"Enviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fatally stricken. It came over Gardley how suddenly old he looked, and haggard and gray! What a thing for the selfish child to have done to her father! Poor, silly child, whose fate with Forsythe would in all probability be anything but enviable! ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... enviable position for any young man. Of course there were the wiseheimers then as now, and statements were made that The Pratt Oil Company had been pushed to the wall, and would shortly have its neck wrung by John D. Rockefeller and have to start all over. But these prophets knew neither ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... from starvation. One by one the strongholds which he had seized surrendered, till finally his entire army was forced to yield, and Sweden, from her place as a weak and down-trodden Danish province, attained an enviable position among the great monarchies of Europe. The key to this marvellous transformation in the two parties can be found only in the characters of their respective leaders. The people were horrified by the brutal cruelties ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... the remarkable genius of the great man who infused courage into the English mind, there can be no question. Marlborough, in spite of his many faults, his selfishness and parsimony, his ambition and duplicity, will ever enjoy an enviable fame. He was not so great a moral hero as William, nor did he contend against such superior forces as the royal hero. But he was a great hero, nevertheless. His glory was reached by no sudden indulgence of fortune, by no fortunate movements, by no accidental circumstances. His fame ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... stood in the Reform ranks, however, he was destined to be eclipsed by his more distinguished son. It is safe to say that no public man in Canada has ever gained so enviable a reputation as attaches to the name of Robert Baldwin. As was intimated two or three pages back, he stood upon a lofty pedestal, and was a very man per se. And this high position he attained, not by means ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... came, therefore, he was not in an enviable frame of mind. He knew that hundreds of eyes would be upon him, and that he would have a very undesirable publicity. Only a few weeks before the strike he had been spoken of as a possible candidate for the town council, and he, young as he was, had rejoiced in the ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... and flags unfurled seeking, in American minds, the American way, and finding it in the thoughts of the noble,—striving against the odds of foreign birth and poverty, and winning, through the use of abundant opportunity, a place as enviable as that of any native child,—having traced the footsteps of the young immigrant almost to the college gate, the rest of the course may be left to the imagination. Let us say that from the Latin School on I lived very much as my American schoolmates lived, having overcome my foreign ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... profession. He was asked derisively what he thought of the circumstances under which the Countess had become engaged to be married; and he made the characteristic answer, that he thought the circumstances highly creditable to both parties, and that he looked on the lady's future husband as a most enviable man. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... ludi magister at Rome held a position even less enviable than that held by the grammatist at Athens. "The starveling Greek," who was glad to barter his knowledge for the certainty of a good dinner, was sneered at by many Roman writers. Many slaves were engaged in this type of instruction, bringing in fees for their ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... had sufficient cause to be excited. What usurious gossip-interest might be collected from such a capitol! Dr. Tromfszky already had an enviable reputation in the county, but what would it become when it became known that he was physician in ordinary to ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... thousands before him, that the fight which he fought, and the death which, perhaps, was in front of him, were so mean. Ophelia dies; Juliet dies, and we fancy that their fate, although terrible, is more enviable than that of a pauper who drops undramatically on London stones. He came to his lodging at the close of the third day, wet, tired, hungry, and with a headache. There was nobody to suggest anything to him or offer him anything. He went to ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... it belongs to your constitution and to your wonderful, if not perhaps quite enviable fortune. But you will easily understand that it separates us. I unconditionally ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... during the stay in Hobart to the care of those important animals. A feeling of relief spread over the whole ship's company as the last dog passed over the side, for travelling with a deck cargo of dogs is not the most enviable thing from a sailor's point of view. Especially is this the case in a sailing-vessel where room is limited, and consequently dogs ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... watch on the still that day, had planned his attack in every detail. He hoped to make his capture of the gang without unnecessary casualties, for in this particular he had achieved an enviable record, on which he prided himself. At first, he had thought of ascending along the course of Luffman's Branch, after springing the traps, but had given over the plan as one offering more chance of the raiders being discovered prematurely. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... still less than fifty, and he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of a happy, useful, and honourable life. Nevertheless, it is impossible to feel that Garfield's death was other than a noble and enviable one. He was cut off suddenly in the very moment of his brightest success, before the cares and disappointments of office had begun to dim the pleasure of his first unexpected triumph. He died a martyr to a good and honest cause, and his death-bed was cheered and alleviated by the hushed ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... of Madame Jules was a sacred plot. Herself, her husband, and her maid alone entered it. Opulence has glorious privileges, and the most enviable are those which enable the development of sentiments to their fullest extent,—fertilizing them by the accomplishment of even their caprices, and surrounding them with a brilliancy that enlarges them, with refinements that purify ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... still strongly imbued with the beauties of Oxford architecture, had looked round blankly on the great square pews and galleries, and then at the wooden pulpit, and the Ten Commandments that adorned the east end, he was not quite so sure in his mind that his position was as enviable as that of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... generally alone when I made my memoranda, I had no one to instruct me. You leave this room, and pass on—catching a glimpse of a lawn richly bedecked with flowers and shrubs—into a long and lofty room, which unites the two enviable distinctions of LIBRARY and GALLERY. Here you are bewildered for an instant: that is to say, you are divided in your attention between the admiration of the proportion and structure of the room, and the alternate captivation of books, busts, and pictures. But as you ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... were six horsemen in front and six behind; in the middle walked a prim lady wearing a long train held up by two pages, and on the train, as if it were a couch, reclined a lovely girl, for in this way do aristocratic fairies travel about. She was dressed in golden rain, but the most enviable part of her was her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat could have glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this admired effect by pricking ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... stood somewhat stiffly in that enviable situation, and the Countess instantly recovered from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reason for suppressing the real name of that officer. He was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much respected in the City. He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice. His ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... be a pity to resort to machinery simply because one did not know how to write well. I would rather set to work to correct the error. I happen to know one of our number who can write a very enviable hand. Do you know, Ried, that the letter you wrote me was the first thing which attracted me to you? I remember I showed the note to one of our senior partners, who was particularly disturbed by poor writing, and he said: 'Engage him, Roberts, do! A young man who can write like ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... pretty and agreeable; or, I should rather say, from forty-five, since the three bachelors, politically avoiding all appearance of preference, were courted equally by nearly the whole phalanx of the sisterhood. One of the enviable men, being only just of age, was indeed too young to excite hopes in the more elderly ladies, but another more fortunate, if he knew his happiness, ("sua si bona norit"), was exposed to the attacks, more or less open, of every unmarried woman. Alas! he was insensible to his privileges; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... resist Dr. Bird when he set out to make a favorable impression, and even a world's champion is apt to be flattered by the attention of one of the greatest scientists of his day, especially when that scientist has made an enviable reputation as an athlete in his college days and can talk the jargon of the champion's particular sport. Henry Ladd promptly capitulated to the charm of the doctor and allowed himself to be led away to supper at Bird's club. The supper passed off pleasantly, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... remarked, Corrie and his two companions in misfortune had been bound, and in this condition were left by the savages to their fate. Their respective positions were by no means enviable. Poor Alice lay near the edge of the cliff, with her wrists and ankles so securely tied that no effort of which she was capable could set her free. Poopy lay about ten yards further up the cliff, flat on her sable back, with her hands tied behind her, and her ankles also ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Count Herbert when, at the age of thirty-one he took up his residence in the ancient castle of his line, was a most enviable one. His marriage with Beatrix, Countess von Falkenstein, had added the lustre of a ruling family to the prestige of his own, and the renown of his valour in the East had lost nothing in transit from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... returned to meet her own. "I shall see to it that he is in no danger. You may depend upon me, who ask but the happy chance to serve you. Should there be any trouble, let me know at once, and I will see to it that all is well. Your brother must not suffer, since he is your brother. He is very blessed and enviable in that." ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... mind and body so nearly at rest, that naught interrupted my inmost repose save cloudy reminiscences of a morning "fizzle" and an afternoon "flunk," my tranquillity was sufficiently enviable.—Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... through his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell him he will wait for his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... position in a small open "rodney" in the middle of a dark, rough night in the North Atlantic was not exactly enviable, especially as the biting winter wind was freezing their clothing solid, and steadily sapping their small ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of evil that had cast its black shadow over my thoughts from the moment I crossed the threshold of this sinister hotel came over me strongly again. Indeed, my position was, to say the least, scarcely enviable. Here was I, a British officer with British papers of identity, about to be discovered in a German hotel, into which I had introduced myself under false pretences, at dead of night alone with the corpse of a German or Austrian (for such the dead ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... did not look more than twenty-nine, and was now more than resigned to the loss of the peculiar opportunities of youth—if, indeed, they could be said to be lost already. "An old maid," she would say, "who has cheerfully made up her mind to be an old maid, is one of the happiest, and, indeed, most enviable, people in all ...
— Different Girls • Various
... at the Mansion-House School who secured a sweetheart enjoyed a proud distinction, and Sammy soon found that his acquaintance with Beth placed him in quite an enviable position. He therefore let his fear of Mrs. Caldwell lapse, and did his best to be seen with Beth as much as possible. And to her it was a surprise as well as a joy to find him hanging about, waiting to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... university was an enviable one. The enthusiasm of the students for him quite reached the borderland of reverence. To get some work in Dr. Hubers' laboratory was regarded, among the scientific students, as the triumph of a whole university ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... for all but an entire century has been unhesitatingly proclaimed the favourite poet of the French nation, was by no means during his lifetime in so enviable a situation, and, notwithstanding many an instance of brilliant success, could not rest as yet in the pleasing and undisturbed possession of his fame. His merit in giving the last polish to the French language, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... I find, in spite of the early apprenticeship which I served among business friends. I have often envied men this alertness of mind, this ever-present consciousness of the obliquity of human nature. And yet, I am not certain it is an enviable quality. I have a suspicion that those who have it envy us who lack it. They seem to have for us a half-contemptuous, half-respectful liking. So with Rebecca. She patted my arm ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... our mundane delights, they do not steal pleasure quite equivalent. Besides, they cannot assist us in conferring happiness on others, or in gleaning improvement for ourselves. I am not quite certain, enviable as appears the distinction, whether the too feelingly appreciating even nature's beauties, does not bear ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a scientific background that ran from childhood experiments, to study at Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and sold science-fiction, achieving for himself an enviable reputation in the field. ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... is condemned to stand in the pillory, holding it in her arms, to be reprimanded by officials, civic and clerical, and to wear, henceforward, upon her breast, the letter "A" in scarlet. Her fate is more enviable than that of her undiscovered lover, whose vacillations of dread and despair and determination to reveal all but move Hester to deeper pity and stronger love. She is beside him when he dies in the effort to bare his bosom and show the cancerous Scarlet Letter ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... was not more strenuously engaged, he soon began to regard Sonia with a softening eye. And as Sonia herself was growing up to womanhood, or, in Mr. WATSON'S elegant phrase, "muliebrity claimed her definitely"—well, he is an enviable reader for whom the last page ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... undone,— the hour of death, followed by the day of judgment." Mr Campbell ceased speaking, and there was a pause for a minute or two in the conversation, when Mary Percival said, "What, then, my dear uncle, do you consider as the most enviable ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... we first met. He was not then what he is now, but he was handsome enough to create an excitement in town and to lift the girl he singled out into an enviable prominence. Unfortunately, I was that girl. I say unfortunately, because his good looks failed to arouse in me more than a passing admiration; and in accepting his attentions, I consulted my necessities and pride rather than the instincts of my better nature. When ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... the 'boys' as a general favourite. This enviable position he still occupies. On account of his duties as bugler requiring him to be one of the first up in the morning, and one of the last to retire at night, he sought a change of duty. He became a bandsman, then a stretcher-bearer, ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... Craig's Feudal Law. Mackenzie's Criminalls was published in 1676, and is often referred to by Lauder. Many of his contemporaries at the bar had studied like himself in the foreign schools of the Roman Civil Law, and in his reports of cases the original sources are quoted with enviable familiarity and appositeness. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... crucible of their imaginations, so that no meanness, nor the sorrow born of the knowledge of meanness in others, ever darkens their path. Men who live in a pure atmosphere of their own creation, whom the worldly-wise pity as deluded fools, but who are perhaps the only really enviable people in the world. Notable, too, were the fanatics of the Kosinski type, stern heroic figures who seem strangely out of place in our humdrum world, whose practical work often strikes us as useless when it is not harmful, yet without whom the world would settle down into deadly ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... end, was killed by a bullet; and Mouktar, having slain a host of enemies with his own hand and seen all his friends perish, himself riddled with wounds, set fire to the powder magazine, and died, leaving as inheritance for the sultan only a heap of smoking ruins. An enviable fate, if compared with that of his father and brothers, who died by the hand ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I would say, that the apiarian who has followed me attentively, and has added nothing of value to his stock of information, possesses an enviable experience that all should ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... this was one of his greatest efforts. Heller wrote: "It engenders the sweetest sadness, the most enviable torments, and if in playing it one feels oneself insensibly drawn toward mournful and melancholy ideas, it is a disposition of the soul which I prefer to all others. Alas! how I love these sombre and ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... been through the earlier schooldays. All the Vernon family were dears of the first water, and might have been specially created to meet the needs of their neighbours, the Garnetts. It is true that the Vernons possessed the enviable advantage of a big grown-up brother, but when the Garnetts felt particularly tried on this score, they sought comfort from the reflection that a brother so solemn and scholarly, so reserved and unresponsive, hardly counted as a brother at all. Dan was already in the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... salutation with a mute bow, and withdrew with drooping head and sorrowful heart. The king continued to regard him with an expression of deep sadness. "Ah!" he sighed, "how enviable are those who can still believe in love's illusion, and who have not awakened from their dream of bliss by sad experience or age! How long since I have banished these dreams—how ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Nearly thirty years ago a young man as you are came in just such a plight as you and stood outside this window at two o'clock of a dark morning. Even so early in my life I was at my books," and he smiled rather sadly. "I let him in and he talked to me for an hour of matters strange and dreamlike, and enviable to me. I have never forgotten that hour, nor to tell the truth have I ever ceased to envy the man who talked to me during it, though many years since he suffered a dreadful doom and vanished from ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... enviable. The next man from Trebizond or Saturn or Fez whom I meet I'm going to greet and treat as if he lived the proverbial 'twenty ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... me that you have been in the library all the morning," said Mrs. Leete. "Do you know, it seems to me, Mr. West, that you are the most enviable of mortals." ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, synthetical power, that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance, and retains them in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable, even ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... were of such a nature that the lot of the astrologer was likely to prove anything but an enviable one. As in the case of the alchemist, the greater the reputation of an astrologer the greater dangers he was likely to fall into. If he became so famous that he was employed by kings or noblemen, his too true or too false prophecies were ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... time toward all bearing the American name. It is impossible to overstate the hearty good-will entertained by all classes and manifested on all occasions, an opportunity to do a service or afford a pleasure being looked upon as a piece of enviable fortune. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Jamsetjee Nusserwanji Tata of Bombay, a typical Parsee, amassed an enormous fortune as a merchant and manufacturer, won an enviable reputation for integrity, enterprise and public spirit, and for several years before his lamented death in 1904, was permitted to enjoy the gratification that men of his kind deserve after a long career ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... revealed no evidences of the distressing drama. I own I had a hard tussle before I could make up my mind to spend another night in that room; and my feelings as I shut the door on my retreating maid, and prepared to get into bed, were not the most enviable. But nothing happened, nor did I again experience anything of the sort till the evening before I left. I had lain down all the afternoon—for I was tired after a long morning's tramp on the moors, a thing I dearly love—and I was thinking it was about time to get up, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Frenchman, who is said to be making a large fortune, which he deserves for the good breakfast he had prepared for us by orders of the Count de B—— and Mr. W——, who had preceded us early in the morning on horseback; (enviable fate!). We had white fish from the river of Lerma, which crosses the plains of Toluca, fresh and well dressed, and without that taste of mud which those from the Mexican Laguna occasionally have; also ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... an enviable person here, for although excellent carriages are to be had, some of the most interesting excursions must be made ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... if it be of a legal character. Of the editor it is a delicate matter to speak; but we can say without violating good taste, that few members of his profession unite at once, and to an equal degree with him, high professional acquirements, an enviable reputation as an orator and advocate, and the accomplishments of a varied and extensive scholarship, so that the words with which the President of Harvard College, at the recent Commencement, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... writing for the press and speaking in public, and in 1860 adopted the profession of journalism. In 1862 he became a war correspondent for the New York World, the Chicago Tribune and other papers, and made an enviable reputation as a descriptive writer. He also published a number of books ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the caviller is anything but enviable, and if God were to take him at his word, his lot would be anything but comfortable. Happy are they who accept God's gifts as He presents them, with thankfulness, and use them in His service faithfully, rejoicing and trusting in His infinite wisdom ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... rose much higher than his large and coarsely shaped ears, combined to form a physiognomy anything but prepossessing, save in the eyes of such as considered that the owner of so splendid an equipage must needs be all that was admirable and enviable, more especially when they gazed on the enormous diamond that glittered in his shirt, and the red ribbon that depended ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... enviable faculty of adapting himself to all sorts of people and circumstances, was in a few moments as much at home among the villagers as if he had lived for years in their midst. He gossiped with the old people, romped with the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... suitors," said courteous Mr. Engelman. "A most majestic person. Witty and accomplished. Possessed of an enviable little fortune, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... enviable position. Cathy, indeed, was very thick with him, and the master had taken to him strangely, believing every word he said, "for that matter he said precious little, and generally the truth," but Mrs. Earnshaw disliked the little interloper and ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... time,—happy in its freedom from care, and happy for him, though all school boys do not appreciate that consideration, in the opportunities for improvement which it afforded. These opportunities, it is only just to Paul to say, were fully improved. He left school with an enviable reputation, and with the good wishes ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... you think Edith Linwood the most enviable of human beings. Rich, lovely, with the power of gratifying every wish, and of dispensing every good, she would gladly exchange this moment with you, and dip ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Notwithstanding this enviable situation a clamour is excited, the people are agitated, and discord, with its train of evils, is prevailing. Some of our citizens, in the height of political prosperity, are seeking to destroy an order of things which has prevailed an hundred and ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... to the evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of religious truth and to read the New Testament and the Fathers in their own tongue induced him to learn Greek and Latin after he was thirty years of age. He possessed excellent gifts and natural abilities of mind, and he soon had an enviable reputation for skill and learning. Like Sebastian Franck, whom he resembled in many points, he was profoundly interested in history and in the stages of man's historical development, and, like the former, he undertook the translation of great masterpieces which expressed ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... irreverent, unconventional, successful brush. If I were not afraid of the patronizing tone I would say that there is little doubt that if as a painter he had not had to try to write in character, he would certainly have made a characteristic writer. He has the most enviable "finds," not dreamed of in timid literature, yet making capital descriptive prose. Other specimens of them may be encountered in two or three Christmas tales, signed with the name whose usual place is the corner of a ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... justly says. She suffers too, he adds, from demoralization and intellectual stoppage. Let us admit, if he likes, this to be true also. His error is that he attributes all this to equality. Equality, as we have seen, has brought France to a really admirable and enviable pitch of humanization in one important line. And this, the work of equality, is so much a good in Sir Erskine May's eyes, that he has mistaken it for the whole of which it is a part, frankly identifies it with civilization, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... they were attacked, the cutter should be kept ready for instant use, and in case the vessel was disabled, they would attempt to finish their journey in her. After giving these orders, Frank went up into the pilot-house, where he found the man at the wheel in no enviable state ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... of Connecticut, was quite a figure in the Senate when I entered it, and was regarded as one of the leaders, especially on military matters. He was a man of fine ability and address, brave as a lion and enjoyed an enviable Civil War record. He was president of the Centennial at Philadelphia and permanent President of the Republican Convention of 1868, which nominated General Grant. He was a very ambitious man, and wanted to be President; several times the delegation from his State presented ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... to provide for George was very eagerly accepted by the Virginian. My lord had not provided very well for his own brother to be sure, and his own position, peer as he was, was anything but enviable; but we believe what we wish to believe, and George Warrington chose to put great stress upon his kinsman's offer of patronage. Unlike the Warrington family, Lord Castlewood was quite gracious when he was made acquainted with George's engagement to Miss Lambert; came ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which Pitt occupied at the close of the reign of George the Second was the most enviable ever occupied by any public man in English history. He had conciliated the King; he domineered over the House of Commons; he was adored by the people; he was admired by all Europe. He was the first Englishman of his time; and he had made England the first country in the world. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pass in the last century; but even then literature and society had outgrown the nursing of coteries, and although many salons of that period were worthy successors of the Hotel de Rambouillet, they were simply a recreation, not an influence. Enviable evenings, no doubt, were passed in them; and if we could be carried back to any of them at will, we should hardly know whether to choose the Wednesday dinner at Madame Geoffrin's, with d'Alembert, Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... How enviable, in how many cases, is the superiority of the beasts! It makes us realise the insufficiency of our impressions, and the very indifferent efficacy of our sense-organs; it proclaims realities which amaze us, so far are they beyond our ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... period of her stay, two hundred daily. The multiplicity of duties in the charge of the household affairs of such an institution, with the uncertain assistance to be found in such a place, may be better imagined than told. Under her satisfactory management the Vicksburg Home acquired an enviable reputation, and was the favorite stopping-place on the river. The great difficulty in conducting a Soldiers' Home in time of war, as every one knows who has been connected with one, is to keep it neat and clean, to have the floors, the tables, the beds sufficiently ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... volume, which completes the series in which the delineation of the character of woman has been the chief design, the public now have the Works of Grace Aguilar, the intrinsic interest and value of which have won for them an enviable reputation. This last of the series consists of a variety of tales and sketches well calculated to awaken sentiments of purse affection, and inspire the heart with nobler and holier sensibilities, by its impressive illustrations ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... such kindness and compassion, Miss Marian, except in yourself. I do declare to you, that his manner to that poor unfortunate is as delicate and reverential and devoted as if she were the most accomplished and enviable lady in the land, and more so, Miss ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... reflected, as she had often done before, that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chapter, almost proverbial. There are other pressing and exhausting pursuits, which wear away the spirit by the ceaseless care which they impose, or perplex and bewilder the intellect by the multiplicity and intricacy of their details. But the business of teaching, by a pre-eminence not very enviable, stands, almost by common consent, at ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the writer attended the district school at Cohoes. The high department did not enjoy a very enviable reputation for being possessed of that respect due from the pupils to teacher. During the year there had been at least four teachers in that department, the last one only remaining one week. The Board of Education had found ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... for instance, barely exists near London, yet this plant I have seen growing most luxuriantly, and producing a profusion of bloom, in the late Mr. MASON'S garden, Cheshunt, Herts, and in which various Orchis's also acquired nearly twice their usual size,—enviable spot! ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... that sea-fight, who, then humble and unknown, was destined one day to win laurels of a purer and more enviable kind than those which grow on the battle-field. This was Cervantes, who, at the age of twenty-four, was serving on board the fleet as a common soldier. He was confined to his bed by a fever; but, notwithstanding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the immense influence which Joachim has wielded in the musical world has been directed toward quartet playing, and he has established a quartet in London and another one at Berlin, which both bear an enviable reputation. His chamber music classes, too, at the Berlin High School, tend to develop admirable quartet players; thus we find Marie Soldat organising a ladies' quartet which had a good career, and Gabrielle Wietrowitz taking the place of first violin in the excellent ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Cabinet weekly journals, in conjunction with Mr. Cumberland, Sir James Bland Burgess, Mr. Horatio Smith, and others. The principal caterer for these publications was Colonel Greville, on whom Lord Byron has conferred a not very enviable immortality— ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor with a gash on his right temple by falling against the corner of a bureau. He tried to speak, could not, and expired. The great ventricle of the heart had burst. What an enviable death!" ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... could only do a thousand times as much!" and the man who had earned such an enviable rating shook his head. "There are so many of the Huns! So many! But we shall never give up! Never!" and ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... universal admiration, the ardor of his ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of mankind profound; but he should have followed up the objects of his high aspirations by a straighter road. His glory would have been truly enviable had he devoted his efforts to the happiness of his subjects, instead of harassing their minds by dissensions, and mowing down their lives by hundreds ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... largely due to the circumstance, that under the disguise of Greek warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had attained, through the genius of Calprenede and Scuderi, an enviable immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have found in that endless desert of phraseology at once their ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the—continued—yes, the continued and continuous, bitter, harassing, disturbing, and, if I may be allowed the expression, the very disturbing influence of the serene, and godlike, and heavenly, and exalted, and elevated, and purifying effect of what may be rightly termed the most enviable, the most truly enviable—nay! the most benignly beautiful, the most deliciously ethereal, and, as it were, the most pretty (if I may use so bold an expression) thing (pardon me, gentle reader!) in the world—but I am always led away ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... heroic in Erasmus scorning to make money out of his facile talents and enviable knowledge of the humanities, daring indigence so as to be able to realize his shining ideal of ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... young; one reason is because death laid hold of him in the middle of his career. While all the world was still gazing expectantly upon him, he vanished from the earth and left no hope deceived. His was the enviable fate of a Raphael, Schiller and Korner. As the German ('tis Schumann's utterance) thinks of Beethoven when he speaks the word symphony, so the name of Mozart in his mind is associated with the conception of things youthful, bright and sunny. Schumann was fully conscious ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... vacant hour, but his stakes were high and he played every shot. His calm, impassioned countenance bore the unmistakable stamp of the professional gambler, and, serene as a quiet mill-pond, he bore his losses or pocketed his winnings with the enviable sang froid which results from a long and intimate ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... concerning the election, which was to take place that evening. All that day she spoke of little else, and when the evening came she insisted upon Gertrude's leaving for the hall immediately after dinner. Laban went with her as escort, Mr. Hungerford's former enviable duty, and one which that gentleman had appeared to enjoy more than did its present occupant, who grumbled at missing his "after supper" smoke. Laban returned ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had forced her to say. She had made herself afraid of him. Her admissions had been so many base disloyalties to Hugh. She was not going to admit anything to Nina, least of all that she found her enviable, as she stood there, stripped for the race, carrying nothing but her genius. It was so horribly true (as Nina had once said) that the lash had been laid across her naked shoulders to turn her into the course when she had ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... time they were near the Castle, and met Miss Crotchet and her companion, who had turned back to meet them. Captain Fitzchrome was shortly after heartily welcomed by Mr. Crotchet, and the party separated to dress for dinner, the Captain being by no means in an enviable state of mind, and full of misgivings as to the extent of belief that he was bound to accord to the words of ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... daughter of my friend Pierce Armitage—I would stay, but circumstances render any such service from me impossible. Besides, she needs no one to assist her—she has made a position for herself—a position more enviable than yours or mine. You have that to think ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... o'er the gulf That lies between us and the aftertime, When this fine portion of the globe shall teem With civiliz'd society; when arts, And industry, and elegance shall reign, As the shrill war-cry of the savage man Yields to the jocund shepherd's roundelay. Oh, enviable country! thus disjoin'd From old licentious Europe! may'st thou rise, Free from those bonds which fraud and superstition In barbarous ages have enchain'd her with;— Bidding the antique world with wonder view A great, yet virtuous empire ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... portion of his reply, Mr. Bowles asserts that Pope "envied Phillips," because he quizzed his pastorals in the Guardian, in that most admirable model of irony, his paper on the subject. If there was any thing enviable about Phillips, it could hardly be his pastorals. They were despicable, and Pope expressed his contempt. If Mr. Fitzgerald published a volume of sonnets, or a "Spirit of Discovery," or a "Missionary," and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to catch some drops of that golden shower of which he was supposed to be the dispenser. To be seen walking with him in the High Street, to be honoured by him with a private interview of a quarter of an hour, were enviable distinctions. He, after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded themselves and others, drew new faith in his own lie from the credulity of his disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated boundless self-importance. When he appeared in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Duke of York and Lord Bute are named of the cabinet council. The late King's will is not yet opened. To-day every body kissed hands at Leicester-house, and this week, I believe, the King will go to St. James's. The body has been opened; the great ventricle of the heart had burst. What an enviable death! In the greatest period of glory of this country, and of his reign, in perfect tranquillity at home, at seventy-seven, growing blind and deaf, to die without a pang, before any reverse of fortune, or any distasted ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... doctor inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had, in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected to the Speakership of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... he sat in his uncle's office the morning after Mrs. Stanmore's ball, were of no enviable nature. Malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness might indeed sufficiently describe the frame of mind in which he went about his daily business, unfortunately on the present occasion an affair of such mere routine as in no ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of greatness; it is so far Mr. Allen's masterpiece; a work of beauty and finished art. There can be no question of its supreme place in our literature; there can be no doubt of its wide acceptance and acceptability. More than any of his books it is destined to an enviable popularity. It does not take extraordinary prescience to predict an extraordinary circulation for it." —JAMES MACARTHUR in a review ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... the case opened, lost to all else in his case, he presented precisely that faculty (and that permission by convention) of complete detachment from his home that long she had known to be man's most outstanding and most enviable quality. He had no attention to spare for the consideration of her own problem and ambition, and she was too honourable to his interests, and too devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more significantly ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... three great empires had attained enviable prosperity and development in 1914, when the War burst, the three great western democracies, Great Britain, France and ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... with nature's marvellous miracles of germination and growth, moving under the open heaven with its glory of sky and meteoric change, and accompanied by the songs of birds and all characteristic rural sights and sounds, will seem to him the sweetest and the most enviable that falls to human lot. But the hard-working farmer sees nothing of this. What cares he for birds, unless they pull up his corn? What cares he for skies, unless he can make use of them for drying his hay, or wetting down his potatoes? The beautiful changes of nature do not touch him. His sensibilities ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... very true," she conceded, "but you can go on with your landscapes, and let your portraits pay the way. With your entree, you could soon have a very enviable clientele." ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... without some artificial light, the long series of worn stone steps, that must be climbed before reaching the Maison Rouge, would offer many opportunities for awkward falls. The bedrooms in this house, when one has finally reached a floor far above the little street, have a most enviable position. They are all provided with small balconies where the enormous sweep of sand or glistening ocean, according to the condition of the tides, is a sight which will drag the greatest sluggard from his bed at ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... although he had never before heard that he had such cases in court. Meanwhile his neighbours predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher rank, with some malignity, accounted him already a degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in his situation, marked his embarrassments with more compassion. He was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the division of a common, or the holding of a black-fishing, or poaching court, or any similar ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... understand, Miss Black, that the vague engagement of which you speak, where there is want of fortune on both sides, is no more prudent than it is binding. On the contrary, the position which it is my pride to offer you is considered an enviable one; even apart from the devoted love that goes with it. You are aware that I am the sole heir of the Hidden House estate, which, with all its dependencies, is considered the largest property, as my wife would be the most important lady, in ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the corner of a side street, where Monsieur Ratignolle owned and conducted a drug store which enjoyed a steady and prosperous trade. His father had been in the business before him, and Monsieur Ratignolle stood well in the community and bore an enviable reputation for integrity and clearheadedness. His family lived in commodious apartments over the store, having an entrance on the side within the porte cochere. There was something which Edna thought very French, very foreign, about their whole manner of living. In the large and pleasant salon which ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... in the trees, the dryads, the leaf-haunters invisible, so sad in childlessness, ceased their swinging to look upon the boy and girl so enviable in their innocence and happiness. Gilian knelt and gathered up the flowers. It was, perhaps, more to hide his vexation than from courtesy that he did so, but the act was so unboylike, so deferring in its manner, that it restored to Nan as much ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... wages, have supported large families by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's poem, "Bread, or the Poor", is an account of an industrious labourer who, by working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, attained to an enviable state of independence.) The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the aristocracy, the army, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Patriot, the local Whig paper, devoted two columns to the speech of this young Democratic upstart; and for weeks thereafter the editor flayed him on all possible occasions. The result was such an enviable notoriety for the young attorney among Whigs and such fame among Democrats, that he received collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons whom he had never seen or known. In after years, looking back on these beginnings, he used to wonder whether he ought not ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the authority of the church; for though the bishop might license and the governor recommend, the parish would not present. It was a leisurely, good-natured, careless, but spirited people, indifferent to commerce, content to harvest their fields and rule their slaves, and let the world go by. A more enviable existence than theirs it would be hard to imagine. All their financial transactions were done in tobacco, even to the clergyman's stipend and the judge's fee. No enemy menaced them; politics were rather an amusement than a serious duty; yet in these fertile regions were made the brains and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... neutrality for the whole twentieth century, Sweden has achieved an enviable standard of living under a mixed system of high-tech capitalism and extensive welfare benefits. It has a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore constitute the ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of baggage master on a railroad train is not an enviable one. There is often a wide difference between the company's regulations, and the passenger's opinion of what articles, and what amount of them, properly come under the denomination of baggage; and this frequently subjects the unlucky official of the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... were really notorious there could be no difficulty in proving it. Such notoriety as Mr. Byron enjoyed was due, as appeared from the evidence of Lord Worthington and others, to his approaching marriage to a lady of distinction. Was it credible that a highly connected gentleman in this enviable position would engage in a prize-fight, risking disgrace and personal disfigurement, for a sum of money that could be no object to him, or for a glory that would appear to all his friends as ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... innocent air and her blue eyes, has climbed the slippery stairs and reached the seventh heaven. And not only reached it herself, mind you, but dragged that ungainly Cartel with her by the tip of her tiny finger! Wonderful! Wonderful! Enviable fate!" ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... nothing about wanting her to come, but maybe it was because he did not wish to force himself upon her a second time. She grew very reluctant. It couldn't be an enviable task to take one of her kind to the Ingmar Farm. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... prevented and the cook enjoy an enviable esteem by the judicious use of herbs, singly or in combination. It is greatly to be regretted that the uses of these humble plants, which seem to fall lower than the dignity of the title "vegetable," should be so little understood by intelligent ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... or bracelet, or one poor pitiful brooch, on Miss Edgeworth or Miss Aitkin, Mrs Somerville or Joanna Baillie, or any other of the female illustrations of the age, saving these aerial machines which have achieved such enviable supremacy? Mrs Marcet, who has taught the young idea of our three kingdoms how to shoot; Miss Martineau, who has engrafted new ones on our oldest crab-stocks, might travel from Dan to Beersheba without having a fatted calf or a fatted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... confident that Fairbanks was honorable and worthy of respect and trust; he was often at his store; he often relied on his integrity for important considerations; and he was well assured that he was a man of merit and justice, and entitled to his enviable name. And so marked was his confidence, it had induced Fairbanks to come without hesitation again to buy all the wheat he could sell, and ask to have credit till January. He offered a fairer price than Fabens ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Idea sought self-realization? It was a terrible fate to be Moses, to be Prometheus. No doubt that image of himself he read in the faces of his friends, and in the loving eyes of the Countess Hatzfeldt—that glorious wonder-youth gifted equally with genius and beauty—must seem enviable enough, yet to his own heart how chill was this lonely greatness. And youth itself was passing—was ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
