"Felicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bones, when, having clambered to the top of the knoll, she sat down on a tree-root and gazed on the cottage and the farm-yard, where hens were scratching in the interest of active chickens, and cows were standing in blank felicity, and pigs were revelling in dirt and sunshine—"Oh, bybie! it's 'eaven upon ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... honest men enow to supply all those imployments. So that the Kings of England are in nothing inferiour to other Princes, save in being more abridged from injuring their own subjects: but have as large a field as any of external felicity, wherein to exercise their own virtue, and so reward and incourage it in others. In short, there is nothing that comes nearer in Government to the Divine Perfection, than where the Monarch, as with us, injoys a capacity of doing all the good imaginable to mankind, under a disability ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the philosophers give their testimony to this truth, and their sentiments on the subject are not altogether to be rejected; for they almost unanimously are agreed, that felicity, so far as it can be enjoyed in this life, consists solely, or at least principally, in virtue: but as to their assertion, that this virtue is perfect in a perfect life, it is rather expressing what were to be wished, than describing things ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... singularly inappropriate, of Aristacus and Orpheus and Eurydice. This epic sketch, Alexandrine in form but abounding in touches of the richest native genius, [36] must have revealed to Rome something of the loftiness of which Virgil's muse was capable. With a felicity and exuberance scarcely inferior to Ovid, it united a power of awakening feeling, a dreamy pathos and a sustained eloquence, which marked its author as the heir of Homer's lyre, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... much you know about it. I came to this enlightened West about a year since, and was duly established in a comfortable country residence within a mile and a half of the city, and there commenced the enjoyment of domestic felicity. I had been married about three months, and had been previously in love in the most approved romantic way, with all the proprieties of moonlight walks, serenades, sentimental ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... authentic simplicity of his heart. And when the point of saturation is reached, to use an engineer's phrase, the artist, still preserving his own innocence, begins to produce. And this, one may remark in passing, is the happiest time of his life! He combines the felicity of youth, the wisdom of age, and the unencumbered vitality of manhood. He knows, even while in love, as he frequently is at such periods, that there are loftier peaks beyond, mountain-ranges of emotion ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... a child came to them, a strong, beautiful boy, worthy to be the heir of such a house, the heart of the rose was filled with overflowing fragrance. Happiness was heaped upon happiness. Every wish brought its own accomplishment. Wealth, honour, beauty, peace, love—it was an abundance of felicity so great that the soul of Hermas could hardly ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... war-horse, the air-shattering trumpet, 130 The unvaried, still-returning hour of duty, Word of command, and exercise of arms— There's nothing here, there's nothing in all this To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart! Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not— 135 This cannot be the sole felicity, These cannot be man's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... yester-morning; and, deuce take me, if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads,—at leaving them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me anything ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... headstrong obstinacy. Then he put his foot on a plate of sandwiches, and was within an ace of sitting down on a jam tart, much to his own consternation, poor boy, for had he destroyed that, the chief source of his own prospective felicity would have ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... holy, who did not view such a proceeding with a degree of complacency. In the pulpit Roscoe was almost powerful. His knowledge of the world, his habits of directness, his eager but not hurried speech, his unconventional but original statements of things, his occasional literary felicity and unusual tact, might have made him distinguished in a more cultured community. Yet there was something to modify all this: an occasional indefinable sadness, a constant note of pathetic warning. It struck me that I never had met a man whose words ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wear, no few tears would have been shed. Madame, in addition to this incentive, intimated that she might attend a prayer meeting now and then-perhaps see Cicero. However, Molly could easily have forgotten Cicero, inasmuch as she had enjoyed the rare felicity of thirteen husbands, all of whom Lady Swiggs had sold when it suited ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... and a classic polish in these volumes, and a felicity of grouping and of portraiture, which invest the subject with the attractions of a living and stirring episode in the grand historic ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur, which the genius of Shakspeare has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspeare's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... was fitfully glad. She was near the man who had enlarged her capacity from girl's to woman's, a little note or two of young feeling to a whole diapason; and though nearness was perhaps not in itself a great reason for felicity when viewed beside the complete realization of all that a woman can desire in such circumstances, it was much in comparison with the outer darkness of the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... so hard to quit life in my company, Ghita? To me it would seem supreme felicity were our ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... obvious thing in life is that people are seldom as unhappy as their circumstances would lead us to expect. Nobody is happy all the time, and if he were, nobody is enough of a genius to make his undeviating felicity interesting. But a great many people are happy most of the time, and almost everybody has been happy at some time or other. It may have been only a momentary experience, but it was very real, and he likes to think about it. He is excessively ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Boleyn, during her short felicity, proceeded from the Tower to Westminster, on the eve of her coronation, the conduit of Cheapside ran, at one end white wine, and at the other red. At Cheapside Cross stood all the aldermen, from amongst whom advanced Master Walter, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... their love, imparted a portion of that celestial fire the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equal to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run, entered together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched constantly over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments were all their works, and the means by which they gave warning of the approach of danger. But, though ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... me honor, madam. It is the superlative felicity of my sublunary existence to congratulate you on this auspicious occasion," replied Mr. Sneed, as he gently pressed the gloved hand ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... which have lately so destroyed your peace. Do not, for heaven's sake, by squeamish notions of filial obedience and dutiful conduct—which I do assure you have been very long out of date—destroy your own happiness. When parents cease to care for the true welfare and felicity of their children, it becomes our positive duty to care for them ourselves. Mr. Hamilton has given you no reason for his command to withdraw yourself from the attentions of Lord Alphingham; and surely ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... return for this noble devotion, and that it may receive the favourable success of which it is worthy, all we require of you is, union, tranquillity, and efficacious co-operation. This alone is necessary to ensure the felicity ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... lot at times, bind us nearer to God and to each other! My heart earnestly joins in your comprehensive prayers. I trust they will unitedly ascend to a throne of grace, and through the Redeemer's merits procure for us peace and happiness here and a life of eternal felicity hereafter. Oh, what sacred pleasure there is in the idea of spending an eternity together in perfect and uninterrupted bliss! This should encourage us to the utmost exertion and fortitude. But whilst ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... old acquaintance is much broken, both in his spirits and constitution. How happy might that man have been, if there had been added to his natural and acquired endowments a dash of morality! If he had known how to distinguish between false and true felicity; and, instead of seeking to increase an estate already too large, and hunting after pleasures that have made him rotten and ridiculous, he had bounded his desires of wealth, and followed the dictates of his conscience! His servile ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... covered with wounds, like Lazarus—what does it matter, if his soul is saved? It is your creed as much as mine, that the soul is immortal, and that the death of the body is only its introduction, if it be saved, to a glorious future of everlasting felicity, progress, and holiness. Does the child remember how he used to cry over his lessons, when he becomes a man? Does he remember all the little difficulties of his school days, when he is inheriting the fruits of them? Just so; ten thousand times less important will ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... See Clarendon's description of England during this period, 'enjoying the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age for so long time together ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... must be allowed, was a singular beginning of connubial felicity; but there is no doubt that Johnson, tho he thus showed a manly firmness, proved a most affectionate and indulgent husband to the last moment of Mrs. Johnson's life: and in his "Prayers and Meditations," we find very remarkable evidence that his regard and fondness for her never ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... with it. With what feelings must he direct his views beyond the Rhine, where the eyes of so many thousands are now opened? He too has lived to witness days which are far from agreeable to him. He, who represented it to the countries which he forced into his alliance as a supreme felicity to have their sons led forth to fight foreign battles, and to have many thousands of them sacrificed every year upon the altar of his ambition, now sees them all abandon him, and become his bitterest enemies. The Great Empire is now an idle dream. Already is he nearly confined within that ancient ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... his Chief; and, you may depend on it, they are playing fair—in their slow way. They always think of India and of Egypt—never of Cuba. Lord! Lord! the fun I've had, the holy joy I am having (I never expected to have such exalted and invigorating felicity) in delivering elementary courses of instruction in democracy to the British Government. Deep down at the bottom, they don't know what Democracy means. Their Empire is in the way. Their centuries ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... or the robbers, or sorely bewail the misfortunes of our country, let him indulge my affections herein, though it be contrary to the rules for writing history; because it had so come to pass, that our city Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to me that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews [3] are not so considerable as they were; while ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... these letters! I do solemnly, unaffectedly wonder how you can put so much pure felicity into an envelope so as that I shall get it as from the fount head. This to-day, those yesterday—there is, I see, and know, thus much goodness in line after line, goodness to be scientifically appreciated, proved there—but over and above, is it in the writing, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... neither said nor done nor even thought, but tasted only and felt, with no object of my felicity but the emotion of felicity itself! I rose with the sun, and I was happy; I went to walk, and I was happy; I saw 'Maman,' and I was happy; I left her, and I was happy. I rambled through the woods and over the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... consolidated and the name of the paper should be the Minnesotian and Times. It can readily be seen that a marriage contracted under these peculiar circumstances was not likely to produce a prolonged state of connubial felicity. The relations between Foster and Newson were no more cordial under one management than had hitherto existed when the offices were separate. This unhappy situation continued until about the time the legislature adjourned, when the partnership ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... single annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume would not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it be simply asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in the courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... the most genial; that its clouds are the scarcest; that its fruit is the most delicious; that the air is the most balmy; that its cigars are of the highest flavor; that the warmth and radiance of early matrimonial felicity so rarefies the intellectual atmosphere that the soul mounts higher, and enjoys a wider prospect, than ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... maketh thee weep? May God not cause an eye of thine to weep!' 'O my lord,' answered she, 'what am I that thou shouldst kiss my hand? Wilt thou have God punish me for this and that my term should come to an end and my felicity pass away? For this is what none ever attained unto.' Quoth he, 'Well said, O Tuhfeh. Know that thy rank in my esteem is mighty and for that which wondered me of what I saw of thee, I offered to do this, but I will not return unto ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... generally checked any further inquiry on the subject. Between Lady Joram and Mrs. Smellpriest there subsisted a singular analogy with respect to their conjugal attachments. It was hinted that her ladyship, in those secret but delicious moments of matrimonial felicity which make up the sugar-candy morsels of domestic life, used to sit with Sir Jenkins for the purpose, by judicious exercise, of easing, by convivial exercise, a rheumatic affection which she complained of in her right arm. There is nothing, however, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... performance; yet some pains has been taken to trace those points of resemblance, which gave so much offence to one party, and triumph to the other. Many must doubtless have escaped our notice; but enough remains to shew the singular felicity with which Dryden, in the present instance, as in that of "Absalom and Achitophel," could adapt the narrative of ancient or foreign transactions to the political events of his own time, and "moralize two meanings in one word." Altogether abstracted from this consideration, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... "I have not failed to win love. But does love bring with it untouched felicity; that is what I ask." He hesitated. "I will not attempt to describe her. I really could not, you know, except in a feeble way, by saying that even to other eyes than mine she is a woman more wonderful than any of my sisters, if ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... pleasant, and her disposition seemed agreeable; and, certainly, if the rest of Jack Purser's wives (for this was one of the nine-and-twenty) be so well-fitted to make him happy, the sum total of his conjugal felicity must be enormous! ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... of the fair, would not be attracted to Najma, enchanted by her, if she were not endowed with such of the celestial treasures as rank above the visible lines of beauty. Our Scribe speaks of the "purity and naivete of her soul as purest sources of felicity and inspiration." Indeed, if she were not constant in love, she would not have spurned the many opportunities in the absence of Khalid; and had she not a fine discerning sense of real worth, she would not have surrendered herself to her ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... then mutual—your friends are all happy and well, and I know your arrival will not a little contribute to their felicity, as well as mine—but who have you here, Loveyet? Landed not fifteen minutes ago, and in close confab with ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... be a future life, the gods have done wisely to withhold its exact nature from us, and that, whatever uncertainties may exist in other respects, nothing can be more true than that those who now die in the arena will, in another world, find their highest felicity in the privilege of looking up from a distance at the loved emperor in whose honor they perished, and beholding him enjoying, through adoption, the society of the inhabitants of Olympus. I then—but it is useless to detail all the argument. I will read the poem itself; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... senator Petronius Maximus [1] was often alleged as a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious, since he descended from the Anician family; his dignity was supported by an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which adorn or imitate the inestimable gifts of genius ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... nourishes many bad passions. True friendship will at all times avoid a rough or careless behavior. Health and peace a moderate fortune and a few friends sum up all the undoubted articles of temporal felicity. Truth is fair and artless simple and sincere uniform and consistent. Intemperance destroys the strength of our bodies and the vigor ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... soldier. So your day has at length come. I am glad of it, with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming to fight in favor of the American rebels, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion—domestic felicity—which same, like the small pox or the plague, a man can have only once in his life; because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America—I don't know how you manage these matters in France) for his whole life time. And yet after all ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour. I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley to Milton, had long ago enlisted my admiration. Indeed, I had already made up my mind, that, in case good fortune should throw any such invaluable record in my way, I would proceed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... attend you. But I make haste to consider you as abstracted from a court, which (if you will give me leave to use a term of logic) is only an adjunct, not a propriety of happiness. The academics, I confess, were willing to admit the goods of fortune into their notion of felicity; but I do not remember, that any of the sects of old philosophers did ever leave a room for greatness. Neither am I formed to praise a court, who admire and covet nothing, but the easiness and quiet of retirement. I naturally withdraw my sight from a precipice; and, admit the prospect ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... established in Windsor Castle; Lord Raymond and my sister, inhabited a house which the former had built on the borders of the Great Park, near Perdita's cottage, as was still named the low-roofed abode, where we two, poor even in hope, had each received the assurance of our felicity. We had our separate occupations and our common amusements. Sometimes we passed whole days under the leafy covert of the forest with our books and music. This occurred during those rare days in this country, when the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... haunts and friends from such enthusiastic lips, delighted Albinia, and her felicity with her baby, with Mr. Kendal, with her brother and his little son, was one of the brightest things in all the world—the fresh young loving bloom of her matronhood was even sweeter and more beautiful than ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that was slowly oozing out. "Oh, how lovely!" your mother said, with a sigh of pleasure; "Come to me Horace, let me revive the drooping courage of your glorious Prick; whose lips but mine ought to raise it again for dear Gert? What intense felicity you gave me, my dear?" as he placed himself kneeling on the couch so as to bring his affair into position for her to take it into her mouth, which she did with great avidity, her hands gently holding back the foreskin and caressing his hairy balls, as first giving a good ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... accepted his attention with lazy amusement; it was true that she had suddenly and audaciously left him on the borders of the McKinstry woods in a way that might have seemed rude and abrupt to any escort less invincibly good-humored than Uncle Ben, but none of these things marred his fatuous felicity. It is even probable that in his gratuitous belief that his timid attentions had been too marked and impulsive, he attributed Cressy's flight to a maidenly coyness that pleasurably increased his admiration for her and his confidence in himself. In his abstraction ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... like that of a princess giving audience, Clavering reflected, a manner enhanced by her slight accent and profound repose, the negligent lifting of her hand to be kissed; and as she stood graciously accepting their expressions of unhoped for felicity she looked less American, more European, than ever. But Clavering wondered for the first time if that perfect repose were merely the expression of a profound indifference, almost apathy . . . but no, she was too young for that, however the war may have seared ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... which seem as defects in her polity, are the very things which make me tremble. The states of the Christian world have grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time, and by a great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them with greater or less degrees of felicity and skill. Not one of them has been formed upon a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their constitutions are not systematical, they have not been directed to any PECULIAR end, eminently distinguished, and superseding every other. The objects which they embrace are of the greatest possible ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... all that was beautiful, whether in prose or verse, in Greek, Latin, or English. His reading was wide and thorough. Nobody knew Burke so well, and he had a contagious enthusiasm for Parliamentary oratory. In composition he had a curiosa felicitas in the strictest meaning of the phrase; for his felicity was the product of care. To go through a prize-exercise with him was a real joy, so generous was his appreciation, so fastidious his taste, so dexterous his substitution of the telling for the ineffective word, and so palpably genuine his enjoyment ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... promise of his two sons, Symmachus and Boethius; happy also in the society of a refined circle of friends. Noble, wealthy, accomplished, universally esteemed for his virtues, high in the favour of the Gothic King, he appeared to all men a signal example of the union of merit and good fortune. His felicity seemed to culminate in the year 522 A.D., when, by special and extraordinary favour, his two sons, young as they were for so exalted an honour, were created joint Consuls and rode to the senate-house ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... said Mr. Gorse, and nodded toward me. I was impressed by the felicity with which a cartoonist of the Pilot had once caricatured him by the use of curved lines. The circle of the heavy eyebrows ended at the wide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy shoulders were rounded. Indeed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... In his essay, "Shakespeare Once More" (Works, in, pp. 36-42), published in 1868, Mr. Lowell has treated of Shakespeare's style in a passage of extraordinary felicity and depth ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... fellows, who had outlived their days of romantic sentiment, if they ever had any, yet to whom the Queen had to declare her love for her cousin Albert, and her intention to marry him, being convinced, she said, that this union would "secure her domestic felicity, and serve the interests of her country." It was a little hard, yet a certain bracelet, containing a certain miniature, which she wore on her arm, gave her "courage," she said. Then came a yet more trying ordeal, for a modest young lady—the announcement of her intended marriage, in a speech from ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... hours or minutes—a day of uninterrupted felicity. The whole house greeted him warmly, a bright fire burned in the salon, flowers bloomed at the windows, and Cecile and the doctor made him feel how dear he was to them both. After they had dined, M. Rivals examined ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... it was only necessary for him to send his quartermasters to chalk up the billets for his soldiers to conquer the country. Cf. "The History of Henry VII," by Lord Bacon: "King Charles had conquered the realm of Naples, and lost it again, in a kind of a felicity of a dream. He passed the whole length of Italy without resistance: so that it was true what Pope Alexander was wont to say: That the Frenchmen came into Italy with chalk in their hands, to mark up their lodgings, rather than with swords ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... solid and natural, as well as delicate, so his design is always to bring to light something useful and ornamental; whence his character is the reverse to theirs, who have eminent abilities in insignificant knowledge, and a great felicity in finding out trifles. He is no less industrious to search out the merit of an author, than sagacious in discerning his errors and defects; and takes more pleasure in commending the beauties, than ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in modern verse with Homer's serene perfection; it would take, perhaps, a greater mind than Bach's to employ all the resources of modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And greater minds than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the felicity ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... organized, by both foreign governments and our own, to encourage the production of works of art, which the producing nations, so far from intending to be their "joy for ever," only hope to sell as soon as possible. Yet the motto was chosen with uncomprehended felicity: for there never was, nor can be, any essential beauty possessed by a work of art, which is not based on the conception of its honoured permanence, and local influence, as a part of appointed and precious furniture, either in the cathedral, the house, or the joyful thoroughfare, of nations which ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... noxious to the body, and poison the sensitive life; these poison the soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, destroy the vitals of our happiness, our future felicity, and contaminate ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... which depend upon individual will and feeling, rather than upon a broad subject founded in nature and tractable by the largest laws of art. Hence, though not irrespective of laws, such works depend upon instinctive felicity—felicity in the choice of topics and the mode of execution, felicity both in doing and in leaving undone: this high and perfect excellence, perhaps, In Memoriam has not reached, though omission and revision might lead very ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... of greater happiness, or one which opened more brilliant prospects for futurity. De Courcy conveyed his bride immediately to a favorite estate, which he possessed in Provence, whither I was permitted to accompany them; and six months glided away, in the full enjoyment of that felicity which their romantic hopes had anticipated. Winter approached, and your father was importuned to visit the metropolis, and introduce his young and beautiful wife to the gay and elevated station which she ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... lives with misery? Be mine, lovely Violetta, and in the fastnesses of my own good Calabrian castle we will defy their vengeance and policy. Their disappointment shall furnish merriment for my vassals, and our felicity shall make the happiness of thousands. I affect no disrespect for the dignity of the councils, nor any indifference to that I lose, but to me art thou far more precious than the horned bonnet itself, with all ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... over a horse's tail. There is another in the middle distance, all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar, at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and a Ducal Palace,—in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of modern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there is something, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite this ornamental design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... demanded of the Pharisees, when the that port or passage, which the divine | kingdom of God should come, he Majesty (who is unchangeable in his ways) | answered them and said, The kingdom doth infallibly continue and observe; that | of God cometh not with observation. is the felicity wherewith he hath blessed | an humility of mind, such as rather | see Novum Organum. I, 93; A.L. Sp. laboureth to spell and so by degrees to | III, 301,I, 29-302; also N.O. I, 129 read in the volumes ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... imperilling the great stabilities of truth; so that in their thought, as in Nature, the dust-particle shall float and fly with the wind, and yet gravitation shall hold particle and world in firm, soft, imperial possession. And next to these are the inventors, guided by a fine felicity of intelligence to special discoveries and admirable combinations, often surpassing in this way the masters themselves. And then come the wise and great scholars, who learn quickly what has been discovered, and follow the masters not by sight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the vocal arts, but also to all students of fundamental pedagogical principle. In its field I know of no work presenting in an equally happy combination philosophic insight, scientific breadth, moral loftiness of tone, and literary felicity of exposition.—William F. Warren, D.D., LL.D., of ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... "it would give me the profoundest felicity, the most unbounded satisfaction; but in these worn-out habiliments, in these deteriorated garments, it would not be possible, it would not be fitting that I should officiate in service of One whom, for respect, we shall not name. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... of Lucrezia and happy in my love, to give her up appeared to me a shameful action. In order to insure the happiness of my future life, I was beginning to be the executioner of my present felicity, and the tormentor of my heart. I revolted against such a necessity which I judged fictitious, and which I could not admit unless I stood guilty of vileness before the tribunal of my own reason. I thought that Father Georgi, if he wished to forbid my visiting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of our novelists to day. He is most exquisitely alive to the fine spirit of comedy. He has a prose style of wonderful beauty, conscientiousness and simplicity.... He has the inexorable conscience of the artist, he always gives us his best; and that best is a style of great purity and felicity and sweetness, a style without strain and yet with an enviable aptness for the sudden inevitable word.... And yet that care, that deliberation ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... sweet words,' replied Ferdinand. 'If my heart can make you happy, felicity shall ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... acknowledged, in mournful language, to be a hopeless task. A cloud of sadness shades the brow of Plato as he contemplates the fallen state of man. In the "Phaedrus" he describes, in gorgeous imagery, the purity, and beauty, and felicity of the soul in its anterior and primeval state, when, charioteering through the highest arch of heaven in company with the Deity, it contemplated the divine justice and beauty; but "this happy life," says he, "we forfeited by our transgression." Allured by strange affections, our souls forgot the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... wished to live, for as soon as that new Monferrand ministry should have fallen beneath the interpellation which he already contemplated, his own turn would surely come: he would take the reins of power in hand, abolish the guillotine and decree justice and perfect felicity. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... for your sake, and for many of our friends, have liked an odd hundred thousand pounds [by a Spanish war]; but, never mind. If they give me the choice of staying a few months longer, it will be very handsome; and, for the sake of others, we would give up very much of our own felicity." ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... deliverance. Down the hill he went singing and dancing. If mere battle with storm was a delight to the boy, what would not a mortal tussle with the elements for the love of men be? The thought itself was a heavenly felicity, and made ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... all pleasures that are attended with repentance. She allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful, that is not master of himself;—and this is the felicity of human life; a felicity that can neither be ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of Daniel Maclise, "executed by order of the Commissioners", and called The Spirit of Chivalry. It may be left an open question, whether or no this allegorical order on the part of the Commissioners, displays any uncommon felicity of idea. We rather think not; and are free to confess that we should like to have seen the Commissioners' notion of the Spirit of Chivalry stated by themselves, in the first instance, on a sheet of foolscap, as the ground-plan of a model cartoon, with all the commissioned proportions ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... my felicity in your general saying, good, or well, etc., were a weakness which the better sort of you might worthily contemn, if not absolutely ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... rather be A goad, a scourge, for their felicity! Let suffering purify each Christian soul, Cross, rack, and flame but lead them to their goal; What here they lose—in Heaven an hundredfold they find. Be cruel,—persecute!—and so alone be kind! My words thou canst not read; thine eyes are blinded here, Wait the unveiling ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... hair, the white skin, and the graceful gait of his family; he had their delicate extremities, their long taper fingers with the inward curve, and that peculiar distinction of shapeliness of the wrist and instep, that supple felicity of line, which is as sure a sign of race in men as in horses. Adroit and alert in all bodily exercises, and an excellent shot, he handled arms like a St. George, he was a paladin on horseback. In short, he gratified the pride which parents take in their children's appearance; a pride founded, for ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... attractive than Joseph Addison; few men more eminently representative, not only of literature as a profession, but of literature as an art. It has happened more than once that literary gifts of a high order have been lodged in very frail moral tenements; that taste, feeling, and felicity of expression have been divorced from general intellectual power, from intimate acquaintance with the best in thought and art, from grace of manner and dignity of life. There have been writers of force and originality who failed to attain ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... an exact and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable. Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... It was his peculiar felicity, not only to be born in a country of liberty, but in an age when all scholastic impertinences were banished from the world. Reason alone was cultivated, and mankind could only be ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... style, it is true, he took great pains, and in his earlier works, I am told, sometimes altered the proofs sent from the printer so largely that they might be said to be written over Yet he attained no special felicity, variety, or compass of expression. His style, however, answered his purpose; it has defects, but it is manly and clear, and stamps on the mind of the reader the impression he desired to convey. I am not sure that some of the very defects of Cooper's novels do not add, by a ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... become the appointed and accepted portion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent persons, inhabiting the districts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were best instructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested with the honor, and indulged in the felicity, of peace. ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... demoralizing influence; mothers, wives, and daughters have often, in the lonely hours of midnight, sat up with a scanty light and a dying fire awaiting the late return of a son, a husband, or a brother; with many a sigh they would trace the ruin of their domestic felicity and the wreck of their family to some lodge of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... caricature which the representation of feeling in sculpture is apt to display. What time and accident, its centuries of darkness under the furrows of the "little Melian farm," have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus of Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, so that some spirit in the thing seems always on the point of breaking out, as though [68] in it classical sculpture had advanced already one step into the mystical Christian ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... and Germany lately. Everywhere have I heard your views and your admirable essay canvassed—the views of course often dissented from, according to the special bias of the speaker—but the work, its honesty of purpose, grandeur of conception, felicity of illustration, and courageous exposition, always referred to in terms of the highest admiration. And among your warmest friends no one rejoiced more heartily in the just appreciation ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... days here between this and Christmas. Just at present I am not My own master, having stepped into the middle of a sudden match in my own family. Lord Hertford is going to marry his third daughter to Lord Villiers, son of Lady Grandison, the present wife of Sir Charles Montagu. We are all felicity, and in a round of dinners. I am this minute returned from Beaumont-lodge, at Old Windsor, where Sir Charles Grandison lives. I will let you know, if the papers do not, when our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Lilliputian histories of Goody Two Shoes, Giles Gingerbread, Tommy Trip, &c., &c., are remarkable proofs of the benevolent minds of the projectors of this plan of instruction, and respectable instances of the accommodation of superior talents to the feeble intellects of infantine felicity." ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... intrusion, and subdued the strongest efforts of his fortitude. Julia too, his beloved sister—unprotected—unfriended—might, even at the moment he lamented her, be sinking under sufferings dreadful to humanity. The airy schemes he once formed of future felicity, resulting from the union of two persons so justly dear to him—with the gay visions of past happiness—floated upon his fancy, and the lustre they reflected served only to heighten, by contrast, the obscurity and gloom of his present views. He had, however, a new ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... a sailor's daughter yourself, you know Jack's account of his wife's domestic creed! 'A good fire, a clean hearth, the children abed, and the husband at sea,' is supposed to be the climax of felicity." ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... relations, herself unrelated, he expresses the Minerva side of feminine nature. It was not by chance that Goethe gave her this name. Macaria, the daughter of Hercules, who offered herself as a victim for the good of her country, was canonized by the Greeks, and worshipped as the Goddess of true Felicity. Goethe has embodied this Felicity as the Serenity that arises from Wisdom, a Wisdom such as the Jewish wise man venerated, alike instructed in the designs of heaven, and the methods necessary to carry them ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... voice from the dramatic to the descriptive tone was unfailing and extraordinary. This was perfection of art. Nor was the evenness of the variety less striking. Every character was indicated with the same felicity. Of course the previous image in the hearer's mind must be considered in estimating the effect. The reader does not create the character, the writer has done that; and now he refreshes it into unwonted vividness, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... popular, for the purpose of getting into Places of Honour, and Emoluments, and by these means of gratifying hereafter the noble Passion—Family Pride. Others are so inchanted with the Musick of the sound, that they conceive it to be supreme felicity. This is indeed Vanity of Vanities, and if such deluded Men ever come to their Senses, they will find it to be vexation of Spirit. When they reflect on their own folly, and injustice in having received ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... with open mouth, looking after the retreating young couple, while Miss Mary told their history; but he did not hear beyond the announcement of the reverend gentleman's marriage; his head was swimming with felicity. After this rencontre he began to walk double quick towards the place of his destination—and yet they were too soon (for he was in a great tremor at the idea of a meeting for which he had been longing any time these ten years)—through the Brompton lanes, and entering at the little ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the attempt to actualise the transcendental religious ideal may, when pursued with ardour, very easily conflict with the morality which makes domestic felicity its end. And again—as we see in the anti-militarist movement in France, in the history of the early Christian Church, in the case of the Quakers and in the teachings of Tolstoy—it may quite well set itself in conflict with ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the Emirs and Captains of the host; moreover he distributed alms to the poor and needy and set free all the prisoners. The whole world rejoiced in the coming of Kamar al-Zaman to the throne, blessing him and wishing him endurance of glory and prosperity, renown and felicity; and, as soon as he became King, he remitted the customs-dues and released all men who remained in gaol. Thus he abode a long while, ordering himself worthily towards his lieges; and he lived with his two wives in peace, happiness, constancy and content, lying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... these, that of Salisbury is chief, rising 424 feet from the ground, admirably designed in every detail. It was not completed till the middle of the fourteenth century, but most fortunately carries out with great felicity the spirit of the earlier style in which it was begun. Lichfield and Chichester have somewhat similar central spires, but less happy in proportion and detail than the beautiful ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... social wit requires natural humour and refinement Here, however, (as well as in the case of Plautus and Terence,) we do not possess a single fragment of any work whose Greek original is extant, to enable us to judge of the accuracy and general felicity of the copy; but a speech of considerable length from Attius' Prometheus Unbound, is in no respect unworthy of—Aeschylus, and the versification, also, is much more careful [Footnote: In what metres could these tragedians have translated the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments, which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motives to bias his counsel. Nor ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... devotion of his life, and the sweet calmness of his death. His coffin, his shroud, his grave, his pale form were reposing in lonely silence beneath the bosom of the earth; but the spirit had departed on its journey of ages, and she doubted not its perfect felicity. As often as she repaired to the spot where he was interred, and kneeled by his tomb and breathed forth her humble supplications, she found the sweet assurance that beyond the grave she would see her earthly parent, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... what the profession or calling of these Persians—whether they were lawyers or lawgivers, grammarians or warriors—they all, or almost all, adored verbal felicity and tried their hands at verse. Poetry may be called the gold ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... is the star-track; and these are they who in the world offered no prayers and chanted no liturgies. Through other works they have attained felicity.'" ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of every epoch and all civilizations is to find a balance between the natural aspiration for freedom that is none other than the need of personal felicity—a need as lively and profound in the heart of woman as of man—and the supreme necessity for a discipline without which the race, the state, and the family run the gravest danger. Yet this problem to-day, in the unmeasured exhilaration with which riches and power ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... splendid cavalcade issue from the portals of the fairy palace—the gallant jinn-born cavaliers, mounted on superb steeds with gorgeous housings, who accompany him to his father's capital. But alas! the brightest sky is sooner or later overcast—human felicity is—etc., etc. The old king's mind is poisoned against his noble son by the whisperings of a malignant and envious minister—a snake in the grass—a fly in the ointment of Prince Ahmad's beatitude! And to think of the old witch gaining access to the fairy palace— it was nothing less ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Scripture that before the Fall, the state of our first parents was a state of unmingled happiness. Now, it is the very nature of joy to give utterance to its emotions. Happiness must have its expression. And thus it may well be supposed that man in his primal felicity would seek to express, by every conceivable mode, the love, gratitude, and joy which absorbed every affection ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... this, as a further charm to exorcise the portent, the dance called Sambaso, which is still performed as a prelude to theatrical exhibitions by an actor dressed up as a venerable old man, emblematic of long life and felicity, was danced on a plot of turf in front of the Temple Kofukuji. By these means the smoke was dispelled, and the drama was originated. The story is to be found in the Zoku Nihon Ki, or ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... felicity consists Not in exterior fortunes.... Sacred felicity doth ne'er extend Beyond itself.... The swelling of an outward fortune can Create a prosperous, not a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... aspect of end gives rise to other vices: because when an end is very desirable, the result is that through desire thereof man sets about doing many things either good or evil. Now the most desirable end is happiness or felicity, which is the last end of human life, as stated above (I-II, Q. 1, AA. 4, 7, 8): wherefore the more a thing is furnished with the conditions of happiness, the more desirable it is. Also one of the conditions of happiness is that it be self-sufficing, else ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... indisputable by the experience of the centuries. And that truth is this: so long as a man has life, there is no need for him to despair. He may pass from the greatest misery to the greatest joy, from the greatest misfortune to the highest felicity. Take courage and, as though you were this very day beginning to recognize the value of life, strive at every moment to make ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... with the deepest sense of your goodness to me, and with the most heart-affecting gratitude, that from the happy, the thrice happy hour, that you so generously made me yours, till this moment, you have not left one thing, on my own part, to wish for, but the continuance and increase of your felicity, and that I might be still worthier of the unexampled goodness, tenderness, and condescension, wherewith you ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... I was hoping that she would drop the cake into my basket in spite of my protest, not only sparing my pride by an act of magnanimity, but allowing me at the same time the felicity of munching the plums on my way back to the Old Market. But the next moment, to my surprise and indignation, she took a generous bite of the very dainty she had offered me, making, while she ate it, provoking faces ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... if food is plenty where you live,—for that, you know, regulates matrimony,—you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather some fine morning; a kind of domestic felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as among ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 313.).—The author of the very clever series of papers in the New Monthly Magazine, to which MR. BEDE refers, is Mr. Leigh Hunt. The particular one in which Swift's Latin-English is quoted, has been republished in a charming little volume, full of original thinking, expressed with the felicity of genius, called Table Talk, and published in 1851 by Messrs. Smith and Elder, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... mind,' she said to Marion. 'I know it's very shocking, but I've had a tiring day and an excellent tea, and oh, this heather is delicious to lie on!' She stretched herself at full length as she spoke. 'I really must smoke, just to arrive at perfect felicity for once in my life. How happy you people ought to be who always have in ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... same time, wherein our arts were endowed by God with the greatest felicity that they could possibly enjoy, there flourished one Guglielmo da Marcilla, a Frenchman, who, from his constant residence in Arezzo, and from the affection that he bore to that city, may be said to have chosen it for his country, insomuch that all men ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... bright and ready wit. There is a pretty little story told by Mrs. Ellis in her book about Mrs. Barbauld, how one day, when Dr. Aikin and a friend 'were conversing on the passions,' the Doctor observes that joy cannot have place in a state of perfect felicity, since it supposes ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... expressed his desire to see an union accomplished between England and Scotland. He was convinced that nothing could more conduce to the safety and happiness of both. He should think it his peculiar felicity if, before the close of his reign, some happy expedient could be devised for making the two kingdoms one; and he, in the most earnest manner, recommended the question to the consideration of the Houses. It was resolved that the message should betaken into consideration ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... invalids have not seemed to sustain so close a relation to their bodies as my mind does to my body. Their powers seem to have been more purely psychic. Look at Stevenson—almost bedridden all his life, yet behold the felicity of his work! How completely his mind must have been emancipated from the infirmities of his body! It is clearly not thus with me. My mind is like a flame that depends entirely upon the good combustion going on in the body. Hence, I can never write in the afternoon, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... probably no writer equally concise. This perfection of style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, as I have already remarked, is by no means equal in other respects to the two preceding parts of the poem. The force and felicity of the diction, however, irresistibly attract the reader through the theological lectures and the sketches of ecclesiastical biography, with which this division of the work too much abounds. It may seem almost absurd to quote particular specimens of an excellence which ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... paradoxes of old philosophy, supported by naked reason, and the reward of mortal felicity; but labour in the ethics of faith, built upon heavenly assistance, and the happiness of both beings. Understand the rules, but swear not unto the doctrines of Zeno or Epicurus. Look beyond Antonius, and terminate not thy morals in Seneca or Epictetus. ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte |
