When we want to be something other than the thing that God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. . . whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.
A system tends to grow in complexity instead of simplicity, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable.
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.
May even the concept of unreached peoples be totally intolerable to us.
. . . if a person is to be unconventional, he must be amusing or he is intolerable: for, in the nature of the case, he guarantees you nothing but amusement. He does not guarantee you any of the little amenities by which society has assured itself that, if it must go to sleep, it will at least sleep in a comfortable chair.
It is intolerable that the world's religions - founded on the values of love and compassion - should provide a pretext for the expression of hatred and violence.
It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.
We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.
Work - other people's work - is an intolerable idea to a cat. Can you picture cats herding sheep or agreeing to pull a cart? They will not inconvenience themselves to the slightest degree.
As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter.
Not as intolerable as being dead, in my opinion, but I'm very fond of me. I would miss me a lot.
There is too much doing - too little being! When we begin to get strenuous, life begins to grow intolerable.
It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.
Represent to yourself a dark city all burning and stinking with fire and brimstone. The damned are in the depth of hell within this woful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments in all their senses and members. Consider above all the eternity of their pains, which above all things makes hell intolerable.
Nothing is so intolerable as a woman with a long purse.
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.
Do not measure your loss by itself; if you do, it will seem intolerable; but if you will take all human affairs into account you will find that some comfort is to be derived from them.
It seems to me probably that any one who has a series of intolerable positions to put up with must have been responsible for them to some extent. . . they have contributed to it by impatience or intolerance, or brusqueness-or some provocation.
We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
You will, I am sure, agree with me that. . . if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.