"Inauspicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... While they were performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors, whose crimes were their claims, that they must keep an awful distance,—that they must silence their inauspicious tongues,—that they must hold off their profane, unhallowed paws from this holy work; they would have proclaimed, with a voice that should make itself heard, that on every country the first creditor is the plough,—that this original, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and water, which are both plentiful, but which may be procured in equal abundance in any of the other islands of the Pacific ocean where there are fewer rocks and breakers to contend with, and where the acquiescence of the natives might easily be purchased. In addition to the above obstacles and inauspicious appearances, vessels at this place have no anchorage, but are obliged always to keep under sail; and I have known them to be blown off the island for several weeks together, with very little provision on board, whilst a part of the crew have been on shore; and by those means ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... Gandiva, the most powerful of all weapons in the world, for their bow; and who have amongst them the mighty Bhima also as a warrior? Formerly, as soon as thy son was born, I told thee,—Forsake thou this inauspicious child of thine. Herein lieth the good of thy race.—But thou didst not then act accordingly. Nor also, O king, have I pointed out to thee the way of thy welfare. If thou doest as I have counselled, thou shalt not have to repent afterwards. If thy ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... a child. And you would be astonished if I were to tell you all the grave and learned heads who have confessed to me that, when on walking tours, they sang—and sang very ill—and had a pair of red ears when, as described above, the inauspicious peasant plumped into their arms from round a corner. And here, lest you should think I am exaggerating, is Hazlitt's own confession, from his essay "On Going a Journey," which is so good that there should be a tax levied on all who have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... similarity between the Sabbath of the Hebrews and the 'evil day' of the Babylonians, that the precautions prescribed in the Pentateuchal codes—against kindling fires, against leaving one's home, against any productive labor—point to the Hebrew Sabbath as having been at its origin an 'inauspicious day,' on which it was dangerous to show oneself or to call the deity's attention to one's existence. Despite the attempts made to change this day to one of 'joy,' as Isaiah would have it,[617] the Hebrew Sabbath continued to retain ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... cloak, and so indeed it might have been, but along with my convictions upon the subject there was mingled a spice of reluctance that our friends at the fort should have an opportunity, as they certainly would have done, of laughing at our inauspicious commencement. ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... covered with them. They appeared to be of a loving disposition, and lay huddled together, fast asleep, like so many pigs; but even pigs would have been ashamed of their dirt, and of the foul smell which came from them. Each herd was watched by the patient but inauspicious eyes of the turkey-buzzard. This disgusting bird, with its bald scarlet head, formed to wallow in putridity, is very common on the west coast, and their attendance on the seals shows on what they rely for their food. We found the water (probably only that of the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the last reign, the inauspicious commencement of the war made the dissolution of the ministry unavoidable, sir George Lyttelton, losing, with the rest, his employment, was recompensed with a peerage; and rested from political turbulence ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... reality, ordinary persons cunningly concealed within masks of cardboard. In this thoughtful manner the actual labours of the sublime Emperor are greatly lessened, while no chance is afforded for an inauspicious omen to be created by the rebellious behaviour of a maliciously-inclined ox, or by any other event of an unforeseen nature. All the other persons, however, are required to make themselves proficient in the art of ploughing, before the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... of justice and power in God, reaching to wicked men through these mysterious agents; who though intending no service to him, but actuated by dispositions of their own, malignant in the greatest of them, and supposed inauspicious in the others, are yet carrying into effect his hostility. But it is little beyond such proximate objects of apprehension that many minds extend their awe of invisible spiritual existence. Even the notion really entertained by them of the greatness of God, may be entertained ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... smiling sarcastically, "but at the present stage of the world, such things cannot be done. Haven't you heard the saying of a man of old to the effect that great men take action suitable to the times. 'He who presses,' he adds, 'towards what is auspicious and avoids what is inauspicious is a perfect man.' From what your worship says, not only you couldn't, by any display of zeal, repay your obligation to His Majesty, but, what is more, your own life you will find it difficult to preserve. There are still three more considerations ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... up the receiver with a few crisp remarks addressed to space, and absorbed in awestruck silence by a young woman at the other end of the room who eased her type-writing labor by pausing to hear them fully. It was at this inauspicious moment that the card of Mr. Bart Harrington was brought in by an office boy. Maxwell surveyed it ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... the survivors (probably about 250 in number) were made prisoners save the adjutant, Lieutenant Charles A. Davis, who had been sent off to communicate with the fleet. The navy lost 29 killed, 31 wounded, and 92 captured. So ended this inauspicious New ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... portent to themselves. Perchance some social calamity they have just been visited with, is attributed in their superstitious minds to the fell influence of the foreign devil, who has so suddenly bobbed up in their midst just at this unhappy, inauspicious moment. Perad-venture some stray and highly exaggerated bit of news in regard to Fankwae aggression in Tonquin (the French Tonquin expedition) has happened to reach the little interior village this very day, and the excited people ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... [33] to his standard. But all was in vain—His plans were entirely frustrated. He had brought none of his auxiliaries into the field; and was totally unprepared for hostilities, when his brother, the celebrated Shawanese prophet, by a premature attack on the army under Gen. Harrison, at an inauspicious moment, precipitated him into a war ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... us, who have followed the career—whose lesson is that of the meanness which lurks in noble things, the nobility which lurks in mean ones—of this woman from her inauspicious wedding-day to the placid day of her death, to us Louise of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, will remain, for all blame we may give her and her times, a figure to remember and reflect ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... inauspicious moment that Mr. Kelly (who, as I have said before, is always everywhere) chooses to rush up to Brian Desmond and address ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... wind veered round to the northeast, and there were some signs of a storm. It had been the intention of Captain Gordon to run over to the Isles of Shoals in the afternoon, but the weather was so inauspicious that he declined to carry out his purpose. The club spent the afternoon, therefore, rowing about the bay, in fishing, and in visiting the objects of interest on shore, including, ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... the late proceedings of Congress manifesting a disposition hostile to Great Britain, and the remaining soreness of wounded pride experienced by England in the loss of her colonies, combined with the stirring events then occurring in Europe, made the moment apparently inauspicious for a mission like that of Mr. Jay. It required, on the part of the minister, the exercise of the most ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... grave it in your brain! Till good Sylvester, pious father, sheds Heaven's holy consecration on your heads, As brother and as sister chaste remain! Oh, may ye not, with inauspicious haste, The fruit forbidden prematurely taste! Know, if ye rashly venture ere the time, That Oberon, in vengeance of your crime, Leaves you, without a friend, on life's deserted waste!'" WIELAND, Oberon ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... mountain itself, which was quickly as white as the pure element could make it. So heavy was the fall of snow, that it was soon impossible to see a dozen yards, and of course the whole of the plain of the island was concealed. At this most inauspicious moment, our adventurers undertook ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at Caen has been somewhat inauspicious: we had scarcely made the few necessary arrangements at the hotel, and seated ourselves quietly before the caffe au lait, when two gens-d'armes, in military costume, stalked without ceremony into the room, and, taking chairs at the table, began the conversation rather ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... horse gave rise, and his liberty as often threatened by the peace-officers, who were disposed to apprehend him as a notorious highwayman, the former owner of the horse, he was obliged to part with the inauspicious animal for a trifle, and to purchase one less beautiful, but not accustomed to such ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... more satisfaction to the reader than the skill of the photographer does to the anxious mother desirous to possess an absolute duplicate of her beloved child. The likeness is indeed true; but it is a dull, dead, unfeeling, inauspicious likeness. The face is indeed there, and those looking at it will know at once whose image it is; but the owner of the face will not ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the beginning was not inauspicious, though there might be a doubt whether old Mrs. Hall would keep all her promises. Ethel was so much diverted and pleased as to be convinced she would; Richard was a little doubtful as to her power over the wild girls. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... huge and sudden anger seizing him. Already super-excited by the labors of the day and by the nervous strain of having recovered the sunken biplane, all this talk of Kamrou, all this persistent opposition just at the most inauspicious moment worked powerfully upon his ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors whose crimes were their claims, that they must keep an awful distance; that they must silence their inauspicious tongues; that they must hold off their profane, unhallowed paws from this holy work; they would have proclaimed with a voice that should make itself heard, that on every country the first creditor is the plow,—that this original, indefeasible claim supersedes ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... slumbering city the multitudinous tread of the iron-shod horses awoke strange echoes, while the splashing rain-drops and lowering clouds did not serve to raise the spirits. It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed. The points of interest,—the public buildings, the white house, the massive Greek architecture of the Treasury ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... What wild mistake is this! Take hence, with speed, Your robe of mourning, and your dogs of death. Quick from my sight, you inauspicious monsters; Nor dare, henceforth, to ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... inauspicious beginnings of the pursuit; and the middle part and the ending varied only in degree. All the way up to midnight, at which hour a station of a bigness to supply a standard brass was reached, the tinkered journal-bearing gave trouble and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... The league was struck, a league to bring To Sita fiends, and Vanar king(556) Apportioned bliss and bale. Through her left eye quick throbbings shot,(557) Glad signs the lady doubted not, That told their hopeful tale. The bright left eye of Bali felt An inauspicious throb that dealt A deadly blow that day. The fiery left eyes of the crew Of demons felt the throb, and knew The ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... De Vlierbeck appeared to encourage the young man's love, it was not alone in consequence of his sympathy with his feelings. No: the denouement of his painful trial was to be developed within a defined period; and, if it proved inauspicious, there was nothing but dishonor and moral death for himself and child! Destiny was about to decide forever whether he was to come out victorious from this ten years' conflict with poverty, or whether he was to fall into the abyss of public contempt! These were the ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... done. The new sect of "Papists" were not the true catholics: there was little of the virtue of the martyr in militant Calvinism. It is not a catholic historian who notes with profound regret "that inauspicious day," in the year 1562, Gaston's tenth year, "when the work of devastation began, which was to strip from France that antique garniture of religious art which later ages have not been able to replace." ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... received the "matchlessly brilliant polish of Warren's inestimable Jet blacking." Not like many others in London, who will run you down and leave you to your fate, the heir of his fader's whimsicalities stopped short in the inauspicious set-out of his rapid career; and "dirty end," he exclaimed, "to the scavenger that didn't think of the gentleman's boots!" And at the same time the mother of this hopeful representative of the Mac ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... condition of the giver of the wise exhortations. The latter is all right, he doesn't need such admonitions; the other does. The important question, therefore, should be: "Is he ready to receive them?" If not, if the time is unpropitious, the mental condition inauspicious, better do, say, nothing, than make matters worse. But, unfortunately, it generally happens that at such times the critic is far more concerned at unbosoming himself of his just and wise admonitions than he is as to whether the time ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... the events preceding the inauspicious occurrence the fruits of which proved so disastrous to the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... inauspicious moment that the Danes charged the palisades again with deadly fury, while the attention of all was drawn to the flames; so fierce was the attack, that it was necessary once more to concentrate all the strength of the besieged to repel them; and the fire gained in strength, roared and hissed ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... but unhappily his father had also come to the end of his resources. Injudicious speculation and the mismanagement of an agent, combined with the necessity of placing a large quantity of real estate in the market at an inauspicious time, were the causes which led to the bankruptcy of the elder Gourlay, who was stripped of his great possessions and left with a bare subsistence. The son's prospects of inheriting a fortune were thus at an end, and ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... light of the assemblage of evil spirits at Boolabong which had seemed so important to Jacko, he by no means did regard the news as unessential. Of Nokes's villany he was convinced. Of Boscobel he had imprudently made a second enemy at a most inauspicious time. Georgie Brownbie had long been his bitter foe. He had prosecuted and, perhaps, persecuted Georgie for various offenses; but as Georgie was supposed to be as much at war with his own brethren as with the rest of the world at large, Heathcote had not thought much of that ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... so pleasant a termination to so inauspicious a beginning, I looked forward to the evening's entertainment with bright and elastic spirits. Once, as my eye rested on the fragments of pearl, I sighed to think how easily the pearls of sensibility, as well as all the frail and delicate treasures of life, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and War. Strong Nature's bent, continual increase, Still counteracts Humanity's fond wish, The perpetuity of Peace, and Love; Alas! progressive Increase cannot last. Soon mourns the encumber'd land it's human load: Too soon arrives the inauspicious hour; The Natal Hour of the unhappy Man, Who all his life goes mourning up and down That there is neither bough, nor mud, nor straw That he may take to make himself a hut; No, not in all his native land a twig That he may take, nor spot of green grass turf, Where without ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... answer for my son's life, if he does not return safe in three days' time, or I should hear that he is alive." He then ordered his officers to secure the Hindoo, and keep him close prisoner; after which he retired to his palace in affliction that the festival of Nooroze should have proved so inauspicious. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... Under these inauspicious circumstances the primary elections for members of the legislative assembly were held in most, if not all, of the precincts at the time and the places and by the persons designated and appointed by the governor ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... not the power; but would not that power be, at such a time as this, most unwisely and indiscreetly exercised. That is the point. Of all the times when an attempt was ever made to carry this measure, is not this the most inauspicious? Is it not a time when the measure is most likely to produce danger and mischief to the Country at large? ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... was fought at Molwitz; and never did the career of a great commander open in a more inauspicious manner. His army was victorious. Not only, however, did he not establish his title to the character of an able general; but he was so unfortunate as to make it doubtful whether he possessed the vulgar courage of a soldier. The cavalry, which he commanded in person, was put to flight. Unaccustomed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... days, the atmosphere alone displayed itself in the character of an enemy. In fact, the emperor had scarcely passed the river, when a rumbling sound began to agitate the air. In a short time the day became overcast, the wind rose, and brought with it the inauspicious mutterings of a thunder-storm. That menacing sky and unsheltered country filled us with melancholy impressions. There were even some amongst us, who, enthusiastic as they had lately been, were terrified at what they ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then, whispering one to another that it was late,—that the moon was almost down,—that the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... It was an inauspicious beginning for us. Two of our electrical ships, with their entire crews, had been wiped out of existence, and this appalling blow had been dealt by a few stranded and disabled enemies floating on ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... galleries of pictures. Fortunately for us, Miss Murray had several friends among the persons to whom the Queen has assigned apartments in the vast edifice, and they willingly yielded their approbation of our admission if she could possibly win over Mrs. Grundy, the housekeeper. This name sounded rather inauspicious, but Mr. Winthrop suggested that there might be a "Felix" to qualify it, and so in this case it turned out. Mrs. Grundy asserted that such a thing had never been done, that it was a very dangerous precedent, etc., ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... drawing in rapidly, and Gaston, ever expecting to see some object appear on the horizon, tried to pierce the obscurity with his bloodshot glances; on he went, as in a dream, thinking he heard the ringing of bells, the roar of cannon, and the roll of drums. His brain was full of mournful strains and inauspicious sounds; he lived no longer as a man, but his fever kept him up, he flew as it ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a most inauspicious beginning, for there was one long storm of ridicule and hisses, yells and hoots, from her own door to that which she went to seek. Her sisters tried to shame her, and bade her stay at home, but she would not obey; and all the idlers, seeing this strange little creature in her ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... his love and his pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display. Anne, too, a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably greedy of this kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very consciousness of the dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances attending their union, might secretly augment the anxiety of the royal pair to dazzle and impose by the magnificence of their public appearance. Only once before, since the Norman conquest, had a king of England ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... is then made and worn as an amulet on the arm or round the neck. A bachelor who wishes to marry a widow must first go through a mock ceremony with an akra or swallow-wort plant, as the widow-marriage is not considered a real one, and it is inauspicious for any one to die without having been properly married once. A similar ceremony must be gone through when a man is married for the third time, as it is held that if he marries a woman for the third time he will quickly die. The akra or swallow-wort (Calotropis gigantea) is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... seasons have their meanings for the Chinese. Anything inauspicious happening on New Year's day is indicative of calamity. Mr. Chen, a friend of mine, had become a Christian contrary to his mother's wishes. When his first child was born it was a girl, born on New Year's day. His mother shook her head, looked distressed, and said that nothing but calamity ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the wooden door of the clock, and, turning, took a generous bite from the side of a mellow August sweeting that lay on the table. At this rather inauspicious moment her eye caught Pitt's. The sight of her old lover drove all prudence and reserve from her mind, and she came to the door with such an intoxicating smile and such welcoming hands that he would have kissed ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at an inauspicious moment, for Lat seemed rather annoyed at being disturbed from his "siesta," and, to judge from his looks, had been having a high time of it during the feast. Shaking hands with him, an operation which he performed half unconsciously, we ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... accidental, and, not being followed up, was productive of no result. Karaiskakes fell, and General Church embarked the troops in order to execute the movement that ought to have taken place a month before. The moment was more inauspicious than we were aware of; for the Turkish commander had that very night been joined by a large body of cavalry and a number of infantry from Negropont and elsewhere. This, however, would not have proved decisive, had not General Church, with a view to conciliate the officers under his command, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... silver coffee spoon dropped from the Lady Mayoress's hand, and she sat bolt upright in her chair as if she had received a galvanic shock. At this inauspicious moment the Lord Mayor made his appearance, very jovial and full of happy morning greetings, mingled with pleasant apologies ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... is covenanted not to break. He represents the majesty of successive kings; he takes the responsibility of heroes and lovers on himself; the mantle of genius and nature falls on his shoulders; we 'pile millions' of associations on him, under which he should be 'buried quick,' and not perk out an inauspicious face upon us, with a plain-cut coat, to say, 'What fools you all were!—I am not Hamlet ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... disbelief in the mouth of a villain; though he makes the honest Kent, on the other hand, declare that "it is the stars ... that govern our conditions;"[174] and though he had previously made Romeo speak of "the yoke of inauspicious stars," and the Duke describe mankind as "servile to all the skiey influences," and was later to make Prospero, in the TEMPEST[175] express his belief in "a most auspicious star." In the case of Montaigne, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... of Henry IV.'s conspicuous qualities that no event, auspicious or inauspicious, affected the correctness of his judgment, and that he was just as much a stranger to illusion or intoxication in the hour of good fortune as to discouragement in the hour of ill. He had sense enough to see, in any case, things ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... two thousand and forty men, and had detached the secretary of war, General Knox, to that state, with directions to concert measures with its government for the safety of the arsenal at Springfield. So inauspicious was the aspect of affairs, as to inspire serious fears that the torch of civil discord, about to be lighted up in Massachusetts, would communicate its flame to all New England, and perhaps to the union. Colonel Lee, a member ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... island, where we for a long time lived in peace and quiet, and thought it would never be interrupted. Destiny, which no one escapes, had determined it otherwise. Oluf came from Britain. They called him the Holy, and Andfind instantly found that his voyage would be inauspicious to the giants. When he heard how Oluf's ship rushed through the waves, he went down to the strand and blew the sea against him with all his strength. The waves swelled up like mountains, but Oluf was still ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... there a burning brazier, and, as soon as Crassus arrived, he threw incense and poured libations upon it, and, at the same time, he denounced against Crassus curses, in themselves dreadful and terrific, and, in addition thereto, he uttered the names of certain awful and inauspicious deities. The Romans say that these mysterious and ancient curses have great efficacy, that no man can escape upon whom they are laid, and that he who utters them also has an unlucky end, and, accordingly, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... appears that before this time there had been a school; but the name of college was not assumed until the above date. The teacher of this school was Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, who has left an unenviable reputation, and made an inauspicious beginning of that institution which was to attain to such distinction. He finally got into serious trouble, in consequence of his brutal conduct and for one act in particular, which led to his leaving the school ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... biscuit, accompanied by a small tin case of a precious unguent, which, she told me, would cure all fractures, and internal complaints. She further directed me to leave the house with my face towards the door, by way of propitiating a happy return from a journey undertaken under such inauspicious circumstances. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... of a son is the occasion of great rejoicing and presents to the family. But the birth of a daughter is considered a misfortune, and of course not the slightest notice is taken of so inauspicious an event. This holds true among all the sects and peoples of Syria, and nothing but a Christian training and the inculcation of the pure principles of gospel morality can remove this deeply seated prejudice. The people say the reason of their dislike of daughters is that while a son builds up ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... needs no comments; it breathes the fears and precautions of a creditor, striving to make the most of a failing debtor, and therefore I considered this letter as inauspicious. I returned a verbal answer, that an examination of these accounts must precede a settlement of them, and that as to a speedy payment of the balance due to him, he knew my ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... exaggerate the lapse of time; and then, to give myself every assurance of fidelity to my purpose, I would start off on a new term of endurance. I seemed to myself to have borne the penance for hours, to have made myself a shining example of what a resolute will can do under circumstances the most inauspicious. At length, when certain that the time must have much more than expired, and with no little elation over the happy result of the experiment, I looked up to the clock and found it to be just three minutes past one! Little as the mind had really accomplished, the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... miles he had passed seemed nothing. Remember, my child, it was in our very infancy; we had neither mills, nor grain, nor roads, nor often clearings; we had nothing of increase but the mouths that were to be fed: for even at that inauspicious moment the restless spirit of emigration was not idle; nay, the general scarcity which extended to the East tended to increase the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... until four in the morning, when in the chill grey light the company were ranged in rows, and photographed, apparently to provide a demonstration of how elderly and plain even the youngest of the number could look under such inauspicious circumstances. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... most inauspicious marriage. The Duchess of Hazlewood sat in her drawing-room alone. Those three days had changed her terribly; her face had lost its bloom, the light had died from her dark eyes, there were great lines of pain round her lips. She sat with her hands folded listlessly, ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... and carefully closed the gate; and, as it happened, he forgot the uprooted shrub, which Pansie, as she ran, had flung away, and which had fallen into the open grave; and when the funeral came that afternoon, the coffin was let down upon it, so that its bright, inauspicious flower never bloomed again. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Empire, they have sympathizing fellow-sufferers whom the conventionalities of the country deter from rushing into matrimony. In this region, circumcision is performed on the adult at the time of his candidacy for matrimonial bliss. A more inauspicious occasion could not possibly have been chosen, unless as in another Mohammedan tribe, who circumcise the bridegroom on the day after his marriage and sprinkle the blood that falls from the cut onto the veil of the bride. The bride is present, and the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... was then approved of)—"Placuit." This is placed at the end, in consequence of the inauspicious reception which had been given to it on the two first representations. See the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... so overgrown, from overfeeding, perhaps, and want of exercise, as to bear the same resemblance to his former self which a stall-fed ox still retains to a wild bull. The look of no man is so inauspicious as a fat man, upon whose features ill-nature has marked an habitual stamp. He seems to have reversed the old proverb of "laugh and be fat," and to have thriven under the influence of the worst affections of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... down the pages of Greek history, we should but repeat the same story over and over. We should, for example, see Alexander the Great balked at the banks of the Hyphasis, and forced to turn back because of inauspicious auguries based as before upon the dissection of a fowl. Alexander himself, to be sure, would have scorned the augury; had he been the prey of such petty superstitions he would never have conquered Asia. We know how he compelled the oracle at ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... nothing of the matter, was up first on that inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading article. 'No one that we are aware of,' ran the article, 'had consulted Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to by the whole body of electors, his letter ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and wellbalanced government for a free people. It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer. This intelligent people perceived and regretted these defects. Still continuing no less attached to union than enamored of liberty, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... guard, preceded by military music, came to present to the young Dauphin, as a New Year's gift, a box of dominoes, made of some of the stone and marble of which that state prison was built. The Queen gave me this inauspicious curiosity, desiring me to preserve it, as it would be a curious illustration of the history of the Revolution. Upon the lid were engraved some bad verses, the purport of which was as follows: "Stones from those walls, which enclosed ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the performance of such rites, the slightest mistake of a word or syllable was deemed highly inauspicious; to prevent which, the regular form of words was pronounced by a priest, and repeated after him ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... says that "instead of carrying the corpse out by the door they make an opening in the wall by which they pass it out in a seated posture, and the hole is closed up after the ceremony."[733] Among various Hindoo castes it is still customary, when a death has occurred on an inauspicious day, to remove the corpse from the house not through the door, but through a temporary hole made in the wall.[734] Old German law required that the corpses of criminals and suicides should be carried out ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... challenges were still common, but never led to a fight. He then walked off with his legal advisers, and wrote to Mary at Falkland. {214a} If Arran went mad, he went mad "with advice of counsel." There had come the chance of "a new day," which the extremists desired, but its dawn was inauspicious. ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... in 4 vols., London, 1832; where he will find, in vol. ii. p 475., a short military memoir of Lieut.-General Whitelocke, which is dispassionately and candidly written, and which accounts very reasonably for the inauspicious result of his military operations. There is one slight error in the account of The Georgian Aera, viz. in the date of the {622} first appointment of Mr. Whitelocke to a commission in the army, which appears in the London Gazette, No. 11938. of December 26, 1778, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... "It was at this inauspicious juncture, only a few hours after independence had been proclaimed in the ranks of his opponents, that the bearer of the pacific commission, Lord Howe, arrived off Sandy Hook. He had cause to regret most bitterly both the delay of his passage ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... languages, and is welcome in every city—the splendid bride unveiled—the defender, register, and mirror of jehandars. The man who has dirhams [Scottice, 'siller'—Fr. 'l'argent'] is handsome; the sun never shines on the inauspicious man without money."[42] Before leaving home the merchant purchased at great cost in the bazaar a wonderful parrot, that could discourse eloquently and intelligently, and also a sharak, a species of nightingale, which, according to Gerrans, "imitates the human voice in so surprising a manner ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... other had his ribs sadly bruised and was unable to stir for some days. Tucker had a dreadful passage of sixteen days with perpetual storms. I wish these little contretemps may not sour their tempers and be inauspicious to our proceedings." ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... her. I am too old, and too poor; and I must put up as well as I can with her loss—drown her image in old Falernian till I embark in Charon's boat for good!—Really, if I had the industry I could write some good Horatian verses on my inauspicious situation!... Ah, well;—in this way I affect levity over my troubles; but in plain truth my life will not be the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... excessively annoyed by the inauspicious manner in which Sir Samuel was greeted, and not less so by the exposure which I made of their politics and principles. The editor of the Morning Chronicle, and other papers in London, gave, however, a flaming account of the public entry of Sir Samuel Romilly into Bristol: ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... attributed to its evil influence; the defeat of a general, the failure of a harvest, the overflowing of the Tiber, the desolations of a hurricane, and the appearance of a pestilence, were all ascribed to its most inauspicious advancement. The public mind was thus gradually prepared for measures of extreme severity; and Decius, who now became emperor, aimed at the utter extirpation of Christianity. All persons suspected of attachment to the gospel were summoned before the civil authorities; and if, regardless of intimidation, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... customer never approached the lady without being repelled by the offensive smirk that she assumed, no dependent ever ventured near her without the fear of the scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully, when she pleased) upon her dark and inauspicious brow. What wonder that little Jehu was crushed into nothingness, behind his own counter, under the eye ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... determination to state occurrences, plainly, as they arose, I must here mention that strange as it may appear in Pantisocritans, I observed at this time a marked coolness between Mr. Coleridge and Robert Lovell, so inauspicious in those about to establish a "Fraternal Colony;" and, in the result, to renovate the whole face of society! They met without speaking, and consequently appeared as strangers. I asked Mr. C. what it meant. He replied, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... fully elapsed, on the 7th of April they assembled for the conclave. At that instant (inauspicious omen!) a terrible flash of lightning, followed by a stunning peal of thunder, struck through the hall, burning and splitting some of the furniture. The hall of conclave was crowded by a fierce rabble, who refused to retire. After about an hour's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... as from regal tyranny. But Leicester's policy, if we must ascribe to him so great a blessing, only forwarded by some years an institution, for which the general state of things had already prepared the nation; and it is otherwise inconceivable, that a plant, set by so inauspicious a hand, could have attained to so vigorous a growth, and have flourished in the midst of such tempests and convulsions. The feudal system, with which the liberty, much more the power of the commons, was totally incompatible, began gradually to decline; and both the king and the commonalty, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... way that gives them their onomatopoetic Arabic name of Lak-Lak. It sounded like the rattle of machine-guns; so much so that on entering the village, for the first second I thought that the Turks were opening up on us. No native will molest a stork; to do so is considered to the last degree inauspicious. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... as then received by Christian princes. [2] But Frederic did do what was contrary to both in his refusal; and that, too, while professing to be imbued with the very faith out of which the homage in question sprang. Thus, it is no wonder that Adrian should view such an inconsistency as most inauspicious for the liberties of the church,—with which those of society were then so closely bound up,—and should, therefore, feel it imperative to pursue a line of conduct, which at first glance may appear so ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... to another, and dropping a little lower at each remove. Abraham Lincoln was born into a family who were not only poor, but shiftless, and his early days were days of ignorance, and poverty, and hard work. Out of such inauspicious surroundings, he slowly and painfully lifted himself. He gave himself an education, he took part in an Indian war, he worked in the fields, he kept a country store, he read and studied, and, at last, he became a lawyer. Then he entered into the rough politics ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... Undaunted by that inauspicious beginning, he came again the next Sunday, smoked my best cigars, and talked lumber, the one subject upon which he is posted, for he was the manager of a ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... the events that had passed; they were numerous and inauspicious. It was scarcely eleven o'clock in the morning, and yet this morning had already brought him into disgrace with M. de Treville, who could not fail to think the manner in which d'Artagnan had left him ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... inconsistency, very hard at the first sight to be solved by any European. Plainly Mataafa does not act at random. Plainly, in the depths of his Samoan mind, he regards his attitude as regular and constitutional. It may be unexpected, it may be inauspicious, it may be undesirable; but he thinks it—and perhaps it is—in full accordance with those "laws and customs of Samoa" ignorantly invoked by the draughtsmen of the Berlin Act. The point is worth an effort of comprehension; a man's life may yet depend upon it. Let us conceive, in the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hilda, fearing some inauspicious act or word, bustled forward her bevy of young folks to offer their babel of congratulations. As she presented them one by one, Ruth mustered a wan smile, let them take her cold, limp hand. But her mind was not on them. All the while she was thinking: "This ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... letting go their hold one by one from branches and dropping down to decay, with a mournful sound of owls, and in fearsome loneliness, there trudged in broken boots and in wet and windy rags an old man, stooping low under a sack of emeralds. It were easy to see had you been travelling late on that inauspicious night, that the burden of the sack was far too great for the poor old man that bore it. And had you flashed a lantern in his face there was a look there of hopelessness and fatigue that would have told you it was no wish of his that kept him tottering ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... seem an inauspicious hour to begin a search which might lead him on in poverty for years and end nowhere. But, having seen the need for perfect rubber, the thought had come to him, with the force of a religious conviction, that "an object so desirable and so important, ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... piercing eye This crisis caught of destiny - The British host had stood That morn 'gainst charge of sword and lance As their own ocean-rocks hold stance, But when thy voice had said, "Advance!" They were their ocean's flood. - O Thou, whose inauspicious aim Hath wrought thy host this hour of shame, Think'st thou thy broken bands will bide The terrors of yon rushing tide? Or will thy chosen brook to feel The British shock of levelled steel, Or dost thou turn thine eye Where coming squadrons gleam afar, And fresher ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... wish to see the Church secure in such possessions as will not only enable her ministers to preach the Gospel with ease, but of such a kind as will enable them to preach it with its full effect, so that the pastor shall not have the inauspicious appearance of a tax-gatherer,—such a maintenance as is compatible with the civil prosperity and improvement ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious, or I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we know ... The child's father is away too, and I must be chowkedar [watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... first calpa it was found that the succession of Ninan Cuyoche would not be auspicious. Then they opened another lamb and took out the lungs, examining certain veins. The result was that the signs respecting Huascar were also inauspicious. Returning to the Inca, that he might name some one else, they found that he was dead. While the orejones stood in suspense about the succession, Cusi Tupac Yupanqui said: "Take care of the body, for I ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... which he greeted his approach found no response from Nathan himself, who, having looked with amazement upon Edith and Telie, as if marvelling what madness had brought females at that hour into that wild desert, turned at last to the soldier, demanding, with inauspicious gravity,— ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... duplicate of this petition, presented to the Commons, was followed by the motion of Mr. Ewart, "That it is inexpedient to make Van Diemen's Land the sole receptacle of convicts, and that transportation be abolished, except as a supplement to penal discipline" (May, 1846). The day chosen was inauspicious. The "house" was gone to the Epsom races. Mr. Hudson, the railway king, not better employed, stumbled into the chapel of St. Stephen, and counted out the members. Mr. Ewart renewed his motion (July 6). A few days before ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... was Sir Giles Mompesson, and his usually stern and sinister features had acquired a yet more inauspicious cast, from the deathlike paleness that bespread them, as well as from the fillet bound round his injured brow. The other was an antiquated coxcomb, aping the airs and graces of a youthful gallant, attired in silks and velvets fashioned in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... ran, in despair, to confide his grief to the husband, who appeared sincerely to share it, but consoled him by saying that he had no doubt chosen his moment badly; that all women, even the least severe, had inauspicious hours in which they would not yield to attack, and that he must let a few days pass, which he must employ in making his peace, and then must take advantage of a better opportunity, and not allow himself to be rebuffed by a few refusals; and to these words the marquis added a purse of gold, in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the embarrassments attending this unlooked-for and inauspicious meeting. Joy at my supposed compliance with her wishes, wishes that imaged to themselves my happiness, and only mine, enabled her to support the hardships of this journey. Fatigue and exposure, likely to be fatal to one of so delicate, so infirm a constitution, so lately and imperfectly ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... rewards of valor, some honorable gifts, civic, and mural, and naval crowns; which he, and perhaps he alone, esteemed more precious than the wealth of Asia. A solemn sacrifice was offered to the god of war, but the appearances of the victims threatened the most inauspicious events; and Julian soon discovered, by less ambiguous signs, that he had now reached the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... back to his desk, savagely out of humor with Benson and with himself, and raging inwardly at the mysterious thieves who were looting the company as boldly as an invading army might. At this, the most inauspicious moment possible, his eye fell upon the calendar memorandum, "See Hallock about B/L.," and his finger was on the chief clerk's bell-push before he remembered that it was late, and that there had been no light ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... bride's ladies, and in my opinion they are right: for the husband and wife at the beginning of their intercourse to be separated, and for the bride alone to be feasted like an ordinary guest, appears to be an inauspicious opening. I have thus pointed out two ill-omened customs which are to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... reverence [2]; But no one is to be looked up to like a father, No one is to be depended on as a mother. Have I not a connexion with the hairs (of my father)? Did I not dwell in the womb (of my mother)? O Heaven, who gave me birth! How was it at so inauspicious a time? ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the opulence of its resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he was compelled to present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to be avoided;—and therefore the only one conceivable addition to the inauspicious influences on the preformation of Edmund's character is given, in the information that all the kindly counteractions to the mischievous feelings of shame, which might have been derived from co-domestication with Edgar and their common father, had been cut off ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... under an inauspicious star. No accommodation was to be had, all the inns were literally overrun with sedan chairs and filled with well-dressed officials, already busy with the "hsi-lien" (wash basin). In my dirty khaki clothes, out at knee and elbow, looking musty and mean and dusty, with my ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Cherub, the latter were actually driven off. They wore, and again began with their long guns; but, these producing no visible effect, both of the British ships hauled out of the fight at 4.30. "Having lost the use of main-sail, jib, and main-stay, appearances looked a little inauspicious," writes Captain Hilyar. But the damages were soon repaired, and his two ships stood back for the crippled foe. Both stationed themselves on her port-quarter, the Phoebe at anchor, with a spring, firing her broadside, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a rather inauspicious time, Mr. Gryce," said the latter, glancing at the card which he held in his hand. "What may your business be? Something to ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... a tree to think and dream and look at the glory of the foliage. He had brought a new copy of The Arabian Nights for Rebecca, wishing to replace the well-worn old one that had been the delight of her girlhood; but meeting her at such an inauspicious time, he had absently carried it away with him. He turned the pages idly until he came to the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and presently, in spite of his thirty-four years, the old tale held him ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had come at an inauspicious moment, and the first words of Sir Philip, though kind and friendly, were not at all harmonious with the feeling of love in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Alexander Graham Bell and his associates had completely demonstrated its usefulness, the Western Union Telegraph Company refused to purchase all their patent rights for $100,000! Only forty years have passed since the telephone made such an inauspicious beginning. It remains now, as it was then, essentially an American achievement. Other nations have their telephone systems, but it is only in the United States that its possibilities have been even faintly ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... speech he had sounded a new challenge to the papacy, so he concluded by an earnest warning to Emperor and empire, lest, by endeavoring to promote peace by a condemnation of the divine Word, they might rather bring a dreadful deluge of evils, and thus give an unhappy and inauspicious beginning to the reign of the noble young Emperor. He said not these things as if the great personages who heard him stood in any need of his admonitions, but because it was a duty that he owed to his native Germany, and he could not neglect ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... devoted brother, who cheerfully shared with him the little money he had to live upon, and thus saved him from the unspeakable miseries which would inevitably attend a literary debut at such an early age and under such inauspicious circumstances. Later on, he was still more fortunate in securing a loving and intelligent wife, who was to be to him, in the words of the holy Scriptures, "a companion of his rank," a wife who was not only to become a help and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... has ceased to be any peril of so inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation. But as an individual, the American is often conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind pathetic tendency to wander back again, which makes itself evident in such wild ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... presence of Lewis, made rapid progress. There were indeed many difficulties to be surmounted and many hardships to be endured. The weather was stormy; and, on the eighth of June, the feast of Saint Medard, who holds in the French Calendar the same inauspicious place which in our Calendar belongs to Saint Swithin, the rain fell in torrents. The Sambre rose and covered many square miles on which the harvest was green. The Mehaigne whirled down its bridges to the Meuse. All the roads became swamps. The trenches ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1844, we left Bath determined to examine the once far-famed Abbey of Fonthill, and to see if its scenery was really as fine as report had represented. The morning was cold and inauspicious, but when we reached Warminster the sun burst out through the mists that had obscured him, and the remainder of the day was as genial and mild as if had been May. We procured the aid of a clownish bumpkin to carry our carpet bag, and left Warminster on foot. About four miles from that town ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... others were inspecting them, taking up now the dies and now the medals in their hands, I began to speak as submissively as I was able: "If a greater power had not controlled the working of my inauspicious stars, and hindered that with which they violently menaced me, your Holiness, without your fault or mine, would have lost a faithful and loving servant. It must, most blessed Father, be allowed that in those cases where men are risking all upon ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... inauspicious commencement of our acquaintance with the natives of Otaheite. Their determined hostility and perseverance in an unequal combat could only have arisen from one of two motives—either from an opinion that a ship of such magnitude, as they had never before beheld, could only be come to their ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... home of the apple, is unknown. If tradition is to be believed, it was the inauspicious fruit to which may be traced all the miseries of mankind. In pictures of the temptation in the garden of Eden, our mother Eve is generally represented as holding an ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... all astir, for it was half-past eight of a work-a-day morning. But Esther had not walked a hundred yards before her breast was heavy with inauspicious emotions. The well-known street she had entered was strangely broadened. Instead of the dirty picturesque houses rose an appalling series of artisans' dwellings, monotonous brick barracks, whose dead, dull prose weighed upon ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was inauspicious. The ships had scarcely entered the straits before a great storm broke upon them. Land and sea were blotted out in driving snow. The open water into which they had sailed was soon {19} filled with great masses of ice which ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... said with the freedom of a friend. "I have really no place to ask anybody in to. What I meant was that the place you chose was so horrid—I suppose I ought not to say horrid—I mean gloomy and inauspicious in its associations... But isn't it funny to begin like this, when I don't know you yet?" She looked him up and down curiously, though Jude did not look much ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... that Mr. Ludgate's affairs were in a bad way, and that now or never must be the word with his creditors. The next morning bills came showering in upon Leonard whilst he was at breakfast, and amongst them came sundry bills of Mrs. Ludgate's. They could not possibly have come at a more inauspicious moment. People bespeak goods with one species of enthusiasm, and look over their bills with another. We should rather have said people spend with one enthusiasm, and pay with another; but this observation would not apply to our present purpose, for Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate had never yet ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... grim ancestors for a thousand generations, in some dark cave of the hills was he whelped, but in a narrow iron cage littered with straw. Two brothers and a sister made at the same time a like inauspicious entrance upon an alien and fettered existence. And because their silent, untamable mother loved too savagely the hereditary freedom of her race to endure the thought of bearing her young into a life of bondage, she would have killed them mercifully, even while ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... bell of the church near the Louvre, St. Germain of Auxerre, rang the tocsin. This was the beginning of that alliance between the rural aristocracy of Catholic France and the furious democracy of the capital which laid the inauspicious foundation of the League. Their objects were not entirely the same. The Parisian populace were indiscriminately murderous and cruel, killing every Huguenot they knew. The Spanish envoy wrote: "not a child has been spared. Blessed be God!" Guise had his thoughts fixed ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... {331} Such was the inauspicious introduction for Baranof to the founding of the new Russian fort at Sitka or Norfolk Sound. It was the end of May before the brigades glided into the sheltered, shadowy harbor, where Chirikoff's men had been lost ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... nature of the hardy and able ruffian who had now become openly her master should no less openly have shown itself even in the first moments of their inauspicious union is what any bystander of common insight must inevitably have foreseen. Tears, dejection, and passionate expressions of a despair "wishing only for death," bore fitful and variable witness to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... and allayed his thirst, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When Bayu together with Indra and Suryya united as allies for the success of the sons of Kunti, and the beasts of prey (by their inauspicious presence) were putting us in fear, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When the wonderful warrior Drona, displaying various modes of fight in the field, did not slay any of the superior Pandavas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the golden treasure burns, And Love and Glory guide the prow by turns. But, when Thessalia's inauspicious plain Received the matron-heroine from the main; 145 While horns of triumph sound, and altars burn, And shouting nations hail their Chief's return: Aghaft, She saw new-deck'd the nuptial bed, And proud CREUSA to the temple led; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... saying, Alcibiades, was a person of this sort. And even now-a-days you will find many who (have offered inauspicious prayers), although, unlike him, they were not in anger nor thought that they were asking evil. He neither sought, nor supposed that he sought for good, but others have had quite the contrary notion. I believe that if the God whom you are about to consult should appear to you, and, in anticipation ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... being a dull nation; they are lovers of pomp and shew; but then there is an eternal stiffness, a kind of affected dignity, which spoils their pleasures. Hence we have the less reason to wonder that Boyse lived obscurely at Edinburgh. His extreme carelesness about his dress was a circumstance very inauspicious to a man who lives in that city. They are such lovers of this kind of decorum, that they will admit of no infringement upon it; and were a man with more wit than Pope, and more philosophy than Newton, to appear at their market place negligent in his apparel, he would be avoided ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and "put in" with all his might; but the more he "put in," the more he put out—from the shore, whither the inauspicious eddies were sweeping him. If Tom had not been born in Pinchbrook, and had a home by the sea, where boating is an appreciated accomplishment, he would probably have been borne into the arms of the expectant rebel, or received in his vitals the ounce of cold lead which ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... which followed cemented the firmest friendship of Jack North's life, an acquaintance which, notwithstanding its inauspicious beginning, was destined to ripen ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... worldly knowledge, I was a far more than equal sufferer for it, at the very outset of my authorship. Toward the close of the first year from the time, that in an inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by sundry philanthropists and Anti-polemists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled THE WATCHMAN, that, according to the general motto of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... natural energy seemed to have deserted him—it required an effort to leave the club. He took up the newspapers, and threw them aside, one after another. Not one of the unfortunate writers and reporters could please him on that inauspicious day. It was only while he was lighting his second cigar that he remembered Mrs. Farnaby's unread letter to him. By this time, he was more than weary of his own affairs. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... Fortunately, the unbounded confidence all had in their military chief inspired hope and infused energy among the people. He had never been defeated in battle. If any one could wrest victory now out of the inauspicious and chaotic conditions that threatened disaster, they believed it ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... he does not say so, that having first enlisted, and then entered upon a professional career under somewhat inauspicious conditions, he felt himself to have fallen away from the social rank (such as it was) that belonged to him by birth; and he may ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... brothers rushed into the dreadful fray, Fatal was the luckless moment, inauspicious ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... mine, she will, for a surety, attain a long life of a hundred years; and when she by and bye grows up to be a big girl, every one of you will be able to have a home and get a patrimony! Or if, at any time, there occur anything inauspicious and she has to face adversity, why it will inevitably change into prosperity; and if she comes across any evil fortune, it will turn into good fortune. And this will all arise from ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... circumstances; often his boyishness would obtrude itself quite unexpectedly at board meetings or on the parish council, while at other times the mantle of the seer or prophet descended upon him on the most inauspicious occasions. Had Mrs. Wrottesley spoken her mind, which she never did, she might have thrown light upon the subject, but she was not a convincing woman at the best of times. All her life she had kept inviolate the woman's secret whether or not her husband was a disappointment to her. No one knew ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan |
