself one morning in his dressing-gown and slippers, before the intolerable burden of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... honeymoon; but you will also have to contend against a resolution. She has determined to revenge herself. From that day, so far as regards you, her mask, like her heart, has turned to bronze. Formerly you were an object of indifference to her; you are becoming by degrees absolutely insupportable. The Civil War commences only at the moment in which, like the drop of water which makes the full glass overflow, some incident, whose more or less importance we find difficulty in determining, has rendered you odious. The lapse ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... a thunderstroke to Othello, who now plainly saw that he was no better than a murderer, and that his wife (poor innocent lady) had been ever faithful to him; the extreme anguish of which discovery making life insupportable, he fell upon his sword, and throwing himself upon the body of his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... to her generosity would be worse than useless. With a little of her old artistic egoism, Katherine valued her brother's career very much as a thing of her own making, and the idea of another woman meddling with it and spoiling it was insupportable. It was as if some reckless colourist had taken the Witch of Atlas and daubed her all over with frightful scarlet and magenta. But the trouble at her heart of hearts was the certainty that Audrey, that creature of dubious intellect and fitful emotions, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... generally speaking, it may be suitable and advisable to represent wars and battles on the stage. The Greeks have uniformly renounced them: as in the whole of their theatrical system they proceeded on ideas of grandeur and dignity, a feeble and petty imitation of the unattainable would have appeared insupportable in their eyes. With them, consequently, all fighting was merely recounted. The principle of the romantic dramatists was altogether different: their wonderful pictures were infinitely larger than their theatrical means of visible execution; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Scythian language arima signifies one and spou the eye. The whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard and severe a winter, that there prevails there for eight months an altogether insupportable cold, so that if you pour water on the ground you will not make mud, but if you light a fire you will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Scythians who live within the trench travel on the ice ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... which the Egyptians derived their metals and choicest materials in hard stone, were difficult of access, and would have been useless had roads not been made, and works of this kind carried out, so as to make life somewhat less insupportable there. ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Louisa! I must call him something. It's impossible,' said Mrs. Gradgrind, with a mingled sense of politeness and injury, 'to be constantly addressing him and never giving him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is insupportable to me. You yourself wouldn't hear of Joe, you very well know. Am I to call my own son- in-law, Mister! Not, I believe, unless the time has arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my relations. Then, what ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... sound, were truly dreadful. I really and sincerely thought St. Julian's mountain was rent by one violent stroke, accompanied with a rough concussion, and that the rock would fall upon our heads by morning; while the agonies of my English maid and the French valet, became equally insupportable to themselves and me; who could only repeat the same unheeded consolations, and protest our resolution of releasing them from this theatre of distraction the moment our departure should become practicable. Mean time the rain fell, and such a torrent came tumbling down ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... be droll, why then were its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer's face. An apron would have done as much; and though I should have preferred even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely insupportable, like the mask. Was it the immovability of the mask? The doll's face was immovable, but I was not afraid of HER. Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused into my quickened ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... pleasures of this world, we should be very little troubled for our afflictions; that which renders an afflicted state so insupportable to many, is because they are too much addicted to the pleasures of this life; and so cannot endure that which makes a separation ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... it that has not happened every twenty-four hours since I was born," she said; "it is always the same—everything is the same, and it is this monotony that seems to me insupportable. As I sit here at this window I feel it to be impossible that I should ever drag myself through the remainder of this afternoon, and through the evening which will be like every other evening that I have spent. Aunt Rosa will repeat her exhaustless jokes, Aunt ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the colony received large accessions from the English in New England. "Numbers, nay whole towns," says De Laet, "to escape from the insupportable government of New England, removed to New Netherlands, to enjoy that liberty denied to them by their own countrymen." They settled in New Amsterdam, on Long Island, and in Westchester county. Being admitted to the rights of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the pulse had risen to one hundred and thirty, and the headache almost insupportable, especially on looking to the right or left. I now opened a vein, and made a large orifice, to allow the blood to rush out rapidly; I closed it after losing sixteen ounces. I then steeped my feet in warm water and got into the hammock. After bleeding ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... to cramp his splay feet, with his great toes standing out, into European shoes made for feet of a different form; to place a collar round his neck, which is called a stock, and which to him is cruel torture; above all, to confine him every night to his barracks—are almost insupportable. One unacquainted with the habits of the negro cannot conceive with what abhorrence he looks on having his disposition to nocturnal rambles ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... the little shutter remains closed, while the sound of spurs, swords, and voices cross each other in the corridor, sometimes near, then dying away into the distance. A few moments more of anxious waiting and agony almost insupportable, then I raise my arm determined to break the window, when a new noise from the outside causes a shudder to run ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dallying for a moment. If we lingered we should be caught by the tide in Mousetrap Cove, and then nothing could save us. Suppose in passing the debris we should come upon her father's corpse. The idea was insupportable. 'Thank God, however, I murmured, 'she will not even then know the very worst; she will see the corpse of her father who has fallen with the cliff, but she need not and will not associate him with ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... must be remembered that—a most important consideration—the aerial voyager, necessarily travelling with the wind, is unconscious, save at exceptional moments, of any breeze whatever, and it is a well-established fact that a degree of cold which might be insupportable when a breeze is stirring may be but little felt in dead calm. It should also be remembered, in duly regarding Gay Lussac's remarkable record, that this was not his first experience of high altitudes, and it is an ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... his heart gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be friendless, now, among that multitude of strangers; whereas, an hour earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an insupportable terror to him. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... while Walter, already feeling the pangs of hunger, was lying stretched at his length in the shade cast by the sail; for the intense heat of the sun, which was striking down from an almost cloudless sky, was almost insupportable. Mr Shobbrok constantly looked around ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... his lips shall he slay the wicked." (Is. xi. 4; Luke xix. 27.) "His countenance as the sun shining in his strength," disclosed to the beloved disciple such splendor as to overwhelm him. The like display of divine majesty was insupportable to Saul of Tarsus when on his way to Damascus. (Acts xxvi. 13.) To the workers of iniquity, "our God is a consuming fire." (Heb. xii. 29.) It is a certain truth,—"The vengeance of the gospel is weighter than the vengeance of the law." (Heb. x. ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... wilt not do as we desire, we will now attack thee, and put thee to death; for we will no longer suffer law and peace to be disturbed. So our forefathers went to work when they drowned five kings in a morass at the Mula-thing, and they were filled with the same insupportable pride thou hast shown towards us. Now tell us, in all haste, what resolution thou wilt take." Then the whole public approved, with clash of arms and shouts, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... how does Peter mean to avoid the new field of duty, if he be sure of turning out on the Dean's death? Oh! I see—"finish his days at his College, if the changes at the University have not rendered it insupportable to one who remembers elder and better days." Poor Peter! Well; these are direful consequences of Miss Sandbrook's fit of flightiness! Yes, I'll show her the letter, it might tame her a little; and, poor thing, I own I liked her better when she was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uneasiness in all men, and presents them every moment with a disagreeable comparison. It is a trite observation in philosophy, and even in common life and conversation, that it is our own pride, which makes us so much displeased with the pride of other people; and that vanity becomes insupportable to us merely because we are vain. The gay naturally associate themselves with the gay, and the amorous with the amorous: But the proud never can endure the proud, and rather seek the company of those who ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... I do not,' replied Venetia, with firmness. 'I can easily conceive that the mention of my father may for various reasons be insupportable to my mother; it is enough for me that I am convinced such is the case: my lips are sealed to her for ever upon the subject; but I cannot recognise the necessity of this constraint to others. For a long time I was kept in ignorance whether I had a father or not. I have ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints. Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had been at the head of the administration, there would have been a great relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been a mere tyranny of the military class over the unarmed population. Like the Roman Empire, that of the Franks had forfeited respect and popularity by misgovernment, by feeble government, by insupportable demands on the personal service of the subject. The land-owner was a less exacting master than the Empire; often he could defend his tenants from imperial exactions. During the invasions of the Northmen and Hungarians, he was impelled by his own interest to guard his estates to the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... man that he was a poet and treated him with great consideration, making him understand, however, that all sustained mental effort was insupportable to ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... now become almost insupportable; as, for the reason before assigned, every window and door was shut. However, this inconvenience, if it was severe, was luckily of short duration. A little after nine, their Majesties retired towards the door by which they had entered: and which, as it was reopened, presented, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... constantly in the dormitory, where everything was rolling and crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of lamentations and imprecations, and he thought that his last hour had come. There were other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of insupportable heat, of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched hours, during which the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the planks, seemed all dead. And the voyage was endless: sea and sky, sky and sea; to-day the same as yesterday, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... perhaps, nothing which so grinds the human soul, and produces such an insupportable burden of wretchedness and despondency, as pecuniary pressure. Nothing more frequently drives men to suicide; and there is, perhaps, no danger to which men in an active and enterprising community are more exposed. Almost all are eagerly reaching forward to a station in life a little ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... see the contrast I am trying to establish? The essence of the romantic ideal of marriage is at bottom an insupportable egoism—the seeking of happiness by the all too insistent Self—the forgetting of the ultimate ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... published separately and ascribed to Butler are: A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus, or London's Confession but not repentance ... (1643), represented in vol. iv. of Somers's tracts; Mola Asinarum, on the unreasonable and insupportable burthen now pressed ... upon this groaning nation ... (1659), included in his posthumous works, which is supposed to have been written by John Prynne, though Wood ascribes it to Butler; The Acts and monuments of our late parliament ... (1659, printed 1710), of which a continuation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in the nunnery now became insupportable, and I determined to escape. I pleaded ill-health, and kept my bed. The physician of a neighbouring convent, who had a great reputation, was sent for against my wishes. When I heard of his arrival, I dressed to receive him for I was fearful of some scrutiny. He inquired what ailed me: I answered ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... employment to which it would have gone of its own accord, are only impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country. In a more advanced state, they might be really oppressive and insupportable. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... chance to meet his labours, he is apt to forget himself; if otherwise, he is soon forgot. The efforts of the critic may be necessary to clip the wings of a presuming author, lest his rising vanity becomes insupportable: but I pity the man, who writes a book which none will peruse a second time; critical exertions are not necessary to pull him down, he will fall of himself. The sin of writing carries its own punishment, the tumultuous passions of anxiety and expectation, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... "You become insupportable, Chicot; and I now attribute to you ambitious projects and intrigues of which I formerly believed ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... about the condition of my own dear native land. I hope not to meet any contradiction when I say that no condition can and will endure, which is so bad, so insupportable, that, by trying to change it, a people can lose nothing, and may gain everything. No condition can and will endure, the maintenance of which is contrary to every interest of every class. A revolution on the contrary is unavoidable, when every interest of every class wishes and ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... incapable of getting an honest Livelihood for themselves and Families; the Number of lewd Houses, which trade in their Vices, and which must at any rate be paid for making Sin convenient to them; and it will account for Villainies of another Kind, which are growing so fast as to be insupportable, and almost incurable: For, Where is the Wonder that Persons so abandoned should be ready to commit all Sorts of Outrage and Violence?—A City without Religion can never be a safe Place ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... this would come, and he felt that, upon the whole, this was the worst part of the performance. He could bear her anger or her sullenness with fortitude, but her lachrymose caresses were insupportable. He held her, however, in his arms, and gazed at himself in the pier glass most uncomfortably over her shoulder. "Oh, Jack," she said, "oh, Jack,—what is to come next?" His face became somewhat more lugubrious ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... I grieve for you. The misery Of doubt is insupportable. Pity, the facts Did not admit of stronger evidence; Twelve honest men, plain men, would set us right; Their verdict would abolish ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... Sometimes the case varied thus far: that it greatly increased towards three or four o'clock in the morning; and, as the sound grew louder, and thereby seemed to draw nearer, poor Pink's ghostly panic grew insupportable; and he absolutely crept from his pavilion, and its luxurious comforts, to a point of rock—a promontory—about half a mile off, from which he could see the ship. The mere sight of a human abode, though an abode of ruffians, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... new seamen the weather continued fine, but the heat of the galley was declared by the new cook to be insupportable. From the other hands they learned that they had been shipped with several others by a resourceful boarding-house master. The other hands, being men of plain speech, also said that they were brought aboard in a state of beastly and enviable intoxication, and chaffed crudely when the ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... she had perjured herself. She had sworn away her honor. She had basely made herself vile. She had struck ruthlessly at the great heart of a man who loved her. Ah! That thrust had rebounded to leave this dreadful pang in her breast. Loved her? Yes, the strange truth, the insupportable truth! She had to contend now, not with her father and her disgrace, not with the baffling presence of Jean Isbel, but with the mysteries of her own soul. Wonder of all wonders was it that such love had been ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... she suggested a night for dining together on her return; and Eric spent three days that were as restless and insupportable as the three hours before a first night. It would hurt intolerably if she behaved as a stranger, when they met; almost as intolerably if she threw herself into his arms—and forced him to remember what he ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... you say, that matters are not going so well between the Emperor and myself, and you are sorry for this. I am sorry myself, if for no other reason than that it increases the friction of the daily working machine to an insupportable degree. As soon as a thing of this sort leaks out—and it does so fast enough—all enemies, male and female, rush in with renewed strength, making for the vulnerable point, in the hope of securing my overthrow. These good people are like carrion ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... there had been no actual war between France and the empire, Henry entered into an alliance with German princes against the Emperor. Several of those princes, headed by Maurice of Saxony, had secretly formed a league to resist by force of arms the "measures employed by Charles to reduce Germany to insupportable and perpetual servitude." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... there was no air stirring, and the vapor of steam hung heavily in the atmosphere, the heat was almost insupportable. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... waking, since she had parted with him on the beach the evening previous. At the sound of every horse's feet she started, and her heart beat quicker. But he came not that day, and as evening approached, her disappointment became almost insupportable; she tried to frame excuses for him; he had never been to the house; perhaps he had, by a very natural mistake, gone to her uncle's house in town, instead of that where she now was, and which was rather ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... ill with the dysentery. I know of no disease which brings a man down more rapidly. Two or three days weakened me so much that I could scarcely move; and with it came a despondency of mind that was almost insupportable. I had been for years a wayfarer in strange lands, but never, during the whole time, did I so forcibly feel the want of a home, and the solace and care of friends, as now. How did I long to be once more under my father's roof, with an affectionate mother and kind sister! I ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... the poignant anecdote and began to write long books full of poignancy, then the reading public began to rebel and to demand the recall of romance. The long books about the black poverty of cities became quite insupportable. The Berkshire tragedy had a chorus; but the London tragedy has no chorus. Therefore people welcomed the return of adventurous novels about alien places and times, the trenchant and swordlike stories of Stevenson. But I am not narrowly on the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... You say now that you have not suspected me, and yet in what condition do I find myself? Because an old woman has chosen to talk scandal about me, I am placed in a position in my own house which is disgraceful to you and insupportable to myself. This man has been in the habit of coming here on Sundays, and will, of course, know that we are at home. You must manage it as you please. If you choose to receive him, I ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... insupportable cry-baby; oh! the silly, with his complaints," cried Cecily, in a sardonic and contemptuous tone; he does nothing but groan and lament, and has been for ten days shut up alone with a young woman, in a ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... and sorrows of those few years, which we now call transitory, but which our BOYHOOD felt as if they would be endless—as if they would endure for ever—arose upon us the glorious dawning of another new life—YOUTH—with its insupportable sunshine, and its agitating storms. Transitory, too, we now know, and well deserving the same name of dream. But while it lasted, long, various, and agonising; as, unable to sustain the eyes that first revealed to us the light of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... described to her and condemn a man for being a selfish brute, when the trouble is really sexual anaesthesia in the wife. It is well known that this single cause operates disastrously to disrupt many marriages or else to render them insupportable. The warning should be added, however—and it cannot be added too emphatically—that the social worker must scrupulously refrain from making diagnoses in these cases, even tentatively; she must refer such data as come to her either to the general practitioner or to the psychiatrist, ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... she was becoming serious again. Lights flashed upon her face. I felt a sudden wave of pity mingled with my love for her. After all, there were times when her anxiety must have been almost insupportable. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... life unsoured. Handicapped, I say, because the public likes to feel that a writer of farcical stories is piquantly miserable in his private life, and that, if he turns out anything amusing, he does it simply in order to obtain relief from the almost insupportable weight of an existence which he has long since realized to be a wash-out. Well, today ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... the sun's rays than the elephant, whose nature prompts it to seek the deepest shade. Its dark colour and immense surface attract an amount of heat which becomes almost insupportable to the unfortunate creature when forced to carry a heavy load during the hot season in India. Even without a greater weight than its rider, the elephant exhibits signs of distress when marching after 9 a.m. At such times it is disagreeable, as the animal has ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... become very savage and very morose. I meet him very seldom in society," said Saint Remy, with a shade of impatience; for this conversation was insupportable, both from its inopportuneness, and because the notary seemed to be much amused. But the stepmother of Madame d'Harville, enchanted at this meeting with a beau of society, was not the woman to let ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... he may wish to eat to a condemned convict. But the Host was brought into the prison without ceremony, without accompanying candles or vestment for the priest. There are always some things which are insupportable to a man. Brother Martin could bear the sight of the girl's anguish, but not to administer to her a diminished rite. He sent again to demand what was needful, out of respect for the Holy Sacrament and the present victim. And his request had come, it would seem, to some canon or person ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... than all the millions. Marta was not thinking of sending thousands to death. Had she sent him to death? The agony of waiting, waiting there among these strangers, waiting for that little instrument at the end of a wire to say whether or not he were alive, became insupportable. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... was the harbinger of catastrophe. He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve! Insupportable and pitiful fate! The fiends of the past mocked him, like wicked ghouls, voiceless and dim. The faces of the men he had killed were around him in the gray gloom, pale, drifting visages of distortion, accusing him, claiming him. Likewise, these gleams of faces were specters of his mind, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... interesting account of Mr. Edgeworth. I heartily concur with you in the wish that neither Plato nor any other profane author may lead him from the truths of the Gospel, without which our existence is an insupportable mystery ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... how—by some beings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages—was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the rapture of a tactile irritation, of a slight perfume; but, above all, it furnishes the charm of an intermittent occupation which soothes us by interrupting, from time to time, our labor. At other times it renders idleness less insupportable to us, by breaking it into the infinite intervals which pass from one pinch of snuff to another. Sometimes our snuff-box arouses us from torpor and drowsiness; sometimes, it occupies our hands when in society we do not know where to put them or what to do with them. Finally, snuff and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... her fault!" said Laurence. "With men she is insupportable. I have never understood how that poor woman has made her way. With women she is charming. But she seems to be incapable of not treating men like dogs. Some men adore that, but they are ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... More insupportable than ever did his studies now appear to Luis, who nevertheless persevered in them for several months after his father's return to Spain, endeavouring by strenuous application to divert his thoughts from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the consciousness—so insupportable to some minds—that his whole life was a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom. Every day would furnish ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... insupportable, O heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... so pleased with them that he made them sing and dance before him the whole evening; the women kissed his face and the men his hand, and he talked to them in German. Though this evening went off well enough, it is clear that nothing would be more insupportable than to live at this Court; the dulness must be excessive, and the people who compose his habitual society are the most insipid and uninteresting that can be found. As for Lady Conyngham, she looks bored to death, and she never speaks, never appears to have one word ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... going by some object in view, or be it some object though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul by its impetuosity to such violent eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... no master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden—all is primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The dust is blinding, the heat insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits possible: the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation, dancing in the gentlemen's hats, and the gentlemen promenading 'the gay and festive scene' in the ladies' bonnets, or with the more expensive ornaments of false noses, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the same time, Eudoxus having a son born to him, and Leontine a daughter; but to the unspeakable grief of the latter, his young wife (in whom all his happiness was wrapt up) died in a few days after the birth of her daughter. His affliction would have been insupportable, had he not been comforted by the daily visits and conversations of his friend. As they were one day talking together with their usual intimacy, Leontine, considering how incapable he was of giving his daughter a proper education in his own house, and Eudoxus reflecting on ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... a disappointment to me. I had hoped to change your mind and purpose concerning the acceptance not only of money which is your own by legal right, but of such as is also yours by every rational law of possession. It was to me an insupportable idea that you should go away without the means of living as becomes your rank ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... accedents prepared for us during our residence at them. the musquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist; for my own part I am confined by them to my bier at least 3/4ths of my time. my dog even howls with the torture he experiences from them, they are almost insupportable, they are so numerous that we frequently get them in our thrats as ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... rancher, had driven his car to Spokane. Upon his return he had with him a detective, whom he expected to use in the I.W.W. investigations, and a neighbor rancher. They had left Spokane early and had endured almost insupportable dust and heat. A welcome change began as they slid down from the bare desert into the valley; and once across the Copper River, Anderson began to breathe freer and to feel he was ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... proceedings. Also they are not always thinking about the money. Perhaps the Kashmiris come next, though the Chinese run them very close. Some of the more expensive London women are bearable, but they are such harlots! The white women in the East are insupportable, and small wonder, for they consist of the dregs of the European and American markets. My list comprises English, French, German, Italian, Spanish-American, American, Bengali, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Kaffir, Singhalese, Tamil, Burmese, Malay, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Lima, is similar in aspect, climate, and character, to those parts north of the city which have just been described. Fruitful valleys, villages, and plantations, commodious sea-ports, and vast sandy wastes, alternate one with the other. Heat, sometimes almost insupportable, is succeeded by chilly and unhealthy mists; whilst here and there the scattered monuments of the wealth and greatness of bygone ages present a remarkable and painful contrast ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... stupid! I am not a child, it's not in the least necessary. I don't have to be watched. Ah! c'est insupportable!" ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Here and there one marries into another family: portfolio, portmanteau, portable, port arms. More often, however, they are wooed than themselves do the pleading: comport, purport, report, disport, transport, passport, deportment, importance, opportunity, importunate, inopportune, insupportable. From our knowledge of the two families, therefore, we should surmise that if any marriage is to take place between them; an ex must be the suitor. The surmise would be sound. There is such a term as ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of the distrust of these, and then the comforting Voices were heard at her ear saying, soft and low, "Go forward, Daughter of God, and I will help thee." Then she added, "When I hear that, the joy in my heart, oh, it is insupportable!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... countenance than the Persian. Besides the short Persian sword, he is armed with a Martini Henry rifle of the 1862 pattern; numbers of these rifles having found their way into the hands of Turks, Koords and Persians, since the RussoTurkish war. My predictions concerning his turning out an insupportable nuisance are not suffered to remain long unverified, for he appears to consider it his chief duty to gallop ahead and notify the villagers of my approach, and to work them up to the highest expectations ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of right and wrong, which make intercourse difficult. A sensitive conscience is no addition to the amenities of the dinner-table. But when a man is willing to counter a deadly sin with a shrug of the shoulders, when between white and black he can discover no insupportable contrast, the probabilities are that he will at least humour your whims and respect your prejudices. And so it is that the Andalusians make very agreeable acquaintance. They are free and amiable in their conversation, and will always say the thing that pleases rather than ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... eyes accustomed to the light of day could distinguish absolutely nothing. The heat was stifling, and a final ladder led to the engine-room, where the heavy atmosphere, charged with a smell of oil, was almost insupportable. Great activity reigned in this room; a general examination was being made of the machinery, which glittered with cleanliness. Jack looked on curiously at the enormous structure, knowing that it would soon be his duty to watch it ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of caves formed of ice, with the thermometer at zero, would naturally strike one as a somewhat chilling amusement. Gardiner did not find it so. He was quite protected from the wind, which gives so much pungency to bitter cold, rendering it insupportable. Completely protected from this, and warmed by the exertion of clambering among the cakes. Roswell's blood was soon in a healthful glow; and, to own the truth, when he left the wreck, it was with a much better opinion of it as a place of residence, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... captured in an ambuscade, that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnos in the commencement of the expedition, and had spent ten years in misery on that desolate island; but he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows of Heracles, which were said to be essential to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... being long as well as lank, had to stoop under the doorway, but drew himself up handsomely on coming out, and assumed his easy, high-bred style, which, although he was not aware of it, was very nearly insupportable, and smiled very engagingly, and meant to talk a little about the weather; but Miss Brandon made him one of her gravest and slightest bows, and suddenly saw Mrs. Brown at her shop door on the other side, and had a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he opened the door an almost insupportable smell came down a shallow hatchway within, up which leaned a rough step-ladder, movable, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... its alloy of fear; for she knew that the day he felt himself to be in full possession of his powers he would attempt again to conquer Sunnysides. So from day to day her apprehension mounted until it became well-nigh insupportable. And her own helplessness maddened her. What could she do? Nothing! Nothing but wait, and pray God to protect him. Every night she prayed for him, and every morning, on her knees; and every hour the prayer was in ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... had an ulcer, which was horrible to the sight, but the noisomeness of the stench was yet more insupportable; every one shunned the miserable creature, not enduring so much as to approach him; and Xavier once found a great repugnance in himself to attend him: but at the same time, he called to his remembrance a maxim ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... not. Was not this a shame, that a philosopher should be thus directed by a cobbler? I'll be sworn, if it were known how many have suffered in this kind by false spelling since the union, this matter would not long lie thus. What makes these evils the more insupportable, is, that they are so easily amended, and nothing done in it. But it is so far from that, that the evil goes on in other arts as well as orthography. Places are confounded, as well for want of proper distinctions, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... now for the first time I was guilty. I had wounded the most lovely heart to its very depths; and the period of a gloomy repentance, with the absence of a refreshing love to which I had grown accustomed, was most agonizing, nay, insupportable." ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... good do the Englishmen get out of their free laws, since they have nothing but parks inclosed by chains, since they have scarcely any free forest left? The constraint of customs and manners in England and North America is insupportable to a German. As the English no longer even know how to appreciate the free forest, it is no wonder that they require a man to bring along a black dress-suit and a white cravat, in addition to the ticket-money, in order to obtain entrance to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Exmouth's arrangement for their ransom. I myself knew the descendant of a man who had been thus sent back to his relations from captivity, and who soon enough returned to Africa, declaring that the climate and religion of Europe were alike insupportable. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... native of Brazil. You are not ignorant of the frightful slavery under which my country groans. This continually becomes more insupportable since the epoch of your glorious independence, for the cruel Portuguese omit nothing which can render our condition more wretched, from an apprehension that we may follow your example. The conviction, that these usurpers against the laws of nature and humanity only meditate new oppressions, has ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Ethiopian Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats and waistcoats, you will find the original model in St. James's Parish. When the Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country; when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to their source in the Upper ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... London in my way to that insupportable spot, a country village; for I am really going to Churchhill. Forgive me, my dear friend, it is my last resource. Were there another place in England open to me I would prefer it. Charles Vernon is my aversion; and I am afraid ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cannot tell. Inquire immediately at Hoebel's in the Kothgasse, whether the Hoebel who belongs to this place set off from Vienna to Baden? It is really so distressing to me to depend on such people, that if life did not possess higher charms, it would be utterly insupportable in my eyes. You no doubt got my yesterday's letter, and the 2 florins for the chocolate. I shall be obliged to drink coffee to-morrow; perhaps after all it is better for me than chocolate, as the ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... Danish plunderers, he lived among the Picts above twenty years in banishment; learning more heartily to despise earthly vanities, and making it his whole study to serve the King of kings. His subjects, groaning under the yoke of an insupportable tyranny, took up arms against their oppressors, and induced the royal prince, upon motives of compassion for their distress and a holy zeal for religion, to put themselves at their head. Several battles were prosperousiy fought; but at length the pious prince was murdered by the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... struggle against it with all my might. Gunga Dass was offensively jocular till I told him that if he addressed another remark of any kind whatever to me I should strangle him where he sat. This silenced him till silence became insupportable, and I bade ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... king, absorbed in his own reflections, began to muse over his secret attachment. Everything seemed to combine—not alone the little teasing attentions of the queen, but also the queen-mother's interruptions—to make the king's position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings of his heart. At first, he complained of the heat—a complaint merely preliminary to others, but with sufficient tact to prevent Maria Theresa guessing ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a controlling influence over the great commercial traffic soon to flow from west to east by way of the Isthmus of Darien; it is to build up our merchant marine; it is to furnish new markets for the products of our farms, shops, and manufactories; it is to make slavery insupportable in Cuba and Porto Rico at once, and ultimately so in Brazil; it is to settle the unhappy condition of Cuba and end an exterminating conflict; it is to provide honest means of paying our honest debts without overtaxing ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... death and welcomed it. In his forest roamings, before his illness struck him, he had thought of it as the one way out. Then it had come to him vaguely terrible as a specter in dreams. Now bereft of the sustaining power of his strength the burden of the days to come had grown insupportable. To live without telling her, to live beside her and remain a partial stranger, to live divorcing her from all she would desire, had been the only course he saw, and in it he recognized nothing but misery. Death was the solution for both, and he relinquished himself to it with less grief at ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... I had been married, if I had no longer control of my actions, I should have thought I was in love with Edgar.... I should have mistaken for an odious and culpable passion, the fearful trouble, insupportable uneasiness that his love caused me to feel. But my vigilant reason, my implacable good faith watched over my heart; they said: "Shun Roger;" they said: "Fear Edgar...." If I had married Roger, woe to me! Conventional love, leaving my heart all ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... without offense, I must say you are as pig-headed in your generosity as that Flemish bear was insupportable with his everlasting dagger. Come, let us reason together. What you most desire, is it not, is ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Mezieres, despite the promises given to the Cardinal de Lorraine, resolved to give her in marriage to the young Prince. The house of de Guise was much displeased at this, but the Duc himself was overcome by grief, and regarded this as an insupportable affront. In spite of warnings from his uncles, the Cardinal and the Duc de Aumale—who did not wish to stand in the way of something which they could not prevent—he expressed himself with so much violence, even in the ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... be released from the strain of a most insupportable situation, "what are we going to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... old authors—Plutarch's charming letter of consolation to his wife on the death of their child; Crashaw's "Verses on a Prayer-Book;" Evelyn's letter on the origin of his Sylva; and many a jewel five-words-long filched from the authors whom modern taste votes slow and insupportable. We mention these to give some idea of the spirit in which this work of marquetry is executed—a work too fragmentary and incoherent to be easily describable except by its specimens. And while culling fragments, we cannot forbear mentioning the curious records of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations," held ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... I entered my seventeenth year. For the last two years my mind had been expanding and growing discontented with my lot. The moroseness of my uncle, the sullenness of his housekeeper, the gloom and dinginess of the bare rooms had grown insupportable to me. These alone I might have endured, but added to them were other sources of disquiet, not the least of which being hints from the housekeeper that it was time I began to do something for myself. Youth, pride, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... bids you good-bye, and you feel yourself murmuring to her the grateful 'Such a pleasant afternoon,' that was due to the real hostess. She is in constant conflict with the other prominent matrons in Priorsford, but she always gets her own way. At a meeting she is quite insupportable. She just calmly tells us what we are to do. It's no good saying we are busy; it's no good saying anything. We walk away with a great district to collect and a pile of pamphlets under one arm.... Her nose is a little on one side, and when I sit and look ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... who has suffered from ague and the intense fever that succeeds it, knows how insupportable is the protracted conversation of an inconsiderate person, and will readily believe that the longer Four-Legs continued his pratings the higher mounted the fever of the patient, and the more intolerable became the pain ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... Frenchman; my life has been spent in the service of France until a few months after the revolution in Spain, when I, together with those who composed the French squadron at Cadiz, was made a prisoner. The hardships and cruel usage which I endured became insupportable. I effected my escape, and after wandering about the town for two or three days, in hourly expectation of being assassinated, the fate of too many of my unfortunate countrymen; desperate from famine, and perceiving no other chance of escaping from the town, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of another of those long, tedious afternoons. But to the young people concerned it seemed that never until then had such words as they spoke to each other been spoken, or such feelings of almost insupportable ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... took no share in it, and was soon afterwards killed by a fall from a stage, which he had erected for the purpose of retouching some of his frescos. Nor did Spagnoletto experience a better fate; for, having seduced a young girl, and become insupportable even to himself from the general odium which he experienced, he embarked on board a ship; nor is it known whither he fled, or how he ended his life, if we may credit the Neapolitan writers. Palomino, however, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... it is possible that the young ensign could have followed the enemy trail. Twice or thrice Dave believed that he had picked up glimpses of bubbles with the searchlight, but at last, with a sigh, he gave orders to shut off speed and drift. Inaction became wellnigh insupportable after a few moments and Darrin ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... a whisper, not a movement, for all felt that the supreme moment had arrived. De Mouchy bent over his papers. I heard them rustling; and then La Valentinois, leaning forward, said something to him in a low voice. There was a word to an usher, and once more the insupportable silence. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... subjects, and his own danger. We are to hold the balance of the constitution, and neither to suffer the regal power to be overborne by a torrent of popular fury, nor the people to be oppressed by an illegal exertion of authority, or the more insupportable hardships of unreasonable laws. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... obstructions to a vigorous and to an economical system of defense. It gave birth to a competition between the States which created a kind of auction for men. In order to furnish the quotas required of them, they outbid each other till bounties grew to an enormous and insupportable size. The hope of a still further increase afforded an inducement to those who were disposed to serve to procrastinate their enlistment, and disinclined them from engaging for any considerable periods. Hence, slow and scanty levies of men, in the most critical ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that followed. But a hot sunny season coming on before the brood was half fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must inevitably have destroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested an expedient, and prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... very distant period. At the time I am writing of he could not but feel completely cut off from all that had hitherto formed his chief interests in life—his family and his friends—for ten years is an eternity to the young, and the feeling of loneliness and home-sickness was apt to become almost insupportable. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... continue to occupy the attention of the Paris papers. The Opinion Nationale says: 'The poor brutes' cries of pain sadden the wards of the clinic, rendering the sojourn there insupportable both to patients and nurses. Only imagine that, when a dog has not been killed at one sitting, and that enough life remains in him to experiment upon him in the following one, they put him back in the kennel, all throbbing and ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... lest any one of the soldiers should escape. Now the overthrow of the places of strength, and the death of the high priest Ananias, so puffed up Manahem, that he became barbarously cruel; and as he thought he had no antagonist to dispute the management of affairs with him, he was no better than an insupportable tyrant; but Eleazar and his party, when words had passed between them, how it was not proper when they revolted from the Romans, out of the desire of liberty, to betray that liberty to any of their own people, and to bear a lord, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... this subject fell into the hands of the Spanish guerillas and were published by order of the Regency at Cadiz. Despised by the Spaniards, flouted by Napoleon, set at defiance by the French satraps, and reduced wellnigh to bankruptcy, the puppet King felt his position insupportable, and, hurrying to Paris, tendered his resignation of the crown (May, 1811). In his anxiety to huddle up the scandal, Napoleon appeased his brother, promised him one-fourth of the taxes levied by the French commanders, and coaxed or drove him to resume ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... insupportable agonies and distraction of the scourge and the rack, recanted, or promised a recantation, a large proportion immediately on being released from the sufferings which had overcome them, abjured their retractions, re-professed with redoubled energy the faith of Christ, and met without ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... married some convicted enemy of our happy constitution, yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government,—which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable,—he would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our Wars ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as an engine in politics and as a fitting embodiment of his private views, Dr. Brownson soon abandoned. He was not truly radical, in the evil sense of that word, at any period of his career, and the theories of the leaders soon became insupportable to his moral sense. But he remained true to the cause of the workingmen while abandoning the organization which assumed to voice their needs and their wishes. Probably these more ulterior aims of their leaders were never fully appreciated by the rank and file of those who followed them. Yet ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the captured monarch. It was a day of intense and suffocating heat. Ten persons were crowded into the royal carriage. Not a breath of air fanned the fevered cheeks of the sufferers. The heat, reflected from the pavements and the bayonets, was almost insupportable. Clouds of dust enveloped them, and the sufferings of the children were so great that the queen was actually apprehensive that they would die. The queen dropped the window of the carriage, and, in a voice of agony, implored some one to give her a cup of water for her fainting child. "See, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... element that I seemed to discover in all the things about me, and for that reason I continued my journal until a few years ago. . . . But at that time the mere idea that a day might come when someone would have a peep at it was insupportable to me; so much so indeed that if I left home and went to the Island or elsewhere for a few days, I always took care to seal up my journal, and with the greatest solemnity I wrote upon the packet: "It is my last wish that this book be ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... can acquit her when there are so many convincing proofs of her guilt. The principal point to be considered is what punishment you will inflict: it ought not to be so slight a one that the remembrance of it may leave no impression behind, nor so heavy that it may anyways be deemed insupportable. After all, I only give my opinion freely, which, above all, is to do justice ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... appear in the sky. The laughing-jackass uttered his cheerful notes, and parrots and other birds began to chirp and screech and chatter. The sound tended somewhat to raise my spirits, though the pangs of hunger and thirst which now oppressed me soon became insupportable. As in daylight the blacks might be passing, I was afraid of attracting their attention by crying out, so that I was unable to ascertain how it fared with the poor dominie. When the sun rose, the heat became oppressive, and the ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... these worlds all marshalled, And their ways all governed for ever; And he felt the sight of his soul Shrivel up like a fire-licked scroll In his insupportable terror. ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... of Asia! Baber established his capital in Agra, a hundred and forty miles south, and therefore farther into India, but his son Humayun returned to Delhi because the summer heats of Agra were found to be insupportable. But it had before been the principal seat of the Pathans or Afghan kings, and, back of them, of several Hindoo dynasties. There are ruins of palaces and forts here dating to one hundred years before Christ, and for eighteen hundred years we have the ruins of the structures ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... that struggle Florentine received a wound from which he never recovered. Weeks before his first mass the woman he loved, in desperation, married a nobody—a blow the rudest he had ever experienced. He lost his moral energy, life became dull and insupportable. If not his virtue and the respect for his office, that unfortunate love affair saved him from the depths into which the regular orders and secular clergymen both fall in the Philippines. He devoted himself to his parishioners ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... her father, who was, as always, very gay, and overwhelmed with business; he had been converted to the Republic, and was at the height of political and financial success. Saccard had even taken her aside, to sympathize with her, saying that poor Maxime was really insupportable, and that she would be truly courageous if she consented to be made his victim. As she could not do everything, he had even had the kindness to send her, on the following day, the niece of his hairdresser, a fair-haired, innocent-looking girl ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... surveyed Denis from head to foot with a smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an end to it, remarked politely that ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... began to tell, horses and dogs, wine and women, guards and grievances, promotion and patronage, began to exert their influence on the discourse, and by the time the cloth was removed, every one seemed to talk louder than his neighbour, and the din was almost insupportable. Then, through the roar of the many voices, was heard an ominous shuffling behind the screen, now extended all across the room; an attuning scream of the clarionet, moan of the violin, and grunt of the bassoon, faintly foretold the coming storm, which in a few ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... seems the liberty to teach the Preparation off) whose Ingredients were purely Saline, and yet the Compound, made up only of salt, sowre, and strongly tasted Bodies, was rather really sweet, than of any other taste , and when a little urged with heat, its odour became stronger, and more insupportable than that of Aqua fortis, distilled Urine and even spirit of salt Ammoniack; but yet when these Fumes settled again into salt, their odour would again prove inoffensive, if ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... trees in the daytime were like the breath from a furnace, while at night there was hardly any at all. The 1st of April, the last day we remained here, was the hottest day we had felt. Life was almost insupportable, and I determined to leave the place upon the morrow. There had evidently been some rain at this rock lately, as the grass and herbage were green and luxuriant, and the flies so numerous. It was most fortunate for us, as my subsequent narrative will show, that we had some one to guide ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... philosopher to think that it did not really matter much in the long run whether he were happy or unhappy; but he was not yet able to regard the thought of Elisabeth's unhappiness as anything but a catastrophe of the most insupportable magnitude; which showed that he had not yet sufficient ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... who are most forward and clamorous in calling out for assistance;—humanity and justice require that peculiar attention should be paid to those who are bashful and silent.—To those, who, in addition to all the distresses arising from poverty and want, feel, that is still more insupportable to ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford |
