"Red-letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I must confess that I, too, have scarcely been able to think of anything else since yesterday, when Sannaes went into town to settle it up. This a red-letter day! Signe is wrestling with a little banquet for us; we shall see what an artist she ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... day was a red-letter one in Albert's history. In the morning he followed Uncle Terry around the circuit of his lobster traps in the "Gypsy's" boat, with Telly as a companion, and watched the old man hauling and rebaiting those elongated ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... was a rather sorry crew that embarked the following morning, April 15. But it turned out a red-letter day. The day before, we had come across cuttings, a year old, which were probably but not certainly made by pioneer rubbermen. But on this day—during which we made twenty-five kilometres—after running two ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... rewarded her with something akin to a fit of apoplexy, instead of a liberal tip. That day was a red-letter one for our photographers. They paid the price in the risks which constantly strained their nerves. But in it they garnered vastly more than in the fortnight ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... simplicity which is given to the understanding of a child, caught a notion of imperishable heroism when they were told that brave men had lost their lives that the slaves might be free. At any moment the conversation of our elders might turn upon these heroic events; there were red-letter days, when a certain general came to see my father, and again when Governor Oglesby, whom all Illinois children called "Uncle Dick," spent a Sunday under the pine trees in our front yard. We felt on those days a connection with the great world so much more heroic than ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... flippant. It is something to have known youth and gayety, enthusiasm and a bravery which flies in the face of day, and now—something to have lost them. The Lark has lived and now dies well, and, to some at least, the time of its irregular appearance will no longer be a red-letter day." ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess
... &c. (repute) 873; weight &c. (influence) 175; value &c. (goodness) 648; usefulness &c. 644. gravity, seriousness, solemnity; no joke, no laughing matter; pressure, urgency, stress; matter of life and death. memorabilia, notabilia[obs3], great doings; red-letter day. great thing, great point; main chance, "the be all and the end all " [Macbeth]; cardinal point; substance, gist &c. (essence) 5; sum and substance, gravamen, head and front; important part, principal part, prominent part, essential part; half the battle; sine qua non; breath ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have discovered, even without the fable which bears that moral, and in the course of the afternoon several mothers and aunts of pupils looked in to express their entire disapproval of the schoolmaster's proceeding. A few confined themselves to hints, such as politely inquiring what red-letter day or saint's day the almanack said it was; a few (these were the profound village politicians) argued that it was a slight to the throne and an affront to church and state, and savoured of revolutionary principles, to grant a half-holiday ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... now raised his hat and shook hands. 'Very pleased, I'm sure,' he said, 'to give the echo to Mr Palmer's kind words. I should have been the first to render expression to them but for the face not being familiar to me, Mr Humphreys. May your residence among us be marked as a red-letter day, sir.' 'Thank you very much, Mr Cooper,' said Humphreys, 'for your good wishes, and Mr Palmer also. I do hope very much that this change of—er—tenancy—which you must all regret, I am sure—will not be to the detriment of those with whom ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... to the Virgin, and the feast of her Assumption is the greatest of all her red-letter days. The streets had echoed at dawn to the feet of contadini coming in by the Porta Romana, the Porta Camollia, the Porta Pespini. The oxen had been fed and left in their stalls; there was no ploughing in the fields on this day, no gathering of figs, no sound of singing voices ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... he cried, "how mortifying! seven minutes too early! The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me. Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lay his hands on that promised capital for an editorial writer in that city and that State. By the end of July he felt that he could slacken up here, too, having pretty well exhausted the field, and the first day of August—red-letter day in the annals of science—saw him unlock the sacred drawer with a close-set face. And now the Schedule, so long lapsed, was reinstated, with Four Hours a Day segregated to Magnum Opus. A pitiful little step at reconstruction, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... &c (influence) 175; value &c (goodness) 648; usefulness &c 644. gravity, seriousness, solemnity; no joke, no laughing matter; pressure, urgency, stress; matter of life and death. memorabilia, notabilia^, great doings; red-letter day. great thing, great point; main chance, the be all and the end all [Macbeth]; cardinal point; substance, gist &c (essence) 5; sum and substance, gravamen, head and front; important part, principal part, prominent part, essential part; half the battle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... daye after the fest Halowen (All Hallows even); the wyche thynge was approved after all holye Chyrche.” {157} This is the old Christian black-letter festival of “All Souls,” generally, as distinguished from the red-letter, “All Saints day.” Such are some of the old traditions which hang, like evergreen garlands, round our sacred places. Children may once have “passed through fire to Molech” where now the heaving turf shrouds the skeleton of ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... These red-letter days when I drive through the familiar (and now exciting) hubbub of London, I love (strange taste!) every motor omnibus, every pretty woman, every sandwich-man, every fine young fellow in khaki, every car-load of men in blue hospital uniform. I love ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Now that this red-letter day has gone by as any other day goes, will you play a game of billiards with me, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... 1906, is a red-letter day in the history of aviation, for it was then that Santos Dumont made his first little flight in an aeroplane. This took place at Bagatelle, ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton |
