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More "Tolerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but it was with such a snail's pace that it would have puzzled a man of tolerable eyesight to have determined whether the horse was moving or standing still. To make it still more interesting, it commenced raining furiously. As they had left Brussels in a coach, and the morning had promised ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... led into a sombre chapel. This was St. Peter's Sanctuary, dedicated to the Holy Innocents, and to it any hunted criminal had the right of entry. Apparently, his pursuers might besiege him without danger of sacrilege, but at any rate he could defy them in tolerable security within those massive walls. There do not seem to be many records of the occasions on which it was used; we do not hear of the quick step and panting breath of the fugitive as he neared that doorway, nor read of ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... anything, or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?" and that now I had all these to a sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a manner, as to live without my gun when my ammunition was spent; so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting without any want as long as I lived. For I considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my ammunition should be spent, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... cringing one, Grumkow and Reichenbach), was never got together out of a gentleman's household. To no idlest reader, armed even with barnacles, and holding mouth and nose, can the stirring-up of such a dust-bin be long tolerable. But the amazing problem was this Editor's, doomed to spell the Event into clearness if he could, and put dates, physiognomy and outline to it, by help of such Flunky-Sanscrit!— That Nosti-Grumkow Correspondence, as we now have it in the Paper-Office,—interpretable ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... ideas which I had had for some time already, on the difficulties put forward by him[67] in opposition to those who endeavour to reconcile reason with faith in regard to the existence of evil. Indeed, there are perhaps few persons who have toiled more than I in this matter. Hardly had I gained some tolerable understanding of Latin writings when I had an opportunity of turning over books in a library. I flitted from book to book, and since subjects for meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the work of Laurentius Valla against ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... Fortunately, Hector had taken the precaution to bend down the flexile branches of the dogwood and break the tops of the young trees that they had passed between on their route to the lake, and by this clue they were enabled with tolerable certainty to retrace their way, nothing doubting of arriving in time at the wigwam of boughs by ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... magnanimity. They are ready to take advantage of the weakness or defencelessness of others, especially where they have themselves succeeded, by unscrupulous methods, in climbing to positions of authority. Snobs in high places are always much less tolerable than snobs of low degree, because they have more frequent opportunities of making their want of manliness felt. They assume greater airs, and are pretentious in all that they do; and the higher their ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... people to belong to a very corrupt, and by many to a positively indecent school. Others thought them tremendously knowing, and paid enormous prices for them; and indeed, to be able to point to one of Gloriani's figures in a shady corner of your library was tolerable proof that you were not a fool. Corrupt things they certainly were; in the line of sculpture they were quite the latest fruit of time. It was the artist's opinion that there is no essential difference between beauty and ugliness; that ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... was the son of a prostitute, brought up with the legitimate children, and the story of Tamar is instructive. But the legal codes were extremely severe on Jewish maidens who became prostitutes (the offense was quite tolerable in strange women), while Hebrew moralists exercised their invectives against prostitution; it is sufficient to refer to a well-known passage in the Book of Proverbs (see art. "Harlot," by Cheyne, in the Encyclopaedia Biblica). Mahomed also severely condemned prostitution, though ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is its first covering, giving place gradually to its natural grey plumage, leaves half the creature covered with down; the other half is a fine compact coat of feathers, composed of white and grey; while the head is of a dazzling, silvery white. Their size is prodigious, one of them proving a tolerable load. Upon skinning them, on our return, we found they were covered with a fine white fat, which I was told was excellent for frying, and other culinary purposes; and the flesh was quite as delicate, and could scarcely be distinguished in flavour ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... rather than fan the flame of every generous or benevolent-feeling that might be kindling in his bosom. With the fond, the ardent, the never-failing desire to improve, physically, intellectually, and morally, there are few females who may not make tolerable companions for a man of sense;—without it, though a young lady were beautiful and otherwise lovely beyond comparison, wealthy as the Indies, surrounded by thousands of the most worthy friends, and even talented, let him beware! Better remain in celibacy a thousand years (could life last so long) ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... reproduced in all the picture shops of Florence. This work is no favourite of mine, but one cannot deny it power and richness. The Guido Reni opposite, in which an affected fat actress poses as Cleopatra with the asp, is not, however, even tolerable. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... by the religious beliefs and observances of others. We cannot estimate their influence either on the personal happiness, or the moral character, or the social welfare of men, without taking this circumstance into account. To arrive at even a tolerable approximation to a correct judgment, we must endeavor to conceive of Atheism as prevailing universally in the community, as emancipated from all restraint, and free to develop itself without let or hindrance of any kind, as tolerated by law, and sanctioned by public ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... actually no other fault than that of being too still and languid. Maurice had brown hair, now a little tossed and disordered (for he had been busy all morning on board the boat), a pair of brown eyes of singular beauty, clear and true, and a tolerable set of features, which, like his manner, varied considerably, according to the humour he happened to be in. Percy was a man of the world, understood and respected "les convenances," and never shocked anybody. Maurice ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... which increased with Melchior's intemperance and folly, life was tolerable as long as Jean Michel was there. He was the only creature who had any influence over Melchior, and who could hold him back to a certain extent from his vice. The esteem in which he was generally ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... three next sonnets may with tolerable certainty be referred to the series written on various occasions ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... party question they could heartily join him in the crusade, thus dividing whatever political capital might be made out of it; or they could disparage his effort and belittle his character as a reformer. The latter being the easier because the more tolerable, many Republican papers began charging him with insincerity, with trickery, and with being wholly influenced by political aspirations. His methods, too, were criticised as undiplomatic, hasty, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... America!" said Mr. Follingsbee, gazing round, and settling his collar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the class of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, "so-so," or "tolerable," or "pretty fair,"—a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. Wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on with tolerable quickness. On reaching home he found the cord to be of a reddish colour. It was just what he ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... illegitimate all that does riot come within the middle, central form! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as he deviates from this standard, not as he excels in individual character, which he says is only good or tolerable as it partakes of general nature; and he might accuse Michael Angelo and Raphael, the one for his grandeur of style, the other for his expression; for neither are what he sets up as the goal of perfection—I will just stop ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... two hours in the hall of the Metropolitan, like a client in some patrician antechamber, they did accord me a tolerable room ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the cabin, and laid decently on the ice, outside, the increasing warmth within rendering the removal advisable. On glancing again at the thermometer, now suspended in a remote part of the cabin, the mercury was found risen to two above zero. This was a very tolerable degree of cold, and the men began to lay aside some of their extra defences against the weather, which would otherwise be of no service to them ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... death (1 Kings iii. 4, 5). Though the chronology of the period is somewhat uncertain, the date must be in the first half of the 9th century B.C. It is to be remembered, however, that important as this monument is for the development of the alphabet, and because it can be dated with tolerable accuracy, the dialect and alphabet of Moab are not in themselves proof for the Phoenician forms which influenced the peoples of the Aegean, and through them Western Europe. The fragment of a bronze bowl ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... matter of Building generally, I think our City would profit by a study of London, especially if our lot-owners, builders, &c., would be satisfied with London rates of interest on their respective investments. I think four per cent. is considered a tolerable and five a satisfactory interest on money securely invested ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... which have cost me the least effort. When the sentiment and the rhyme come in competition, I make bad verses, and am not happy in my corrections. You cannot comprehend the difficulties I have to overcome in making a few tolerable verses. A happy combination by nature, an irrepressible and fruitful intellect, made you a great poet without any effort of your own. I feel and acknowledge the inferiority of my talent. I swim about in the ocean of poetry with my life-preserver under my arm. I do not write as well as I think. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... highest possible authority,—my own. Representing the gentler half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable parts, and good education, as tender-hearted as most women, not unfamiliar with the best society, mingling, to some extent, with those who understand and practise the minor moralities, you would at once infer from my circumstances that I was a very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the man had a tolerable knack of writing and describing: And my father, who had been abroad in his youth, said, that his remarks were curious, and shewed him to be a person of reading, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... whence we may infer, that the mare colts are best fed and taken care of. That if you ask one of these banditti to sell his mare, his answer is, that on her speed depends his own head. He says also, the stone colts are so little regarded, that it is difficult to find a Horse of any tolerable size and shape ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... gait was obvious in some of the feasters. At one point in the middle of the road a maenad was flinging her arms about and shrieking as if she were just escaped from a madhouse. But the drive in the Bois was what made Paris tolerable. There were few fine equipages, and few distinguished-looking people in the carriages, but there were quiet groups by the wayside, seeming happy enough; and now and then a pretty face or a wonderful bonnet gave variety to the somewhat bourgeois ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the ships as were in a tolerable state of health, both male and female, were sent up to Rose Hill, to be employed in agriculture and other labours. A subaltern's detachment from the New South Wales corps was at the same time sent up for the military duty of that settlement in conjunction ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... consented, and the machine succeeded in cutting the corn—leaving a tolerable stubble, but not so short and regular ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... if there be any rich persons in this congregation who hold these peculiar economic doctrines, let me recommend to them, more than to any other persons present, that they would support a society which alleviates the hard pressure of their system; which helps to make it tolerable and prudent by teaching the poor to save; by teaching them, in London alone,—how to save 54,000 in the last eleven years. Let ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... things are, a man has no freedom, and no security for the necessities of a tolerable life; without power, he has no opportunity for initiative. If men are to have free play for their creative impulses, they must be liberated from sordid cares by a certain measure of security, and they must have a sufficient share of power to be able to exercise initiative ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... defending of that condition, as at least tolerable and none of the worst; a justifying of it, or at least a pleading for themselves and excusing the matter, and covering over their neglect of duty with fair pretexts, as the spouse did when she answered Christ's call with this, that she had washed her feet ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... represent it, therefore, as a work of art, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, is necessarily a failure. The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves unsolved are made tolerable to us by Hope. We are prepared to find in religion many things which we cannot understand; and difficulties do not perplex us so long as they remain in a form to which we are accustomed. To emphasise the problem ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... but may soothe and solace me. Even the natural taste and smell may be made to like what they naturally dislike; even bitter medicine, which is nauseous to the palate, may by a resolute will become tolerable. Nay, even sufferings and torture, such as martyrs have borne, have before now been rejoiced in and embraced heartily from love to Christ. I then, a sinner, will take this light inconvenience in a generous way, pleased at the ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... on the third day, Israel had arrived within sixteen miles of the capital. Once more he sought refuge in a barn. This time he found some hay, and flinging himself down procured a tolerable night's rest. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... difficult; the afternoon is tolerable, but you say truly when the daylight goes, evils spring up. A whole cavalcade of obscene ideas then pass through my brain; how can any one be recollected ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom and libertines indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early assumed novel airs of piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the fashion here. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... very light thinkers. It is the only form of literature that calls for absolutely no equipment in the author. Writing a play, for instance, presupposes some acquaintance with a few plays already written. No one can succeed as a novelist without a fair knowledge of the technique of millinery or a tolerable mastery of stock exchange slang. The writer of scientific articles for the magazines must have fancy, and the writer of advertisements must have poetry and wit. But to produce a book of epigrams on Woman requires nothing but an elementary knowledge of spelling and the courage necessary ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... some rites and institutions, as the use of images in churches, the vestments of the clergy, the private confession of sins, the use of wafers in the administration of the Lord's supper, the form of exorcism in the celebration of baptism, and other ceremonies of the like nature, as tolerable, and some of them useful. The Lutherans maintain, with regard to the divine decrees, that they respect the salvation or misery of men in consequence of a previous knowledge of their sentiments and characters, and not as founded on the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... of passion, and were not at all looked down upon by their friends. The fact is that the blame for all complaints of that kind is to be charged to character, not to a particular time of life. For old men who are reasonable and neither cross-grained nor churlish find old age tolerable enough: whereas unreason and churlishness cause uneasiness ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... arrival it was hastily prepared for my reception. Saddles, ropes, clothes, hats, and other articles which lay scattered about, were hastily flung into a corner; mattresses and some nice soft pillows soon appeared, and a very tolerable bed was prepared for me on a large chest in which the vestments of the priest, the coverings of the altar, &c., were deposited. I would willingly have locked myself in, eaten my frugal supper, and afterwards written a few ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... one immediate anxiety, but his apprehensions for the future were great, both for the young man and for the people of Ruscino and its surrounding country. To take away their river was to deprive them of the little which they had to make life tolerable and to supply the means of existence. Its winter overflow nourished the fields which they owned around it, and the only cornmill of the district worked by a huge wheel in its water. If the river were turned out of its course above Ruscino the whole of this part of the ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... light of a few authentic documents and many subsequent events, the outline of this plan can be traced with tolerable accuracy. In the region through which the projected railways were to run there was a large marauding population, and consequently the labourers and the works would have to be protected; and as Chinese troops can never be thoroughly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Ptolemy's map, which is the first geographical document of that island, represents it to the west of Britain, but five degrees further to the north than it actually is. He delineates its general shape, rivers, and promontories with tolerable accuracy, and some of his towns may be traced in their present appellations, as Dublin in Eblana. It has already been noticed that he was probably acquainted with the south of Sweden, and his four Scandinavian islands are evidently Zealand, Funen, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... and Porter and the padre walked on either side of him into camp. Derby rode his own horse, but by the time he reached the mine, he had lost so much blood that he was pretty fit for the doctor himself. Tiggs, a lean, wiry Yankee, sandy-haired and resourceful, was a tolerable surgeon, and he plastered Derby up, pronouncing the injury nothing more ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... with the business of the new Articles, or Confession of Faith. The particular form in which, by the order of Parliament, they had addressed themselves to this business, was that of a careful revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. With tolerable unanimity (ante, pp. 5, 6 and 18,19), they had gone on in this labour for three months, or till Oct. 12,1643; by which time they had Calvinized fifteen of the Articles. [Footnote: Whoever wants to compare the Westminster Assembly's Calvinized ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, and, to some extent, the moral history of its population. "History does ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... nearer they draw to the moral ideal, strange paradox, the farther off from them does it ever appear, and they from it. It is an apostle who writes, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief." Nor can I discover any tolerable explanation of all this, except that the guiding and directive power in the world, reveals itself in the moral consciousness of men, and with growing clearness in proportion as that consciousness has been trained and educated, as ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... of the scene, one became a little fatigued, a little weary; but as we approached Matanzas, the refreshing air from off the Gulf of Mexico suddenly came to our relief, full of a bracing tonic, and rendering all things tolerable. The sight of the broad harbor, lying with its flickering surface under the afternoon ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... verse would do credit to STREET, so graphic and poetical are the rural images introduced; but it runs into the fourth, a stanza 'most tolerable, and not to be endured.' Our young friend may be assured that we shall not 'regard with indifference' any thing from his pen that may fulfil the promise of the lines to which we allude. Na'theless, he must 'squeeze out more of his whey.' . . . THE admirers of one of the most popular ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... it is a pleasant sight to anglers to see thousands of these flies settling on the water, and the fish rising at them in all directions. During these feeds I venture to predict that any person who has suitable flies, and who can manage to make a tolerable light cast, cannot well miss taking some fish. With respect to the Grannams, you may on bright mornings begin to fish with them as early as six o'clock, and again after the large Browns have disappeared, I mean for that day. If you commence ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... is imbued with a deep sympathy for his subject, we would not give sixpence for his chance of producing a tolerable ballad. Nay, we go further, and aver that he ought when possible to write in the unscrupulous character of a partisan. In historical and martial ballads, there always must be two sides; and it is the business of the poet to adopt one of these with as much enthusiasm and prejudice, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... formally petitioned for leave to see number one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadow of Mr Dombey's roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favour of the excursion, and who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the disappointments of other people with tolerable fortitude, could not abide to disappoint herself, threw so many ingenious doubts in the way of this second thought, and stimulated the original intention with so many ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr Dombey's stately ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... resume. Godefroid de Beaudenord was respected by his tradespeople, for they were paid with tolerable regularity. The witty woman before quoted—I cannot give her name, for she is still living, thanks to her ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... decided that it would be much jollier for Jimmy to have you there for his holidays. I depend upon you to make things tolerable for Jimmy. You know how few people there are near us who would trouble themselves about a boy. You will be my stand-by with ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... in England, and the consequent ugliness of the various objects in the sight and use of which human beings pass their lives. English furniture, wall-papers, carpets, curtains, cutlery, garments, upholstery, ranged from the tolerable to the hideous, and were inferior to the manufactures of France and Germany. He organized a series of exhibitions on a small scale, somewhat similar to those of the American Institute in New York, which has held a competitive ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... permitted to flourish for a time, and then superseded. As he grew up he displayed a taste for drawing and music. He was soon able to copy little paintings of flowers, or even little country scenes, and to play a piece of no very great difficulty with tolerable effect. But as he never was taught by a master, and never practised elementary exercises and studies, he was deficient in accuracy. When the question came what was to be done with him after he left school, his father naturally wished him to go into the mill. Clem, however, set his face ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... me," rejoined Dendy, halting. "I have it in my power to render your situation far more tolerable, or to inflict greater torment ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... commendable faculty of taking most especial good care of himself, which he manifested by being always found where water was nearest and the grass best, and on the whole might be termed, in the language of those who consider themselves judges of horse flesh, a 'tolerable chunk of a pony' for ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Spaniard, gravity and pride; with an Italian, strong passions of love and revenge: with a German, plodding industry and habits of deep thinking; and with the northern nations, an honest sincerity and persevering courage. We sometimes judge with tolerable correctness; at others are wholly mistaken, and not unfrequently run into such extremes, that having established a principle, that a particular people are knavish, or cowardly, or stupid, we are unwilling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create the conditions under which we live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... taken leave of his friends and his son, he resolved that the Spartans should not be released from the oath they had taken, and that he would, of his own act, close his life where he was. He was now about that age in which life was still tolerable, and yet might be quitted without regret. Everything, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently prosperous condition. He, therefore, made an end of himself by a total abstinence from food; thinking it a statesman's duty to make his very death, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... because although whenever she came out she was always neatly dressed, yet most of the neighbours knew perfectly well that she had been wearing the same white straw hat all the time she had been there. In fact, the only tolerable one of the family was the boy, and they were forced to admit that he was always very well dressed; so well indeed as to occasion some surprise, until they found out that all the boy's clothes were home-made. Then their surprise ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a bird chirped in the distance. The brook down below him ran on silently without an audible ripple. Everything was silent and motionless. If only a cow would low or a hen would cackle back in the barnyard, life would be a bit more tolerable. It was as if all the world had become ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... which almost exhausted Grisell, and halts in exceedingly uncomfortable hostels, where she could hardly obtain tolerable seclusion, brought her at last within reach of home. There was a tall church tower and some wretched hovels round it. The Lord of Whitburn halted, and blew his bugle with the peculiar note that signified his own return, then all rode down ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... astonish the most pompous courts of India. It seems almost incredible that in such a short period nothing should remain of this town but the heaps of rubbish, amongst which we could hardly find room enough for our tent. At last we decided to pitch it in the only building which remained in a tolerable state of preservation, in Yami-Masjid, the cathedral-mosque, on a granite platform about twenty-five steps higher than the square. The stairs, constructed of pure marble like the greater part of the town buildings, are broad and almost untouched by time, but the roof has entirely disappeared, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... even really the middle, as he measures his page from the head line, if he has one, though it is not really a part of the page, but a spray of type only faintly staining the head of the paper. Now I go so far as to say that any book in which the page is properly put on the paper is tolerable to look at, however poor the type may be (always so long as there is no "ornament" which may spoil the whole thing), whereas any book in which the page is wrongly set on the paper is intolerable to look at, however good the type and ornaments ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... yourself out in the eatin' way, when a fellah 's as hungry as the chap that said a turkey was too much for one 'n' not enough for two. I can't help lookin' at the old woman. Corned-beef-days she's tolerable calm. Roastin'-days she worries some, 'n' keeps a sharp eye on the chap that carves. But when there's anything in the poultry line, it seems to hurt her feelin's so to see the knife goin' into the breast and joints comin' to pieces, that there's no comfort in eatin'. When I cut up ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... dancing, and Italian, the latter by a Signor Mazzochetti, an object of special detestation to me, whose union with Mademoiselle Flore caused a temporary fit of rejoicing in the school. The small seven-year-old beginnings of such particular humanities I mastered with tolerable success, but if I may judge from the frequency of my penitences, humanity in general was not instilled into me without considerable trouble. I was a sore torment, no doubt, to poor Madame Faudier, who, on being once informed by ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... afternoon by a thick scrub, through which we could only make our way with great difficulty, but on coming to a watercourse running into the southern part of Gantheaume Bay from the south-east I turned up its bed, and we were then able to move along with tolerable facility. This watercourse ran at the bottom of a red sandstone ravine resembling the old red sandstone of England; and the remainder of the evening was spent in clambering about the rocks and endeavouring to avoid such natural ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... and the tanners of hides; he was thoroughly respectable, and probably paid his taxes as they came due; if only by necessity of his office, he went to church with regularity; and on the whole we may suppose that he got enough of respect to make life tolerable. But Mozart was only one of a crowd who provided amusement for a gay population; and a gay population, always a heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who provide it with amusement. So Mozart got no respect from those ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of the fits of depression evident in most of the quotations thus far given, there were many alleviations, as life settled into more tolerable conditions, and one chief one was now very near. Probably no event in the first years of Anne Bradstreet's life in the little colony had as much significance for her as the arrival at Boston in 1633, of the Rev. John Cotton, her father's friend, and one of the strongest influences ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... recovered the wall. Ortygia was again blockaded, but as Dionysius was still master of the sea, he ravaged the coasts for provisions, and maintained his position, until the arrival of Heraclides, with a Peloponnesian fleet, gave the Syracusans a tolerable naval force. Philistus commanded the fleet of Dionysius, but in a battle with Heraclides, he lost ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... beyond all tolerable bounds is the generic and vague nature proper to language and its terms. The first personal pronoun "I" is a concept so thoroughly universal that it can accompany any experience whatever, yet it is used to designate an individual who is really definable not by the formal selfhood which he shares ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... avarice, the latter from an anxiety to become possessed, each according to his means, of some relic, however small, of buildings or statues which had formed the pride of Greece. The Ionic temple on the Ilyssus which, in Stuart's time, about the year 1759, was in tolerable preservation, had so entirely disappeared, that its foundation was no longer to be ascertained. Another temple near Olympia had shared a similar fate within the recollection of many. The temple of Minerva had been converted into a powder ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... about one, where, at the Ship, I dined; and thither come to me Mr. Hosier, whom I went to speak with, about several businesses of work that he is doing, and I would have him do, of writing work, for me. And I did go with him to his lodging, and there did see his wife, a pretty tolerable woman, and do find him upon an extraordinary good work of designing a method of keeping our Storekeeper's Accounts, in the Navy. Here I should have met with Mr. Wilson, but he is sick, and could not come from Chatham to me. So, having done with Hosier, I took ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... minutes we had tolerable warm work of it, individually, collectively, and miscellaneously; single-handed, and one against a dozen; struggling with painted savages in the firelight, and with one another in the dark; shooting the living, and stabbing the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... superior to man; for they may be frightened and coerced by him into doing his will. At this stage of thought the world is viewed as a great democracy; all beings in it, whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand on a footing of tolerable equality. But with the growth of his knowledge man learns to realise more clearly the vastness of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in presence of it. The recognition of his helplessness does not, however, carry with it a corresponding belief ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... have overcome this disagreeable accident, and recovered, in spite of it? This cow's hair did not look well, as did that of those in which the cyst was air-tight; but still she was beginning to eat well again, and appeared in a tolerable way for recovery. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... becoming every moment softer. The walking wearied them terribly, but they pushed on in the hope that they might be able to cross the upper waters of the Nepalgah river before night. This would place them on the west bank of that stream, where Sam believed that he should find the marching tolerable. If they should fail in this, Sam feared that the water would rise during the night, and fill all the bottom lands. In that event he must continue marching down the east bank of the river; not going very far out of his way, it is true, but having ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... remark that these two bills were not regarded with favor by the King himself, if the anecdote—which seems to rest on undeniable authority—be true, that he expressed satisfaction at the acquittal of some prisoners, on the ground that almost any evil would be more tolerable than that of putting men to death "for constructive treason." It must therefore, probably, be affirmed that these two acts, the Treason Act and the Seditious Meetings Act, went beyond the necessity of the case; that they were not only violations of the constitution—which, when the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... certain of the men," he said, "to whom I speak, I could say many things that should arouse you, so that you should catch with fiery eagerness at aught that promised a more tolerable position. I could recount the luxuries of wealth which you once knew; the agonies of poverty beneath which, to no purpose, you lie groaning. I could point out your actual inability to live, however basely—deprived of character and credit—devoid of any relics of your fortunes! ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... glass in my eye and my back ready to break. However, I'm off again on Monday,' he said, altering his tone, for he remembered that if Bryda was in Dowry Square, within reach, even the little workshop and the pain in his back would be tolerable. ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... with soft soap and fuller's earth. I think, if he could add his imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill's bucking-basket, and let her boil it in her copper, with rain-water and bleaching-powder (I hope you think me a tolerable laundress), it would ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is wholly different from that of the other plays, and there is an attempt at regular versification and artificial closes, not always inelegant, yet seldom pleasing. The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre, which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience; yet we are told by Jonson, that they were not only borne, but praised. That Shakespeare wrote any part, though Theobald declares it incontestable, I see ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... given. We read of the Persian Sibyl, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Erythraean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine. With the name of the last-mentioned Sibyl tourists make acquaintance at Tivoli. Two ancient temples in tolerable preservation are still standing on the very edge of the deep rocky ravine through which the Anio pours its foaming flood. The one is a small circular building, with ten pillars surrounding the broken-down ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... reports on the condition of the Indians, published by Government, under the editorship of Mr. Schoolcraft. The specimens are chiefly Algonquin. ] The Hurons had, however, in common with other tribes, a system of rude pictures and arbitrary signs, by which they could convey to each other, with tolerable precision, information touching the ordinary subjects ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... windows, leaped over garden walls, and was let in by Mrs. Betty in the dark. Nay, the magistrates of Bath complimented him with the freedom of the corporation, merely because, through his means, the waters had gained extraordinary credit; for every female of a tolerable appearance, that went thither on account of her sterility, got the better of her complaint, during his residence at Bath. And now the fellow thinks no woman can withstand his addresses. He had not been here three minutes, when ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... survive his fall by a few weeks or months, and as if his work were to finish when he left his country for the last time. But his indomitable energy, and the brave spirit that sustained him, brought back first a tolerable measure of good health; then serenity of mind; and, lastly, that industry which opened to him, in the reading and in the making of books, a new world from which all the sordid pettiness, and the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... be but one end to it all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the best, lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would break her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament which alone could make life tolerable to her or to others who might live with her under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he swiftly devised means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He was certain harm was meant—there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Would life be tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past and supported by a ruling caste which ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... good humor warmed again under the officer's admission of his difficulties. He was an irrepressible fellow when opportunity offered. Usually he lived in a condition of utter boredom. In fact, there were only two things that made life tolerable for him in Amberley. These were the doings of the Mounted Police, and the doings of those who made their existence ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... figures of animals, of shields, and weapons, and even of men, have been seen carved upon the rocks, roughly indeed, but sufficiently well to ascertain very fully what was the the object intended. Fish were often represented, and in one place the form of a large lizard was sketched out with tolerable accuracy. On the top of one of the hills, the figure of a man in the attitude usually assumed by them when they begin to dance, was executed in a still superior style. That the arts of imitation and amusement, should thus in any degree precede those of necessity, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... ever touched flesh, they got over their reluctance, and as their appetites told them it was dinner-time, they each took a thin slice with some biscuit. They agreed that when cooked it would be tolerable food. ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... of steam, the flames shot out fiercer and higher every moment. In that sweltering climate it does not take very much inducement to make a fire settle down thoroughly to work, once it gets anything like a tolerable start. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... repeated by Henchard to himself, accompanied him everywhere through the day. His mood was no longer that of the rebellious, ironical, reckless misadventurer; but the leaden gloom of one who has lost all that can make life interesting, or even tolerable. There would remain nobody for him to be proud of, nobody to fortify him; for Elizabeth-Jane would soon be but as a stranger, and worse. Susan, Farfrae, Lucetta, Elizabeth—all had gone from him, one after one, either by his fault ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... factor of Hunt, who sold him to Mr. Tolsey. He was at first employed in the cultivation of tobacco; but his humane master perceiving that he could not bear the fatigue, rendered his situation more tolerable by charging him with the care of his cattle. While in this employment, he used to retire, at stated times, to the recesses of a wood, to pray. He was seen there by a white boy, who amused himself with interrupting him, and often with wantonly insulting ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... so on, through the entire act. By the end of it, Mildred's nerves were unstrung. She saw the whole game, and realized how helpless she was. Before the end of that rehearsal, Mildred had slipped back from promising professional into clumsy amateur, tolerable only because of the beautiful freshness of her voice—and it was a question whether voice alone would save her. Yet no one but Mildred herself suspected that Ransdell had done it, had revenged himself, had served notice on her that since she felt strong enough to stand ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... be seen in Europe; but a few words may be devoted to La Sainte Beaume in Var, where, according to tradition, Mary Magdalen spent the end of her days. The tradition is entirely destitute of historical basis, and rests on a misconception. Scott has described the cave with tolerable accuracy in "Anne of Geierstein," though he had not seen ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... that I cannot do all I wish; seldom or ever troubled with nothing to do, and merely desiring that everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and then we should have a very tolerable world of it. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... horses. At length, in the grey of a gurly dawn, the smack came alongside. They had had a rough passage, and the mare was considerably subdued by sickness, so that there was less difficulty in getting her ashore, and she paced for a little while in tolerable quietness. But with every step on dry land, the evil spirit in her awoke, and soon Malcolm had to dismount and lead her. The morning was little advanced, and few vehicles were about, otherwise he could hardly have got her home uninjured, notwithstanding the sugar with which ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... "A tolerable journey betwixt now and to-morrow noon," Kenyon replied; "for, at that hour, I purpose to be standing by the Pope's statue in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there is always something or other which proves his Pretensions to Revelation to be false; and as they tell us, that, let the Devil change himself into what Shape he will he can never conceal his Cloven Foot; so neither can the Enthusiast make himself pass for Inspired, with any Person of tolerable discerning; but there will appear some very considerable Flaw, which shall manifestly prove him a Deceiver, or at least a Person deceiv'd. This is the Fate of them, and our Author could not avoid it. He has indeed carried his Philosopher beyond the Orb of Saturn[46], but he might ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... about near it, two corrals,[13] a long shed, in front of which a steer was being killed, a log dairy with a water wheel, some hay piles, and various evidences of comfort; and two men, on serviceable horses, were just bringing in some tolerable cows to be milked. A short, pleasant-looking man ran up to me and shook hands gleefully, which surprised me; but he has since told me that in the evening light he thought I was "Mountain Jim, dressed up as a woman!" I recognized in him a countryman, and he introduced himself as Griffith ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... over another on a skewer running through the middle. The upper one being lighted burnt down to the second, which took fire, the part of the skewer which went through the first being consumed, and so on to the last. These candles burnt a considerable time, and gave a very tolerable light. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... to grief — was it card or horse? Nobody asked and nobody cared; Ship him away to the bush of course, Ne'er-do-well fellows are easily spared; Only of women a tolerable few Sorrowed at parting ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... of whiteness. Pure unsifted solar light is white; and, if all the wave-constituents of such light be reduced in the same proportion, the light, though diminished in intensity, will still be white. The whiteness of snow with the sun shining upon it, is barely tolerable to the eye. The same snow under an overcast firmament is still white. Such a firmament enfeebles the light by reflecting it upwards; and when we stand above a cloud-field—on an Alpine summit, for instance, or on the top of Snowdon—and see, in the proper ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... reality belong to, but are merely accidentally projected upon, it; or, rather, that it is projected upon them; for their apparent immobility (which, in two of the six, may be called absolute) shows them with tolerable certainty to be indefinitely more remote—so remote that the path, moderately estimated at 21,000,000,000 miles in length, traversed by the solar system during the forty-five years elapsed since the Konigsberg measures dwindles into visual insensibility when beheld ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... was strict in insisting on the audit of her accounts, which the accurate lawyer sometimes praised. By judicious accounts of Fergusson, the other surviving member of the Tontine, he managed to keep his client in tolerable order. Katherine, though grateful to him for his friendly help, little knew how strenuously he strove to lengthen the old miser's days, hoping he would make some provision for his niece, while he dared not offer any suggestion on the subject, lest it should produce an effect contrary ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... life one of comfort and of usefulness to its owner. The brain and spirits need never grow old, even if our bodies will insist on getting rickety and in falling by the wayside. But an abstemious life will drag even the old body along to centenarian limits in a tolerable state of preservation and usefulness. The foregoing list can be lengthened out with an indefinite number of names, but it is sufficiently long to show what good spirits and an active brain will do to lighten up the weight of old age. When we contemplate ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... letters, now transposed into a tidy brown-paper parcel, which P——, balancing in the palm of his left hand, suggested was not of sufficient weight to reach the ship. We were not long at a loss, for the cook appeared, grim and smiling, with a tolerable-sized coal exposed to view and approbation, between his thumb and forefinger. Side by side, like a fair-haired youth with his swarthy bride, the coal and potato were placed; and P——, poising for the second time the precious parcel, rolled up his shirt-sleeve, and, throwing himself well back, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... from experience—partly my own. There was a time when I thought as you do—at least, I was fully persuaded that home and its affections were the only things that made life tolerable: that, if deprived of these, existence would become a burden hard to be endured; but now I have no home—unless you would dignify my two hired rooms at Horton by such a name;—and not twelve months ago I lost the last and dearest of my early ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... nothing lost which may not be regained, except life. I know of nothing which cannot be rendered tolerable through loyalty. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of tolerable education; the only son of his parents, who had endeavored to make great things of him, and might perhaps have succeeded, if he hadn't always had so little time at his disposal,—hadn't been "so drove," as he expressed it. He went to the village school ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would be subjected to the severest and most hostile scrutiny, and it was doubtful if a translation of part of an obscure and difficult poem, vaguely supposed to be coarse and irreligious, would meet with even a tolerable measure of success. At any rate, in spite of many inquiries and much vaunting of its excellence (see Letters, June 29, September 12, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 314, 362), the MS. remained for more than two years in Murray's hands, and it was not until other arrangements came into force that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... foraging, and procured water with difficulty. The legionary soldiers had a tolerable supply of corn, because they had been ordered to bring from Ilerda sufficient to last twenty-two days; the Spanish and auxiliary forces had none, for they had but few opportunities of procuring any, and their bodies were ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... registered 3.9% GDP growth in 1994, the best rate for six years, but slipped back to 2.7% in 1995. Exports and manufacturing output have been the primary engines of growth. Unemployment is gradually falling. Inflation is at a tolerable 3%. A major economic policy question for the UK in the 1990s is the terms on which it participates in the financial and economic ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a voice with personality and modulations to make a fifteen-minute telephone conversation tolerable, and youth to make it possible. Ruth had both. For fifteen minutes she discussed with Carl the question of whether she should go to Marion Browne's dinner-dance at Delmonico's, as Phil wished, or go skeeing in the Westchester Hills, as ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... supply of flesh and milk: in the far greater part of the uncultivated waste, the vegetation of the grass is quick and luxuriant; and there are few places so extremely barren, that the hardy cattle of the North cannot find some tolerable pasture. The supply is multiplied and prolonged by the undistinguishing appetite, and patient abstinence, of the Tartars. They indifferently feed on the flesh of those animals that have been killed for the table, or have died of disease. Horseflesh, which in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... half-caste baby, held an inquest on a dead sailor, bullied a Samoan army off his front grass, and had settled a disputed inheritance involving five acres of cocoanuts. This, of course, left him with some spare time on his hands, which, on the whole, he managed to get through with very tolerable enjoyment. But until the date of Captain Satterlee's arrival he had never had a friend, or at least so it seemed to him now in the retrospect. His official colleagues were out of the question—the standoffish ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... drawback in all works of the period, occasions an extreme difficulty in rendering them faithfully in an engraving. For wherever there is good and legitimate drawing, the ordinary education of a modern draughtsman enables him to copy it with tolerable accuracy; but when once the true forms of nature are departed from, it is by no means easy to express exactly the error, and no more than the error, of his original. In most cases modern copyists try to modify or hide the weaknesses ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Duck, but have a narrow Bill, with Setts of Teeth. They live on very small Fish, which they catch as they swim along. They taste Fishy. The best way to order them, is, upon occasion, to pull out the Oil-Box from the Rump, and then bury them five or six Hours under Ground. Then they become tolerable. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... gifted Hector MacQuarrie, whom I fear I have guiltily been quoting in almost every sentence of this chapter, has said that Maugham writes "transcripts, not of life as a tolerable whole, but of phases which suit his arbitrary treatment." It is ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... she consoled the dear perverse one all she could, when with her, insists upon it to me, that nothing but terror will procure me tolerable usage. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Throughout Europe there are others of the same character. The best that can be said of "a civilized nation" [3312] is that its laws, customs and practices are composed "one-half of abuses and one-half of tolerable usage".—But, underneath these concrete laws, which contradict each other, and of which each contradicts itself, a natural law exists, implied in the codes, applied socially, and written in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Warburton on Virgil and some articles in "Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne" were my sole publications. In November, 1770, my father sank into the grave in the sixty-fourth year of his age. As soon as I had paid the last solemn duties to my father, and obtained from time and reason a tolerable composure of mind, I began to form the plan of an independent life most adapted to my circumstances and inclination. I had now attained the first of earthly blessings—independence. I was absolute master of my hours and actions; and no sooner was I settled ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... soon have parted with his own bones as submit to such reckless expenditure of his fuel. The perishing temperature of the cabin, however, was sufficient justification for the orderly's conduct, and by a little skillful manipulation he soon succeeded in getting up a tolerable fire. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... boisterous seas, or to travel by land in some parts by rough mountains, threatened in the one place with shipwreck and in the other by continual dangers. Since the new convent was established in the island of Ticao, the administration is more tolerable, although it is always accompanied by indescribable fatigues. For the religious of Mobo have to sail completely about the island of Masbate in order to fulfil their obligations, or if they prefer to journey by land, as they are able, to one or ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... an instance can be produced in the world, of a country putting herself to such an amazing charge to conquer and enslave another, as Britain has done. The sum is too great for her to think of with any tolerable degree of temper; and when we consider the burden she sustains, as well as the disposition she has shown, it would be the height of folly in us to suppose that she would not reimburse herself by the most rapid means, had she America once more within her ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... nicely for cool days, and relieved Eyebright from the long-legged sensation which was growing over her. This, with a calico, some of Mrs. Bright's underclothing altered a little, and a sun-bonnet with a deep cape, made a tolerable summer outfit. Gloves, ruffles, ribbons, and such little niceties, she learned to do without; and when the sweet summer came again with long days and warm winds, when she could row, sit out-doors ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... would prefer it to the coffee-room; but, as it turned out, he was in no state to appear. They left him asleep, and the ship's doctor sat in the seat that had been prepared for his patient, and made the meal as tolerable to us both as it could be. He was an odd, old-fashioned fellow, but as true a ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... as these were not at all adapted to give comfort to his mind, or make his rest refreshing. Soon, by such fancies, he kindled anew his old rage, and his blood rose to fever heat, so that inaction became no longer tolerable. He had rest enough. He started up, and looked all around, and listened attentively. No sound arose and no sight appeared which at all excited suspicion. He determined to set forth once more, he scarcely knew where. He had a vague idea of finding his way back to the road, so as to be able ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... invented a new kind of tragedy, and to have carried his pieces about in carts, which [certain strollers], who had their faces besmeared with lees of wine, sang and acted. After him Aeschylus, the inventor of the vizard mask and decent robe, laid the stage over with boards of a tolerable size, and taught to speak in lofty tone, and strut in the buskin. To these succeeded the old comedy, not without considerable praise: but its personal freedom degenerated into excess and violence, worthy to be regulated by law; a law was made accordingly, and the chorus, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... managed. Maioralty, markets, faires, and nomination of Burgesses for the parliament, it hath common with the most: Coynage of Tynne, onely with three, others; but the gayle for the whole Stannary, and keeping of the County Courts, it selfe alone. Yet all this can hardly rayse it to a tolerable condition of wealth and inhabitance. Wherefore I will [138] detayne you no longer, then vntill I haue shewed you a solemne custome in times past here yeerely obserued, and onely of late ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... wish to argue that such a thing as happiness itself has become as obsolete in our day as hoop-skirts and side-combs, for, from the earliest reflections I have ever indulged in, I have concluded that it is quite easy to attain to a tolerable degree of happiness, if external influences be not too desperately at variance with our efforts to arrive at its tempting goal: and even now, when I have made my way through some of the densest and darkest fogs of experience, I know I should be happy yet, if, some day, I may see the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... unimportant; of little account, of small account, of no account, of little importance, of no importance &c. 642; immaterial; unessential, nonessential; indifferent. subordinate &c. (inferior) 34; mediocre &c. (average) 29; passable, fair, respectable, tolerable, commonplace; uneventful, mere, common; ordinary &c. (habitual) 613; inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. trifling, trivial; slight, slender, light, flimsy, frothy, idle; puerile &c. (foolish) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... upon them, and it was therefore best to look out and keep free of them. About three o'clock we caught sight of the main land of Cape Cod, to which we sailed northerly. We arrived inside the cape about six o'clock, with a tolerable breeze from the west, and at the same time saw vessels to the leeward of us which had an east wind, from which circumstance we supposed we were in a whirlwind. These two contrary winds striking against each other, the sky became dark, and they whirled by ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Vermont was the hardest, the most severe. My obstinacy, no doubt, did much at first to enhance my sufferings, and it was the accident only of my saving Morey's life that made the last part of my imprisonment a little more tolerable. When I was preparing to go, it was discovered that the fine suit of clothes I wore into the prison had been given by mistake or design to some one else, and my silk hat and calf-skin boots had gone with the clothes. But never mind! I would have gone out into the world in ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... written by two scribes; the work of the first is represented in ll. 1-353 of the present selection; that of the second in ll. 354-437; the former was accustomed to French scribal methods. The writer of C was a mechanical copyist and not at home in English, consequently he reproduces X with tolerable accuracy. The scribe of J was more independent (see [VI, Alfred, second ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... industrious at school; he was kept two years in the fourth form. The third year's work was only tolerable and he had to begin the second over again, so that he was in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the free waterway to the sea. As the tide naturally comes up the river a little way beyond Exeter, before the weir was made ships had been able to sail up to the watergate of the city. The first attempts to improve matters after this Act was passed failed, but a canal was constructed with tolerable success in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Dutton, for making one, so unexpectedly to myself, in a family council," returned the rear-admiral. "As for the men, they are no great philosophers, though tolerable judges of when they are well commanded, and well treated.—But, the hour is late, and it was my intention to sleep in my own ship, to-night. The coach of Sir Wycherly has been ordered to carry me to the landing, and I hope to have your permission ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... made of two poles spliced together, a yard was made of a third, a blanket borrowed from our coverings made a tolerable sail. There was no want of cordage for the rigging, and everything ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... spoken respectively in my several essays on those other three poets. The next play which bears his name alone was published five years later than the political or historical sketch or study which we have just dismissed; and which, compared with it, is a tolerable if not a creditable piece of work. It is difficult to abstain from intemperate language in speaking of such a dramatic abortion as that which bears the grotesque and puerile inscription, "If this be not a good Play, the Devil is ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... qualities, been but small. The creature has a marvellous strength, great intelligence, and remarkable docility. In proportion to the power which he can apply to a task, he is not an expensive animal to maintain. He can endure a considerable range of climate, and enjoys a tolerable immunity from disease. The reason for the relatively inconsiderable use of these creatures is probably to be found in the fact that they are not adapted for ordinary draught purposes, nor are they well suited ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... supposed, it was somewhat burned, but I was able to cut as many small slices from it as he could eat. After tasting a piece, he said, "Do you take it, Andrew. I do not think I want it." I pressed him, however; and in a little time he was able to make a tolerable meal. I then placed him inside the hut, telling him that I would sit up and keep watch till it was his turn, of course intending to let him sleep on the whole of the night, if he ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... compelled to surrender. Meanwhile, Eugene had renewed his attack upon the Gallo-Bavarian left, and Marsin, finding his colleague utterly routed, and his own right flank uncovered, prepared to retreat. He and the Elector succeeded in withdrawing a considerable part of their troops in tolerable order to Dillingen; but the large body of French who garrisoned Blenheim were left exposed to certain destruction. Marlborough speedily occupied all the outlets from the village with his victorious troops, and then, collecting his artillery round it, he commenced ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... be alone expected from what may be denominated the more humble labours of the biographer: who, nevertheless, must not be permitted to boast much of extraordinary humility, if he pretends to combine, in a single picture, any tolerable portion of that sublime grandeur, and that delicate simplicity, which constitute the Iliad and the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... the Sixth and Nineteenth corps were moved over toward the Millwood pike to help Wilson on the left, but the day was so far spent that they could render him no assistance, and Ramseur's division, which had maintained some organization, was in such tolerable shape as to check him. Meanwhile Torbert passed around to the west of Winchester to join Wilson, but was unable to do so till after dark. Crook's command pursued the enemy through the town to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... by negroes. They are generally shelled, put into small pails, which the negroes carry on their heads, and are sold, by measure, at the rate of about eight-pence per quart. Vegetables have been cultivated, of late years, with great success; and, of these, there is generally a tolerable supply in ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerable obvious, that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. "It may, of course, be urged," he writes, "that Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... none such appeared, was so kind as to supply its place with a work, in three volumes, called Walladmor, to which he prefixed the Christian and surname at full length. The character of this work is given with tolerable fairness in ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... indemnities, France and Belgium must push forward their boundaries so far that if ever Germany tries another rush she will have to rush for some days through her own lost lands. The only tolerable frontier against Germans is a day's march deep in Germany. Of course, Liege will have to be covered in the future by Belgian annexations in the Aix region and stretching toward Cologne, and France will go to the Rhine. I think Belgium as well as France ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... possible authority,—my own. Representing the gentler half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable parts, and good education, as tender-hearted as most women, not unfamiliar with the best society, mingling, to some extent, with those who understand and practise the minor moralities, you would at once infer from my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Francais on the occasion of the unveiling of Ponsard's bust. To the Romanticists, Ponsard was nothing less than the ass's jawbone with which the Philistines attempted to slay Hugo. But Emile Chasles, a son of my old friend, gave a lecture upon him, and afterwards Le lion amoureux was played, a very tolerable little piece from the Revolutionary period, in which, for one thing, Napoleon appears as a young man. There are some very fine revolutionary tirades in it, of which Princess Mathilde, after its first representation, said that they made her Republican heart palpitate. The ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... respectively in my several essays on those other three poets. The next play which bears his name alone was published five years later than the political or historical sketch or study which we have just dismissed; and which, compared with it, is a tolerable if not a creditable piece of work. It is difficult to abstain from intemperate language in speaking of such a dramatic abortion as that which bears the grotesque and puerile inscription, "If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it." A worse ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... than alive, and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant, who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... first time in his life, felt that he had found a position which really suited him. There was very little work to do. He received the ground rents of the town of Ballymoy; saw that Ballymoy House was kept in repair and the grounds in tolerable order; and let the fishing of the river every year by means of advertisements in sporting papers. Many men would have found the life dull, but Mr. Simpkins had a busy and vigorous mind of a sort not uncommon among incompetent people. By temperament ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... "Forward, I say! Charge!" he exclaimed from the window, as if he could have been heard. Our horsemen seemed to fall back as the Arabs returned to the attack; and after a little contest, maintained with tolerable spirit, the Arabs retired without loss, and without being molested in their retreat. Bonaparte could no longer repress his rage; and when Croisier returned he experienced such a harsh reception that the poor fellow withdrew ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... May days, is practically making preparations to follow the French across the Rhine; no fear of French Armies interfering with us this year. Dohna has the Swedes locked in Stralsund (capable of being starved, had not the thaw come); and in Hinter-Pommern he has General Platen, with a tolerable Detachment, watching Fermor and his Russians; Dohna, with Platen, may entertain the Russians for a little, when they get on way,—which we know will be at a slow pace, and late in the season. Prince Henri commands in Saxony, say with 30,000;—King's vicegerent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... answered the advertisements, scores of them, more than a hundred, before she saw through the trick and gave up. She found that throughout New York all the attractive or even tolerable places were filled by girls helped by their families or in other ways, girls working at less than living wages because they did not have to rely upon their wages for their support. And those help wanted advertisements were simply appeals for more girls of that sort—for ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Mrs. Frost, after a moment's thought, "your father will be all the better for all the good news we can send him. It will make his life more tolerable." ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... his fall by a few weeks or months, and as if his work were to finish when he left his country for the last time. But his indomitable energy, and the brave spirit that sustained him, brought back first a tolerable measure of good health; then serenity of mind; and, lastly, that industry which opened to him, in the reading and in the making of books, a new world from which all the sordid pettiness, and the infinite annoyances, of the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... old terms that have served the world for a fair number of centuries, when one comes to consider it: it is a pity to allow her to grow up without those dogmas and sentiments that may help to make the position tolerable, if not always satisfactory, to her. Though, as a philosopher, one may see the absurdity of popular prejudices, yet as a practical man, one feels the inexpediency of disturbing the ideas upon which the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... their poverty; I should remove from them the scorn and opprobrium which are harder to bear than poverty. I should make them love peace and equality, which often remove poverty, and always make it tolerable. When they saw that I was in no way better off than themselves, and that yet I was content with my lot, they would learn to put up with their fate and to be content like me. In my sermons I would lay more stress on the spirit of the gospel than on the spirit of the church; its ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... had a strong idea that it would be advisable to keep out of Glumdalkin's way that afternoon as long as possible, having a pretty tolerable notion of the sort of temper her respected relative would be most likely to be found in, so, cold as it was out-of-doors, Friskarina could not muster resolution to go into the house till it was really ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... submit to such reckless expenditure of his fuel. The perishing temperature of the cabin, however, was sufficient justification for the orderly's conduct, and by a little skillful manipulation he soon succeeded in getting up a tolerable fire. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Persian Sibyl, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Erythraean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine. With the name of the last-mentioned Sibyl tourists make acquaintance at Tivoli. Two ancient temples in tolerable preservation are still standing on the very edge of the deep rocky ravine through which the Anio pours its foaming flood. The one is a small circular building, with ten pillars surrounding the broken-down cella, whose familiar appearance is often represented ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... sure that there are not times—very short seasons, I mean— during our waking hours, even with those who are in tolerable health, when we best serve God and our fellow men by doing absolutely nothing at all. I am not sure, I say, that thus may not be the case. Still, if it is so, we should be exceedingly careful not to run into excess in this respect—an error which seems to be almost inevitable. ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... man staid and dined with Mrs. Jervis, with some tolerable ease of mind, in hopes to hear from his beloved daughter in a few days; and then accepting the present, returned for his own house, and resolved to be ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... and fundamental rights either of her own people or of the citizens of other countries resident within her territory can long be successfully safeguarded, and which threatens, if long continued, to imperil the interests of peace, order, and tolerable life in the lands immediately to the south of us. Even if the usurper had succeeded in his purposes, in despite of the constitution of the Republic and the rights of its people, he would have set up nothing but a precarious and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ways in which arguments fall short of a tolerable standard of proof, though they cannot be exhibited as definite breaches of logical principles. Logicians, therefore, might be excused from discussing them; but out of the abundance of their pity for human infirmity they usually describe and label the chief classes of these ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the growing demand for Burton beer he started as a brewer himself. The principal market for Burton beer at that time was in St Petersburg, whither the beer could be sent by water direct from Burton via the Trent and Hull, and William Bass managed to secure a tolerable share of the large Russian orders. But in 1822 the Russian government placed a prohibitory duty on Burton ales, and the Burton brewers were forced into cultivating the home market. William Bass ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... fatalities that carried off, within a few weeks of each other, two or three of his most loved and valued friends. "In the short space of one month," he says, in a note on Childe Harold, "I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who made that being tolerable."[18] Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favourites, died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at college, was drowned while bathing in the waters ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... stone buttresses had been nearly completed. I had endeavoured to introduce permanent bridges of stonework into this colony instead of those of wood, which were very liable to be burnt and frequently required repair. We had among the prisoners some tolerable stonecutters and setters but, until I had the good fortune to find among the emigrants a person practically acquainted with the construction of arches, their labours had never been productive of much benefit to the public. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... comes after me, and told me that out of the money he received some months since he did receive 18d. too much, and did now come and give it me, which was very pretty. So home, and there found Mr. Andrews and his lady, a well-bred and a tolerable pretty woman, and by and by Mr. Hill and to singing, and then to supper, then to sing again, and so good night. To prayers and tonight [bed]. It is a little strange how these Psalms of Ravenscroft after 2 or 3 times singing prove but ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to enter into negotiation with it; but, from experience and the evidence of facts, Ministers discovered that it was then become good and proper to treat with; and yet so it happened that, immediately after this judgement in its favour, it crumbled to pieces. Here, then, we have a tolerable rule to judge by, and may presume, on the authority of this case, that something more than two years and a half must expire before any new government will be pronounced stable. The note, Sir, then proceeds to pay an handsome compliment to the line of princes who maintained ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... transfers them from himself to any object consciously and under the guidance of his will. Let any man give way to any intense feeling, such as anger, grief, &c., under or near a tree, or in direct contact with a stone, and after many thousands of years any tolerable psychometer will see the man, and perceive his feelings from one single fragment of that tree or stone that he had touched. Hold any object in your hand, and it will become impregnated with your life-atoms, indrawn and outdrawn, changed and transferred ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... gentleman, of tolerable assurance, obtruded his company where he was far from being welcome; the master of the house, indeed, literally kicked him down stairs. Returning to some acquaintance whom he had told his intention of dining at the above house, and being asked ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... a different direction. He sauntered along, and cooled down. He took a pull at the grass, nearly snatching the loose reins out of Geoff's small hands. Then, after having thus secured the proper length, he had a tolerable meal, a sort of picnic refreshment, not unpleasant; and the grass was very crisp and fresh. He began to think that it was for this purpose, to give him a little beneficial change of diet, that he had been brought out. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... "Aye, tolerable," he said, and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he began to peruse under the slender light. "This now's another slap in the eye for the Emperor," said McCrae, "this business ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... my irregular way of living, I wretchedly misspent my time, which is the most valuable thing in the world. I remembered the saying of the great Solomon, which I frequently heard from my father, that death is more tolerable than poverty. Being struck with those reflections, I gathered together the ruins of my estate, and sold all my moveables in the public market to the highest bidder. Then I entered into a contract with some merchants that traded by sea, took the advice of those whom I thought ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... would be of the greater size, now, or else have disappeared entirely. There isn't a single tree which could correspond with Parmenter's, closer than four hundred yards, and, as the point would have been receding rather than gaining, we can assume, with tolerable certainty, that the beeches have vanished—either from decay or from wind storms, which must be very severe over in this exposed land. Hence, must not our first quest be for some ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... "throughout this wild country has a legend: were I to tell you all, there would be no time for business. I merely selected this because it is concerning a town situated on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and gives you a tolerable idea of the superstition of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... sad, surrounded by companions or treading a solitary path, failures or successes as the world has it, strong or broken and weak and wearied—all these varieties, important as they are, come to be very small when we can say, 'We are the Lord's.' That amulet makes all things tolerable; and the Christian submission which is the expression of our love to, and confidence in, His infinite sweetness and unerring goodness, raises us to a height from which the varieties of earthly condition seem to blend and melt into one. When we are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... perpetually, day and night. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched; for nearly two years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, I am deaf! In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful. Besides, what would my enemies say to this?—and they are ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... turned the conversation at once to less personal channels. The beauty of the country at this season seemed to offer her an inoffensive escape. She felt that she could handle it at least with tolerable discretion. She realized that she was not deep on the subject, but ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... be reckoned among the pleasures of a candidature. One must be very young indeed to find it even tolerable. A candidate engaged in a house-to-house canvass has always seemed to me (and not least clearly when I was the candidate) to sink beneath the level of humanity. To beg for votes, as if they were alms or broken victuals, is a ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... towards those at whose hands he had suffered, he would have stifled his pangs of wounded pride and self-love, and emerged a victor over himself in the contest. He might have recognized his own imperfections to a tolerable degree which would have disinclined him to censoriousness, not to say rashness. By maintaining an evenness of temper and equality of spirits during the days of his sore affliction, he might have reconsidered his decisions ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... struggled for Kyoto, they maintained, the while, their ultimate base and rallying-place at Kamakura, and thus, even when shattered in the west, they could recuperate in the east. The Southern Court had no such depot and recruiting-ground. They had, indeed, a tolerable place of arms in the province of Kawachi, but in the end ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... much impressed by the thousand dollars, and found the occupation of housekeeper a long way more tolerable than that of house-maid, a distinction which made Diantha smile rather bitterly. Even her father wrote to her once, suggesting that if she chose to invest her salary according to his advice he could double it for her in a year, maybe treble it, in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... but it is nevertheless unreasonable. Heroes and geniuses are never to be had ready-made, nor was a tolerable specimen of either ever produced at six months' notice. Dearly do nations pay for such secular births; still more dearly for their training. They are commonly rather the slow result than the conscious cause of revolutions in thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... entering on the profession. After putting his hand to the dramatic plough, he cannot draw back, but must continue at it, and toil, till death release him from want, or charity, by its milder influence, steps in to render that want more tolerable. He had little more to say, except that he sincerely hoped that the collection to-day, from the number of respectable gentlemen present, would meet the views entertained by the patrons. He hoped it would do so. They should not be disheartened. Though they could not do a great deal, they might ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... villa-gardens the Promenade has filled up rapidly. A continuous stream of carriages occupies the centre of the road, a throng of gay folks animate with their showiest toilets the oleander walk and the Jardin Publique, where a tolerable band plays for two or three hours thrice a week. The marble stairs of the Casino are crowded with loungers, and the windows and balconies of every villa are filled with well-dressed men and women. Nowhere, perhaps, excepting in Rotten Row or the Bois de Boulogne, can so many celebrated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... progress, and soon excelled in all branches of classics and literature. He delighted in poetry, and in later years wrote several essays on Dante, Tasso, and Ariosto, besides composing some tolerable poems himself. He played skilfully on several musical instruments, especially on the lute, of which indeed he became a master, and on which he solaced himself when quite an old man. Besides this, he seems to have had some ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... falls the stress of war? Not upon the soldier. He is killed and fattens the soil where he falls; or he is maimed and hobbles off toward a pension or beggary—both tolerable things; anyway he has drunk deep of cruelty and terror and may go his way. By rare good grace he may have been a hero. In other words, he may have been a Belgian—which is a word like a decoration, a name to make one strut like a Greek of Thermopylae—and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... know but it may succeed; at least if we can make out a tolerable good title-page: so, if you will walk in, if I can make a bargain with you I will. Gentlemen, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... their talk at Newport. Yet the thought of her had persisted as a plaintive undertone through all the days after. Only the sharp hurt to his sensitive pride—from the conviction that she had found him tolerable solely because of the money—had saved him from the willing admission to himself that he had carried off too much of her ever to forget. In his quiet moments, the tones of her clear, low voice came movingly ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... less and less equal to the simple task my "mission" had set me. I was fairly sick at heart and ready to surrender that morning when the good Koon Ying Phan came unannounced into our rooms to tell us that a tolerable house was found for us at last. I cannot describe with what an access of joy I heard the glad tidings, nor how I thanked the messenger, nor how in a moment I forgot all my chagrin and repining, and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... part, I am inclined to connect this fact with his expressed determination to visit his South African undertakings for three months yearly in future; and I am driven to suspect he felt life at Cloetedorp would be rendered much more tolerable by the agreeable society of a quaint ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... it in words. If he gained even a doubtful advantage over an adversary, he rubbed his hands, clapped his knees, and chuckled and growled out his satisfaction, in a manner peculiarly his own. He was only tolerable as a companion after taking his third glass of brandy-and-water; and as he commenced these humanizing doses by daybreak in the morning, repeating them at stated intervals during the four-and-twenty hours, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... of its weight, and watched the opportunity of slipping up into his chamber with it, where his box was, and in which he put it under lock and key. At playtime every day he slipped away from his companions, went upstairs a-tiptoe, cut a tolerable slice off, swallowed it, put by the rest, and then came down and mixed again with his companions. He continued this clandestine business all the week, and even then the cake was hardly half consumed. But what ensued? At last the cake grew dry, and quickly after mouldy; nay, the very maggots ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... an Arabian Night any evening. For my own part, I had vibrated all my life between Drumble and Cranford, and I thought it was quite possible that all Mr Peter's stories might be true, although wonderful; but when I found that, if we swallowed an anecdote of tolerable magnitude one week, we had the dose considerably increased the next, I began to have my doubts; especially as I noticed that when his sister was present the accounts of Indian life were comparatively tame; not that she knew more than we did, perhaps ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 48 miles. At the top it tapered almost to a point. The whole of it was personally surveyed and charted by Flinders, who was able to write that for the general exactness of his drawing he could "answer with tolerable confidence, having seen all that is laid down, and, as usual, taken every angle which enters ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... History of Russia, a very attractive book, on account of its lively style. Voltaire's Life of Charles XII., also, is equally fascinating. There are tolerable histories of both Russia and Sweden in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia; also in the Family Library. See, also, a History of Russia and Sweden in the Universal History. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Cathedral were to be used, all the washen beggars should be actual communicants of the Established Church; but the demand died down when it was found that such a breed did not exist; and a rush of undesirables to the altar in order to qualify could hardly be welcomed as a tolerable solution. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... merciful," but "Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." Is this the mercy which ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... us with good mules, a hearty breakfast at daybreak, cold meat and hard eggs at noon, and a plentiful dinner or supper, call it which you choose, on arriving at our night's quarters. Agnello himself was cook, and proved a very tolerable one. This is essential; for Spanish custom prevails in the inns, whose host considers his duty accomplished when he has provided ample stabling for the mules and dubious ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... chevrons of an old Invalide; its rusty joints squeaked,—but it only cost four hundred and fifty francs; and Max bought a good stout mare, trained to harness, from an officer of a regiment then stationed at Bourges. He had the carriage repainted a dark brown, and bought a tolerable harness at a bargain. The whole town of Issoudun was shaken to its centre in expectation of Pere Rouget's equipage; and on the occasion of its first appearance, every household was on its door-step and curious faces were at all ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... father and Reynolds, revived. There was nothing which thrilled and stimulated her so much as riding on Midnight through the great wilderness. Her lithe, supple body swayed in a rhythmical motion as the horse sped on his way. Riding was one of the few attractions which made the northland tolerable, and she wondered what she would ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... fellow's face. A man seen is a man judged of." D'Artagnan increased his pace, and, which was not very difficult, by-the-by, soon got in advance of the soldier. Not only did he observe that his face showed a tolerable amount of intelligence and resolution, but he noticed also that his nose was a little red. "He has a weakness for brandy, I see," said D'Artagnan to himself. At the same moment that he remarked his red nose, he saw that the soldier had a ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... delegates this right to any government. He may rescind his qualified delegation when he finds his chosen servants unfaithful or inefficient; and so have back again clean his own great and imperishable human rights. A wise law and one enforced is tolerable. An unjust and impure law is intolerable, and it is no wrong to cast off allegiance to it. If so, Magna Charta was wrong, and the American Revolution earth's greatest example of ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... care if I do lose,' said Sir Mulberry; 'for one tolerable look at Miss Nickleby's eyes is ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... observed the proctor; "the fellow is beginning to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. If you wish to secure his favor, however, you ought to try and put him on the trail of a Conspiracy, or anything that will give him a tolerable justification for writing to his Friend the Castle, as he calls it! He is a regular conspiracy hunter, and were it not that he is now awfully afraid of these Whiteboys, and naturally cowardly and easily frightened, I think he would be the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the eyes of English statesmen! They saw their way clear, they understood their game; it was to lighten in no degree the pressure which they maintained upon the lives of the Irish people, to do nothing that could tend to render existence tolerable to them in Ireland, or check the rush of emigration. Acting in conformity with this shallow and false estimate of the situation, they allowed to drift away unused the time which wise statesmen would have employed in the effectuation of conciliatory and ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the turning to his own office, he felt it hard luck that Alfred Hesketh should meet and want a word with him. Hesketh had become tolerable only when other things were equal. Lorne had not seen him since the night of his election, when his felicitations had seemed to stand for very little one way or another. His manner now was more important charged with other considerations. Lorne waited on the word, uncomfortably putting off the necessity ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the Play which is acted before the King, has, in my Opinion, too much Levity in it. His Madness is of too light a Kind, although I know he says, he must be idle; but among other Things, his Pun to Polonius is not tolerable. I might also justly find Fault with the want of Decency in his Discourses to Ophelia, without being thought too severe. The Scene represented by the Players is in wretched Verse. This we may, without incurring the Denomination of an ill-natur'd Critick, venture ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... god," answered Aristarchi, with a grin. "He was a good Christian. I have often thought that he must have been very like me. He was a great traveller and a tolerable sailor." ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... and so much to him due Of hazard more as he above the rest High honoured sits? Go, therefore, mighty Powers, Terror of Heaven, though fallen; intend at home, While here shall be our home, what best may ease The present misery, and render Hell More tolerable; if there be cure or charm To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain Of this ill mansion: intermit no watch Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek Deliverance for us all. This enterprise None shall partake with ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sanctify it and brand it as infamous; which will identify it with virtue and with sin simultaneously. Obviously it is useless to look for any consistency in such institutions; and it is only by continual reform and readjustment, and by a considerable elasticity in their enforcement, that a tolerable result can be arrived at. I need not repeat here the long and elaborate examination of them that I prefixed to my play entitled Getting Married. Here I am concerned only with the views of Jesus on the question; and it ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... adversities, and reconcile the spirit to bereaving dispensations. The present is a probationary state; and although the particular mode of suffering be unknown, afflictions are not unexpected by Christians. But whatever is transitory is tolerable— ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... very industrious at school; he was kept two years in the fourth form. The third year's work was only tolerable and he had to begin the second over again, so that he was in rhetoric ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... mindedness, openness and candor—nor with Mr. Linnendoll in belleslettres—and that he would not make so good a dancing master as Mr James Merrill[6] and leave the public to judge whether coming short of these qualifications, he can be any way tolerable in his person or ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... all that you learn, to all that you say, and to all that you do, remember to join the Graces. All is imperfect without them; with them everything is at least tolerable. Nothing could hurt me more than to find you unattended by them. How cruelly should I be shocked, if, at our first meeting, you should present yourself to me without them! Invoke them, and sacrifice to them every moment; they are always kind, where they are assiduously ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... plans and to endeavour to form some sort of an idea of what kind of place the world would be if they had their way. We can then form our own opinion as to whether a world conducted on such lines would be in any way a tolerable place for human existence. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... beamed love poured forth without stint and without condition. It was as if every man, woman, and child who approached her became instantly to her more interesting than herself, their defects more tolerable, their wants more imperative, their sorrows more moving than her own. In this lay the source of that mysterious charm so many have felt, so few have understood, and yielding to which even those least capable of appreciating her confessed that, whatever her conduct might be, she herself was ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... freely, and thousands availed themselves of the opportunity of visiting their homes and recruiting their health. The men, with the patience which none but soldiers ever exhibit, went quietly to work to render their situation as tolerable as possible. Wells were dug in the camps, from which they procured better water than they were able to get at first, and small pines were brought and set among the tents, by which some degree of protection was afforded against the burning sun. On the morning of the 8th of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... with tolerable safety, that no first villany is ever entirely deliberate. There is something in events to give it direction—something to egg it on—to point out time, place, and opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the actor is one, in the first place, wanting ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... fiercer, larger of make and more powerful. But he has also a couple of white ones with pink eyes. Besides the sack of nets, the bag of ferrets, and a small bundle in a knotted handkerchief—his 'nuncheon'—which in themselves make a tolerable load, he has brought a billhook, and ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... diminished. Ye who reject the Saviour, and disobey his commands—who throw away your own souls as worthless, and are reckless of the souls of your fellow men, what can you say in the day of Christ's appearing? If ye had only destroyed your own souls, then your case would be more tolerable; but since you withhold from the millions of ignorant heathen the knowledge of salvation, which has been imparted to you—not only refusing to enter the kingdom of heaven yourselves, but denying the key to those ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... cozy depths told of old-time fireside dreams; a work-table with attenuated legs called to mind the wearisome needlework of our foremothers; and a brass warming-pan carried us back to the times when only such devices could make tolerable the frigid winter beds ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Barnet every day, reasons of poverty might compel us to accept the offer, but we should hardly be proud of our new profession. We should prefer to earn a thousand a year by doing some more useful work. Indeed, to a man of any fine feeling the profession of Barnet walking would only be tolerable if he could persuade himself that by his exertions he was helping to revive the neglected art of pedestrianism, or to make more popular the neglected beauties of Barnet; if he could hope that, after his three- hundredth journey, inquisitive people would begin to follow him, wondering what he was ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... perhaps, that in the Asiatic kingdom where my inheritance lies, nothing is on such a bad footing as the land, except it be the king's highways. But no, the law is much the worse. The highways, if the weather be dry, are tolerable, but the law is always the same whether ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... was thoroughly respectable, and probably paid his taxes as they came due; if only by necessity of his office, he went to church with regularity; and on the whole we may suppose that he got enough of respect to make life tolerable. But Mozart was only one of a crowd who provided amusement for a gay population; and a gay population, always a heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who provide it with amusement. So Mozart got no respect from those he served, and his Bohemianism lost him the respect ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... for college at a distant school, and thenceforward he was at home only for brief visits, till he was graduated with distinguished honor at the age of twenty-one. During those six years of separation our relation to each other had suffered no change. We had corresponded with tolerable regularity, and I had felt a sister's pride in his talents and literary honors. When, therefore, he returned home to recruit his health, which had been seriously impaired by study and confinement, I welcomed him with great joy, and with all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Sundays together without a service, the late incumbent residing in Shrewsbury, twelve miles distant, and being frequently prevented by ill health from coming over. There is no house in the parish where a clergyman could live, or even procure tolerable lodgings; and if there were, there is next to nothing, as one of the parishioners said to me the other day, "to find coals to warm it with." It is scarcely to be wondered at that under these circumstances, when the living became ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... when I did appear; and most of the surmises were wild and wide of the mark—some even going so far as to say it was all owing to my wonderful unheard-of beauty that I was thus mysteriously concealed from view. I had a soft voice, and a tolerable shape; and upon this, I presume, they founded the affirmation. But my father and I kept our own council, and let them say what they listed. I had never been named, as other children are; but they called me La Masque now. I had masters and professors ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the war, because American public opinion would not have allowed it. But without the help of the United States, the Entente could not win. It resolved itself, therefore, into a question of the skill of our negotiators to ensure a tolerable peace for us, as the result of the conference. Diplomatic negotiations have a way of ending owing to general weariness, in which case the party which holds the best cards secures the greatest advantages. If ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... expect to be confronted with the necessity, but both the Boys and the Orangemen of Derry, with all their co-religionists, are deeply pledged to resist a Dublin Parliament. "We would not take the initiative, but would merely stand on our own defence, and offer a dogged resistance. We have a tolerable store of arms, although this place was long a proclaimed district, and we have fifteen modern cannon, two of which are six-pounders, the rest mostly four-pounders, and one or two two-pounders, which are snugly stored away, for fear of accident." Thus spake one who certainly ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... was the first ferment of Jean Paul's sincere and huge imagination. See, for instance, Vol. II. p. 229. And we cannot too much admire the tact which Mr. Brooks has brought to the decanting of these seething passages into tolerable vernacular limits. Sometimes, indeed, he misses a help which he might have procured for the reader, to lift him, with less danger of dislocation, to these pinnacles of passion, by transferring more of the elevated idiom of the style: for, in some of the complicated paragraphs, a too English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... I have no thought of going yet) and you will not write, there is likely to be an end of our communication: not, by the way, that I am never to go to London again; but not just yet. Here I live with tolerable content: perhaps with as much as most people arrive at, and what if one were properly grateful one would perhaps call perfect happiness. Here is a glorious sunshiny day: all the morning I read about Nero in Tacitus, lying at full length on a bench in the garden, a nightingale ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore more tolerable than ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... instance, of fifty lire is thought something: whereas near Genoa, upon the leasehold system, a farmer may sometimes provide a dower of twenty thousand lire. The country produces grain of different sorts, excellent oil, and timber. It also yields a tolerable red wine. The Government makes from eight to nine per cent. upon the value of the land, employing him and his two religious ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... experience a revulsion of spirits; and to consider that, for a gentleman who owned Lord Chatham for a patron, and was even now on his roundabout way to join that minister—for a gentleman whose fortune, though crippled and impaired, was still tolerable, and who, where it had suffered, might look with confidence to see it made good at the public expense—or to what end patrons or ministers?—he began to reflect, I say, that for such an one to exchange a peer's coach and good company for a night trudge at a woman's ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of chairs, the two back rows being raised above the first the height of one step. As far as seeing into the House is concerned, one might as well sit down on the flight of steps in Westminster Hall as sit on a chair in the back row in the Ladies' Gallery. On the second row it is tolerable enough, or at least you get a good view of the little old gentleman with the sword by his side sitting in a chair at the far end of the House. I thought at first this was the Speaker, and wondered why gentlemen on the cross benches ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... the walks of literature, famed for a beautiful style of composition, who do not write a tolerable letter nor answer a note of invitation with propriety. Their sentences are slipshod, their punctuation and spelling beyond criticism, and their manuscript repulsive. A lady, to whose politeness such an answer is given, has a right to feel offended, and may very properly ask whether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... shower of rain, but soon stunned and silenced by horrors incompatible with the labour of the Muses. The wars of the Fronde made a sharp cut between the heroic age of imaginative literature and the classical age which presently succeeded it, and offer in this respect a tolerable parallel to the civil wars raging in England about the same time. It is specious, but convenient, to discover a date at which a change of this kind may be said to occur. In England we have such a date marked large for us in 1660; French letters less ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... London, Dick Cavendish had felt himself something like a wreck upon the shore. The season was very near its end, and invitations no longer came in dozens. To be sure there were a great many other wrecks whose society made life tolerable; but he felt himself out of heart, out of temper, seized by that sudden disgust with life in general which is often the result of the departure of one person who has given it a special interest. It was a strong effect to be produced by Chatty's unpretending personality, but it affected ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... before leaving his Corps, was made aware of many of the facts of this camp-life. But its more intimate details, those making the existence tolerable or intolerable, were to be discovered only by experience; and, moreover, depended largely upon the name and the reputation of the individual, and the standing of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... scattered, and there is very little underwood. The lowest parts are not mangrove swamps, as elsewhere, but pleasant looking vallies, at the bottom of which are ponds of fresh water frequented by flocks of ducks. Cattle would find here a tolerable abundance of nutritive food, though the soil may perhaps be no where sufficiently deep and good to afford a ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Morgue! The dead-house where you show your drowned: Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned. One pays one's debt in such a case; I plucked up heart and entered,—stalked, Keeping a tolerable face Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked: Let them! No Briton's to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw. It is a strange life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat, and not too heavy a dose of marching. So severe a time as we had is terribly physical, and benumbs the brain somewhat. The campaign was short, but the utmost was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... architecture and the number of Greek artists in Rome. The temples of the last two centuries B.C., and some of earlier date, though still Etruscan in plan, were in many cases strongly Greek in the character of their details. Afew have remained to our time in tolerable preservation. The temple of Fortuna Virilis (really of Fors Fortuna), of the second century (?) B.C., is a tetrastyle prostyle pseudoperipteral temple with a high podium or base, atypical Etruscan cella, and a deep porch, now walled ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... pleasures imaginable, having a small peece at my command, shooting patriges and squerells, playing most part of the day with my companions. The old woman wished that I would make meselfe more familiar with her 2 daughters, which weare tolerable among such people. They weare accustomed to grease and combe my haire in the morning. I went with them into the wilderness, there they would be gabling which I could not understand. They wanted no company but I was shure to be of the number. ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... road before sunset. The plain became broader and broader the nearer we approached the town; the beauty of the scenery falls off very much, and for the first time since I left Europe, did I see fields and hills of sand. The town itself, situated upon a hill, presents a tolerable appearance; it contains about 22,000 inhabitants, and is a place of considerable importance for the internal commerce of the country. In spite of this, however, it has neither an inn nor any other ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... thereby shifting the responsibility to him. It may pass through strange vicissitudes in his careless hands,—he may drop it, damage it, lose it, even destroy it, but she is reasonably sure that when the time comes he will return her either the old in a tolerable state of preservation, or a new one of some ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... out of place here to cast a glance backwards upon the old order of things which perished with the kingdom of Samaria. With reference to any period earlier than the century 850-750 B.C., we can hardly be said to possess any statistics. For, while the facts of history admit of being handed down with tolerable accuracy through a considerable time, a contemporary literature is indispensable for the description of standing conditions. But it was within this period that Hebrew literature first flourished—after ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... which was not helpful to Whitelocke and his people, who must take things as they were, and make the best shift they could. His officers had provided meat sufficient for them; he caused fresh straw enough to be laid all over the room, which was the more tolerable in this hot season. He himself lay in one of his coaches, his sons and some of his servants in straw, near him; the rest of the company, men and women, on straw, where they chose to lie in the room, only affording place for the horses, cows, sheep, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of Milton's extraordinary Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be of interest in the study of Milton's character. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... first victim of that enormous sacrifice of blood which has since reeked up to God. Jaures, an honest man, perhaps, in spite of all his theatrical appeals to mob passion—honest at least in his desire to make life more tolerable for the sweated workers of France—was mortally wounded by those shots through the window blind, and the crimson cushions of his seat ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... who waved his hands, rolled his eyes, chattered nonsense that made Bertie laugh, but at the same time interested him so much that he took great pains to listen and remember; and having learned his grammar fairly well at school he was soon able to make his way with tolerable ease through either a ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... two years I did not relax in my sincere efforts to make it a success. It would be more exact perhaps to say that for one year I tried hard to make it a success, and for another year I tried hard to make it tolerable. Yes, I did my best through that period, though my efforts were quite unsuccessful. I realise that this does not justify or excuse the fact that, to all intents and purposes, I then gave up trying. In that, of course, I was to blame; very much ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... William Skin—a crab-apple of a man, whose infirmity of deafness had long since reduced all the world for him to a vain tolerable show, in which so much went unexplained that nothing caused surprise—came stumbling around the corner of the house with a waggon-rope and a second ladder, which he proceeded to rest alongside the first one; showing the while no recognition of Cai's ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... day passed very pleasantly, and the next in tolerable comfort; but on the third it was time to think of food for the wife, and perhaps ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... vast amount of profitless discussion might have been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must be learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence." We do not know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in all probability we shall never know. The data for settling the question are not now accessible, and it is ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... step-mother, but still thou wouldst constantly return to thy mother. Let the court and philosophy now be to thee step-mother and mother: return to philosophy frequently and repose in her, through whom what thou meetest with in the court appears to thee tolerable, and thou appearest tolerable ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... dressed upon the shortest notice; choice stabling, and a lock-up coach-house; and, in short, to run over such recommendatory scraps of language as were painted up on various portions of the building, and which in the course of some forty years he had learnt to repeat with tolerable correctness. He was considering whether it was at all possible to insert any novel sentences to the same purpose, when the gentleman who had spoken first, turning to him of the long wind, exclaimed, 'What say you, Gashford? Shall we tarry at this ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... blame, dear as he is and worshipful, yea, even if thou be angry with me, nor will I hide my thought, for that he slumbereth, and to thee alone hath left the toil; now should he be toiling among all the chiefs and beseeching them, for need no longer tolerable is ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... brilliant chance, and demoralised as it became under the fatigues and hardships of a most harassing retreat, never failed to repel attacks on its rear, where Paget handled the cavalry of the rear-guard with signal ability, especially in a spirited action near Benevente. In spite of some excesses, tolerable order was maintained until the British force, still 25,000 strong, reached Astorga, and was joined by some 10,000 Spaniards under Romana. Thenceforward, all sense of discipline was abandoned by so many regiments that Moore described the conduct of his whole army as "infamous ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... That a writer should be taken to task about his books, is fair, and he must abide the praise or the censure. But that a publisher should be criticised for his dinners, and for the conversation which did NOT take place there,—is this tolerable press practice, legitimate joking, or honorable warfare? I have not the honor to know my next-door neighbor, but I make no doubt that he receives his friends at dinner; I see his wife and children ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... way, following the same path that they had made in the morning. Fortunately, Hector had taken the precaution to bend down the flexile branches of the dogwood and break the tops of the young trees that they had passed between on their route to the lake, and by this clue they were enabled with tolerable certainty to retrace their way, nothing doubting of arriving in time at the wigwam of boughs by the rock ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were seen of vegetation, and no drop of water could be found. Camels and men were already so overladen, that it was a mere impossibility that they should carry a tolerable sufficiency for the passage of this frightful wilderness. On the eighth day the wretched daily allowance, which had been continually diminishing, failed entirely; and thus for two days of insupportable fatigue, the horrors of thirst had been carried to the fiercest extremity. Upon this last ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... apologise for the confusion in which she was found. She had always just got rid of a servant, and could not get another that suited her; or there was some other commonplace reason for her being discovered en deshabille [40]. However, she managed to talk to Frank for a minute or two with tolerable volubility, till her eyes happening to dwell on her own hands, which were certainly not as white as a lady's should be, she became a little uncomfortable and embarrassed—tried to hide them in her drapery—then ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... much of a young fellow as at any time of my life. I had feared that when middle age overtook me I should feel middle-aged and full of sad longings for the old toys and the old pleasures. How would life be tolerable when cricket, for example, had ceased to play an important part in it? Never again to have the ecstasy of a drive along "the carpet" to the boundary or, with a flash of the arm, snapping an opponent in the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the vault, the floor of which was composed of flat red tiles, laid in tolerable order the one beside the other. As Henry had stated, the vault was by no means of large extent. Indeed, several of the apartments for the living, at the hall, were much larger than was that one destined for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... or discipline, not with the supplanting of the old order, but with perpetuating the naturalistic principle by means of a partial redivision of the spoils, a series of compromises, designed to make it more tolerable for one class of its former victims. Thus in capital we have the autocratic corporation, atoning for past outrages on humanity by a well-advertised benevolent paternalism, calculated to make men comfortable so that they may not struggle to be free, or by ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... he in a great measure wrote, and as his society was courted by the wealthy and powerful, I am not sure whether he merits to be treated with the roughness with which some authors mention his labours. He had, certainly, a tolerable degree of strength in his English style; but he painted with a pencil which reminded us more frequently of the horrific pictures of Spagnoletti than of the tender compositions of Albano. That he idolized his master, Leland, so enthusiastically, will always cover, in my estimation, a multitude ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... months before my departure from Rome, I was in a cafe frequented by the pupils of the Academy, when an Italian musician, named Benedetto, came in, as he usually did every evening. Nominally he was a musician and a tolerable one; but we had been warned that he was also a spy of the Roman police. However that might be, he was very amusing; and as we cared nothing for the police, we not only endured but we encouraged his visits,—which was not hard to do in view of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... by the English successors of the Dutch, had much to do with exciting the War for Independence. The patroons also were an aristocratic element foreign to the prevalent spirit of North American settlement, and their feudal rule, although liberal and patriarchal in some instances, became less tolerable as years rolled on, and the people comprehended the absurdity and injustice of mediaeval institutions on American soil. It is fortunate that the patroon system, unlike slavery, was ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... one misfortune for breeding another; and what with the loss of carriage, horses and cow, the string of accidents had fairly commenced. The carriage still lay inverted; and although a tolerable specimen of a smash, I determined to pay a certain honor to its remains by not allowing it to lie and rot upon the ground. Accordingly, I sent the blacksmith with a gang of men, and Perkes was ordered to accompany the party. I also sent the elephant to assist in battling the body ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... formal sense reduces itself to a minimum. In very early boyhood he attended a species of dame-school, which, according to some of his biographers, he had apparently to leave because he was too clever to be tolerable. However this may be, he undoubtedly went afterwards to a school kept by Mr. Ready, at which again he was marked chiefly by precocity. But the boy's education did not in truth take place at any systematic seat of education; it took place in his own home, where one of the quaintest and most ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... find neither good butter, milk, or cream. At Lyons, every thing, which man can wish for, is in perfection; it is indeed a rich, noble, and plentiful town, abounding with every thing that is good, and more finery than even in Paris itself. They have a good theatre, and some tolerable actors; among whom is the handsomest Frenchman I ever beheld, and, a little ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... spending a few days of tolerable quietness on the banks of the Rappahannock, with our camp near the Phillips House, Falmouth, a most lovely spot, we were to-day ordered out as escort or guard to a train destined for the Shenandoah Valley. Such a job is generally any thing but pleasant to ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... about a mile and a half in diameter, bisected by the Rio [33] Chico de Cagayan, with mountains forming a scarp all around. Bontok stands on the left bank, and Samoki [34] on the right; separated only by a river easily fordable in the dry season, these two Igorot centers manage to live in tolerable peace with each other, but both have been steadily hostile to Talubin, only two hours away. However, it can not be too often said that this sort of hostility is diminishing, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... had lain on the audience broke. This imitation seemed to them to possess in an extraordinary measure the one quality which renders amateur imitations tolerable, that of brevity. They had seen many amateur imitations, but never one as short as this. The saloon echoed ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... dollars. Eight thousand dollars from an income that began at sixty and rose to a little under three times that amount! Eight thousand dollars, wrung from their lives at the price of every joy, every alleviation, everything that could make the world barely tolerable. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... gaiety; all are amazingly unlike the dwelling-houses of men and women. Yet their owners are very wealthy. To them nothing is denied that money can buy, and it is thus that they prefer to express themselves and their ambitions. What, then, is tolerable in Chicago? Lincoln Park, which the smoke and fog of the city have not obscured, and the grandiose lake, whose fresh splendour no villainy of man can ever deface. And at one moment of the day, when a dark cloud hung over the lake, and the sun set in ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... distant relation of Zverkov's, and this, foolish as it seems, gave him a certain importance among us. He always thought me of no consequence whatever; his behaviour to me, though not quite courteous, was tolerable. ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... Mr. Dutton, for making one, so unexpectedly to myself, in a family council," returned the rear-admiral. "As for the men, they are no great philosophers, though tolerable judges of when they are well commanded, and well treated.—But, the hour is late, and it was my intention to sleep in my own ship, to-night. The coach of Sir Wycherly has been ordered to carry me to the landing, and I hope to have your permission to see ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in the hall of the Metropolitan, like a client in some patrician antechamber, they did accord me a tolerable room on the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... into a sombre chapel. This was St. Peter's Sanctuary, dedicated to the Holy Innocents, and to it any hunted criminal had the right of entry. Apparently, his pursuers might besiege him without danger of sacrilege, but at any rate he could defy them in tolerable security within those massive walls. There do not seem to be many records of the occasions on which it was used; we do not hear of the quick step and panting breath of the fugitive as he neared that doorway, nor ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... is tolerable, by good taste, which does not permit, and seem to permit, the easy performance of any movement proper to the wearer's age and condition in life. Such a costume openly defies the first law of the mixed arts,—fitness. Thus, the dress of children should be simple, loose, and, whatever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the country of the carrion crows, but looks up first to see where they may be gathering. It is a sufficient occupation for a windy morning, on the lineless, level mesa, to watch the pair of them eying each other furtively, with a tolerable assumption of unconcern, but no doubt with a certain amount of good understanding about it. Once at Red Rock, in a year of green pasture, which is a bad time for the scavengers, we saw two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... true, when a man has so far acknowledged his participation in the common frailty as to die, then men begin to condone his faults; and by the time he is dead one or two hundred years they find him quite tolerable. An eminent ecclesiastic in the Anglican Church recently pronounced the greatest of the Puritans, Oliver Cromwell, "the most righteous ruler England ever had." A man who is dead is out of the way. We live in the home ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways. Strange: they did believe that, while we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tolerable means to do it; for there is another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they have been ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... board a ship which I commanded, a very large Cape baboon, who was a pet of mine, and also a little boy, who was a son of mine. When the baboon sat down on his hams, he was about as tall as the boy was when he walked. The boy having tolerable appetite, received about noon a considerable slice of bread and butter, to keep him quiet till dinner-time. I was on one of the carronades, busy with the sun's lower limb, bringing it in contact ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... characterised by the occurrence in them of any one particular fossil. It may be that a formation contains some particular fossil or fossils not occurring out of that formation, and that in this way an observer may identify a given group with tolerable certainty. It very often happens, indeed, that some particular stratum, or sub-group of a series, contains peculiar fossils, by which its existence may be determined in various localities. As before remarked, however, the great formations are characterised ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... approved of it. The inspector arrived. I kept myself to myself. Salviti acted his part admirably. So did I: and to my great delight the evening closed, and nothing disagreeable had happened. Until this night I had always slept separately from the rest on a tolerable mattress. But the inspector was now accommodated with my birth and my bed; and I was compelled to lie on the floor with the sailors; my head being placed even with the feet of my two next neighbours. The stench and closeness of the atmosphere of my den drove the blood into my head, and I thought ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of images in churches, the vestments of the clergy, the private confession of sins, the use of wafers in the administration of the Lord's supper, the form of exorcism in the celebration of baptism, and other ceremonies of the like nature, as tolerable, and some of them useful. The Lutherans maintain, with regard to the divine decrees, that they respect the salvation or misery of men in consequence of a previous knowledge of their sentiments and characters, and not as founded on the mere will of God. See Augsburg Confession ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... passed all day in reading, after a desultory fashion, "Les Enfants d'Edouard," by Casimir Delavigne, Washington Irving, D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," etc.; and it is rather singular that while there is a very tolerable supply of English and French books here, I see but one or two odd volumes in Spanish, although these packets are constantly filled with people of that nation, going and coming. Is it that they do ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
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