"Felicitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... practical handbook of felicitous expressions for enriching the vocabulary. 12 mo, cloth, $1.60, net; ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... this same smile in his rear, made by an unconscious and loving wife, in a singular disposition of patches: three on his blouse fortuitously representing eyes and nose, and a long horizontal one, lower down, combining with these in an undesigned but felicitous grin. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... entitled 'In Capri,' and signed 'W. Wordsworth,' are from the pen of a grandson of the famous author of 'The Excursion.' They are gracefully written, in an agreeable rhythm, and with much command of felicitous expression. If, therefore, the writer has indeed the relationship to the great Wordsworth which rumour assigns him, the fact is interesting, and suggests some considerations as to the transmission of the poetic faculty from one generation ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... harmony with, in keeping with, in unison with, &c. n.; at one with, of one mind, of a piece[Fr]; consistent, compatible, proportionate; commensurate; on all fours. apt, apposite, pertinent, pat; to the point, to the purpose; happy, felicitous, germane, ad rem[Lat], in point, on point, directly on point, bearing upon, applicable, relevant, admissible. fit adapted, in loco, a propos[Fr], appropriate, seasonable, sortable, suitable, idoneous[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... calls the "Messiah" "a Christian epic in musical sounds." The expression is a felicitous description of its theme and style. It celebrates the grandest of events with the sublimest strains that music may utter. The great composer commanded, and all the powers of music hastened with song and instrument to praise the life, death, and triumph of the Christ. No human ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Life of Hume. Everybody who takes an interest in Rousseau is indebted to Mr. Burton for the ample documents which he has provided. Yet one cannot but regret the satire on Rousseau with which he intersperses them, and which is not always felicitous. For one instance, he implies (p. 295) that Rousseau invented the story given in the Confessions, of Hume's correcting the proofs of Wallace's book against himself. The story may be true or not, but at any ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... day, the sky without a cloud and the air as soft as summer. The carriages were ordered immediately after breakfast, and we sallied forth in high spirits—resolved as L** said, with his usual felicitous ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Vaguely damped by his environment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gave himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinking over all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of the dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitous replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he was going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangely alike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... beautiful and satisfactory room, before a stick of furniture has been placed in it. All questions pertaining to the practical equipment and the decorative amenities of the house should be approached architecturally. If this is done, the result cannot fail to be felicitous, and our dream of our house ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... details of the machine. When the case came on for trial, the learned sergeant was enabled to work the model on the table with such case and skill, and to explain the precise nature of the invention with such felicitous clearness, as to astonish alike judge, jury, and spectators; and the thorough conscientiousness and mastery with which he handled the case had no doubt its influence upon the decision ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... means of preservation which human ingenuity had failed to secure were at hand from the felicitous provision of Nature herself. It was on the 10th of March that the captain and Lieutenant Procope started off once more to investigate the northwest corner of the island; on their way their conversation naturally was engrossed by the subject ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Hall to the church, already crowded with an expectant audience, to whom they gave a full report of the morning's proceedings. The Hutchinsons of worldwide fame were present in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with appropriate songs and felicitous remarks. For five long hours on that hot midsummer day a crowded audience, many standing, listened with profound interest and reluctantly dispersed at last, all agreeing that it was one of the most impressive and enthusiastic meetings ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... establishment of such an intercourse, no man could have been more aptly chosen than John Adams. While his high-toned manners opened the way to favor, his nervous logic followed up the advantage so gracefully won, and drove home his purpose to its end. Franklin was equally felicitous in attaching to himself the good-will of the court of Versailles. Their successors well sustained the respect which they had inspired; and it was a matter of surprise among the best educated Europeans that such cultivated ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... viewed, to be seen truly and impartially. His appreciative recognition of the privileges of religious equality which we possess in Canada, and of the prominent part taken by Dr. Ryerson in obtaining them, was very suggestive and felicitous. We rarely follow to the grave so eminent a man as Dr. Ryerson; and we seldom have heard a discourse so fully equal ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... also. And afterwards as the months flew by the Golden Belt Wheat Company paid the interest on the forged note, and the bank paid the Golden Belt Wheat Company interest on a daily ledger balance of nine thousand, and all went happily. The Larger Good accepted the sacrifices of truth, and went on its felicitous way. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... by the individual agencies but stored in the center prior to their screening and acquisition by the National Archives. These records are open to qualified researchers, but access to them is controlled by the records managers of the individual agencies, a not altogether felicitous arrangement for the researcher, considering the bulk of the material and its lack ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... he is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded in advance, and which celebrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... donkey yonder is toiling and perspiring while we are lolling in the shade." The happy conceit of letting the donkeys work while the idle enjoyed life made such a deep impression on him that he determined to turn priest; and it is the same felicitous thought that has impelled so many impecunious gentlemen to become colonial officials. The little opening for civil labor in Spain and Portugal, and the prospect of comfortable perquisites in the colonies, have sent many a starving caballero across ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... with the Moors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that betrayed the Christian cause and interests at a critical moment. But all is conjecture. As to the name, Southey has somewhere offered a possible interpretation of it; but it struck me as far from felicitous, and not what might have been expected from Southey, whose vast historical research and commanding talent should naturally have unlocked this most mysterious of modern secrets, if any unlocking does yet lie within the resources of human skill ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... modern. Whether he praises his country, its religion, its laws, its citizens, its senate, or its individual magistrates, he does it with enthusiasm, a splendour, a geniality, and an inconceivable richness of felicitous expression which make us love the man as much as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and felicitous genius, Euripides enjoyed the blessing of a firm undaunted spirit, a great and bold dignity, and a courage which nothing could shake. During the representation of one of his tragedies, the audience took ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... from Massachusetts and slave-drivers from South Carolina entered the vast hall arm in arm. The great meeting rose to its feet, and walls and roof shook with applause. General John A. Dix of New York called the Convention to order, and, in an eloquent and felicitous speech, stated the objects of the assembly—to renew fraternal feeling between the sections, heal the wounds of war, obliterate bitter memories, and restore the Union of the fathers. Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin was chosen permanent president, and patriotic resolutions were adopted ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... completed his fifth volume of the Lives of the most eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. It contains Jameson, Ramsey, Romney, Runciman, Copley, Mortimer, Raeburn, Hoppner, Owen, Harlow, and Bonington; all sketched in the author's most felicitous style. The memoir of Bonington is of peculiar interest, since all our readers must recollect the premature death of that promising artist. Mr. Cunningham ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... in an address before the Worcester Technical School, June 25th, said some words that are worthy of noting. He said: "I thank my mother that she taught me both to sew and to knit. Although my domestic life has always been felicitous, I have, at times, found this knowledge very convenient. A man who knows how to do these things, at all times honorable and sometimes absolutely necessary to preserve one's integrity, is ten times more patient ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by this purple light, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... "It is a felicitous affair," said the Count, "which has the fortune to introduce me to this charming company," and the Count bowed first to Bulldog and then to the school with such a marked indication in one direction that Speug almost blushed. "My sorrow is to ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... satire.[13] But though he veiled his resentment under this mask of indifference at the time, he afterwards avowed that the exquisite character of Zimri in "Absalom and Achitophel" was laboured with so much felicitous skill as a requital in kind to the author of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... in reality a poet who imagines and creates. The microscope, the magnifying glass, the scalpel, are as it were the strings of a lyre. "The felicitous and fruitful hypothesis which constitutes scientific invention is a gift of sentiment" in the words of Claude Bernard; and of this king of physiology, who commenced by proving himself in works of pure imagination, and whose genius finally took for its theme the manifold ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Mirdite revolt, Mr. Fisher's description is hardly what you would call felicitous. Mark Djoni and the other members of the Mirdite Government were compelled last July to seek refuge at Prizren in Yugoslavia, and since then they have conducted their affairs from that place. These circumstances, in Mr. Fisher's opinion, go to prove the existence of a Yugoslav plot whose aim ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... another ten years or so apparently—but he believed, oh yes! he was certain, that had there been fewer boats there would have been more people saved. Really, when reading the report of this admirably conducted inquiry one isn't certain at times whether it is an Admirable Inquiry or a felicitous opera-bouffe of the Gilbertian type—with a rather grim subject, to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... house of a mutual acquaintance, the couple quickly became enamored of each other. A brief engagement of less than a month was followed by marriage, and so Moscheles entered into a relation singularly felicitous in all the elements which make domestic life most blessed. After a brief tour in the Rhenish cities, and a visit to Paris, Moscheles proceeded to London, where he had determined to make his home, for in no country ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... morning to make their daily repast in the intoxicating Soma of Nature's offertory, of which the Priest could only compound, from simples a symbolical imitation. Then came the various Sun-Gods, Adityas or Solar Attributes, Surya the Heavenly, Savitri the Progenitor, Pashan the Nourisher, Bagha the Felicitous, and Mitra the Friend. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the time. Thus writes the Adjutant-General: 'Some of our Philadelphia gentlemen, who came over on visits, upon the first cannon went off in a violent hurry. Your noisy Sons of Liberty are, I find, the quietest in the field.' Thus again Washington, with felicitous expression, points a paragraph ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... have for me a kind of life in them, and to be humble friends of mine and mute partakers of my destiny. How often have I confided my soul to them in a glance! A warped bit of beading often met my eyes, and suggested new developments,—a striking proof of my system, or a felicitous word by which to render my all but inexpressible thought. By sheer contemplation of the things about me I discerned an expression and a character in each. If the setting sun happened to steal in through my narrow window, they would take new ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... third anniversary of our felicitous union. It is now two months since our guests left us to the enjoyment of each other's society; and I have had nine weeks' experience of this new phase of conjugal life—two persons living together, as master and mistress of the house, and father and mother of a winsome, merry little child, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... mocking vein, for courage is moving when it is light-hearted. When a Frenchman tells you he has eaten nothing for two days, he adds, "Ca, ce n'est pas drole" ("Now, that's no joke"). "Coeur d'artichaut" (a heart like an artichoke) is a felicitous expression for a person who has a succession of caprices and short-lived fancies; and there is something to the point in the satire which calls a surgical instrument "baume d'acier" (steel balm), or in the saying which mocks the credulous faith many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... tales given of Fairy dances the music is always spoken of as most entrancing, and Shakespeare in felicitous terms gives utterance ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... spread it out carefully before her; these epistolary children of hers were tenderly dear to Miss Madigan. Her eye caught a phrase here and there that appeared to be singularly felicitous. This one, for instance: ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... obvious in the Vicar of Wakefield, because this is a novel, and a very delightful one. The only point of direct contact with Rasselas is the knowledge of human nature, though in the one book this takes the form of melancholy aphorism and apophthegm, in the other that of felicitous trait and dialogue-utterance. There is plenty of story, though this has not been arranged so as to hit the taste of the martinet in "fable;" the book has endless character; the descriptions are Hogarth with less of peuple about them; the dialogue is unsurpassable. Yet Goldsmith, untiring ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... produced by him on that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how "'Abolitionist' was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something, if one must die, to die by such a hand—a hand somewhat worthy and able to stifle anti-slavery, if ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... lamenting the blindness of his own pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her engagement ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... by name, and inquired if he had just come de l'autre cote, meaning the other side of the Atlantic, according to a common New-York idiom; but the Vicomte not unnaturally took it to mean from the other side of the road, and gave a corresponding answer in English as felicitous as Mr. Simpson's French. Then he digressed upon Ashburner, whom he saw to be an Englishman, in so pointed a manner, that Benson was obliged to introduce them; and the introduction was followed by an invitation on Simpson's part ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... advocate, desirous of leading to a determinate and material conclusion, his address, like that of the apostle of temperance, is mostly mild and equable, with occasionally a little gentlemanly fervour to give animation to his discourse. His style is mostly felicitous, sometimes beautiful, lucid, precise, and elevated. In tone and manner of execution, in quiet steadiness of purpose, in the firm, intrepid spirit with which truth, or that which is conceived to be true, is followed, regardless of startling presentments, the Vestiges ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... BELLOWS and BETHUNE, who, though pole-wide apart in the sphere of theology, spanning the distance between Arius and Calvin, find common grounds of sympathy in their love for, and appreciation of Art. Mr. DURAND, the President, in a very felicitous speech, narrated his experience as an artist and as one of the founders ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... struck him the night before, but what he saw during these charmed hours filled him with admiration and gratitude. She WAS in it, this time; she had pulled herself together, she had taken possession, she was felicitous at every turn. Fresh from his revelation of Nona he was in a position to judge, and as he judged he exulted. He was thrilled and carried away, and he was moreover intensely curious to know what had happened to her, by what unfathomable art she had managed in a few hours to effect ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... the ill-regulated fancies of metaphysical theorists. It was a reform strictly in accordance with some of the most important principles of the constitution, as they have been gradually developed by the practical experience of successive generations. It combined with felicitous skill representative with local government; it secured uniformity in working, and that peculiarly English principle of publicity, without which the best-devised system cannot long be ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found their equal in comic etching anywhere. . . . The picturesque details of the room are etched with the same felicitous intelligence; but the marvel of the work is in the expression of the strange little faces, and the energy of the comical wee limbs." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... oral tradition, and few have exercised so wide and mighty an influence. The profound, many-sided and intimate knowledge of human nature which it evinces, its vast variety of incident, its wealth of tears and laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt for every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured periods, its sustained energy and animation of style must ever ensure ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... spirit with the wise men of the ages. He had conned his books as jealously as a miner peering for gold, and had not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected the purest ore of truth and the richest gems of thought, until he was able to crown himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis and a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, ancient and modern, sacred and profane; science, pure, empirical, and metaphysical; the arts, mechanical and liberal; the professions, law, divinity, and medicine; ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... the beach, lightly tripping, capacious reticule in hand, came Mrs. Barlow to spend the day at the Ark, unexpectedly! The inspired and felicitous customs of the Wallencampers admitted of no rude surprises; rational joy, alone, pervaded the Ark ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... surprised at the ease with which he did work he felt to be good. By nature a critic, he would have been the first to detect signs of carelessness, of over-fluency even in his own writing; but the narrative, with its felicitous turns of expression, its lucid, clear-cut phrases, slipped naturally from his pen; and he felt to the full the truth ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... quaint and pithy point of this passage stamps it as one of Bunyan's most felicitous descriptions. We who live in a later age may, indeed, suspect that he has somewhat antedated the death of Pagan, and the impotence of Pope; but his picture of their cave and its memorials, his delineation of the survivor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... special pride of a rich and well-born man. Barclay was of plebeian birth, with nothing in the world to depend on but his own talents, which he had abused, and the before-named patrimony, which was already nearly exhausted. It will at once be seen that there could hardly be a more felicitous conjunction of circumstances to make everybody miserable by one easy, natural step; and the step was duly taken. Of course, the young people fell in love immediately,—Everett, the Dreamer, looking on with a sort of reverent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and will continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer—four of them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous choice of situation. 'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offsprings of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of Defoe. Even an unpractised midwife would swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them. They are, in their way, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... depositing it in unexpected holy water, and it was whispered that he had put it there to mend it, everybody knew that there was hardly a Catholic in the Parliament of whom such a fable could be told with more felicitous unfitness. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... not undeserving in itself, full as it is of curious exhibitions of character and contrivance, but to which politically it cannot lay claim, amid the social phenomena, so far grander in scale and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of other western nations. It is remarkable for keeping up an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... glorious laugh, and "throw (affectation) to the dogs; I'll have none of it." Now the farce begins: up starts the immortal hero himself, and makes his bow; a simultaneous display of "broad grins" welcomes his felicitous entree; and for a few seconds the scene resembles the appearance of a popular election candidate, Sir Francis Burdett, or his colleague, little Cam Hobhouse, on the hustings in Covent Garden; nothing is heard but one deafening shout of clamorous approbation. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... E. VernA"de (George H. Doran Company). This volume of stories which is drawn from the late Lieutenant VernA"de's output during the past twelve years reveals a genuine talent for the felicitous portrayal of social life in an English village, and suggests that he might have gone rather far in stories of adventure. "The Maze" is the best story in the volume, and makes it clear that a brilliant short story writer was lost ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it is impossible that in its course it should not once and again touch upon some point worth notice, if not exploration. Even that miserable animal the "unattached writer" may gratefully and respectfully recognize his accurate apprehension and his felicitous application of well-nigh the most hackneyed verse in all the range of Shakespeare's—which yet is almost invariably misconstrued and misapplied—"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;" ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... acting-principal of Abbot Academy in 1853, and now president of its Alumnae Association, kindly offered her pleasant parlors in Chester Square for the purpose. There on the 12th of January, was held a most delightful gathering, where the speakers were as choice as they were felicitous, and the company as rarely homogeneous ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... would place it with the Aspleniums, but considering its size, structure, habits of growth and all, it seems more closely allied to the two larger ferns than to the little rock species. We shall group the three together as the large spleenworts, or for the sake of being more definite adopt Clute's felicitous phrase. ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... Hollingsworth's feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to me, who have always been curious in such matters, that Priscilla's vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them thither, they neither can tell nor care ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such making, in the present case, was of the humblest it is true, mere spade labour and hod-bearing—namely, writing from Charles Verity's dictation, verifying names and dates, checking references and quotations. Still each arresting phrase, each felicitous expression, the dramatic ring of some virile word, the broad onward sweep of stately prose in narrative or sustained description, not only charmed her ear but challenged her creative faculty. She put herself to school in respect of it all, learning day by day a lesson.—This ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and his new house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)—who does not know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand enough ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prudence of old age. They think that in the impetuosity of youth, you will resent the prudence with which the mother country holds you back. Upon a wise view of it, we find in the distinctive qualities and defects of youth and age the elements of a felicitous combination. The father of the philosophy of history, Thucydides, has attributed to Alcibiades a great truth: "Consider that youth and age have no power unless united; but that the lighter and the more exact and the middle sort of judgment, when duly attempered, are likely to be most ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... degree of good and kindness in thy daily life, for the result is a slight pleasurable sense that will seem to warm and delectate thee with felicitous self-laudings; and all that brings thy thoughts to thyself tends to invigorate that central principle by the growth of which thou art to give thyself ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Charles Remond, once said upon the platform that George Washington, having been a slaveholder, was a villain, Wendell Phillips remonstrated by saying, "Charles, the epithet is not felicitous." Reformers are apt to be pelted with epithets quite as ill-chosen. How often has the charge figured in history, that they were "actuated by love of notoriety"! The early Christians, it was generally believed, took a positive pleasure in being thrown to the lions, under the influence of this ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... superior aspect—they perceived that it was in familiar colloquial communications, such as men use in real life, that human affairs and the hearts of men could be justly imitated, and Andronicus taking advantage of this singular and felicitous incident, composed and represented regular dramas ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... measure was mainly attributable, were thoroughly satisfied, and, instead of displaying their nationality in angry and defiant resolutions, they adopted the language of congratulation and enthusiastic allegiance to the Government. This felicitous state of things was suddenly interrupted by one of those incidents which no foresight could have anticipated, and which, absolutely trivial in itself, was magnified at once, by the jealous spirit of patriotism, into a violation of the solemn compact that had just been ratified on ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Rhode Island, was a model Senator. Endowed by nature with a gracious presence, integrity, and good sense, what he had to say on any question was always listened to with attention on both sides of the Senate Chamber. He excelled in the felicitous eulogies which he was called upon to deliver over departed associates. "The shaft of Death, Mr. President," said he on one of these occasions, "has been buried in this Chamber of late with fearful frequency, sparing neither eminence nor usefulness ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... conformable; in accordance with, in harmony with, in keeping with, in unison with, &c n.; at one with, of one mind, of a piece [Fr.]; consistent, compatible, proportionate; commensurate; on all fours. apt, apposite, pertinent, pat; to the point, to the purpose; happy, felicitous, germane, ad rem [Lat.], in point, on point, directly on point, bearing upon, applicable, relevant, admissible. fit adapted, in loco, a propos [Fr.], appropriate, seasonable, sortable, suitable, idoneous^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on the other hand, seems to me on the whole undoubtedly successful, though, for whatever reason, its merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. It is unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. In one of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to Horace's not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps I should have done wisely to follow it more than I have done: but the matter is one where a line must be drawn, and I am not without apprehension ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... King, perhaps the most noted and broadly honored divine ever known on the Pacific Coast, visited Lake Tahoe, and on his return to San Francisco preached a sermon, entitled: "Living Water from Lake Tahoe." Its descriptions are so felicitous that I am gratified to be able to quote them from Dr. King's volume of Sermons Christianity and Humanity, with the kind permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Company, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... DEAR SIR,—I trust your suggestion for Miss Kavanagh's benefit will have all success. It seems to me truly felicitous and excellent, and, I doubt not, she will think so too. The last class of female character will be difficult to manage: there will be nice points in it—yet, well-managed, both an attractive and instructive book might result therefrom. One thing may be depended upon in the execution ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... hearts that love him there, he is better prepared to successfully meet and overcome life's difficulties and to endure buffetings from the outside world. It seems eminently felicitous that heaven should be called home; for the name is associated with the sweetest, purest, holiest joys that are experienced in this life. It raises our hopes, and fills us with a glorious expectancy, when we think of that place of ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... but the State prevented that; we now rely on opinion instead; the public approval is a reward, its disapproval a severe penalty, on the Bank directors; and of these it is most important that the finance minister should be a sound and felicitous exponent. ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... padded surtout which clothes him from neb to base, and from heat by the cool, limpid wave, softly lap-lapping against the impenetrable feathers. He feels like a stove in the winter, and like a water-bag in the summer. When, from a sort of drowsy, felicitous wantonness—for he never requires to act either on reason or impulse— he desires to visit an adjacent island, he simply allows the tide to encircle him to about two-thirds his total altitude; then, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... glanced from the lady's face to the little egg-shaped head and back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found a felicitous moment: ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... not a felicitous illustration of the way in which the boundaries of the constellations should be defined. There can be no more naturally associated group than the four stars of this square, and they ought surely to be included in the same constellation. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... speed, and compliments were set aside by Garnache, who, at his best, was not felicitous with them. Valerie felt herself caught by the wrist, a trifle roughly she remembered afterwards, and hurried across the cobbles to the tethered horses, with which Rabecque was already busy. She saw Garnache raise his foot to the stirrup and hoist himself to the saddle. Then he held down a hand ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... preparation, were ordered. In the meantime he went to the bar for an "appetizer," as he termed it. Here he met an acquaintance among the loungers present, and, of course, asked him to take a social glass also. This personage complied in a manner peculiarly felicitous, and in such a way as to give the impression that his acceptance of the courtesy was a compliment to Haldane. Much practice had made him perfect in this art, and the number of drinks that he was able to secure gratis in the course of a year by being always on hand and by maintaining ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... received sure tidings of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... amenity. It is therefore the duty of an author to learn to write as well as to learn to think; and this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, and an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual faculties. These are the true prompters of those felicitous expressions which give a tone congruous to the subject, and which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the beauty, and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... in a beautiful ode. Another—left unfinished—that on the Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, was for many years lost sight of, but was discovered by Dr. Alex. Carlyle (q.v.). C.'s poetry is distinguished by its high imaginative quality, and by exquisitely felicitous descriptive phrases. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... judgment, but he showed in almost everything a keen appreciation and talked very readily. For through his authority and recklessness and his habit of saying right out without reflection anything at all that occurred to him, and not being ashamed to air his thoughts, he often stumbled upon some felicitous expression. [But the same Antoninus made many mistakes through his headstrong opinions. It was not enough for him to know everything: he wanted to be the only one who knew anything. It was not enough for him to have all power: he would be the only one with any power. Hence it was ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... important point in our present investigation, we will give it further attention. That the Christians were to experience a great and sudden change at the destruction of Jerusalem is certain. They were to be delivered from all their trials and persecutions, and be raised into the full and felicitous enjoyment of the reign of Christ. Those Christians, who had not seen our Saviour alive from the dead, who had believed on the testimony of his apostles and of the "five hundred brethren," were delivered from all their doubts ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... deals with those branches, such as comparative anatomy and natural history, of which he had a personal and practical knowledge, that he begins to write well. Of his physiological conclusions, some are singularly felicitous; his views of the connected chain of organic forms, from the lowest to the highest, are very grand. His metaphysical and physical speculations—for in reality they are nothing but speculations—are of no kind of value. His successful achievements, and also his failures, conspicuously ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... left much of its interest in the hands of the restorers. It has been "done up" without mercy; its natural place would be at Rochelle the New. A sort of battlemented curtain, flanked with turrets, divides it from the street and contains a low door (a low door in a high wall is always felicitous), which admits you to an inner court, where you discover the face of the building. It has statues set into it and is raised upon a very low and very deep arcade. The principal function of the deferential old portress who conducts you ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... prominent men of letters of his time, and he entered freely into the debauchery of the period. Thus his verse gives a representation of the debased manners of the day in gay society. His style was remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their subjects range from a touching outburst of genuine grief for a brother's death to a fugitive epigram of the most voluptuous triviality. His verses display ease and impetuosity, tumultuous merriment ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and, as Venice was an old haunt of mine, she very excusably expected me to act as cicerone to her, and allowed me but little rest between the hours of breakfast and of the table d'hote. At last, however, she conceived the modest and felicitous idea of making a copy of Titian's "Assumption"; and, having obtained the requisite permission for that purpose, set to work upon the first of a long series of courageous attempts, all of which she conscientiously destroyed when in ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... romanticism— melodrama in fact. I want to have in poetry what we are getting in fiction—the best sort of realism. Realism is now abjuring the heroic theory; it has thrown over the old conventions, the felicitous coincidences, life arranged on ideal lines; and it has gone straight to life itself, strong, full-blooded, eager life, full of mistakes and blunders and failures and sharp disasters and fears. Life goes shambling along like a ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... favorite attitude, having his left forefinger and thumb in his waist-coat pocket, and with his right hand caressing his whisker, while he stood near Gwendolen and looked at her—not unlike a gentleman who has a felicitous introduction at ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... inadequacy to his task, and expressions of reliance on the people's support when he tried to do his duty. To a man who can sometimes speak from the heart and to the heart as Lincoln did it is perhaps not given to be uniformly felicitous. Among these speeches was that delivered at Philadelphia, which has already been quoted, but most of them were not considered felicitous at the time. They were too unpretentious. Moreover, they contained sentences which seemed to understate the gravity of the crisis in a ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Lord Wellesley's verses—Greek as well as Latin. The Latin lines upon Chantrey's success at Holkham in killing two woodcocks at the first shot, which subsequently he sculptured in marble and presented to Lord Leicester, are perhaps the most felicitous amongst the whole. Masquerading, in Lord Wellesley's verses, as Praxiteles, who could not well be represented with a Manon having a percussion lock, Chantrey is armed with a bow ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... eccentric modern theories, of writing Shakespeare's plays. No man ever had a more imaginative power of illustration drawn from the most remote and most unlikely analogies; analogies often of the quaintest and most unexpected kind, but often also not only felicitous in application but profound and true. His powers were early called upon for some of those sportive compositions in which that age delighted on occasions of rejoicing or festival. Three of his contributions to these "devices" have been preserved—two ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... were of a high order: clear and distinct apprehension of his subject, and felicitous illustration, characterized him among all his companions. To an eager desire for wide acquaintance with truth in all its departments, and a memory strong and accurate in retaining what he found, there was added a remarkable candor in examining what claimed to be the ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... front a man had risen from his seat—the felicitous Mr. Truesdale. Glancing around at his fellow-members he then began to explain in the impressive but conversational tone of one whose counsels are in the habit of being listened to, that this was merely a little measure ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man, passion-laden, In a chamber meets a maiden, Then felicitous communion, By love's strain between the twain, Grows from forth their union; For the game, it hath no name, Of lips, arms, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... annoyance that has escaped his notice. It was thus with Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite. He had made up his mind that he wanted for nothing, when it was suddenly found out by his friends that he was in a state of felicitous destitution. It was discovered simultaneously, by five mamas and eighteen daughters, that Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite must want a wife; and that his sixteen thousand and odd pounds must be a source of undivided anxiety ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that, old fellow," Richard answered, more touched by this difficult voicing of what he knew to be Hugh's genuine devotion than he should have been by the most felicitous phrasing of another's congratulations. "And I can tell you this. There's nobody else I know whom I would have brought here to see my preparations—nobody else who would have understood how I feel about—what I'm doing to-day. I never should have believed it would have seemed ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... weather was at the time being, and what it had been in time past, but what it was likely to be in time to come. It soon diverged, however, to business, and usually ended in a display of fresh goods and invoices, and in references, on the part of Boone, to the felicitous state of trade ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... in framing the Declaration of Independence, "have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The words are more than a felicitous phrase. They express even more than the creed of a nation. They embody in themselves the uppermost thought of the era that was dawning when they were written. They stand for the same view of society which, in that very year of 1776, Adam Smith put before the world ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... followed by a narrative of travel in Italy, happily written, full of felicitous description, and touched by a humor which, in quality and manner, was new to English readers. Then came one of those indiscretions of the imagination which showed that the dignified and somewhat sober young poet, the "parson ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I beg to compliment him on the motto in his title-page; it is felicitous. A motto should contain, as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the charm thus felt at the outset is evenly distributed and remarkably well sustained throughout the book. Mr. Cowley's work is valuable, as supplying a place not filled by any of the larger and more pretentious histories of the late war. Full of vivid description, spicy detail, felicitous citation, and sparkling anecdote, Leaves from a Lawyer's Life is sure to prove a genuine source of pleasure to a ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... gunwale of the gig, Paul replied in a felicitous manner as he accepted the trophy from her hands. The reception at Memphis was in accordance with the enthusiasm of the excursionists and Paul resumed the voyage Monday afternoon with the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... power at all as a writer, if writing be considered an accomplishment which can be separated from earnest thinking. Words are, with him, the mere instruments for the expression of things; and he hits on felicitous words only under that impatient stress of thought which demands exact expression for definite ideas. All his words, simple as they are, are therefore fairly earned, and he gives to them a force and significance which they do not bear in the dictionary. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... triumphed. The first distinguished names of the new school are those of Franzen and Wallin. Franzen (1772-1847), a bishop, was celebrated for his lyrics of social life, and in many points resembles Wordsworth. The qualities of heart, the home affections, and the gladsome and felicitous appreciation of the beauty of life and nature found in his poems, give him his great charm. Archbishop Wallin (1779- 1839) is the great religious poet of Sweden. In his hymns there is a strength and majesty, a solemn splendor and harmony of intonation, that ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... persons seem to be without character; such men are therefore called, distinctively, 'characters'; and it is a matter of common experience that, whether through the unconscious prescience of parents or through that felicitous sense of propriety which often guides the hazards of destiny, they usually bear names to match their qualities. Meshach Myatt! Meshach Myatt! What piquant curious syllables to roll glibly off the tongue, and to repeat for the pleasure of repetition! And what a vision of Meshach ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... "is a propitious day, and you should lose no time in hiring a boat and starting on your journey westwards. And when, by your eminent talents, you shall have soared high to a lofty position, and we meet again next winter, will not the occasion be extremely felicitous?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of I. 21, To a Jar of Wine, already quoted in part, is an example. Another brilliant success is Sir Stephen E. De Vere's I. 31, Prayer to Apollo, quoted in connection with the poet's religious attitude. No less felicitous are Conington's spirited twelve lines, reproducing ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... Comforts of Conceitedness; Virginia Water, by the editor, could hardly be written by his fireside—it has too much local inspiration in every line; Auguste de Valcour, by the author of Gilbert Earle, is in his usual felicitous vein of philosophic melancholy; Miss Roberts has a glittering Tale of Normandy; the Orphans, by the editor, is simple and pathetic; Palinodia ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... mental anxiety, and corporeal lassitude, was our justly renowned hero, at the period of those preparations being completed, which were calculated to display him, in the view of an enraptured people, as the greatest and most felicitous of mortals; nor did his admirable heart, amidst all it's oppressions, reject a temporary participation in the bliss which was so amply provided for ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... conscious that this somewhat felicitous ending to the tragedy, as an object lesson to Hunch, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... arrived during dinner. Among them were the nine volumes of Pietro Gianone's Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli, a copy of which I ought to have possessed long ago. It is dedicated to the "Most Puissant and Felicitous Prince Charles VI, the Great, by God crowned Emperor of the Romans, King of Germany, Spain, Naples, Hungary, Bohemia, Sicily, etcetera." Is there a living soul in God's universe who has a spark ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Cooper. With an earnestness and indefatigable zeal proportioned to the object, and which nothing but the most generous friendship could impel him to employ, Mr. Holcroft gave those powers to the instruction of our hero, and with such speedy and felicitous effect, that the young gentleman was, in the course of a few months, considered by his two friends as perfectly qualified to appear before a London audience in some of Shakspeare's most important characters. Having been for some time a successful dramatic writer, Mr. H. enjoyed the ear ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... suggested;[80] but the objection to them is that, beautiful though they are, their complexity would embarrass and distress the kneeling worshipper. In these matters, practical drawbacks have to be taken into account as well as abstract excellencies, and no matter how felicitous the antiphonal responses, they would be worse than useless were a puzzled congregation to ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... a heart for humanity? Have you a soul that goes out for men? Are you Christ-like? Will you spend yourself for the sake of elevating men who need to be lifted up? That is orthodox. I do not care what the creed is. If a church has a good creed, that is all the more felicitous; and if it has a bad creed, a good life cures ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... draw upon this fragment for further examples of felicitous translation. It is scarcely necessary, however. What has been given is sufficient to show the rare skill of the translator. He is so fortunate as to possess in a high degree what Bayard Taylor calls "secondary inspiration," without which the work of a translator ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... would be a great hindrance to him in his calling. But much argument is not required to guide the public, still less a formal exposition of that argument. What is mostly needed is the manly utterance of clear conclusions; if a statesman gives these in a felicitous way (and if with a few light and humorous illustrations, so much the better), he has done his part. He will have given the text, the scribes in the newspapers will write the sermon. A statesman ought to show his own nature, and talk in a palpable ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of it is too often declamatory; he drops the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... connections between the succeeding paragraphs. They are most skillfully dovetailed together. Now make a list of the phrases in the first fifteen pages which introduce paragraphs, telling from what in the preceding paragraph each new paragraph springs. Do you think that such a felicitous result just happened? ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... mental organism by which over effort is felt to be as vicious and contemptible as indolence. He knew this too well to know the grounds of his knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less completely, can see that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of the two great contradictory principles, love of effort and love of ease, has underlain every healthy step of all healthy growth, whether of vegetable or animal, from the earliest conceivable time ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... maintain so high a rank among German poems, because they arose with and in the achievements which are their subject; and because, moreover, their felicitous form, just as if a fellow-combatant had produced them in the loftiest moments, makes us feel the most ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... passages, and adopts the general design. Though he does not equal the vigour of some of Dryden's lines, and wages war in a more ungenerous spirit, the Dunciad has a wider scope than its original, and shows Pope's command of his weapons in occasional felicitous phrases, in the vigour of the versification, and in the general sense of form and clear presentation of the scene imagined. For a successor to the great empire of dulness he chose (in the original form of the poem) the unlucky Theobald, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... is the felicitous term given by Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott to the period of nearly three centuries following the campaign against the inhabitants of Canaan, when the Israelites took possession of their land. The Book of, Judges is a record of those "colonial days;" and ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... learnedly considered. Dr. Seasholes declared that all good people will rise into the air, like so many larks, to meet the Lord and conduct him to earth—with flying banners and a brass-band, I suppose— where he will reign a thousand years. At the conclusion of this felicitous period Satan is to be loosed for a little season, and after he has pawed up the gravel with his long toe-nails and given us a preliminary touch of Purgatory, we are to have the genuine pyrotechnics. Some of the divines did not agree with the spectacular ceremonies arranged by Dr. Seasholes ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to satisfy the doubts his impatient and uncurbed mind feels? Why cannot my form accompany the bold flights of my mind and satisfy the craving I feel to resolve the vexed question that ever rises to my lips—"Is he alive?" O soul of mine, be patient, thou hast a felicitous tranquillity, which other men might envy thee! Sufficient for the hour is the consciousness thou hast that thy mission is a holy ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... and exception, a phenomenon of the clearest-minded and most active of races, who thought, but did not contemplate,—whose ideal world consisted only of simple, but stately legends of bright-limbed gods and heroes. A felicitous production of high art, also, is among the rarest of exceptions, and will be till the Millennium. Myriads of comparative failures follow in the suite of a masterpiece. We have, therefore, judged the novel by an impracticable standard, by a comparison with the highest aims rather than the usual ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... consciousness. In fact, the corner occupied by the sensation was so small that occasional efforts on her part to escape to it from the less agreeable contents of her mind were lamentable failures. Aloud, in terms as felicitous as she could make them, she was commenting on the beauty of the glass-smooth river, with the sumptuously colored autumn trees casting down into it the imperial gold and crimson of their reflections. Silently she was struggling ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... friend named King, in the Irish Channel, in that year, and is a classical pastoral, tricked off in Italian garb. What it loses in adherence to classic models and Italian taste, is more than made up by exquisite lines and felicitous phrases. In it he calls fame "that last infirmity of noble mind." Perhaps he has nowhere written ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three small coins his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a colour to cover that small ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... his sister Margaret, written soon after his arrival, shows a delightful relation between them and warm affection on his part. It tells in a felicitous manner of the place, the people, and his experiences. He had been to a camp-meeting and was struck with the quaint, old-fashioned garb of the girls, seeming to make the ugly ones uglier and the pretty ones prettier. It was raining when he wrote and he felt depressed, but he sent his love ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... but these instances are rare indeed compared with those that occur in the other division. On the other hand, there are always present Hazlitt's enthusiastic appreciation of what is good in letters, his combination of gusto with sound theory as to what is excellent in prose and verse, his felicitous method of expression, and the acuteness that kept him from that excessive and paradoxical admiration which both Lamb and Coleridge affected, and which has gained many more pupils than his own moderation. Nothing better has ever been written as a general ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... pathos, at times bringing unfeigned tears to the eyes of both judge and jurors—his burning scorn of fraud—and his appeal on behalf of what he believed to be right, so impetuous with enthusiasm, so condensed and incisive in expression, and so felicitous in illustration, as ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... neither side gained the advantage, though altogether about 5,000 men fell on the field. Negotiations were entered into between the king and the Parliament, and these were renewed again and again, but never with felicitous issues. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... cannot wound others—those are the people whose sharp pangs we feel in our breasts as we read the stories of Tchehov. The people who wound—it is they whom he paints (or, rather, as Mr. Garnett suggests, etches) with such felicitous and untiring irony. But, though he often makes his people beautiful in their sorrow, he more often than not sets their sad figures against a common and ugly background. In Anyuta, the medical student and his mistress live in a room disgusting in ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... began "And now shake hands". In the fourth stanza for "sudden laughters" of the jay was substituted the felicitous "sudden scritches," and the sixth ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Our felicitous Author, throwing aside all these traditional idiosyncrasies, launches boldly into the billowy sea of his idea-scattered brain[A], and in his very first line gives a full, concise description of the heroine, Mrs. HUBBARD; and having finished her description, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... admiration seem to have been unbounded; and his letters to her, which in the second volume are very numerous, contain many noble and delicate passages. "You know too well," he says to her somewhere, with a happy choice of words belonging to the writer, whose diction was here and there as felicitous as it was generally intolerable—"Vous savez trop bien que tout ce qui n'est pas vous n'est que surface, sottise et vains palliatifs de l'absence." "You must be proud of your children," he writes to his sister from Poland; "such daughters are the recompense of your ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... There were monsters who out of sheer, crass good nature did offend; but even they took care to couple with their "remarks" an apologetic laugh, which was intended to convey that the joke, though carried far, was just a joke. The wags—the species was not yet extinct—were especially felicitous. They treated the subject as a very original piece of humour indeed. Their treatment of it gained them an occasional cuff in the ear, and they had to be discriminative in their choice of victims. Everybody was not to be wished "returns ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... FELLOW-MEMBERS:—I am sure that you have greatly enjoyed the brilliant and witty speech to which you have just listened—a speech which shows that our distinguished guest is as felicitous at the dinner-table as he is signally successful in other fields of oratory. But if you have deluded yourself with the idea that because of this change in the programme you are to escape the infliction of the usual address by the President of the Society, it is now ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... and by no means a felicitous one; I am no admirer either of Werther or his author. But I should say that, if there was a Werther in Germany, he did not smoke. Werther, as you very justly ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Care, you are a part of the history of Little Rivers!" he said, airily. "You have brought us something which we lacked in our singularly peaceful beginning. Without romance, sir, no community is complete. I have found you a felicitous disputant whom I shall miss; for you leave me to provide the arguments on both sides of a subject on the same evening. Our people have found you a neighbor of infinite resources of humor and cheer. We wish you a pleasant trail. We wish you ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... halting prose that I remember few episodes of Italian travel more sympathetic, as they have it here, than that perfect autumn afternoon; the half-hour's station on the little battered terrace of the villa; the climb to the singularly felicitous old castle that hangs above Lerici; the meditative lounge, in the fading light, on the vine-decked platform that looked out toward the sunset and the darkening mountains and, far below, upon ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "A felicitous combination of the German, the Sclave, and the Semite, with grand features, brown hair floating in artistic fashion, and brown eyes ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... inspiring visitor to the lines of the gallant troops of all kinds whom he himself had so often led to victory. It has been said that no man can be called happy until his death, and certainly no one was ever more felicitous in the manner of his end than the veteran hero, the blameless "Bayard" of the British Army, who has well been called ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... occur; and in writing to an old friend like Sir William White he uses a free mixture of French and English with other ingredients for seasoning. But in general the literary style is admirable. He has a rare command of language, a most inventive use of metaphor, a felicitous touch in sketching a character or an incident. Towards those working under him he was exacting, setting up a high standard of industry, but he was generous in his praise and very ready to take up the cudgels for them when they needed ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... literature, combine with his native talent to qualify him for such a work. He has done nothing so well, not even his admirable translation of Heine's Reisebilder. He is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his motto, 'Hilariter,' and in expressing his bright thoughts, he has been peculiarly felicitous in style. Nothing of his that we have read shows so much elegance and polish. Every chapter in the book is delightful, but we especially enjoyed that on 'Tannhaeuser,' with the fine translation and subsequent elucidation of the famous legend.' But the boldest and most original chapter ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and the Homestead, and then supposed that his brother would wish him to call upon "these unfortunate ladies." Colin certainly would have been vexed if he had openly slighted them; but Alison, whom the brothers overtook on their way into Mackarel Lane, did not think the colonel looked in the most felicitous frame of mind, and thought the most charitable construction might be that he shared her wishes that she could be a few minutes in advance; to secure that neither Rose's sports nor ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conducted with a certain formality. Todd had therefore, on his arrival, unpinned from the inside of his jacket a portentous document signed with his owner's name and sealed with a red wafer, which after such felicitous phrases as—"I have the distinguished honor," etc.—gave the boy's age (21), weight (140 pounds), and height (5 feet 10 inches)—all valuable data for identification in case the chattel conceived a notion of moving further north (an unnecessary precaution ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith |
