"Unpropitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people. Capitalists treated it exactly as they treated the Atlantic Cable project when Cyrus Field visited Boston in 1862. They admired and marvelled; but not a man subscribed a dollar. Also, Sanders very soon learned that it was a most unpropitious time for the setting afloat of a new enterprise. It was a period of turmoil and suspicion. What with the Jay Cooke failure, the Hayes-Tilden deadlock, and the bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the news of the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... contribute a beautiful specimen of a rifle-green glossy ibis, common in Europe. I tried the water with a very roughly manufactured fly: the fish rose repeatedly at it, though there was scarcely a ripple, and notwithstanding my own want of success under these unpropitious circumstances, I feel perfectly satisfied that with proper tackle, and on a favourable day, this prince of sports might be enjoyed on ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... surface sufficiently long before turning the sod to get an extra growth of the clover or grass. If the soil be very sandy in character, I would advise that the variety planted be the Winnigstadt, which, in my experience, is unexcelled for making a hard head under almost any conditions, however unpropitious. Should the soil be naturally very wet it should be underdrained, or stump foot will be very likely to appear, which is ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... mingled with surprise; finally, as Miss Anthony closed with one of her most eloquent appeals, all the faces showed a decided and almost eager interest in what we had to say. Senator George, who certainly looked more unpropitious than any other one, assured the ladies that he would give to the subject of woman suffrage that careful and impartial consideration which its grave importance demands. This, from one who heralded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... followed thus far he has a tolerably fair notion of the unpropitious and eccentric surroundings amid which Field worked immediately after coming to Chicago. Out of this strange environment came as variegated a column of satire, wit, and personal persiflage as ever attracted and fascinated the readers of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... though the prevailing eastern breezes serve to drive back its noxious emanations; and the harbor, even now so shallow that vessels are obliged to anchor a mile from shore, is gradually silting up with sediment from the Yuna River. The story goes that the selection of this unpropitious spot for the terminus of the railroad was due to the passion of a moment. A tract of land at Point Santa Capuza, five miles down the bay, where a level coast plain and deep water up to the very shore invited the establishment of a port, had ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... fall in, at the time of their birth, with an era of propitious fortune; while those extremely vicious correspond, at the time of their existence, with an era of calamity. When those who coexist with propitious fortune come into life, the world is in order; when those who coexist with unpropitious fortune come into life, the world is in danger. Yao, Shun, Yue, Ch'eng T'ang, Wen Wang, Wu Wang, Chou Kung, Chao Kung, Confucius, Mencius, T'ung Hu, Han Hsin, Chou Tzu, Ch'eng Tzu, Chu Tzu and Chang Tzu were ordained ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a hapless sufferer from beneath the table. It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if "every dog will have his day," he could not have selected a more unpropitious one than this. Mrs. Ogleton, too, had a pet—a favorite pug—whose squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow! continued the brute—a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to say, pug ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... at this unpropitious moment that Colonel Carvel walked into the store, and his daughter ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Delme's voyage was not unpropitious, although the yacht was frequently baffled by contrary winds, which prevented the passage being very speedy. During the day, the weather was ordinarily blustering, at times stormy; but with the setting sun, it seemed that tranquillity came; for during the nights, which were uncommonly ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... a place eminently adapted to study and education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other, is in danger of yielding to the love ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... deeply. Bitter experience had taught that never was moment so unpropitious for errands like the present as when that cheerful dirge filled the air. But the thought of the waiting Silvey nerved him. He turned the doorknob and coughed hesitantly. His mother looked up from the pan of apples on her lap and smiled. She knew that ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... accordance with these commands [143] and set out against Amalek, to conquer whom required not only skillful strategy, but also adeptness in the art of magic. For Amalek was a great magician and knew that propitious and the unpropitious hour of each individual, and in this way regulated his attacks against Israel; he attacked that one at night, whose death had been predicted for a night, and him whose death had been preordained for a day did ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the lynx; and their cat-like tread among the grass and leaves, seems so light as scarcely to shake off the dew drops. Thus they advance on their expedition rapidly and in profound silence, unless some one of the party should relate that he has had an unpropitious dream When this happens, an immediate arrest is put upon the expedition, and the whole party face about, and return without any sense of shame or mortification. A whole party is thus often arrested by a single person; and their return is applauded by the tribe, as a respectful ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... into an unfrequented part of the garden, and as soon as they were out of sight of all but a few stragglers, he suddenly stopt, and, in great agitation, said, "my chaise will soon be ready, and I shall take of you a long farewell!— all my affairs are unpropitious to my speedy return:—the wine is now mounting into my head, and perhaps I may not be able to say much by and by. I fear I have been cruel to you, Priscilla, and I begin to wish I had spared you this parting scene; ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... your mistress on one condition only," said the woman, in reply to the nonsense I poured into her ear, carried away by the fervor of an improvised passion, to which everything was unpropitious. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... fair coz?" asked Gerald, who was standing near and heard the sigh. "Are the Fates very unpropitious?" ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... standard; and a sudden incursion was made into the Roman territory, for which the imperial officers were wholly unprepared. A considerable impression would probably have been produced, had not the weather proved exceedingly unpropitious. Storms of rain and hail hindered the advance of the Persian troops, and allowed the Roman generals a breathing space, during which they collected an army. But the Emperor Theodosius was anxious that the flames of war should not be relighted in this quarter; and his instructions ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... hours, and some times more frequently than that. A meteorological screen, containing thermometers and a barograph, had been erected on a post frozen into the ice, and observations were taken every four hours. When we first left the ship the weather was cold and miserable, and altogether as unpropitious as it could possibly have been for our attempted march. Our first few days at Ocean Camp were passed under much the same conditions. At nights the temperature dropped to zero, with blinding snow and drift. One-hour watches were instituted, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... everything unpropitious is guarded against, nothing unpropitious occurs. It would have been a wonderful chance, indeed, if, supplied only for one day, a fine, clear day had come. But supplied against bad weather for two or three weeks, it was no wonder at all that the very first day should have ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... man hesitated. He might have been a bedizened citizen's wife craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the rain. But the hour was not unpropitious for the indulgence of some discreditable whim. Earlier, he might have been detected; later, he might find himself cut out. Tempted by a glance which is encouraging without being inviting, to have followed a young and pretty woman for an hour, or perhaps for a day, thinking of her as a divinity ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... one is more conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of Myths," ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the station settlement, there is more life than in Gafsa, though the surroundings are decidedly unpropitious—a waterless plain, with low hills in the foreground, phosphate-bearing, and wondrously tinted in rose and heliotrope. There are respectable stores here, very different from the shops of Gafsa. I entered a large Italian warehouse which contained an assortment of goods—clothing, jams, boots, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Italy was unpropitious to the queen of Hungary and the king of Sardinia. Count Gages passed the Appenines, and entered the state of Lucca; from thence he proceeded by the eastern coast of Genoa to Lestride-Levante. The junction of the two armies was thus accomplished, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sorry, after Gwen drove away, that he had not pointed out what an unpropitious moment it was for an upsetting revelation, and suggested postponement. It was too late to do anything, by the time he thought of it. He shrugged his shoulders about it, and perceived that what was done couldn't be undone. Then he drove as fast as he could to Sir Cropton Fuller, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... He heard now the rushing of the river, and, as he turned into the road by its side, he saw the black hill looming large. Nothing but the momentum of a will already made up kept his intention turned to the climb, so unpropitious was the time, so utterly lonely the place. As it was, with quiescent mind and vigorous step, he held on down the smooth road that ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... possibilities, she particularly wanted to have a few, a very few, people down for that Sunday. They had all a special connection with Bray. Things had happened there before, and it was a party of healed memories that was to gather there. If, after all, the weather turned out to be hopelessly unpropitious, they could all sit in a ring round the fire, holding each other's hands. She felt sure they would like to do that. Probably there would be a great many tete-a-tetes in various corners, or, if it were warm, in various punts. But she felt sure ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the poverty, pain, wrong, hunger, wretchedness and torment, and every nameless misery that has been endured by those who have lived in obscurity, and groped their lonely way through a long series of unpropitious events, with but little help besides the light of nature. While the gilded monument displays in brightest colors the vanity of pomp, and the emptiness of nominal greatness, the biographical page, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... of 1614 the "Restless" was launched. Immediately Captain Block entered upon an exploring tour through what is now called the East River. He gave the whole river the name of the Hellegat, from a branch of the river Scheldt in East Flanders. The unpropitious name still adheres to the tumultuous point of whirling eddies where the waters of the sound unite with those of ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... It was an unpropitious hour at which to return to office. There were troubles in Egypt; there was impending war in the Soudan and in South Africa. There was something very like an agrarian revolution going on in Ireland; and the Home Rule ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... borrow their shapes when on their mysterious expeditions. I was once told, that Lord Cochrane was accompanied by a favourite black cat in a cruise through the northern seas. The weather had been most unpropitious; no day had passed without some untoward circumstance, and the sailors were not slow in attributing the whole to the influence of the black cat on board. This came to Lord Cochrane's ears, and knowing ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... rascal, scoundrel, profligate, knavish, naughty, malevolent, malicious, unrighteous, degrading, dissolute, libertine, hardened, wanton; injurious, prejudicial, pernicious, detrimental, baneful, unwholesome, baleful, deleterious, mischievous, noisome, malign, malignant, noxious, unpropitious, disadvantageous; offensive, serious, grave, severe, mortal; defective, imperfect, incompetent, inferior; untoward, depressing, unwelcome, adverse, grievous, unfavorable, inauspicious; infertile, inarable; barren, unproductive, worthless; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... unfriendly eye the perspective of our growing greatness. In a review of these transactions we may trace some of the causes which would be likely to embroil the States with each other, if it should be their unpropitious destiny to become disunited. The competitions of commerce would be another fruitful source of contention. The States less favorably circumstanced would be desirous of escaping from the disadvantages ...
— The Federalist Papers
... has divided the spoil. It would be no difficult matter to prove, by reviewing the history of the Union under this Constitution, that almost everything which has contributed to the honor and welfare of the nation has been accomplished in despite of them or forced upon them, and that everything unpropitious and dishonorable, including the blunders and follies of their adversaries, may be traced to them. I have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it to be all that could be effected under the present Constitution, and from extreme unwillingness to put the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... numbers of American vessels protected by licenses, and the fewness of the American ships of war, may have indisposed the admiral and his officers to watch very closely an inhospitable shore, at a season unpropitious to active operations. Besides, as appears from letters already quoted, the commander-in-chief's personal predilection was more for the defensive than the offensive; to protect British trade by cruisers patrolling its routes, rather than by preventing egress ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... unpropitious to the buttered-toast question, and it had quite slipped out of my mind. I have never traced the string of associations which reminded me of it, on one certain morning. Once more I made bold to ask if I could have buttered toast. "Impossible," said the waiter, curtly. I was piqued. "How ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... aid us!" cried the son of Minerva, "Venus is unpropitious to-night. All my trouble is vain." For when the black storm broke upon the little channel islet, Alaric Hobbs saw no way of a comfortable return to the Royal Victoria at St. Heliers. "I might leave all here and claim old Fraser's hospitality for a night. No one can get up to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... prevented her from making it in eighteen days less, for she was then in sight of the harbour's mouth, when an unpropitious gale of wind blew her off. Otherwise she would have reached us one day sooner than the 'Lady Juliana'. It is a curious circumstance, that these two ships had sailed together from the river Thames, one bound to Port Jackson, and the other bound to Jamaica. The Justinian ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... for the Fourth of July; but when the club met, things were found to be unpropitious. Thorny had gone out of town with his sister to pass the day, two of the best players did not appear, and the others were somewhat exhausted by the festivities, which began at sunrise for them. So they lay about on the grass in the shade of the big elm, languidly ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the Mgussa's familiar motioned the Kamraviona and several officers to draw around him, when, in a very low tone, he gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations seemed unpropitious, for we immediately repaired to our boats and returned to our quarters. Here we no sooner arrived than a host of Wakungu, lately returned from the Unyoro war, came to pay their respects to the king: they had returned six days or more, but etiquette had forbidden ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... appearance of a fool's bauble. They lead an easy life. When they take a fancy to a house, they settle down near the gate, and the owner has to support them as long as the whim takes them to stay there. To use force against a dervish would be looked upon as an exceedingly unpropitious affair to the true believer. Then, too, I have little doubt but that they are capable of making good use of their steel bodkins. Why my dervish wished to give up his easy-going profession and take over the charge of my horses ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... somewhat unpropitious commencement, and in 1774 the Court are found writing to Madras, to which Balambangan was subordinate, complaining of the "imprudent management and profuse conduct" of ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... recruit their crews here. Is it because surrounding nature is so bountiful, so lovely, so prolific in spontaneous food, that these, her children, are lazy, dirty, and heedless? Does it require a cold, unpropitious climate, a sterile soil and rude surroundings, to awaken human energy and put man at his best? There is compensation always. With luxury comes enervation, effort is superfluous; while with frugality and labor we have strength, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... wrought reputed miracles in Brazil, and gathered the tribes of Paraguay beneath their paternal sway. And now, with the aid of the Virgin and her votary at court, they would build another empire among the tribes of New France. The omens were sinister and the outset was unpropitious. The Society was destined to reap few laurels from the brief apostleship of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... most unpropitious, for an hour's delay might cost a kingdom; Esmond had nothing for it but to hasten to the "King's Arms," and tell the gentlemen there assembled that Mr. George (as we called the Prince there) was not at home, but that Esmond ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... chastise men, Where'er she moved was death. There was a flash Of scorn that lighted up her fiery eye, A glance of wrath upon her countenance— There was a terror in her frenzied arm That struck dismay into the boldest heart. Alas for her, Fortune was unpropitious! Her fearless valor found an overmatch In the experienced prudence of Aurelian; And scarcely could the desert's hardy sons Cope with the practiced legions of the empire. The battle gained, Palmyra taken, sacked— Its queen a captive, hurled from off a throne, Stripped of her wide possessions, forced ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... destination was invariably some wild spot, unfrequented—possibly even unknown—alike by painter and tourist. And there—if undisturbed—he would remain, diligently working all day in the open air during favourable weather; and, when the elements were unpropitious for work, taking long walks over solitary heaths and desolate mountain sides, or along the lonely shore. And when the first snows of winter came, reminding him that it was time to turn his face homeward once more, he would pack ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... had said, to make acquaintance with Carew of Crompton, and possible even to become his bosom friend at a short notice, for his friendships, all made in wine, at play, or in the hunting-field, were soon cemented; but then, if the introduction was effected in an unpropitious time or manner, it was like enough to end in affront or downright insult. A gulf might be fixed just where you wanted a causeway, and of this—though he had feigned to inquire about it so innocently of the honest park-keeper—Richard ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... hear the very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach, now once more preaching; I know well, that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. This long ago the ancient pagans knew And therefore of their own accord they offered To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities And human sacrifices bled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Holland—and the islands of St. Francis and St. Peter. Certainly Captain Baudin, in order to render this hydrographical survey complete, should have followed out his instructions, and penetrated beyond St. Peter and St. Francis Islands. The weather, however, was too unpropitious, and this exploration was reserved ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... however fair, that has not some drawback or other. There are no hopes, however promising, that may not be blighted; no prospects, however encouraging, that may not wither. Unfitness for the new field of enterprise on which a man may enter—unpropitious seasons, the designs of others, or unforeseen misfortunes; one or more of these may combine to bring about results very opposite from those we had anticipated. I would not therefore take upon myself the responsibility of giving advice, but enter upon a general description ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... hunger, to see my children deprived of bread, to permit me to stain my whole existence with a crime? The child is gone to Heaven. Aye! there her sinlessness and innocence might give her a welcome, and she may be happy, but the blank left in my heart, the darkness of my mind, the cheerless and unpropitious future that unveils itself before my aching eyes, can never be obliterated until I am laid in the grave beside her, and my spirit has winged its flight to the home where ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... this dismal, chilly November night that little Dino found himself in one of the suburban towns of Boston, where some young ladies were holding a little sale for the benefit of a Home for Orphan Children in their neighborhood. The day being so unpropitious, visitors had been few and sales very slow. The young people, with rueful faces, were talking in the twilight of their disappointed hopes, and wondering if the evening would bring customers for the little articles they had spent all their leisure summer hours upon, in the hope ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... more in the evening. Stayed at home all day. Indeed, the weather—sleety, rainy, stormy—forms no tempting prospect. Bogie, too, who sees his flourish going to wreck, is looking as spiteful as an angry fiend towards the unpropitious heavens. So I made a day of work ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... said King, also in English. The Prince looked glum, but interposed no imperial objection. Instead he suddenly shoved the cigarette box under the nose of his dainty relative, who at that unpropitious instant stooped over to watch King's awkward attempt to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... long, shimmering lances of light, in which the mighty stream, gray, mysterious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging onward with majestic sweep. Upon its bosom we are to be borne for a thousand miles. Our introduction has been unpropitious; it is to be hoped that on further acquaintance we may be better pleased with La ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... importance than the 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 is ripe, the ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... has been equally unpropitious to the love-lorn Phoebe Wilkins. I fear the reader will be impatient at having this humble amour so often alluded to; but I confess I am apt to take a great interest in the love troubles of simple girls of this class. Few people have an idea of the world of care and perplexity ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... your eloquence and patriotism, as I sympathize with your unpropitious gallantry. May Venus make happy your next ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... conspicuous for kindliness of heart, or intellectually distinguished in any walk of life? I should be glad to know his name. A sorry crew! Not because they drink water, but because the state of mind which makes them dread alcohol is unpropitious to the hatching of any generous idea. WHEN MEN HAVE WELL DRUNK. I like that phrase. WHEN MEN HAVE WELL DRUNK. I am inclined to think that the Aramaic text has not been tampered with at this point. What do you ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Nash can lay no claim. His one conspicuous dramatic effort is 'Summer's Last Will and Testament.' Nash wrote for bare existence—to use his own words, 'contending with the cold, and conversing with scarcity.' Nash lived in an unpropitious age. A recent French writer has placed him in the foremost rank of English writers. Dr. Jusserand, the author referred to, in his accounts of the English novel in the time of Shakespeare, tells us Nash was the most successful exponent in England of the picturesque novel. The picturesque ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the side of the Grecians, and the moon for the Persians; and that this planet was never in an eclipse, but it threatened them with some mighty disaster: of this they quoted several ancient examples among the kings of Persia, who, after an eclipse, had always found their gods unpropitious in the day of battle. "Nothing," says Quintus Curtius,[125] "is so effectual as superstition for keeping the vulgar under. Be they ever so unruly and inconstant, if once their minds are possessed with the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... would perhaps have been, if he had been instrumental in producing, as well as in communicating the tidings of her death. Propitious to us, the friends of Pleyel, to whom has thereby been secured the enjoyment of his society; and not unpropitious to himself; for though this object of his love be snatched away, is there not another who is able and willing to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... seen him before, and wondered that he had not reminded her of it; but perhaps he had forgotten too? She soon let go that reminiscence, and with a light heart, in anticipation of the future which had appeared in the distance so unpropitious, she talked of it to madame with a thousand random speculations, until madame was tired of the subject. And then she talked of it to Babette, who having no private disappointments in connection therewith, proved ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... through the Thousand Islands, which sounds very romantic, but turned out rather a failure. There are in reality about 1,400 of these islands, where the river St. Lawrence issues from Lake Ontario. The morning was unpropitious, it being very rainy, and this, no doubt, helped to give them a dismal appearance. They are of all forms and sizes, some three miles long, and some hardly appearing above the water. The disappointment to us was their flatness, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... than Patrick Henry's ascendency became apparent. His sway over that body was such that it was described as "omnipotent." And by the time the session had been in progress not quite a month, Washington informed Madison that "the accounts from Richmond" were "very unpropitious to federal measures." "In one word," he added, "it is said that the edicts of Mr. H. are enregistered with less opposition in the Virginia Assembly than those of the grand monarch by his parliaments. He has only to say, Let this ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... pick from the hand of an astonished Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he still kept on his way, a quarter of a mile beyond the shaft. Here he stopped before a jagged hole in the hillside. Bared to the sky and air, the very openness of its abandonment, its unpropitious position, and distance from the strike in Mulrady's shaft had no doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... himself away for nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself—let alone with me—in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not inspired himself from a cause superior to human interests, where then would he have drawn the constancy and the strength of soul to support what he was obliged to the end to endure and to submit to; that is to say, the unpropitious advice of the learned people, the repulses of princes, the tempests of the furious ocean, the continual watches, during which he more than once risked ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... took the opportunity of renewing his addresses to Agnes. He could hardly have chosen a more unpropitious time for pleading his cause with her. The gaieties of Paris (quite incomprehensibly to herself as well as to everyone about her) had a depressing effect on her spirits. She had no illness to complain of; she shared willingly in the ever-varying succession of ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... first page. It is a great trial of patience, but be patient, that is, wise. One must never allow the toilsome labor of years of quiet reflection and of utmost exertion for the attainment of one's aim to be destroyed by an unpropitious event. It is most probable, and also the best for you, that the affair should not now be hurried through. Your claims are stronger every quarter, and will certainly become more so in the eyes of the English through good temper and patience under trying circumstances. I ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... their unpropitious journey—the exposure to cold and rain—that he had hurried on the invalids, till he had accomplished his own purposes. One had already gone; the other was fast following. Speculators have consciences and affections, and ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... coastal blacks of North Queensland had no knowledge of the use of barbed hooks is misleading. In sheer desperation, when the supply of pearl-shell hooks was exhausted, they were wont to attach bait to their harpoon-points, and they used such unpropitious means successfully, and occasionally made a miniature hook by tying a sharp spur to a thin, straight stick. Recent proof has been obtained of the use of the lorum of one of the creeping palms, from which all ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Ch'i can expect to give law to the princes of the kingdom. These barbarians have nothing to do with our Great Flowery land. Such vassals may not interfere with our covenant. Weapons are out of place at such a meeting. As before the spirits, such conduct is unpropitious. In point of virtue, it is contrary to right. As between man and man, it is not polite.' The duke of Ch'i ordered the disturbers off, but Confucius withdrew, carrying the duke of Lu with him. The business proceeded, notwithstanding, and when the words of the alliance were being read on the part ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... as 'one of the best imitators of Johnson's voice and manner' only increased the ardour of Boswell for the meeting. Now the hour was come and the man. Yet surely never could there have been a more apparently unpropitious time chosen. Number 45 of the North Briton denouncing Bute and his Scotch favourites had appeared on April 23rd. The minister had bowed to the storm and resigned, while the writer of the libel had been arrested under a general warrant and discharged on the 30th of the month under appeal, either ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... zealous to do their duty in this instance," and he offered to subscribe "twenty pounds per annum towards so good an object." "Minimus," another writer to the same paper, with reference to missionary enterprise, says:—"The soil which it is proposed to cultivate is remarkably barren and unpropitious; of course, a plentiful harvest must not be soon expected;" and finishes his letter by saying, "Let us arise and build; let us begin; there is no fear of progress and help." "H.," a clergyman, writes again ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the Priory to meet Angela, to whom it was now a comfort and pleasure to talk of her treasure, so much less lost to her than in the uncongenial surroundings threatened at Coalham. And the invitation, followed by the proposal, came at a not unpropitious moment. A railway company, after much surveying, much disputing, and many heartburnings, were actually obtaining an Act of Parliament, empowering it to lay its cruel hands upon the Goyle, running its viaducts down the ravine of Arnscombe, and destroy all the peace and privacy! ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... under a sense of injury which was annoyingly indefinite. It was true that Jack Meredith had come at a very unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could only have been the result of accident. It was really a case of the third person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms. Durnovo had vaguely felt in the presence ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... liberty and life—she had become wholly insensible to the peril environing her, and almost unconscious of any other presence save that of Richard, now her avowed lover; for, impelled by the irresistible violence of his feelings, the young man had chosen that moment, apparently so unpropitious, and so fraught with danger and alarm, for the declaration of his passion, and the offer of his life in her service. A few low-murmured words were all Alizon could utter in reply, but they were enough. They told Richard his passion was requited, and his devotion fully appreciated. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in proportion to its own magnitude as those of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn in proportion to their magnitude, they could be descried by any human observer. The patient, persevering, reverent temper of Herschel took no account, however, of any discouraging or unpropitious circumstances. What he did was to substitute for telescopes of the ordinary construction the new and gigantic forty-foot tube already described; and, thus, with unremitting vigilance and intense zeal, he arrived at the discovery (between January 4, 1787, and February 28, 1794) of ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... It was an unpropitious moment for any one to address Royal; therefore, when he heard himself spoken to, he whirled with a scowl upon his face. A tall French-Canadian, just back ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... into the house for something after starting on a journey is unpropitious. To have it brought out is all ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... an unpropitious moment, for the colonel was in a cold fury, and the object of his wrath was Crewe, who sat with folded arms and tense face, looking down at ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... timely broadside saved the English commander-in-chiefs ship from an early defeat. It took the crew of le Pluton, her new adversary, by surprise; for they had not been able to distinguish the precise position of their enemy; and, besides doing vast injury to both hull and people, drew her fire at an unpropitious moment. So uncertain and hasty, indeed, was the discharge the French ship gave in return, that no small portion of the contents of her guns passed ahead of the Plantagenet, and went into the larboard quarter of le Temeraire, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... talents. It forms a class of men, shrewd, vigilant, inventive; of men whose dexterity triumphs over the most perplexing combinations of circumstances, whose presaging instinct no sign of the times can elude. But it is an unpropitious season for the firm and masculine virtues. The statesman who enters on his career at such a time, can form no permanent connections, can make no accurate observations on the higher parts of political science. Before ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there one of those eternal passions which I have sometimes known, by great accident, last three months, I can tell you that without great attention, infinite politeness, and engaging air and manners, the omens will be sinister, and the goddess unpropitious. Pray tell me what are the amusements of those assemblies? Are they little commercial play, are they music, are they 'la belle conversation', or are they all three? 'Y file-t-on le parfait amour? Y debite-t-on les beaux sentimens? Ou est-ce yu'on y parle Epigramme? And pray which is your department? ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was rather a large woman, of middle age, with a high forehead unruffled by thought, and a clear skin unmarred by wrinkles. She had a cheerfulness that obtruded itself, like a creditor, at unpropitious moments; and her voice, though not displeasing, gave the impression that it might become volcanic at any moment. She also possessed a considerable theatrical instinct, with which she would frequently manoeuvre to the centre of the stage, to find, as often as not, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... now summoned several of the king's officers to draw round him, and then, in a low voice, gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations appeared to have been unpropitious, for the party immediately repaired to their boats and returned to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... not for one, situated, through his original errors and a fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark (if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who now takes up the pen to address you—it is not, I repeat, for one so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of congratulation. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... house, but day by day her riches wane and her house contracts. She explains to her visitor that her condition at any given hour affects the whole lives of all children born at that time, and that he had come into the world at a most unpropitious moment; and she advises him to take his niece Militsa (who had been born at a lucky time) to live in his house, and to call all he might acquire her property. This advice he follows, and all goes well with him. One day, as he is gazing at a splendid field of ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... not to betray any agitation, she could not help it that her tone was unusually high and hard, and her mother felt sure that something unpropitious ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... handicapped here by the scarcity of ferocious game, I was more fortunate in another enthusiasm which attacked me at almost the same time. For however unpropitious the hunting is on any given part of the earth's surface, there is everywhere and always an abundance of good hidden-treasure-seeking to be had. The garden, the attic, the tennis lawn all suffered. And my initiative was strengthened by the discovery of ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... particularly unpropitious to definers; for though perhaps they might properly have contented themselves, with declaring it to be such a dramatick representation of human life, as may excite mirth, they have embarrassed their definition with the means by which the comick writers attain ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... those parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of God."[D] This expedition left the shores of England, December 19, 1606, and, after a protracted voyage, occasioned by unpropitious winds, which kept them in sight of home for more than "six weeks," reached the capes of Virginia. The southern cape was christened "Henry," and the northern, "Charles," after the King's sons. This was on the 26th day of April, 1607. Accompanying this expedition was ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... voice ere this, and compulsory observation had forced on me a theory as to what it boded. Three times in the course of my life, events had taught me that these strange accents in the storm—this restless, hopeless cry—denote a coming state of the atmosphere unpropitious to life. Epidemic diseases, I believed, were often heralded by a gasping, sobbing, tormented, long-lamenting east wind. Hence, I inferred, arose the legend of the Banshee. I fancied, too, I had noticed—but was not philosopher enough to know whether there ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... solid psychological advantage. The success of Buddhism in China was due to the fact that it presented religious emotion and speculation in the best form known there, and when it began to spread the intellectual soil was not unpropitious. The higher Taoist philosophy had made familiar the ideas of quietism and the contemplative life: the age was unsettled, harassed alike by foreign invasion and civil strife. In such times when even active natures tire ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... three men spoke or stirred, but in that time the steady blue eyes of the countryman took in the details of the scene—the luxurious furnishings, the condition of the two men—with the rapidity and minuteness of a sensitized plate. Ironic chance had chosen an unpropitious night for his call. Intoxication surrounding a bar, under the stimulus of numbers, and preceding or following some exciting event, he could understand, could, perhaps, condone; but this solitary dissipation, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... is one of those laughable absurdities that we would gladly see banished in this enlightened age. Truly, there are many things in which our wisdom does not exceed the wisdom of our forefathers. The weather during the two first days of the exhibition was very unpropitious; a succession of drenching thunder showers, succeeded by warm bursts of sunshine, promising better things, and giving rise to hopes in the expectant visitants to the show, which were as often doomed to be disappointed by returns of blackness, ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... over sacrificing and consulting the flame or the entrails; for no reversal or respite of their sufferings had followed their most assiduous acts of deprecation. Moreover the omens were generally considered by the priests to have been unpropitious or adverse. A sheep had been discovered to have, instead of a liver, something very like a gizzard; a sow had chewed and swallowed the flowers with which it had been embellished for the sacrifice; and a calf, after receiving the fatal blow, instead of ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne—who did not notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace girl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment implied therein ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this visit to Munich was, in one respect, most unpropitious; and, for a young artist, unsupported by powerful moral protection, the visit itself might well have proved extremely unpleasant. It was impossible to sing at Court, for the reigning spirit in the household of King Ludwig I was the notorious Lola ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... that our unavailing exertions to accomplish a cordial good understanding on this interest will not have an unpropitious effect upon the other great topics of discussion between the two Governments. Our northeastern and northwestern boundaries are still unadjusted. The commissioners under the seventh article of the treaty of Ghent have nearly come to the close of their labors; nor can we renounce ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day late in May—a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting, foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore. As he rode through Long-Ash ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the Walloon provinces and its shameful infraction by Parma in the immediate recal of large masses of Spanish and Italian troops, showed too plainly the value of all solemn stipulations with his Catholic Majesty. Moreover, the time was unpropitious. It was idle to look, after what had recently occurred, for even fair promises. It was madness then to incur the enmity of two such powers at once. The French could do the Netherlands more harm as enemies than the Spaniards. The Spaniards would be more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... field-day against the bears and boars in the forest, with a couple of hundred peasants as beaters, had been arranged by the Natchalnik for his guest's amusement; but their plans were frustrated by the unpropitious state of the weather; and as soon as it became favourable, we find Mr Paton again in motion, ascending the eastern branch of the Morava to Alexinate, the quarantine station on the Bulgarian frontier, where the British govermnent has established a konak or residence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... a very few exceptions, he has found them candid and liberal; prompt to discover merit, and just in applauding it. If there have been exceptions, he has also generally been able to trace their cause to the unpropitious coincidence of narrow circumstances, a defective education, and poverty of intellect. Is it then surprising, that in the hands of such a triumvirate the art should be degraded to an imposture, to the trick of a juggler? but it surely would be a cause of wonder, if, with such leprous ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... is typified by a marriage which the prophet contracted at the command of the Lord; the apostasy of the people, and especially of the ten tribes, to whom the prophet was sent in the first instance, is typified by the adultery of the wife, by the divine punishment, and the unpropitious names which he gives to the children born by the adulterous wife. In chap. ii. 1-3, there follows the announcement of salvation more directly, and only with a simple ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk, scarcely analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the spot where their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically to enjoy the unpropitious elements arrayed against a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes. And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a fete at once of farewell and in honour of his daughter's betrothal to the Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious a season was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he might mark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the new ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... style? Who doubts you? Let me tell you, then, a little fragment of my experience. We saw this group of statuary the last thing before dinner, after a most fatiguing forenoon of sightseeing, when we were both tired and hungry,—a most unpropitious time, certainly,—and yet it enchanted our whole company; what is more, it made us all cry—a fact of which I am not ashamed, yet. But, only the next day, when I was expressing my admiration to an artist, who is one of the authorities, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... completed, and is one of the most important features of the Park. It is worthy to rank as a feat of engineering skill with, any of the great works of modern times. The Commissioners decided to put its powers to the test yesterday afternoon, but owing to the unpropitious weather of the forenoon the trial was postponed. Nevertheless, Commissioners Stranahan, Fiske, and Haynes, with Mr. Martin, engineer in charge, and Mr. John Y. Culyer, his assistant, were at the well. During the last summer ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... books especially, which I had been borrowing; but about my child I feel anxious lest I should not take what is necessary for his health and comfort on so long a voyage, where omissions are irreparable. The unpropitious, rainy weather delays us now from day to day, as our ship; the Elizabeth,—(look out for news of shipwreck!) cannot finish taking in her cargo till come one ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... court with frantic haste Oppression's rushing woes?— Oft have our sires the work of war delay'd, 'Till signs aerial promised heavenly aid; Oft pitch'd their idle lances in the plain, While south-winds held their unpropitious reign. Remember too the word disclosed from high, The sacred word of ancient prophecy,— "When gather'd mists from Denmark's sky shall crowd, And blot the North with one continued cloud, Then shall a second sun to Sweden rise, And with unchanging glory gild her skies." ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... hundred Russian premieres danseuses and thousands of coryphees of all grades congregated in the Metropolis, many of them without engagements, and reduced to giving dancing lessons to the daughters of profiteers, Crypto-Semites and other unpropitious persons. The organisation of a Russian Ballet train would therefore serve the double purpose of freeing these gifted performers from an ignoble use of their talents and at the same time initiating the provinces in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... morning, when things were clearer in his consciousness, he assumed that her enterprising, calculating mother had inspired the gift. For it seemed to be apropos of nothing in particular at this unpropitious time, although he had made Elsa little presents during the fall and early winter. It was evident that the family, after the arrival of the mirific Jim Deming, had grown somewhat accustomed to Americans and had at length struck ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... fetters. This lackey takes a healthy enough view of the matter, for all his cynicisms. You must not take it too tragically. You have passed through your heart crisis—it comes to most of us—only with you it has happened late, and under unpropitious circumstances. That has tended to make it more severe than is usually the case. But now, let it be past and over, though naturally it will take some little time for your mind to regain its normal balance. What I regret most in the affair is, that ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... elbow a man in no very respectable attire, so far as the obscurity would allow him to judge, but half muffled up in a cloak, and armed with a stout bludgeon. Much as he had just now been wishing for some guide, he yet could not congratulate himself on so unpropitious a rencontre. The stranger's dress and unceremonious greeting were not more suspicious than the abruptness of his appearance: for Bertram felt convinced that he must have way-laid him. Assuming however as much composure as he could, he ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... in mid-August, not cold for the time of year. I had been laid up for a few days, and my back was unpropitious, and I was tired. But I felt very happy, for so bad a man, since the sunshine was clear and genial, and my pipe went ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... been found insoluble, and will probably remain unsolved till the mystery of God contained in them shall have been fulfilled. One thing, however, they clearly reveal to us: that the future triumph of God's kingdom is certain, and that all the great movements in the history of the nations, however unpropitious they may seem at the time, are parts of the mighty plan of divine providence which shall end in making the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... when Mrs. Falconer was exasperated by Georgiana's ingratitude, that her son Buckhurst was obliged to come to London after his marriage, to settle with his creditors. His bride insisted upon accompanying him, and chose this unpropitious time for being introduced to his family. And such a bride! Mrs. Buckhurst Falconer! Such an introduction! Such a reception! His mother cold and civil, merely from policy to prevent their family-quarrels from becoming ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... harshly with thee, O Hotep; for thou hast struggled desperately against an unwilling soil and unpropitious seasons. But thou knowest all my affairs are in the hands of Zaphnath, without whom I do nothing. Therefore go thou before him and do even as he ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... waters of the river, the blue sky and fair sunlight, the bright and beautiful of the scene around them, those two saw and tasted; with hopeful though very grave hearts. The other poor lady saw nothing but a dirty steamboat and a very unpropitious company. Among these however were Eleanor's fellow-voyagers, Mr. Amos and his wife; and she was introduced to them now for the first time. Various circumstances had prevented their ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... perseverance, "his favourite plan for the separation of the western people from the Union," and he continued to do so, subsequent to the ratification of the treaty between the United States and Spain. The report made by Power, the Baron's agent, of the dispositions of the western people, was altogether unpropitious to his design. He, however, delayed the delivery of the posts, to which the United States were entitled, under various pretences; still having the separation in view. His proceedings to effect this object are detailed, and will be read with interest. It is needless to say, that ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of Windover, but he thought it was probably very good for her, part of the experience which should mould the citizen. Gerda shrank from no experience. At the corner of Bouverie Street they met a painted girl out for hire, strayed for some reason into this unpropitious locality. For the moment Gerda had fallen behind and Barry seemed alone. The girl stopped in his path, looked up in his face enquiringly, and he pushed his way, not urgently, past her. The next moment Gerda's ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... to release combatants. Sue freed the two, and took from Ikey's pocket a square of cotton once white, but now characteristically gray, and strangely heavy. "Here, put up that poor face," she comforted. But at this unpropitious moment, the handkerchief, clear of the pocket, sagged with its holdings and deposited upon the carpet several yellowish, black-spotted cubes. "Dice!" exclaimed Sue, horrified. "Dice!—Ikey Einstein, ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... all, she had contemplated the subject in all its bearings, and had deliberately decided that Ivy was to go to school. The consent of the senior partner of the firm was a secondary matter, which time and judicious management would infallibly secure. Consequently, notwithstanding the unpropitious result of their first colloquy, she the next day commenced preparations for Ivy's departure, as unhesitatingly, as calmly, as assiduously, as if the day of that departure had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for at that time he had the makings of a voluminous letter-writer. Yet it was only what one might expect. The whole world was unpropitious—obdurate indeed.... A splendid isolation ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... affections are wounded, as jealousy, love unrequited, friendship betrayed and the like. As, in despair from remorse, the whole life seems to be involved in one action: so in the despair we are now considering, the whole life appears to be shut up in the one unpropitious affection. Yet human nature, if fairly treated, is too large a thing to be suppressed into despair by one affection, however potent. We might imagine that if there were anything that would rob life of its strength and favour, it is domestic unhappiness. And yet how numerous is ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... circumstances should be so unpropitious, Madame Theodore nevertheless ventured to ask for the loan of twenty sons; and this brought her sister's despair and confusion to a climax. "I really haven't a centime in the house," said she, "just now I borrowed ten sous for the children from the servant. I had ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high table-lands of Central Asia, in or near Bactria, east of the Caspian Sea, and north and west of the Himalaya Mountains. This country was so cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was difficult to support life. But the people, inured to hardship and privation, were bold, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... impressively strikes the mind. As that was the time out of which all that is great and good in England and America has proceeded, in letters and in arms, in religion and in politics, we can easily understand how vast must have been the change, had not the winds of the North been so unpropitious to the purposes of the King ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... these secret agents were, unknown to the king, all devoted to the parliaments, and consequently inimical to courtiers, favorites, and especially mistresses. God knows how they disposed of us! By these unpropitious channels the king had learnt all the hatred which was borne to madame de Pompadour. He was afraid of exciting the discontent of the people by announcing another mistress, and was no less intimidated at the severity of madame Louise, and the ill-humor of his other children. He loved his ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Park, enjoying to the full the keen, fresh odors of the Spring,—odors that even in London cannot altogether lose their sweetness, so long as hyacinths and violets consent to bloom, and almond-trees to flower, beneath the too often unpropitious murkiness of city skies. It had been raining, but now the clouds had rolled off, and the sun shone as brightly as it ever CAN shine on the English capital, sending sparkles of gold among the still wet foliage, and reviving the little crocuses, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... haunted by strange and fearsome insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust down between the cracks in the worn floor. But those boys were satisfied that they were having a perfectly blissful time, and were serenely happy in defiance of unpropitious surroundings. They were 'playing the wag,' and to be playing the wag under any circumstances is a guarantee of pure felicity to the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... not the least hope of seeing New York and a Cunarder; not with such an unpropitious start as that. With an exit like Euston one never doubts sure direction, and arrival at the precise spot at the exact moment. You feel there it was arranged for in Genesis. The officials cannot alter affairs. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... stood, at the bottom of the steps, confounded at such strange and unexpected treatment. I could not withdraw till my purpose was accomplished. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door, and pulled the bell. A negro came, of a very unpropitious aspect, and, opening the door, looked at me in silence. To my question, Was Mrs. Maurice to be seen? he made some answer, in a jargon which I could not understand; but his words were immediately followed by an unseen person within the house:—"Mrs. Maurice can't be seen by anybody. Come in, Cato, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... were landed and prepared for their novel life. The Indians were no longer pacific; the spirit of Wingina had diffused itself through every bosom, and the unfortunate mistake, which caused the death of a friendly savage, contributed much to the general hostility. But amid so much that was unpropitious, two events occurred to shed a faint light upon their days (August 13th). Manteo, the faithful friend of the early visitors, was baptized with the simple though solemn rites of the Christian faith, and upon him was bestowed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... much above a week after the calculations, in all the glory of the purple of Manor Cross, the new Popenjoy was born. For it was a Popenjoy. The Fates, who had for some time past been unpropitious to the house of Brotherton, now smiled; and Fortune, who had been good to the Dean throughout, remained true to him also in this. The family had a new heir, a real Popenjoy; and the old Marchioness when the baby was shown to her for awhile forgot her sorrows and triumphed ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the weather was unpropitious: crossing the rivers became dangerous; trees had to be cut down to form temporary bridges. These obstacles cooled the spirit of volunteers, who passed rapidly from discontent to criticism, and from criticism to despair. "Many crawled home:" such was the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... know as well as I do that he used to be a thoroughly insufficient, uncapacious man (though I wouldn't let anybody else say it!), putterin' over a mess of pictures that wouldn't sell for a nickel. An' that he used to run from anything an' everything that was unpropitious an' disagreeable, like he was bein' chased. Well, then you was took ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... with them hogs, fowls, dogs, and several edible roots. To the present day are the first footsteps of man on this land to be seen. Rono was at that time absent, catching fish on the northern islands for his wife. The fire-god, his subject, unpropitious to man, taking advantage of this circumstance, made an effort to repulse the new-comers. He approached them with terrible gestures, and asked whence they came. They answered—"We come from a country which abounds in hogs, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy—could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... with copper and an old chest of drawers, loading. His success at Faro had awakened a host of creditors; but, unless his bank had swelled to the size of the Bank of England, it could not have yielded a half-penny apiece for each. Epsom too had been unpropitious; and one creditor had actually seized and carried off Fox's goods, which did not seem worth removing. Yet, shortly after this, whom should Walpole find sauntering by his own door but Fox, who came up and talked to him at the coach window, on the Marriage Bill, with ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) 133; too late for; premature &c. (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was to winter in Castile. But he stood alone in the council of war; and, indeed it is not easy to understand how the Allies could have maintained themselves, through so unpropitious a season, in the midst of so hostile a population. Charles, whose personal safety was the first object of the generals, was sent with an escort of cavalry to Catalonia in November; and in December the army commenced its ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... figure the side of which is five, subtracting one from each square or two perfect squares from all, and adding a hundred cubes of three. This entire number is geometrical and contains the rule or law of generation. When this law is neglected marriages will be unpropitious; the inferior offspring who are then born will in time become the rulers; the State will decline, and education fall into decay; gymnastic will be preferred to music, and the gold and silver and brass and iron will form a chaotic mass—thus division will arise. Such is the Muses' ...
— The Republic • Plato
... of this heroic sacrifice, the gods were unpropitious. They chaffed the poet in polished Yiddish throughout the first two acts. There was only a sprinkling of audience (most of it paper) in the dimly-lit hall, for the fame of the great writer had not spread from Berlin, Mogadore, Constantinople and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... his sagacity credit, that his footing in this quarter was only to be obtained by unusually slow and cautious means. Still, Mr. Bragg was a man of great decision, and, in his way, of very far-sighted views; and, singular as it may seem, at that unpropitious moment, he mentally determined that, at no very distant day, he would make Miss Eve Effingham ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... rudeness. Great allowance, however, ought to be made for the Princess's occasional bluntness when it is remembered that she was then in her sixty-fourth year, suffering from rheumatism and a painful affection of one of her eyes, a condition altogether very unpropitious in which to commence the career of arms in the capacity of field-marshal to a youthful Queen. Notwithstanding all this, however, she exerted herself to enliven everybody, to console, to inspire fortitude and a spirit of joyousness around her, never to ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Miss Wharton sticks fast in my heart; and, I assure you, I could hardly persuade myself even to appear unfaithful to her. O Eliza! accuse me not of infidelity; for your image is my constant companion. A thousand times have I cursed the unpropitious stars which withheld from her a fortune. That would have enabled me to marry her; and with her even ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons contending ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the Amendment, it would not be binding on any State whose interest was affected by it, if that State protested against it!" And beyond all this, he re-echoed the old, old cry of the Border-state men, that "the time is unpropitious for such ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Go-Daigo was not to be moved from his purpose. He gave Yoshisada fair words indeed: "I profoundly praise your loyal services. My wish is to pacify the country by the assistance of your family, but heaven has not yet vouchsafed its aid. Our troops are worn out and the hour is unpropitious. Therefore, I make peace for the moment and bide my time. Do you repair to Echizen and use your best endeavours to promote the cause of the restoration. Lest you be called a rebel after my return to Kyoto, I order the Crown ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... angler or the sketcher is chilled by the east wind, whirling showers of hail, and even when the riverbanks are sweet with primroses, the bluff tops of the border hills are often bleak with late snow. This state of things is less unpropitious to angling than might be expected. A hardy race of trout will sometimes rise freely to the artificial fly when the natural fly is destroyed, and the angler is almost blinded with dusty snowflakes. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... wealthy yeoman, who resided at Heatherwick (now Stanke), about a mile from Harewood; and who, successful in the cultivation of his paternal acres, sought to extend his interests by renting the farm of Sandygate. His removal was however unpropitious to his domestic happiness; for entering the new house before it was fully fit for occupation, his wife, already in a delicate state of health, took cold and died; leaving him with four children, the eldest of whom was six years old, and the youngest but an infant. Mr. S. is said to have ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... had slept at Perigny, about a league from the capital of Burgundy, so as to make the last stage of his journey thither in leisurely state. Unpropitious weather on Saturday, January 22d, the appointed day, made postponement of the ducal parade necessary, out of consideration for the precious hangings and costly ecclesiastical robes that were to grace the ceremonies of reception ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... was unpropitious, heavy fogs lay on the water, dissipated occasionally by fierce outbursts of wind. The Saxon fleet kept the sea. It was well that for a time the Danish fleet did not appear in sight, for the Saxons, save the sailors, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... compassion for the fate of those to whom fortune had been so unpropitious, Catharine's husband sent all who still retained a breath of life to the hospitals and ambulances. He was just on the point of leaving this desolate spot, when, casting his eye on a heap of corpses being covered over with earth, he noticed a Polish officer of high rank, decorated with numerous ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... destinations in the U. S. S. Swatara, Captain Ralph Chandler, U. S. N., commanding. In astronomical observations all work is at the mercy of the elements. Clear weather was, of course, a necessity to success at any station. In the present case the weather was on the whole unpropitious. While there was not a complete failure at any one station, the number or value of the observations was more or less impaired at all. Where the sky was nearly cloudless, the air was thick and hazy. This was especially ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... of irritation in such troubles which adds a whole armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... pretty joust the brows of the prospective cup-bearer had knitted blackly. The scowl was unpropitious. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... of all rules of angling, in her indiscriminate enthusiasm, and "took to the water" whether the wind blew, the sun shone, or the rain fell; fishing—under the most propitious or unpropitious circumstances—was not, indeed, necessarily, catching fish, but still, fishing; and she was almost equally happy whether she did or did not catch any thing. I have known her remain all day in patient expectation of the "glorious nibble," ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... most of all was, that the Duchess and all the gentlemen did not cease drawing for a single moment, but coolly continued their occupation; so I was left to play to the chairs and tables, and the walls. My patience gave way under such unpropitious circumstances. I therefore began the Fischer variations, and after playing one half of them I rose. Then came eulogiums without end. I, however, said all that could be said—which was, that I could do ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... speak of consequences which may be produced in the revolution of ages, by corruption of morals, profligacy of manners, and listlessness in the preservation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind, nor of the successful usurpations that may be established at such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins of liberty, however providentially guarded and secured, as these are contingencies against which no human prudence can effectually provide. It will at least be a recommendation to the proposed constitution that it is provided with more checks and barriers ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing |
