"Supportable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heat, capable of vitrifying terrestrial matters, and of evaporating water, would have formed a thick circle of clouds which would have lessened the excessive heat, hence there would be compensation between the cold of the aphelion and the heat of the perihelion, and an average probably supportable." ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Lovelace.— The lady's pious frame. The approaches of death how supportable to her; and why. She has no reason, she says, to grieve for any thing but the sorrow she has ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... that me the Gods Inhabiting Olympus so would hide From human eyes for ever, or bright-hair'd Diana pierce me with a shaft, that while Ulysses yet engages all my thoughts, My days concluded, I might 'scape the pain Of gratifying some inferior Chief! This is supportable, when (all the day To sorrow giv'n) the mourner sleeps at night; For sleep, when it hath once the eyelids veil'd, 100 All reminiscence blots of all alike, Both good and ill; but me the Gods afflict Not seldom ev'n in dreams, and at my side, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... said, her spirit had died; if the Millie Stope that had moved him so swiftly and tragically from his long indifference, his aversion to life, had gone, leaving him more hoplessly alone than before. The sudden extinction of Ellen's life had been more supportable than Millie's crouching dumbly at his feet. His arm unconsciously tightened about her, and she gazed up with a momentary, questioning flicker of her wide-opened eyes. He repeated her name in a deep whisper, but her head ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Decret, bien des lois humiliantes, edictees contre les non-Musulmans dans des temps anterieurs, ont ete mises hors de pratique, et le sort des races non-Musulmans au Maroc est devenu plus supportable. ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... great to me as late; and, supportable 145 To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker Than you may call to comfort you, for I Have ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... traditional first aid to the famished, was a mere bag of bones. The fish would neither bite nor be bitten. Most of the running-tackle of the ship had been used for macaroni soup; all the leather work, our shoes included, had been devoured in omelettes; with oakum and tar we had made fairly supportable salad. After a brief experimental career as tripe the sails had departed this life forever. Only two courses remained from which to choose; we could eat one another, as is the etiquette of the sea, or ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... of all these distractions, our delay was barely supportable; and watching the course of the muddy river, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... weather, when no umbrella is required, and when the invariably grey sky rarely rains. Travellers are told that June and July are the cream of the year, the healthiest time for seasoned Europeans, and this phantom of a winter renders the climate more supportable ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of water- and musk-melons, now in their perfection. We purchased as many as we could carry off for a real. They were full, rich, and juicy, and proved to be a grateful restorative, after our day's exposure to the direct rays of the sun, and their scarcely less supportable reflection from the water. The melon-patch of Las Sandias is overflowed daring the rainy season, and probably the apparently bare, sandy surface hides rich deposits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... several; sneers at marriage, and gives it as his opinion that there is not a virtuous woman in the land. When he is fairly of age he has lost his freshness, and is tired of life. His great object now is to render his existence supportable. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... good-nature; and the children are frank, lively, laughing urchins. The old women are thorough hags. Indolence, when left to themselves, is their besetting sin; they detest any fixed employment, and their foulness of person and garments renders them disagreeable inmates: in this rainy climate they are supportable out of doors. Though fond of bathing when they come to a stream in hot weather, and expert, even admirable swimmers, these people never take to the water for the purpose of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... a chace of ten hours, had taken shelter under the roof of Sir James, was, at our return, stamping up and down, the vestibule, disappointed both in his sport and dinner, shew'd an aspect cloudy as the heavens.—My mortification was scarce supportable, when I heard him roar out, in a voice like thunder, What the devil have we here?—I sprang to the top of the stairs in a moment,—there stopp'd to fetch breath; and again the same person, who had so genteelly accosted me, said to Lord Darcey,—Great ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... engrossing idea, which so besets the man, that he can see nothing clearly in the world around him. At this age he has a philosophy, a metaphysical system, which he really believes in, (a species of delusion the first to quit us,) and he persists in seeing his dogma reflected to him from all sides. This is supportable, or may be disguised in poetry; it becomes intolerable in prose. Add to all which, that the writer of a novel should have had some experience in the realities of life, a certain empirical knowledge of the manner in which the passions develop themselves in men and women. The high ideal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... being once settled, and the facilities of obtaining hands increased, such legal acts of compulsion, far from being any longer necessary, will have introduced a spirit of industry that will render the labors of the field supportable and even desirable; and in this occupation all the tributary natives of the surrounding settlements can be alternately employed, by the day or week, and thus do their work almost at the door of their own huts, and as it were in sight of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... imperious Mr. Delvile was more supportable here than in London. Secure in his own castle, he looked round him with a pride of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His superiority was undisputed: his will was without control. He was not, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the exhibition, leaving her in a state of nervous prostration, moral sickness, and distressful exasperation. It needs all the tireless patience of the fairy, all the magic of her memories constantly evoked, to make life supportable beside this restlessness, this wicked anger, which growls beneath the girl's long silences and suddenly bursts out in a bitter word or in an "Ugh!" of disgust at everything. All the critics are asses. The public? An immense goitre with three rows ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... hermit's cell. It is long after and much is changed. There is sadness in the air, but it is of an unfretful gentle sort, almost sweet; the sadness of a solitude visited by high thoughts, memories of calamity softened in retrospect, present crosses made supportable by faith and the light cast on the path already of an approaching event which is to mark a new epoch in the life of the Order. A sadness in the air and a something holy. It is Spring-time and it is Good-Friday; the trees ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... dungeon, the sufferings of Ambrosio's body were far more supportable than those of his mind. His dislocated limbs, the nails torn from his hands and feet, and his fingers mashed and broken by the pressure of screws, were far surpassed in anguish by the agitation of his soul and vehemence of his terrors. He saw ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... so sullen, and why am I the cause? Can you believe that I do willingly defer my journey? I know you do not. Why, then, should my absence now be less supportable to you than heretofore? Nay, it shall not be long (if I can help it), and I shall break through all inconveniences rather than deny you anything that lies in my power to grant. But by your own rules, then, may I not expect ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... strict families music is allowed, but never cards or games of any kind. The man who proposed such a thing in Adelaide would be anathema maranatha. The general feeling, is, that the Sunday was made too wearisome in England to be supportable in a common-sense community; and Sabbatarianism is gradually losing ground day by day, as fast as the keeping up of appearances will allow. There was a great outcry on one occasion because the Governor of Victoria travelled ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... view on the opposite side of this branch of the Columbia are yet perfectly covered with snow; the air which proceeds from those mountains has an agreeable coolness and renders these parched and South hillsides much more supportable at this time of the day it being now about noon. I observe the indian women collecting the root of a speceis of fennel which grows in the moist grounds and feeding their poor starved children; it is really distressing to witness the situation of those poor wretches. the radix ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... hitherto doubted whether this man were mad—doubted no longer when he was seen to enter the theatre; where in the lightest summer-clothing the heat was scarcely supportable. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... credit of the Infantry. This they did, because they having no State of their own, but living upon their industry, their few foot gave them no reputation, and many they were not able to maintain; whereupon they reduc'd themselves to cavalery, and so with a supportable number they were entertained and honored: and matters were brought to such termes, that in an army of twenty thousand soldiers you should not find two thousand foot. They had moreover us'd all industry to free themselves ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the success that was attending her unselfish efforts to harmonize her own and her uncle's conceptions of the temporal fitness of things, Miss Lee began to find life at the Pier quite supportable. "There's not much to do here," she declared, with her customary candor, "and the hotels—all ugly and all in a row—make it look like an overgrown charitable institution; and most of the people, ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... summit on a fine day is said to be very good; but when only half-way, the rain came down in such torrents that we were glad to return to the inn for shelter. For two hours the downpour lasted, but it cooled the air and rendered the return journey a little more supportable; and when we arrived at the house, we also arrived at the decision that never again to a picnic, as far as we were concerned, should thinness and ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... he, "what on earth can quiet my mind that leads to our separation?—Give to me no condescension with any such view,—preserve your indifference, persevere in your coldness, triumph still in your power of inspiring those feelings you can never return,—all, every thing is more supportable than to talk ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... mind usually magnify expected evil, and anticipated suffering often diminishes the effect of an apprehended blow; yet my imagination had suggested less than I have experienced, nor do I find that a preparatory state of anxiety has rendered affliction more supportable. The last month of my life has been a compendium of misery; and my recollection, which on every other subject seems to fail me, is, on this, but too faithful, and will enable me to relate events which will interest ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... unaffected cheerfulness. 'In the short term of my life a great deal of happiness has been comprised. The maladies of my frame were peculiar; those of my head and stomach which no medicine could eradicate, were spasmodic and violent; and required stronger measures to render them supportable while they lasted than my constitution could sustain without injury. The periods of exemption from those pains were frequently of several days' duration, and in my intermissions I felt no indications of malady. Pain taught me the value of ease, and I enjoyed it ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... EMIL BACH. In this plot the women of a besieged city are allowed to leave it, carrying whatever is most precious on their backs—but this one BACH can't carry Irmengarda, which is, however, not too, too precious, but is supportable. Sir DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS "gives a Back," and it's "Over!" First Act, while performing, is promising; second very much after, or behind the first. House full. Everybody good, specially VALDA and ABRAMOFF. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... superfluous, a legislature would become useless, and our authority must cease for want of objects to employ it; but we find, my lords, that there are men whom nothing but laws and penalties can make supportable to society; that there are men, who, if they are not told their duty, will never know it, and who will, at last, only perform what they shall be punished ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... like. It was certainly so with Pascal's long-continued physical sufferings. That aigreur, which is part of the native colour of Pascal's genius, is reinforced in the [78] "Pensees" by insupportable languor, alternating with supportable pain, as he died little by little through the eight years of their composition. They are essentially the utterance of a soul malade—a soul of great genius, whose malady became a new quality of that genius, perfecting it thus, by its very ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the other they often starve each other for want of room. For my part, I think the vices and miseries to be found in the latter, exceed those of the former; in which real evil is more scarce, more supportable, and less enormous. Yet we wish to see the earth peopled; to accomplish the happiness of kingdoms, which is said to consist in numbers. Gracious God! to what end is the introduction of so many beings into a mode of existence in which they must grope ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the midst of the agitations they excite, frequently he degenerates into witticisms, which abruptly destroy the pathetic. That he abounds with images of too florid a kind; affected turns; conceits and frivolous thoughts; which, far from being adapted to his Jerusalem, could hardly be supportable in his 'Aminta.' So that all this, opposed to the gravity, the sobriety, the majesty of Virgil, what is it but tinsel ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sterling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the 'science' of the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... deprive me of the only hope that can make life supportable. I must be free, or I must die. Your commander loves gold above all things. Surely I can purchase my liberty from him at some price, and however unreasonable it may be, I am willing to satisfy his demand. Tell me, I entreat of you, what sum ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... relied on for any considerable time; when it is manifest that her peace and happiness, and, perhaps, her life, depend upon their fulfilment; when things have been carried to this length, the change in the Lover ought to be announced in the manner most likely to make the disappointment as supportable as the case will admit of; for, though it is better to break the promise than to marry one while you like another better; though it is better for both parties, you have no right to break the heart of her who has, and that, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... in about fifteen minutes after Captain HARDY left him. Doctor SCOTT and Mr. BURKE, who had all along sustained the bed under his shoulders (which raised him in nearly a semi-recumbent posture, the only one that was supportable to him), forbore to disturb him by speaking to him; and when he had remained speechless about five minutes, HIS LORDSHIP'S Steward went to the Surgeon, who had been a short time occupied with the wounded in another part of the cockpit, and stated his apprehensions that HIS LORDSHIP was ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... also not worth leaving. The ancient philosopher who was asked why he did not the if, as he taught, life was no better than death, replied: "Because death is no better than life." We do not know that either proposition is true, but the matter is not worth bothering about, for both states are supportable—life despite its pleasures and death ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Lee Randon was possessed by a recklessness that hardened him to everything but the present moment: such times were few in existence, hours of vivid living which alone made the dull weight of years supportable. This belonged to Savina and him; they were accountable only to each other. It was a sensation like the fortunate and exhilarating effect of exactly the right amount of wine. The emotion that flooded them had freed Lee from responsibility; sharpening ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... went out to a cafe in spite of the dreadful weather. I thought over Leah and her designs, feeling certain that she would pay me another nocturnal visit and renew the assault in force. I resolved to weaken myself with some common woman, if I could find one at all supportable. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... foot-notes and references. It is plain that our author has delved in the "Scriptores Historiae Augustae," that he has read Lampridius, Suetonius, and the others, but he does not strive to make us aware of it. The historical form has at last found a poet to render it supportable. Blood runs across the pages; gore and booty are the principal themes; and yet Beauty struts supreme through the horror. The author's sympathy is his password, a sympathy which he occasionally exposes, for he is not above pinning his heart ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... whose lot takes him there need be regarded as an object of pity. The climate is good; food is abundant; life is tolerably easy. True, there are no newspapers and no Parliament; but existence has often been found supportable in the absence of these things. The natives are friendly; and there are no animals anywhere, not even rats. The men are decently clad, and the women wear a very voluminous kilt, sometimes two or three of them, over each ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... to the test her practice of those pious virtues we all know her to possess, and of which she sets so bright an example. James's presence is of the greatest comfort to me, and alone enables me to make my cabin supportable. He returned most opportunely from St. Petersburg the day on which the news of this affliction arrived, and it was he that communicated it to me. He was the bearer of Lord Cathcart's despatches, which I have forwarded, for I could ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... Lucy who could, if she would, deliver Bice from all the snares of poverty, had not done so, and was not, so far as appeared, intending to do so. To find fault with the devices of the poor, and yet not to help them—is not that one of the things least easily supportable of all the spurns of patient merit? The Contessa was doing what she could, all she could in her own fashion, strenuously, anxiously. But Lucy was doing nothing, though she could have done it so easily: and yet she found fault and criticised. Madame ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... were set in motion upon the planets which are nearest to the sun, and more, on the contrary, upon those which are farthest removed from it, this simple fact would alone suffice to equalize the heat, and to render the temperature of those worlds supportable by beings organized like ourselves. If I were a naturalist, I would tell him that, according to some illustrious men of science, nature has furnished us with instances upon the earth of animals existing under ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... often urged as an additional cause for aggravating the sense of annoyance experienced by those wedded but unsuited to each other, is, in my opinion, one of the strongest motives for using every endeavour to render the union supportable, if not agreeable. If a dwelling known to be unalienable has some defect which makes it unsuited to the taste of its owner, he either ameliorates it, or, if that be impracticable, he adopts the resolution of supporting ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Leopold having wound up his Glogau affairs, and completed the new preliminaries there, joins the King at Schweidnitz. In the highest favor, as was natural. Kalkstein is to take a main hand in the Siege of Neisse; for which operation it is hoped there will soon be weather, if not favorable yet supportable. What of the force was superfluous at Glogau had at once marched off, as we observed; and is now getting re-distributed where needful. There is much shifting about; strengthening of posts, giving up of posts: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... this state of ecstasy was about as far as Millicent's religion ever carried her. She was afraid to give up the flesh-pots of this world in case she found life without them too dull to be supportable. She enjoyed her state of being so thoroughly that she had no wish to change it. Her religion and church-going were, she considered, sufficient to ensure her a place in heaven. It was her way of paying her future-life insurance ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... say that. No; I couldn't have stood Cruger's arguments. 'Ditto to Mr. Burke' is certainly not a very brilliant observation, but still it's supportable, whereas I must have found the pains of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... have wondered at the patience of the antediluvians; their libraries were insufficiently furnished; how then could seven or eight hundred years of life be supportable?—COWPER, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... been cool to-day. We are on high ground, although in a wady; and this renders the heat very supportable. The reported attack keeps our minds occupied, and has a little upset us; but no one talks of flinching. Besides, this has not been the first alarm, nor will it be the last. I sent an account of this circumstance so ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... and bestowed on the patient all sorts of little attentions. Even this occupation of nurses caused them to forget, and afforded them an appeasement that encouraged them to double in zeal. They did not wish to lose a third party who rendered their evenings supportable; and they did not wish the dining-room and the whole house to become a cruel and sinister spot like ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... he said, "marriage is a state required by society. It is not a pleasure, but it can—with creature comforts—become supportable, and it opens the door to freedom et de tous les autres agrements de la vie ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... incognito to be preserved would secure me from any charge of inconsistency, and coming as it did when my regular source of income was suddenly closed, and when the idea of being burdensome to my generous brother with his increasing family was hardly supportable, it was ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Lane and County Street. Lois had a renewal of the terror from which her own conversation had distracted her. The crucial minute was at hand. The door was but a few yards away. He would either go in with her—or he would go back. She hardly knew which would be the more supportable—the joy or the dismay. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... amongst us might discharge itself in some neighbouring war, for fear lest all the peccant humours that now reign in this politic body of ours may diffuse themselves farther, keep the fever still in the height, and at last cause our total ruin; and, in truth, a foreign is much more supportable than a civil war, but I do not believe that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel with others for our ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... as late; and, supportable To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker Than you may call to comfort you, for ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... have. Custome hath (without doubt) much sweetned them, and even it hath made others wave, or insensibly correct a many, whereto we could not so well by prudence have given a remedy. And in fine, They are alwayes more supportable, then their change can be, Even, as the great Roads, which winding by little and little betwixt mountains, become so plain and commodious, with being often frequented, that it's much better to follow them, then to undertake to goe in a strait line by climbing ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... heard how my granddaughter took the matter up this morning. Instead of being content with me for retiring to this wilderness of a place, which I did to please her, she does nothing to render my life supportable." ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... had an attack of gout, in consequence of working at the boats instead of going out. He bore it with his usual philosophy—trying to read or write whenever the pain was supportable. It happened during the Easter vacation, and Stephen used to sit up late into the night to keep his ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... between youth and age, there is the ever-recurring image of green and withered trees, and it is only the attractiveness of the Latin, half real, half perhaps arising from association and the romance of a language not one's own, that makes us feel this "lyrical commonplace" more supportable than common-place is usually found to be. It is this, indeed, which constitutes the grand difficulty of the translator, who may well despair when he undertakes to reproduce beauties depending on expression ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... verified the existence of Eustace, the safety of De Vallance, and their welfare and comparative happiness. What a weight of anguish was removed from these amiable victims of tyranny by the intelligence! Imprisonment, poverty, dependence, personal infirmity, were all supportable evils. But for a complete exemplification of the extreme limit of human misery, we must look to the oppressor, not to the oppressed; to Cromwell, galled by the armour worn under his robes of state to defend his person from the expected ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... variegated with flowers of the richest colours and most fragrant perfumes, and enlivened by the notes of innumerable birds arrayed in all the splendid hues of the Tropics. Although Tahaiti is only seventeen degrees from the Equator, the heat is so much moderated by refreshing breezes that it is very supportable even to an European. Bougainville never found it above twenty-two, and often under eighteen degrees of Reaumur. That indeed was during the winter; but even in January, the middle of the Tahaitian summer, the atmosphere ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... such a mass of taxation, so disproportionate to the whole wealth of the kingdom, in any degree supportable, recourse has been had, either from ignorance or design, to the most monstrous schemes in tampering with the currency, or circulating money of the country, at one time by greatly diminishing the value of the same, and at another ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the heads of the party in the boats. Still their spirits did not flag. Jack and Adair, indeed, had been pretty well seasoned to the heat of the coast of Africa, where, if not greater, it was often far less supportable. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... not half suspect it will slip Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment Knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists Known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts Lascivious poet: Homer Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... hound who is now enjoying his first decently competent and peaceful weeks for close upon two years; happy in a big brown moor behind him, and an incomparable burn by his side; happy, above all, in some work - for at last I am at work with that appetite and confidence that alone makes work supportable. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only occupied two or three minutes, and yet the shock was supportable. It was observed that as soon as the machine had touched the earth all the cloth became unfolded in a few seconds, which seemed to confirm the opinion of Montgolfier, who believed that electricity had much to do in the ascent of balloons. The voyagers were got out of the ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... no news to give you. Mr. Smith leaves in the course of a fortnight. He will spend a few weeks in Ireland previously to settling at Keighley. He continues just the same: often anxious and bad-tempered, sometimes rather tolerable—just supportable. How did your party go off? How are you? Write soon, and at length, for your letters are a great comfort to me. We are all pretty well. Remember me kindly to each member of the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... at quite a supportable degree. With an involuntary shudder, I reflected on what the heat must have been when the volcano of Sneffels was pouring its smoke, flames, and streams of boiling lava—all of which must have come up by the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... packet will explain the whole; and, I trust, will relieve our minds of that burden, hardly supportable ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... property, who for a momentary appetite will expose her fame, without the noble end of loving on; she that will abuse my bed, and yet return again to the loathed conjugal embrace, back to the arms so hated, and even strong fancy of the absent youth beloved, cannot so much as render supportable. Curse on her, and yet she kisses, fawns and dissembles on, hangs on his neck, and makes the sot believe:—damn her, brute; I'll whistle her off, and let her down the wind, as Othello says. No, I adore the wife, that, when the ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... hopes, thus freely expressed, as they are more sincere, so they are more supportable, than when they appear under the disguise and pretence of fears. Some of these gentlemen are employed to shake their heads in proper companies; to doubt where all this will end; to be in mighty pain for the nation; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... considerably above zero, though oftener falling far below it. There had been many storms in September, and October was opening with a most blustering and wintry aspect. In one sense, however, the character of the season had changed; the dry, equal cold, that was generally supportable, having been succeeded by tempests that were sometimes a little moist, but oftener of intense frigidity. Of course the equinox was past, and there were more than twelve hours of sun. The great luminary showed ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Brooke Burgess in Exeter Cathedral, Mrs. Trevelyan was living with her husband in the cottage at Twickenham. Her life was dreary enough, and there was but very little of hope in it to make its dreariness supportable. As often happens in periods of sickness, the single friend who could now be of service to the one or to the other was the doctor. He came daily to them, and with that quick growth of confidence which ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Never, never! An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely. And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely. The only thing which makes it supportable for a while is curiosity. You smile? Ah, but it is so, or else people would be sent to the rightabout at the second sentence. How many sympathetic souls can you reckon on in the world? One in ten, one in a hundred—in a thousand—in ten thousand? Ah! What a sell these confessions are! ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... as much as in him lay, the public expectation, the Emperor made numerous changes in the laws relating to the consolidated taxes (droits reunis), which, while they diminished the impost, freed it from its abuses and tyrannical forms, and rendered it less odious, and more supportable. These beneficial meliorations, though incomplete, were received with gratitude; and the Emperor was thanked for his endeavours to reconcile the interests of individuals with the wants ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Dispute concerning the [magnetick] [4], and in first reprint.] Virtue of the Loadstone, or perhaps the Pressure of the Atmosphere: Their Language is peculiar to themselves, and they scorn to express themselves on the meanest Trifle with Words that are not of a Latin Derivation. But this were supportable still, would they suffer me to enjoy an uninterrupted Ignorance; but, unless I fall in with their abstracted Idea of Things (as they call them) I must not expect to smoak one Pipe in Quiet. In a late Fit of the Gout I complained of the Pain of that Distemper ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... rolled at all, and as the waves followed her, her pitching was but slight. This mode of progressing was not such as to affect the looks of the passengers and give them pinched noses, hollow eyes, livid foreheads, or colourless cheeks. It was supportable. They steered south-west over a splendid sea, hardly lifting in the least, and the American coast soon disappeared ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... ordinary friendship (tho even that brings delight and benefit), but of real and true friendship, such as belonged to those of whom very few are recorded; for prosperity, friendship renders more brilliant, and adversity more supportable, by dividing and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... wanted such an entertainment to enliven and make the fatigue supportable. We sat on Wednesday till ten at night; on Friday till past three in the morning; on Monday till between nine and ten.(644) We have profusion of orators, and many very great, which is surprising so soon after the leaden age(645 of the late Right ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... husband: she had buried him. She had been used to affluence: it was gone. She had no child to connect her with life and happiness again, no relations to assist in the arrangement of perplexed affairs, no health to make all the rest supportable. Her accommodations were limited to a noisy parlour, and a dark bedroom behind, with no possibility of moving from one to the other without assistance, which there was only one servant in the house ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... he replied, 'I was like you once. I could once be content with Materialism—I could find it supportable once; but, should you ever come to love as I have loved (and, for your own happiness, child, I hope you never may), you will And that Materialism is intolerable, is hell itself, to the heart that has known ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... far I have pursu'd the Fugitives, Who by the help of hasty Fear and Night, Are got beyond my Power; unlucky Accident! Had I but kill'd Antonio, or Hippolyta, Either had made my Shame supportable. But tho I have mist the Pleasure of Revenge, I will not that of Love. One Look from fair Clarinda will appease The Madness which this Disappointment rais'd. [Walks looking towards the Window. None appears yet: Dormida was to throw me down the Key. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... were given up to the happiness inspired by the safe return. The exploring party were rejoiced to find everything in good condition, which assured them a supportable though it might be a rough winter. The ship had not been shaken by her sudden elevation, and was perfectly tight. When the season of thawing came, they would only have to slide her down an inclined plane, to launch her, in a word, in ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... marquis, life is now a burden to me. There is nothing but the dear business of friendship, and the employment of disinterested affection that could make it supportable. Accept at least this last exertion of your St. Julian. His last vows shall be breathed for your happiness. Fate, do what thou wilt me, but shower down thy choicest blessings on my friend! Whatever thou deniest to my sincere exertions in the ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... and the sun sets behind it, surely that aspect of earth and sky is one of the grandest in the world. I don't like to say that the facade of the church is ugly and obtrusive. As long as the dome overawes, that facade is supportable. You advance towards it—through, oh, such a noble court! with fountains flashing up to meet the sunbeams; and right and left of you two sweeping half-crescents of great columns; but you pass by the courtiers ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friend, he assures us that nothing could be more simple, takes us in at the door, and promises to send her down to us in five minutes. How much we love him—as at that moment I loved Francoise—the good-natured intermediary who by a single word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love. If we are ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... you is not easily moved, I must tell you that some word of your forgiving is not only necessary to me, but would make happier the marriage in which, as you compelled it, you must still (I think) feel no small concern. My child, on whose frail help I had counted to make our life more supportable to my husband and myself, is dead. Should God give and take away another, I can never escape the thought that my father's intercession might have prevailed against His wrath, which I shall then, alas! ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... must be put away, out of sight: people who have undergone bereavement always jealously gather together and lock away mementos: it is not supportable to be stabbed to the heart each moment by sharp ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... they will sap the foundations of religion, morality, and society. They will call themselves philanthropic, they will declaim on humanity—at the very moment that they are taking from the people the consolations which render supportable the miseries of life, and the religious curb which suspends wrath and restrains vengeance. It is thus, also, that they will obtain the envied title of philosophy, and merit the protection of the great; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... milkmaid and market-woman. Her features were coarse, her frame robust, her mind totally unlettered, and her morals defective in that point in which female excellence is supposed chiefly to consist. She possessed super-abundant health and good-humour, and was quite a supportable companion in the hay-field or ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... possession. One must admit regretfully that to-day is but a scramble, that to-morrow may never come; it is only the precious yesterday that cannot be taken away from us. A gift from the dead, great and little, it makes life supportable, it almost makes one believe in a benevolent scheme of creation. And some kind of belief is very necessary. But the real knowledge of matters infinitely more profound than any conceivable scheme of creation ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Siennese, who, being reduced by prodigality to a state of extreme want, found his existence no longer supportable; and, having been sent by his countrymen on a military expedition, to assist the Florentine against the Aretini, took that opportunity of exposing himself to certain death, in the engagement which took place at Toppo near Arezzo. See G. Villani, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... age. If d'Angivillier was responsible for displacing a transcendent art with a false one, if he routed a dainty mythology and its accessories with the heavy effort and paraphernalia of the Romans, on whom shall we place the entirely supportable responsibility of diminishing tapestries from noble draperies ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... frustration of this design, to make Bethnal Green as attractive as possible, so that Doris will refuse to sacrifice her ideals when she learns the truth about Callender. Yet it looks as if Rose is playing Callender's game and not her own. At first, it is true, she tries to make the attic more supportable; imparts a pleasant flavour to the meal; dismisses the hurdy-gurdies that Callender has chartered from the Universal Provider. But subsequently she goes slumming with Doris to such good purpose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... But, Sir Robert Wortley, is it supportable this thing?"—a brand now on his brow—"an alien race in Britain opposing thus daringly not my will only, but the plain will of the people? And have I the air of one who will support it? Rather, I assure you, would I govern without a Parliament! ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel |
