"Intolerably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three weeks, and then were sent down to Quebec, where we were put on board of prison-ships. I was sent to the Lord Cathcart, and most of the Julia's men with me. Our provisions were very bad, and the mortality among us was great. The bread was intolerably bad. Mr. Trant came to see us, privately, and he brought some salt with him, which was a great relief to us. Jack Mallet asked him whether some of us might not go to work on board a transport, that lay ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... implanted in the mind, but a gradual recognition of the truth that you never really held them. The old husk drops off because it has long been withered, and you discover that beneath is a sound and vigorous growth of genuine conviction. Theologians have been assuring you that the world would be intolerably hideous if you did not look through their spectacles. With infinite pains you have turned away your eyes from the external light. It is with relief, not regret, that you discover that the sun shines, and that the world is beautiful without the help of these ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... recognition that we have both of us been provoked to 'animosities' which we desire to put aside ... The commonest objection was that the action was 'premature'—my own feeling being that of shame for having vainly waited so long in deference to political complications, and that shame was intolerably increasing ... It is undiscerning not to see that at a critical moment of extreme tension they [the German Professors] allowed their passion to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... difficult to answer objections to doubtful points and make the discussion readable. I shall make only a selection. The worst of it is that I cannot possibly hunt through all my references for isolated points; it would take me three weeks of intolerably hard work. I wish I had your power of arguing clearly. At present I feel sick of everything, and if I could occupy my time and forget my daily discomforts or little miseries, I would never publish another word. But I shall cheer up, I daresay, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... for him and hidden it in the locker under the front seat, so that they might be ready for any sort of adventure.) And yet in the very moment that I realized her disastrous obstinacy I found her intolerably pathetic. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... "Yes, truly. I was intolerably thirsty; but if I was not here in time, you must blame the clock of Notre Dame; it could not have struck right, I am sure. So be calm, signor: you know that your anger makes no impression on me. Make haste ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... material for a monograph might be at hand if at last I came to fame, but he silenced me with his cold eye. He now thrust a pamphlet in my hands, and told me to sit alongside and read it. It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room. It was eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end I nodded. Awaking with a start, I was about to hold up my hands for the adjustment of the thumb screws—for I had fallen on a nightmare—when he softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to the Reading ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... of back-hair the Lady Capilla was blessed even beyond her deserts. Her natural pigtail was so intolerably long that she employed two pages to look after it when she walked out; the one a few yards behind her, the other at the extreme end of the line. Their names were ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... weather had come upon the city. June was going out in a wave of torrid heat such as August might have boasted. The day had seemed endless and intolerably close. I was feeling very limp and languid. Perhaps, thought I, it was the heat which had ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... wrath. He swore that Servadac and his people were responsible for his loss; he vowed that they should be sued and made to pay him damages; he asserted that he had been brought from Gourbi Island only to be plundered; in fact, he became so intolerably abusive, that Servadac threatened to put him into irons unless he conducted himself properly; whereupon the Jew, finding that the captain was in earnest, and would not hesitate to carry the threat into effect, was fain to hold his tongue, and slunk ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... damp and dark, but intolerably foul. At first Arthur instinctively drew back, half choked by the stench of raw hides and rancid oil. Then he remembered the "punishment cell," and descended the ladder, shrugging his shoulders. Life is pretty much the same everywhere, it seemed; ugly, putrid, infested with vermin, full ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... stretched in front of the camp was intolerably flat The sun rose with pitiless regularity, shone with a steady glare for a great many hours, and then set. That was all that ever happened. The coming of a cloud into the sky would have been greeted ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... can be so intolerably right, that he becomes unbearably wrong. You have no business with a wife and a home. You are a d—— sight too good for a good little girl that wants a bit of innocent amusement. Sermons and Christmas ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... for the first eight years, however, he was too busy making acquaintance with Johnson, travelling on the Continent, and conducting his famous Corsican adventure, to be a very prolific letter-writer. In 1766 he settled down in Edinburgh to the law, which he found intolerably dreary, and a love-affair, which he found too exciting. "The dear infidel," as he called her, besides being another man's wife, seems to have been an extravagant and disreputable ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the sun-burst of Les Chouans after this darkness-that-can-be-felt of the early melodramas. Not that Les Chouans is by any means a perfect novel, or even a great one. Its narrative drags, in some cases, almost intolerably; the grasp of character, though visible, is inchoate; the plot is rather a polyptych of separate scenes than a connected action; you see at once that the author has changed his model to Sir Walter and think how much better Sir Walter would have done the thing. But there is a strange air of "coming ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... as I feared, has turned out intolerably long, and like our first conversation, it is all about myself. But then, you see, you are the only one on the other side of the water to whom I have confided my selfish worries, and I believe you to be so kind-hearted that I am sure you ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... grasped for sufficient mechanical control, to save himself. She laughed a silvery little mockery, yet intolerably caressive. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Mrs. Caldwell seemed indifferent to the attention. She let Beth walk beside her day after day, but remained absorbed in her own reflections, and made no effort to talk to Beth and take her out of herself; so that Beth very soon found the duty intolerably irksome. It irritated her, too, when she caught her mother smiling to herself, and on asking what was amusing her, Mrs. Caldwell replied, still smiling, "Never you mind." With Beth's temperament it was not ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... His strange moods filled her with new and powerful emotions. The charm of the wild life he depicted appealed to her as well as to him. It was all a fearsome venture, but after all it was glorious. The placid round of her own life seemed for the moment intolerably commonplace. There was epic largeness in the circuit of the plainsman's daring plans. The wonders of Nature which he catalogued loomed large in the misty knowledge she held of ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... without exchanging a word. The vast noiseless spaces seemed full of sound, like the roar of a distant multitude heard only by the inner ear. Had their speech been articulate their language would have been incomprehensible; and even that far-off murmur of meaning pressed intolerably on Claudia's nerves. Keniston took the onset without outward sign of disturbance. Now and then he paused before a canvas, or prolonged from one of the benches his silent communion with some miracle of line or color; but he neither looked at his wife nor spoke to her. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... great home-bird. On the few occasions in her childhood, when she had paid visits at relations' houses, she had, after a few days, grown so intolerably homesick, and wept so hopelessly and inconsolably, that she had had to be packed back, rather in disgrace; and though she was now old enough to behave herself, she had not been asked again, nor was she very enthusiastic to receive ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... minister—a Unitarian, judging from the intellectuality betrayed in his countenance. To me he was always civil and, even, genial, for he did not know that I was a writing fellow. But to others casually met he seemed to be invariably and intolerably rude. He could not brook contradiction—particularly on religious topics. He was an earnest believer. But it was in the God of Battles that he believed. And he would be delighted at any time to prove in a stand-up fight the honesty of his convictions. In the union of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... there are streams and plenty of water. For all that they would not escape but for one thing that I will mention. The fact is, you see, that in summer a wind often blows across the sands which encompass the plain, so intolerably hot that it would kill everybody, were it not that when they perceive that wind coming they plunge into water up to the neck, and so abide until the wind have ceased.[NOTE 4] [And to prove the great heat of this wind, Messer Mark related a case that befell when he was there. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... these habits are strangely various even as presented to the eyes of a contemporary student. Some people, having spent much time and patient labour in making burrows for themselves, find life there so intolerably monotonous that they prefer to take the chances above ground. Others pass whole days with wives and families or in solitary misery where there is not light enough to read or work, scarcely showing a head outside from sunrise to ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... but such men as Mazzini conquer always,—conquer in defeat. Yet Heaven grant that no more blood, no more corruption of priestly government, be for Italy. It could only be for once more, for the strength, of her present impulse would not fail to triumph at last; but even one more trial seems too intolerably much, when I think of the holocaust of the broken hearts, baffled ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... an enormous effort to feel all this, but it must be felt if we are to understand how little the general harmony is disturbed by that which intolerably assails our emotions. ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... "For weeks I have felt that the future you have designed for me is too narrow—too selfish. With my Master's Call sounding in my ears, the thought of devoting my life to any business, however high its position in the eyes of the world, is intolerably repugnant. ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... continent great pains are taken to procure fat overgrown livers. The methods employed to produce this diseased state of the animals are as disgusting to rational taste as revolting to humanity. The geese are crammed with fat food, deprived of drink, kept in an intolerably hot atmosphere, and fastened by the feet (we have heard of nailing) to the shelves of the fattening cribs. The celebrated Strasburg pies, which are esteemed so great a delicacy that they are often sent as presents to distant places, are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... celebrated oculist, was recommended by the latter, as a last resource, to try galvanism. He had received no benefit whatever whilst under the direction of the oculist above alluded to, but his intestines were intolerably deranged by the effects of the mercury 336 which he had taken. This gentleman galvanised his eyes, and the man, who is a gunsmith, told me, that when he first went to have the operation performed, he could not see the red border round the hearth-rug in the front parlour, but when he returned into ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... dull," she said, "intolerably dull. And Dal always says 'only a dullard is dull.' But I diagnosed my dulness in the train just now and found it was largely his ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... spirits, and in becoming more unhappy she grew more irritable. Miss Davis felt her patience tried by the troublesome new pupil, and Phyllis eyed her with strong disapproval over the edges of her book. Phyllis loved order, regularity, good conduct, and in her opinion Hetty was an intolerably disagreeable interruption of the ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... the patronage of religion, almost unlimited freedom, and the public morality preserved it for a time from degeneracy. The comedies of Aristophanes, which with our views and habits appear to us so intolerably licentious, and in which the senate and the people itself are unmercifully turned to ridicule, were the seal of Athenian freedom. To meet this abuse, Plato, who lived in the very same Athens, and either witnessed or foresaw the decline ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... claim to sophistication. As for the incident that had led to the permanent retiring from their table of the monumental salt-and-pepper 'caster' which had been one of their most prized wedding presents, the Emerys refused to allow themselves to remember it, so intolerably ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... thing, to make a challenge and aggression quite another. Your friends may understand and sympathize and condone, but it does not lie upon you to force them to identify themselves with your act and situation. But better too much openness than too little. Squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably narrow order; it is a shadow we want to illuminate out of existence. Secrets will be ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... deeply understood.' In order to further this laudable aim he has written a very tedious blank verse poem which he calls The Secret of Content, but it certainly does not convey that secret to the reader. It is heavy, abstract and prosaic, and shows how intolerably dull a man can be who has the best intentions and the most earnest beliefs. In the rest of the volume, where Mr. Catty does not take himself quite so seriously, there are some rather pleasing things. The sonnet on Shelley's room at University College would ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... fact that the Professor was evidently again suffering severely. "There is a melancholy," said Goedike, "and it is the most usual, in which the inward depression easily changes to displeasure against every one, and the household of the melancholic suffers thereby intolerably; for the displeasure turns against them,—no one does anything properly, nothing is in its place. How very different is Gellert's melancholy! Not a soul suffers from it but himself, against himself alone his gloomy thoughts turn, and towards ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... he was suffering intolerably from gout and ophthalmia; his ships were crazy; and he was anxious to inspect the infant colony whence he had been absent so long. And so, after touching at and naming the Island of Margarita, he bore away to the northeast, and on August 30th the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... pushing through into the inner court, where mass is going on in the curious old church. One has now to elbow his way to enter, and all around the door, even out into the middle court, contadini are kneeling. Besides this, the whole place reeks intolerably with garlic, which, mixed with whiff of incense from the church within and other unmentionable smells, makes such a compound that only a brave nose can stand it. But stand it we must, if we would see Domenichino's frescoes in the chapel within; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... perspiration stood on his brow. It was certainly pretty hard work, but then he must be prepared for that, and after all he was earning money for his mother. Still the time did seem long. The scythe was so intolerably dull that it took a long time to make any ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... doubted it very much, having never seen a good version into that language out of the Greek." To confess the truth, I believe," said he, "the French translators have generally consulted the Latin only; which, in some of the few Greek writers I have read, is intolerably bad. And as the English translators, for the most part, pursue the French, we may easily guess what spirit those copies of bad copies must ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... low, circular Tartar table. The cornet wiped his hands, took off his cap, crossed himself, and moved nearer to the table. The boy seized the jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and daughter crossed their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in the shade it was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt unpleasant: the strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought no coolness, but only monotonously bent the tops of the pear, peach, and mulberry trees with which the vineyard was sprinkled. ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... Coventry to do the same, and said he was sorry he had only one pair of stockings to lend. And that was a lie: for he was glad he had only one pair to lend. When he had quite dried the shoes, he turned round, and found Grace was peeping over the pew, and looking intolerably lovely in the firelight. He kissed the shoes furtively, and gave them to her. She shook her head in a remonstrating way, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... his novels are outgrowths of the original notion of taking notes, splendid and inspired notes, of what happens in the street. Those in the modern world who cannot reconcile themselves to his method—those who feel that there is about his books something intolerably clumsy or superficial—have either no natural taste for strong literature at all, or else have fallen into their error by too persistently regarding Dickens as a modern novelist and expecting all his books to be modern novels. Dickens did not know at what exact point he really ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... That intolerably keen instinct of his seemed to have anticipated my scheme: he met me at the threshold, hurried me into the room, and fixed me in a minute in my former seat. Taking the plate of fruit from my hand, he divided the portion intended only for ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... could maintain myself as a teacher or governess in some German family. At all events, I will write to you again soon, and I entreat you to let me know all you can learn about my uncle. I feel so grateful to you for your just disbelief of the horrible calumny which must be so intolerably galling to a man so proud, and, whatever his errors, so incapable of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... social novel. Of the former he used to say he preferred to read either philosophy or fiction; he could not endure them combined. To hear even a sentence of the best social or domestic novel read irritated him intolerably. He would ask, "How any one could feel interest in the talk of a set of ordinary silly people, such as one must meet with every day. It was bad enough to hear them talk when one ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... introductions of very considerable length, each addressed to one or other of his chief literary friends, and having little or nothing at all to do with the subject of the tale. Contemporaries complained that the main poem was thereby intolerably interrupted; posterity, I believe, has taken the line of ignoring the introductions altogether. This is a very great pity, for not only do they contain some of Scott's best and oftenest quoted lines, but each is a really ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... What was the matter? Where was she? What was that smell? She leant forward on her elbow. The lantern was just going out, and smelt intolerably. A cold grey light was in the little ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shameless one; and it is only of late years that actresses have at last succeeded in living down the assumption that actress and prostitute are synonymous terms, and made good their position in respectable society. This makes the survival of the old ostracism in the Act of 1843 intolerably galling; and though it explains the apparently unaccountable absurdity of choosing as Censor of dramatic literature an official whose functions and qualifications have nothing whatever to do with literature, it also ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... afternoon? I am sure you need it. And to-night—" She paused a moment, for, her courage notwithstanding, she had begun to tremble—"to-night,"—she said again, and still paused, feeling his hand tighten upon her, feeling her heart quicken almost intolerably under its weight. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... on which our tourists took the steamer for Wood's Holl the sea lay shimmering in the heat, only stirred a little by the land breeze, and it needed all the invigoration of the short ocean voyage to brace them up for the intolerably hot and dusty ride in the cars through the sandy part of Massachusetts. So long as the train kept by the indented shore the route was fairly picturesque; all along Buzzard Bay and Onset Bay and Monument Beach little cottages, gay with paint ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... log just alight on the hearth, she noticed. She got out of her chair, softly and stiffly, for she felt intolerably languid and tired. Besides, she must not disturb the boy. So she went down on her knees, and, with infinite craft, picked out a coal or two from the fender and dropped them neatly into the core of red-heat that still smoldered. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... discussion of the illness of poor Dr ——, who would no longer be able to get through the work of the parish single-handed, and would require a curate, was continued till the ladies rose from table. Nor did matters mend in the library. John's thoughts went back to his book; the room seemed to him intolerably uncomfortable and ugly. He went to the billiard-room to smoke a cigar. It was not clear to him if he would be able to spend two months in this odious place. He might offer them to God as penance for his sins; if every evening passed like the present, it were a modern martyrdom. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... an old splint-bottomed chair—gagged, arms tied behind her and to the chair's back, and her ankles tied to the chair's legs. In a moment Pudge had the knotted towel out of her mouth, and had cut her bonds. But quick though Pudge was, to her he seemed intolerably slow; just then E. Eliot was thinking of ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... behind, my clothes daily get more and more intolerably disreputable,—this thought continually uppermost is not compatible with a due sense of self-respect. With the bag I could have faced the world of men head erect and spirits high; without it, I fain would skulk in corners, away from the glances of the crowd. I go to ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... A sense of being intolerably bullied seized Edwardes and made red spots of anger dance before his eyes. His fists clenched and he took a forward step, then with tensed muscles he halted and stood there so close to the other that their eyes locked at a range of inches. Very deliberately he inquired: "Are you determined ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... themselves beneath the frowning mountains of Corsica. The difference between the scenery of the island and the shores which they have left is very striking. Instead of the rocky mountains of the Cornice, intolerably dry and barren at their summits, but covered at their base with villages and ancient towns and olive-fields, Corsica presents a scene of solitary and peculiar grandeur. The highest mountain-tops are covered with snow, and beneath the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... he was sent to Edinburgh University to prepare himself for the work of a doctor—the profession of his father and grandfather. But here his independence of character again asserted itself. He found most of the lectures 'intolerably dull,' so he occupied himself with other pursuits, making many friendships among the younger naturalists and doing a little in the way of biological ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... and inquisitive, that he lived much to himself and asked but little of his milieu. If he had been exacting and ambitious, if his appetite had been large and his knowledge various, he would probably have found the bounds of Salem intolerably narrow. But his culture had been of a simple sort—there was little of any other sort to be obtained in America in those days, and though he was doubtless haunted by visions of more suggestive opportunities, we may safely assume that he ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... France to shake off the domination of the scoundrels who had fastened themselves upon her vitals at Paris after the collapse of the monarchy, Valenciennes became the theatre of the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, and in both cases he came to grief through his overweening self-confidence ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... which it must inevitably lead! Look back to what was first told you as an inducement to enter into this dangerous course. The great political truth was repeated to you that you had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably oppressive. It was added that the right to nullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a peaceable remedy. This character which was given to it made you receive with too much confidence the assertions that were made of the unconstitutionally of the law ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... For my part, I cannot think what the women mean. It might be very well, if the Apollo Belvedere should suddenly glow all over into life, and step forward from the pedestal with that godlike air of his. But of the misbegotten changelings who call themselves men, and prate intolerably over dinner-tables, I never saw one who seemed worthy to inspire love—no, nor read of any, except Leonardo da Vinci, and perhaps Goethe in his youth. About women I entertain a somewhat different opinion; but there, I have the misfortune to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the ancient glorious inhabitants, who were generous, brave, and the most valiant of all nations, to a vicious baseness of soul, barbarous, treacherous, jealous and revengeful, lewd and cowardly, intolerably proud and haughty, bigoted to blind, incoherent devotion, and the ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... the mob got loose and undertook a raid. On several occasions organized massacres took toll of the "Children of the Ghetto," who on other occasions were banished, bag and baggage, from Prague and driven out into the country. Though now and again they suffered intolerably, yet were they on the whole better treated than in many other parts of Europe, were allowed to develop along their own lines, and produced many men of mark and learning, and women of distinction, among the latter one who was raised to the nobility by a Habsburg Emperor and King of Bohemia, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... was still fighting the sea—the wind, too, Rainey fancied—sailing close-hauled, going north against the trade. He fumbled for his watch. It had run down. His head ached intolerably. Each hair seemed set in a nerve center of pain. But ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... he did not know what to say next. That tolerant acquiescence of hers in what he had meant to sting intolerably . . . it was as though he had put all his force into a blow that would stun, and somehow missing his aim, encountering no resistance, was toppling forward with the impetus of his own effort. He recovered himself and looked at her, choking, "You don't ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... time in his life the society of his troops of acquaintance became intolerably oppressive; for the first time in his life he sought refuge from thought in the stimulus of drink, and dashed down neat Cognac as though it were iced Badminton, as he drove with his set off the disastrous plains of Iffesheim. He shook himself free of them as soon as he could; he felt the chatter ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... assailant, to let him at the back avenue: but here it was likewise impossible to stand his bearing so fiercely against me, in his agitations and endeavours to enter that way, whilst his belly battered directly against the recent sore. What should we do now? both intolerably heated: both in a fury; but pleasure is ever inventive for its own ends: he strips me in a trice stark naked, and placing a broad settee-cushion on the carpet before the fire, oversets me gently, topsy turvy, on it; and handling me only at the waist, whilst you may be sure I favoured all my ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... in tones too seductive for denial, prompt action. Moreover, we had been rising before daylight for some days past in order that we might cover a respectable distance before the Enemy should begin to blaze intolerably above our heads, commanding us to seek the shade of some chance fig-tree ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... long and so supremely in this country that the Hindu accepts it without questioning; and it has become more than a second nature to him, even a necessity of his being. What would be intolerably irksome to a Westerner is to the Hindu a matter of course. To the rank and file of the Hindus, caste has ceased to be a matter of question. It is the only order of life with which he is conversant; and while he may be convinced by arguments ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... beastly people, especially in their feeding; for I have seen them eat the guts and garbage, dung and all. They even eat the seals which we had cast into the river, after they had lain fourteen days, being then full of maggots, and stinking most intolerably. We saw here several signs of wild beasts, some so fierce, that when we found their dens, we durst neither enter nor come near them. The natives brought down to us ostrich eggs, some of the shells being empty, with a small hole at one end; also feathers of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... while on the tree are intolerably bitter, without any of that peculiar taste which gains them admittance at the richest tables; to fit them for which they are pickled. Ripe olives are eaten in the Eastern countries, especially amongst the Greeks, as an article of food, particularly in Lent. The oil, which ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... fixed to the spot, sick with giddiness, as things swam around her. One intolerably painful thought suddenly struck her like a flash of lightning—Yann's comrades, the Icelanders, were waiting for him below in the market-place. What if he were to tell them this as a good joke—what a still more odious affront ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... altar. The snowy top and sides of the mountain appeared, shining in the bright sun, like a grand dome of the purest white marble. But it cannot be described. I thought of Sinai, of Moses on the Mount, when the glory of the Lord was passing by; of the mountain of the Transfiguration, something too intolerably bright and magnificent for mortal eye to look upon and live. We rode slowly, and in speechless wonder, till the sun, which had crowned the mountain like a glory, rose slowly from its radiant brow, and we were reminded that it ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... in me, and I would much sooner go for sympathy to one of your bronze monsters yonder on the doorsteps, than to you. Neither of us likes the other, and consequently a sham cordiality would be intolerably irksome. I shall not be here much longer; but while we are in the same house, I trust no bitter or unkind feelings will be entertained. I thank you, sir, for your polite offer of assistance, but hope I shall soon be able to maintain myself without ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... The air now becoming intolerably hot, and to evacuate the foul air from below where the people slept, had recourse to Mr. White's new ventilator, but found little benefit from it; not from any fault in the machine, but from the crowded state of the ship, it was impossible to throw ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... came to notice that he stayed away from home on circuit when all the rest of them could go home for a day or two. Fifteen years after his wedding he himself confessed to his trouble, not disloyally, but in a rather moving remonstrance with some one who had felt intolerably provoked by Mrs. Lincoln. There are slight indications that occasions of difficulty and pain to Lincoln happened up to the end of his life. On the other hand, there are slight indications that common love for their children helped to make the two ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... is both these—is far more dominant in our "greatest dramatist" than any dramatic conscience. That is precisely why those among us who love "poetry," but find "drama," especially "drama since Ibsen," intolerably tiresome, revert again and again to Shakespeare. Only absurd groups of Culture-Philistines can read these "powerful modern productions" more than once! One knows not whether their impertinent preaching, or their exasperating technical cleverness is ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Spithead": can anyone want a better sentence for brevity and seamanlike ring? But the "cast-anchor" trick, with its affectation of being a sea-phrase—for why not write just as well "threw anchor," "flung anchor," or "shied anchor"?—is intolerably odious to a sailor's ear. I remember a coasting pilot of my early acquaintance (he used to read the papers assiduously) who, to define the utmost degree of lubberliness in a landsman, used to say, "He's one of them ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the hearthrug with her arms round him and her face against him. His body was so big and comfortable. But something hurt her head intolerably. She sobbed almost ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... his son in a gaming transaction, he said—"Really I did my best for the young man; I gave him my arm all the way from White's to Watier's." However, there can be no doubt that he was very often intolerably impudent; and, as impudence is always vulgar, he was guilty of vulgarity. Dining at a gentleman's house in Hampshire, where the champagne did not happen to suit his taste, he refused his glass when the servant came to help him a second time, with—"No, thank ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... headquarters. The superintendent, having changed his attire, made it his first business to satisfy their clamorous demands by dictating a brief and discreet account of the raid, to be typed and handed out to them, then with a head that ached intolerably he forced himself to do some ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... visitor, M. Donat Rimareau, the half-caste vice-president. As it was not the season for pearl fishing, there were no white men on the island, though now and again a schooner with a French captain would appear and disappear like a phantom ship. The days were almost intolerably hot, but with the setting of the sun a gentle breeze sprang up. We spent the evenings in the moonlight, sitting on mattresses spread on the veranda, our only chair being reserved for our guest. The conversation with M. Rimareau, who was half Tahitian, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... looked sidelong at her with eyes alight. She matched the glance for just about one second, and turned her eyes away with a certain consciousness that gave Kent a savage delight. Of a truth, she was different! She was human, she was intolerably alluring. She was not the prim, perfectly well-bred young woman he had met at the train. Lonesome Land was doing its work. She was beginning to think as an individual—as a woman; not merely as a ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... tyrannies and absurd jealousies which would never have entered into one's head.—I don't want to go into all that. It's better forgot.—Only they piled up and up, till the shadow of them shut out the sunshine; and I got so bored, so madly and intolerably bored. You see, I had tried to believe in him at first. In self-defence I had done so, and stood by him, and done my very best to put him through. But when I began to understand that there was nothing to stand by or put through, that his talent was not talent at all, but merely a vain ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... of food which we obtained from Captain Bob and his friends, it was so small that we often felt most intolerably hungry. We could not blame them for not bringing us more, for we soon became aware that they had to pinch themselves in order to give us what they did; besides, they received nothing for their kindness but the daily ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... collie had made another spring and fallen back with a crash into the corner, where he made noise enough in his savage rage to waken the dead before he fell to whining and then finally lay still. And directly afterwards the doctor's own distress became intolerably acute. He had made a half movement forward to come to the rescue when a veil that was denser than mere fog seemed to drop down over the scene, draping room, walls, animals and fire in a mist of darkness and folding also about his own mind. ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... had followed James Mottram's departure had seemed intolerably long. Catherine felt as if she had gone through some terrible physical exertion which had left her worn out—stupefied. And yet she could not rest. Even now her day was not over; Charles often grew restless and talkative at night. He and Mr. Dorriforth ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Alice, at the piano, it was terrible to be associated with the song of the young lady from Morfe. She felt that Rowcliffe was looking at her (he wasn't) and she strove by look and manner to detach herself. As the young lady flung herself into it and became more and more intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge of the last hope of the young ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... Constance and I returned to-day from London; we had been there to get my things. I took her with me because I feared to leave her alone with Gabriel; it seemed unwise. Besides, I could not leave them; I am indeed intolerably jealous; I never leave them now for the fraction of a minute. I cannot, it is too cruel pain; and I am grown such a ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heat iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, an more entire calm it is impossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he was naturally a timid man, but they could not deny that he had seen things to make the brave afraid, or that he had now every reason from the police to be secret and cautious in his life. He could hardly be called company for Tonelli, who must have found the day intolerably long but for the visit which the notary's pretty granddaughter contrived to pay every morning in the cheerless mezza. She commonly appeared on some errand from her mother, but her chief business seemed to be to share with Tonelli the modest feast of rumor and hearsay ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... George was in general of a slow, solemn, Spanish turn of manners; "intolerably proud, too, since he got that English dignity," says Wilhelmina: he seemed always tacitly to look down on Friedrich Wilhelm, as if the Prussian Majesty were a kind of inferior clownish King in comparison. It is certain he showed no eagerness to get the Treaty perfected. Again and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... liberty of conscience. Every people, they argued, ought to be treated according to their natural character, as every individual must in accordance to his bodily constitution. Thus, for example, the south may be considered happy under a certain degree of constraint which would press intolerably on the north. Never, they added, would the Flemings consent to a yoke under which, perhaps, the Spaniards bowed with patience, and rather than submit to it would they undergo any extremity if it was sought to force such a yoke upon them. This remonstrance was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... against her will at the other's shrewdness, and in consequence wiping away a few tears directly afterward. "It is nothing; but he is really intolerably jealous, and I can't and won't put up ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... contempt for the simple townsfolk than did the officers of the Chasseurs who had drunk in the same cafes the year before. Nevertheless there was a something in the air; something subtle and indefinable, an intolerably unfamiliar atmosphere like a widely diffused odor—the odor of invasion. It filled the private dwellings and the public places, it affected the taste of food, and gave one the impression of being on a journey, far away from home, among barbarous ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a book and a human being to be purely secular, and desire to discuss them, not indeed with ridicule but with freedom. When I discuss them, he treats my act as intolerably offensive, as though the subject were sacred; yet he now pretends that I think such topics "pertain to God," and he was not aware of it until I told him so! Thus he turns away the eyes of his readers from my true charge of profanity, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... has come into a large estate. Then came the Rebellion, and, presto! a flaw in our titles was discovered, the plate we were promised at the family table is flung at our head, and we were again the scum of creation, intolerably vulgar, at once cowardly and overbearing,—no relations of theirs, after all, but a dreggy hybrid of the basest bloods of Europe. Panurge was not quicker to call Friar John his former friend. I cannot help thinking of Walter Mapes's jingling ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and naked feet being literally encrusted with dirt—their attendance at our meals is not, as you may suppose, particularly agreeable to me, and I dispense with it as often as possible. Mary, too, is so intolerably offensive in her person that it is impossible to endure her proximity, and the consequence is that, amongst Mr. ——'s slaves, I wait upon myself more than I have ever done in my life before. About ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... unkindly, but as much for decency's sake as for his own. That the son, for any motive at all, should be turned out of the house where his mother lies dead, even though he had not stood by her living, is hard enough in the estimation of any people, but in the estimation of the Irish peasant it is intolerably tragic. If we realize this, the ending of the play will be on a note deeper and more significant than if we fail to realize it, but not even the utmost sympathy with the intention of the author and a full realization of the significance ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Clifton, and continued so ill for a whole week, that her life was despaired of. It was not till yesterday that Dr Rigge declared her out of danger. You cannot imagine what I have suffered, partly from the indiscretion of this poor child, but much more from the fear of losing her entirely. This air is intolerably cold, and the place quite solitary — I never go down to the Well without returning low-spirited; for there I meet with half a dozen poor emaciated creatures, with ghostly looks, in the last stage of a consumption, who have made shift ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... white man. They said he was too salty. Hundreds of years ago the Aztecs, according to Bernal Diaz, who was there, complained that "the flesh of the Spaniards failed to afford even nourishment, since it was intolerably bitter." This, though the Indians were dying of starvation by hundreds of thousands in the merciless siege of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... received a letter in which a man tells me amazedly of the life he led in a slave-labor camp during the time of The Leader's rule. He describes the attempt of another prisoner to organize a revolt of the prisoners. While he spoke of the brutality of the guards and the intolerably hard labor and the deliberately insufficient food, they cheered him. But when he accused The Leader of having ordered these things—the prisoners fell upon him with cries of fury. They killed him. I had this information verified. ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... always either exhausted with the heat of the sun, or frozen with cold, or the evening is so tedious, she wants it to be bedtime, or if there is any unusual gaiety going on, she quarrels with the same length of evening, because it is so intolerably short; and, in short, she is never truly happy but when she is surrounded by admirers, whether men or women. And this seems to me to be a sad way of 'getting her time over,' as the poor women say of life. Ah, Mamma, it goes but ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty |
