Top 100 Could Not Bear Quotes
#1. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good.
Larry McMurtry
#2. For the pride of trace and trail was his, and sick unto death, he could not bear that another dog should do his work.
Jack London
#3. He could not bear the thought of training, not only because of the effort he could never summon from himself now, but also because the idea of fighting was disorienting in its repugnance. He felt that everyone at the Lido Gym was insane. One
Leonard Gardner
#4. [] no man is ever free and probably could not bear it if he were ...
William Faulkner
#5. I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
Vaslav Nijinsky
#6. I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be on one's guard against them.
Franz Kafka
#7. No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
Maria Edgeworth
#8. I'll explain to her, even though I don't have to. Why I did it. How if I hadn't killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her.
Toni Morrison
#9. I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.
Mark Twain
#10. Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad - I could not bear to "outlive" them - for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.
Joyce Carol Oates
#11. But I could not bear to look into this man's eyes any longer and see such voracious need, because what if I realized that I was standing in front of a mirror?
Joel Derfner
#12. I kept seeing Yolanda on the parquet, two men pinning her to the ground, her eyes loaded with hatred and madness combing her hair. I was stormed by her image and my heart could not bear it. We know so little about people. But about the people we love, we know even less.
Nicholas Shakespeare
#13. She could have phoned one of three friends, but she could not bear to hear herself explain her situation and make it irreversibly real.
Ian McEwan
#14. She could not bear to look at him just now. If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And never know which was right and which was wrong and which was madness.
George R R Martin
#15. The purpose of our holy and righteous God was to save his church, but their sin could not go unpunished. It was, therefore, necessary that the punishment for that sin be transferred from those who deserved it but could not bear it, to one who did not deserve it but was able to bear it.
John Owen
#17. Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office.
Abraham Lincoln
#18. I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man's power for life only from a present capricious inclination.
Sarah Fielding
#19. Why?' said Philippa. 'For suffering what you have suffered for three months?' And felt the veils rend about her, for she had broken the unwritten law: it must not be uttered. It must not be uttered, or they could not bear the pain, mirrored over and over.
Dorothy Dunnett
#20. Are we so childish (I do not say childlike) as to think that a God who could scheme a Jesus-plan would lead poor pilgrims into situations they could not bear?
Elisabeth Elliot
#21. It's the process of making-do,
of the life I've lived between
breakdowns and break-ups, that has made life
worth living.
I could not bear a life
with everything perfect.
Jimmy Santiago Baca
#22. It can be ... difficult to to learn how the world truly is, to see it in its true shape and form ... most human beings never do. Most could not bear it.
Cassandra Clare
#23. Hope was a cancer inside him. He didn't want it; he did not want it. He could not bear these shoots of tender green hope springing up within him any longer. (45)
Elizabeth Strout
#24. Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.
Susanna Clarke
#25. I have gone through the most terrible affair that could possibly happen; only imagine, my shadow has gone mad; I suppose such a poor, shallow brain, could not bear much; he fancies that he has become a real man, and that I am his shadow.
Hans Christian Andersen
#26. My hopes and dreams, so tattered and tender, had been sheltered by secrecy for so long that I could not bear to bring them to light.
S. Jae-Jones
#27. I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my life to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.
John Clare
#28. He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#29. And I knew that I could not bear the thought of never hearing that laughter any more. For me, it was like a spring of fresh water in the desert.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
#30. If I was to show the Latter-day Saints all the revelations that the Lord has shown unto me, there is scarce a man that would stay with me, they could not bear it.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#31. It was over. He knew, but she did not. He could tell by the way she nuzzled him, how her body relaxed in his embrace, how she sighed when he kissed the top of her head. She was still hopeful, he thought, and that made her beautiful. Suddenly he could not bear to imagine a life without her.
S. Walden
#32. Margrethe watched them paralyzed by the intensity of the emotions moving through her. So much pain and euphoria, a sense that even though her own heart was broken, the world could contain such beauty and magic she almost could not bear it? What did her own pain matter, in the face of that?
Carolyn Turgeon
#33. The South Koreans treated me well. I could not bear to imagine their reaction if they'd known I'd grown up in the bosom of their archenemy. At times this felt surreal. We were all Koreans, sharing the same language and culture, yet we were technically at war. I
Hyeonseo Lee
#34. I am not a hoarder, but my wardrobe is the antithesis of fast fashion. I buy clothes - beautiful in looks and make - to last. I originally stored away things like Ossie Clark because I could not bear to part with such treasures.
Suzy Menkes
#35. Forbid me not to weep; he was my father;
And, had you lov'd him half so well as I,
You could not bear his death thus patiently.
Christopher Marlowe
#36. In this manner, I continued with Satan for ten days. His answer and blasphemy were too shocking to pen; till I was worn out with rage and malice against him, I could not bear myself.
Joanna Southcott
#37. the truth was that I had become a secret agent because I could not bear for another minute the pointlessness of life in the real world.
Charles McCarry
#38. The enemies of Christ ... could not bear his independence; his "Give the emperor that which is the emperor's" showed a contempt for the affairs of state and its politics for the moral order that their self-respect would not let them tolerate.
John Carroll
#39. We fell asleep wrapped in each other as if we could not bear to part, even in sleep we could not bear to let each other go.
Philippa Gregory
#40. The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.
J.M. Barrie
#41. The greatest mercy, I have often thought, of the Mediterranean coast lies in its mosquitoes. Did we not suffer from their unwelcome attention, we could not bear our holidays to end.
Winifred Holtby
#42. She could not bear the thought. She simply could not bear the thought that she might somehow prove to her grandfather that her mother had indeed been a fool and her father had been a damned fool and that she was the damnedest fool of them all.
Julia Quinn
#43. Victoria was just as much in love with me as I was with her. We could not bear to be apart for a single second. We were like two lovers shipwrecked on a desert island. There was no world outside our love.
Andy Gibb
#44. The classic Aryan who idolized himself and who existed in his own dreams could not bear to see the Jew, the evidence of divine reality,and he would kill him.
Andre Frossard
#45. Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.
Susan Sontag
#46. I could not bear the silences when the drum stopped. I sank down into the depths of the sound of the rain.
Yasunari Kawabata
#47. He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. In
William Peter Blatty
#48. Unless our souls had root in soil divine We could not bear earth's overwhelming strife. The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine, Convinces me of everlasting life.
Stefan Zweig
#49. I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Alexander Pope
#50. How many crimes have been committed for no other reason than that the perpetrator could not bear being in the wrong!
Albert Camus
#51. Again, the troubling gap between word and meaning. My feeble language skills could not bear the weight of such a laden experience.
Alison Bechdel
#52. What else could a person do, she thought, staring hard at the darkness, but try to be happy? However confused and wrong-looking the attempt might be. And then whatever happens afterward all you could do was bear it, because whatever you could not bear you had to carry.
Suzanne Berne
#53. Kate refused to go to bed - for if she slept, she would have to wake up, she said, and that she could not bear to do-to face afresh the grief she was as yet so little used to.
Elizabeth Taylor
#54. In truth, though, she could not bear the idea of having a phone on her all the time, wherever she went. Could not be at ease knowing she might get an urgent call from Christmasland, some dead kid on the line: Hey, Ms. McQueen, did you miss us?!?
Joe Hill
#55. Alyosha's heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#56. I never spoke - unless addressed
And then, 'twas brief and low
I could not bear to live - aloud
The Racket shamed me so
And if it had not been so far
And any one I knew
Were going - I had often thought
How noteless - I could die -
Emily Dickinson
#57. I could not bear to think that I wrote a five-hundred page novel just because I needed to love my father.
Pat Conroy
#58. she could not bear to let someone else perform a task when she could do it better herself.
Julia Quinn
#59. Would a soul continually eye His everlasting tenderness and compassion ... [then] it could not bear an hour's absence from Him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour.
John Owen
#60. You saved me because you could not bear the thought of leaving me behind." He touched my face, very gently. "Not from a sense of right and wrong, but because you are just that tenderhearted.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#61. But the truth was she could not bear to be around thier undead,healthy children.More than envy she felt that each laughing redcheeked child of thiers was an accusation of failure,a mockery of her own.
Toni Morrison
#62. He was not afraid, in fact he was content to go: So much that had been pleasurable in his life was now beyond his capacity, and that he could not bear.
Alison Weir
#63. Am I capable of deceiving my friend? Julien asked himself peevishly. This being, for whom hypocrisy and an absence of all sympathy were the usual methods of protecting himself, could not bear, this time, the thought of the slightest trickiness in dealing with a man for whom he had friendly feelings.
Stendhal
#64. He had conceded in a panic - for it crushed Nilssen's spirit to be held in low esteem by other men. He could not bear to know that he was disliked, for to him there was no real difference between being disliked, and being dislikeable; every injury he sustained was an injury to his very selfhood.
Eleanor Catton
#65. When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, "I would accept it," said Parmenio, "were I Alexander." "And so truly would I," said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings.
Plutarch
#66. A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought
Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade,
Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out.
It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
William Butler Yeats
#67. Sometimes I felt as if I could not bear it any longer to be away from you!
Johanna Spyri
#68. I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.
Pat Conroy
#69. out of the forest. The dwarf sprang up in a fright, but he could not reach his cave, for the bear was already close. Then in the dread of his heart he cried: 'Dear Mr Bear, spare me, I will
Jacob Grimm
#70. If I had the pen of Moliere, I could make him comic. That is the role of art, is it not? To make monsters comic, so we can bear them, and our own cheap griefs into grand tragedy, so that others will weep with us.
Judith Merkle Riley
#71. She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.
Cassandra Clare
#72. I would not choose to go where I would be afraid to die, nor could I bear to live without a good hope for hereafter.
Charles Spurgeon
#73. I'm not sure if I could bear to go on an aeroplane again. It's not my concern for the welfare of the planet. It's not even the long check-in times and queuing. No, it's the humiliation of the security process that has finally done it for me.
Tom Hodgkinson
#74. The U.S.A. was outraged, and loudly said so to everyone, whether they would listen or not. But there wasn't much America could do about it, having sacrificed our space program on the altars of economic necessity and eternal war.
Elizabeth Bear
#75. ...being in love. It was not an emotion that could be willed away when it became too arduous to bear. It clung tight with the tenacity of a stubborn clam, forcing its victim to face the pain (Adam Ashworth).
Cynthia Wicklund
#76. But he was wrong. Because I had fought with my heart and defeated it long ago. I was certainly not going to become passionate about something that was impossible. I knew my limits; I knew how much suffering i could bear.
Paulo Coelho
#77. He smiled and it was beautiful and horrible what I saw in it. Hope that should not be born and desire that could never bear fruit. Whether they were my feelings or his, I did not know.
Gwen Hayes
#78. How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized - as a reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.
Emma Donoghue
#79. If I was harsh with you, it was because I cannot bear to see you treat yourself as if you are worth nothing. Whatever part you might act to the contrary, I see you as you really are, my blood brother. Not just better than you pretend to be, but better than most people could hope to be.
Cassandra Clare
#80. Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.
Greg Bear
#81. People could bear so much, but Simon did not know how much of the original you was left when the world had twisted you into a whole different shape.
Cassandra Clare
#82. I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.
Daphne Du Maurier
#83. Depend upon it, since Satan could not kill the church by roaring at her like a lion, he is now trying to crush her by hugging her like a bear.
Charles Spurgeon
#84. I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.
Sophie Scholl
#85. I want to make sure I don't interfere with the success of that team next year. I don't see any way I could go to practice like most of 'em do, and not hurt the team. I'd go nuts if I tried doing that.
Bear Bryant
#86. What could be worse than another person's happiness? Not that his unhappiness would make us happy, but we need it in order to bear our own.
Hansjorg Schertenleib
#87. How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes!
Friedrich Nietzsche
#88. But let me open up my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not being a god! Hence, there areno gods. I drew this conclusion, to be sure
but now it draws me.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#89. He could bear the dying, but not the disappointment.
John Flanagan
#90. Every Clayr is given the gift to See some portent of her death, though not the death itself, for no human could bear that weight. Almost twenty years ago I Saw myself and your little dog, and in time I realized that this was the vision that foretold my final days.
Garth Nix
#91. The coaches today should realize that they are, after all, working with children who sometimes have to stand up to physical and moral stresses which not even all grown-ups could bear.
Elena Mukhina
#92. I believe in a reasonable amount of "right to bear arms". But private citizens of the United States are not allowed to own nuclear weapons. I always wanted a nuclear weapon, if I could have gotten one. I'm every other kind of power, but I'm not a nuclear power.
Ted Turner
#93. I gave you justice, it said, as I was taught it. And I gave you mercy , too, so far as I could. While I could not spare you pain and humiliation, I make you a gift of my own pains and humiliations, that yours might be easier to bear.
Diana Gabaldon
#94. He had left home one day, yesterday, and come home today, and the change was too much for him to bear. And this was why he could not go home all at once.
Robert Laxalt
#95. I wondered, not for the first time, that the world could bear the weight of so many foul people. "Besides,
Sebastien De Castell
#96. Job was the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them wearing him to death, that would not make his story tragic.
Andrew Coyle Bradley
#97. Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
Charlotte Bronte
#98. I could never bear to be buried with people to whom I had not been introduced.
Norman Parkinson
#99. I knelt by the design. Yes, there was the sun rising. But the white form I had always thought to be a cloud was a bear. I could see it now, upside down. White bear, isbjorn, stood for north. Father had not been able to help himself. The truth was there, too. Truth and lie, side by side.
Edith Pattou
#100. The devil put before me that I could not endure the trials of the religious life, because of my delicate nurture. I defended myself against him by alleging the trials which Christ endured, and that it was not much for me to suffer something for His sake; besides, He would help me to bear it.
Saint Teresa Of Avila
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