"Felicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their accounts, or upon the landing to trim the lamp. And these precious moments were turned to so good an account that all the most anxious feelings of the past were gone through. Before they parted at night, Anne had the felicity of being assured that in the first place (so far from being altered for the worse), she had gained inexpressibly in personal loveliness; and that as to character, hers was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the just medium of ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... they are so situated as to be able to make the comparison. But, betake yourself to mealy vegetables and fruits a few years, and live temperately on them, and then you will perceive the difference, especially in riding in a stage-coach. This, I confess, is rather a draw-back upon the felicity of vegetable-eaters; but it is some consolation to know what a mass of corruption ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... paste-board upstairs I keep a black, ceremonial object; 'tis my link with Christendom and the world of grave custom; only on sacred occasions does it make its appearance, only at some great tribal dance of my race. To pageants of Woe I convey it, or of the hugest Felicity: at great Hallelujahs of Wedlock, or at last Valedictions, I hold it bare-headed as I bow before altars ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... been so good as to ask us," said Mrs. Westgate, who perceived that her visitor had now begun to look at her, and who had her customary happy consciousness of a distinguished appearance. The only mitigation of her felicity on this point was that, having inspected her visitor's own costume, she said to herself, "She won't know how well I ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... relating to art, and especially her original and sparkling remarks on painting and architecture, although qualified by Mr Boas as twaddle, stamp her at once as a woman of no common order. She has profound and poetical conceptions of Beauty, and at times a felicity of expression in presenting the effects of nature and art upon her own mind, that strikes and startles by its novelty and power. As a delineator of men and manners, she is remarkable for shrewdness, subtle perception, and truthfulness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... architecture 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
... enthusiasm which seemed to pervade his whole being. From 1853 to 1855 he was in Congress, and I had the pleasure of listening to one of his scathing speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives in denunciation of slavery. I recall his unusual felicity in the use of Scriptural quotations, one of which still lingers in my ears: "Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." His daughter Elizabeth married Charles Dudley Miller, a prominent citizen ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... stopped the great Felicity Work, on which his father laid out, some say, ten thousand pounds, and never got in a penny? Why, what has he to do with Sir Geoffrey's property down here at Bonadventure? It was ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and violent contests. He was not the awe-inspiring master who is followed from afar; he was the master to whom one always listens, whose words are always read; and the writers who imitate his work - with more or less felicity - believe themselves inspired by him. The middle ages knew no Jewish names more famous than those of Jehudah ha-Levi and Maimonides; but how many nowadays read their writings and understand them wholly? The "Diwan" as ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... is our fate! that we should be deprived of your dear company, when it would compleat our Felicity—but such is the fate of Mortals! We are never permitted to be perfectly happy. I suppose it is right, else the Supreme Disposer of all things would not have permitted it: we should perhaps have been more neglectful than ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... call blessing on yours. Smiles are as catching as tears; and periods men have termed happy, were periods when there existed some who knew of their happiness. Happiness rarely is absent; it is we that know not of its presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know not that we are happy; there is more joy in the smallest delight whereof we are conscious, than in the approach of the mightiest happiness that enters not into our soul. There are only too many who think that what they have cannot be happiness; and therefore ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... made to herself in the first instance, when, after declining the honour, she could have passed the handkerchief to her daughters. Besides, the mere dread of having the infliction of such a mother-in-law would have sufficed to frighten off the most ardent wooer or rabid aspirant for connubial felicity. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and embracing his knees. The feast of tulips came and on that day I was married to the charming Fatima! The charming Fatima I continue still to think her, though she has now been my wife some years. She is the joy and pride of my heart; and, from our mutual affection, I have experienced more felicity than from all the other circumstances of my life, which are called so fortunate. Her father gave me the house in which I now live, and joined his possessions to ours; so that I have more wealth even than I desire. My riches, however, ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... pray Thee, all the workmen who shall be engaged in the erection of this edifice; keep them from all forms of accidents and harm; grant them in health and prosperity to live; and finally, we hope, after this life, through Thy mercy and forgiveness to attain everlasting joy and felicity in Thy bright mansion, in Thy holy temple, not made with hands, eternal in the ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... thou'rt a man, Give me the cup; let go; by heaven, I'll have't.— O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... a man can be when his Armada sails in with its sunlit canvas; and yet, had that Armada gone to pieces on a coast, I think my tears over its wreckage had been the deeper emotion. Our conception of disaster outrides by far our conception of felicity. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... know enough English law. But still it is a practical advantage to master Austin, and his predecessors, Hobbes and Bentham, and his worthy successors, Holland and Pollock. Sir Frederick Pollock's recent little book is touched with the felicity which marks all his works, and is wholly free from the perverting ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... is not all, the Author of this cannot but observe here that as England is unhappily divided among Parties, so it has this one Felicity even to be found in the very matter of her Misfortunes, that those Parties are all again ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... you display tries me too severely; the wisest man, upon such an occasion, can but ill answer for his conduct. Suppress it, I beseech you, for a few moments, and spare me, Madam, this cruel trial; however great your love for my rival may be, do not let me be a wretched witness of his felicity. This is the smallest favour I think a lover may ask, even when he is disliked as much as I am. I do not seek this favour for long, Madam; my departure will soon satisfy you. I go where sorrow shall ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... 1839, a year after Susan left school, says: "The tender chord that so long confined our beloved Deborah to this world was broken on the 25th day of the 4th month, and we trust her happy spirit took its flight to realms of eternal felicity." Deborah Moulson was a cultured and estimable woman, but she represented the spirit of that age toward childhood, one of chilling severity and constant repression, when reproof was as liberally administered as praise was ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow's books had been sold in England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie—and you will observe the felicity of its being a game pie, ferae naturae always you see—was the only honorarium he had ever received from this ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... she would like someone to stay with her. She would keep it so clean, and would mend all the linen, and do the cooking, and save to go to market, would never leave it from one year's end to the other. A good sleek cat to curl up by the fireside would complete her felicity. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... about 'friendship.' I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am 'too old:' but, nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than Yours," &c. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... such is the tendency of human nature, especially in the case of the young and ardent, to turn the most valuable blessings conferred on man into curses,—and poison, at their very sources, the purest streams of human felicity,—that it will be necessary to advert briefly but plainly to some of the most frequent ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... a man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible favours and blessings of Fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Augustan Age, to which he was a barbarian only to be tolerated if put into the court-dress of the final period of civilisation. Still, even thus, he was not left altogether unread; nor was he in all cases adapted without a certain measure of success. The irrepressible vigour, and the frequent felicity, of Dryden's "Fables" contrast advantageously with the tame evenness of the "Temple of Fame," an early effort by Pope, who had wit enough to imitate in a juvenile parody some of the grossest peculiarities of Chaucer's manner, but who would have ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... prune over-luxuriant branches and to train vines from tree to tree. While they are thus occupied, the Almighty summons Raphael, and, after informing him Satan has escaped from hell and has found his way to Paradise to disturb the felicity of man, bids the archangel hasten down to earth, and, conversing "as friend with friend" with Adam, warn him that he had the power to retain or forfeit his happy state, and caution him against the wiles of the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... 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 the like thereof; so be of good ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... are pronounced by Mrs. Starling, a widow lady who lost her husband when she was young, and lost herself about the same-time—for by her own count she has never since grown five years older—to be a perfect model of wedded felicity. 'You would suppose,' says the romantic lady, 'that they were lovers only just now engaged. Never was such happiness! They are so tender, so affectionate, so attached to each other, so enamoured, that positively nothing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... confidence in the perfectability of man and the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike from man the shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to him a free government, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity. Republican government was the strongest government on earth, because it was founded on free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legitimate desires of men. Only one thing was wanting to make the American people happy and prosperous, said the President ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the happy ease wherewith Shakespeare surpasses, in mere command of words, every achievement of those even who, apart from him, are great? I could fancy that, in The Tempest, he wrought with a peculiar consciousness of this power, smiling as the word of inimitable felicity, the phrase of incomparable cadence, was whispered to him by the Ariel that was his genius. He seems to sport with language, to amuse himself with new discovery of its resources. From king to beggar, men ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... it, by the terms in which those about him expressed their sense of the power, the splendor, and the delights of royalty. As his mind gradually opened, he naturally considered these as the objects of universal define, and the means of supreme felicity: he was often reminded, that the time was coming, when the sole possession of sovereign power would enable him to fulfil all his wishes, to determine the fate of dependent nations with a nod, and dispense life and death, and happiness and misery, at his will: he was flattered by those who hoped to ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... a permanent place as one of the most perfect of his compositions. It has much of the fearless felicity of youth; and its imagery has the sharp and vivid outline of ideas fresh from the brain. The subject—the development of his own great powers—raises him above that willful dallying with trivialties which repels ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... the spirit alone, the founders anticipate no hasty or numerous addition to their numbers. The kingdom of peace is entered only through the gates of self-denial; and felicity is the test and the reward of loyalty to the unswerving law ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... earned honours and always guarding against the defeat of his plans, he betakes himself to such means as would gratify his desire of enjoyment. At last he meets with destruction as the inevitable consequence of the conduct he pursues. It is well-known, however, that true felicity is theirs that are endued with intelligence, that are utterers of the eternal Brahma, that seek to accomplish only acts that are auspicious and beneficial, and that abstain from all acts that are optional and spring from desire alone.[1532] From loss of all such objects in which are centred our ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... whom so long you have call'd your Friend? May all the Blesings Heaven can bestow On us poor Mortals in this World below, Crown all your Days, and may you nothing see But flowing Tides of sweet Felicity; But I, alas!— ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... 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 ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... 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 terms appropriated to it, by means of which the botanist can convey and receive ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... between sexes is one of refined telepathy, soul-connection by thought transmission, a thousand-fold more charming than the low plane of intercourse in the flesh life, with none of its attendant weakening results. This strange felicity is as indescribable as it is glorious. Each nature seeks its real complement, and enjoys the most absolute liberty, for there is not a single barrier to prevent it, as no ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat, and by his natural felicity of manner to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family; so that they talked as freely together as if ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... 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 ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... industry, civil rights, property, and free expression in art, literature, and even speech, being forcibly and systematically repressed: while in the mountains of Savoy, the streets of Turin, and the harbor of Genoa, the stir and zest, the productiveness, and the felicity of national life greet the senses and gladden the soul. Statistics evidence what observation hints; Cavour wins the respect of Europe; D'Azeglio illustrates the inspiration which liberty yields to genius; journalism ventilates political ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... blooming in countenance, like the rosy tints of morning kindling with the promise of a genial day; an eye beaming with the benignity of a happy heart; a cheerful temper, alive to all kind impulses, and frankly diffusing its own felicity; a self-poised mind, that needs not lean on others for support; an elegant taste, that can embellish solitude, and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and long black beard. He has a melancholy air, and does his work as though he were thinking all the while that it is a part of the sum of labour he has to get through before reaching that perfect state of felicity in which there is no more washing to be done or counted. If there were only monks in the priory, this one would have very little to do in looking after the linen; but there are many boys who, although they are being educated ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Reason, is far better than to indulge the Passions without Stop or Controul, and consequently that Virtue is more beneficial than Vice, not only for the Peace and real Happiness of Society in general, but likewise for the Temporal Felicity of every individual Member of it, abstract from thee Consideration of a future State, I am moreover convinced, that all wise Men ever were and ever will be of this Opinion; and I shall never oppose Any body, who shall be pleased to ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... colonies that induced Franklin to remain in America. The Peace of Paris he regarded as "the most advantageous" of any recorded in British annals, very fitting to mark the close of a successful war, and well suited to usher in the long period of prosperous felicity which should properly distinguish the reign of a virtuous prince. Never before, in Franklin's opinion, were the relations between Britain and her colonies more happy; and there could be, he thought, no good reason to fear that the excellent young ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... time on their country estates; they preferred to remain at Versailles in attendance on the king, to whose favor they owed offices, pensions, and honors. The king's countenance, it was said, is the courtier's supreme felicity; "he passes his life looking on it and within sight ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... succeeded by the calm repose of perfect contentment. My heart's longings had been gratified; it had found all that it desired—even to the full reciprocity of its passion. What would it more? There is no more of mundane bliss. Life has no felicity to cope with requited love; it alone can give us a foretaste of future joys; by it only may we form some idea of the angel ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... upon the cutting-out knife, and the master fingered the notes on the sharp edge, his head on one side and his eyes closed—his whole appearance that of one absorbed in intent inward listening. But then suddenly his face beamed with felicity, his whole figure contracted in a frenzy of delight, one foot clutched at the air as though bewitched, as though he were playing a harp with his toes—Master Andres was all at once a musical idiot and a musical clown. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Okehurst was full of people, and Mrs. Oke, to my amazement, was doing the honours of it as if a house full of commonplace, noisy young creatures, bent upon flirting and tennis, were her usual idea of felicity. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... intensely be to live happily, Macaulay had an enviable lot during those stirring years; and, if the old songwriters had reason on their side when they celebrated the charms of a light purse, he certainly possessed that element of felicity. Among the earliest economical reforms undertaken by the new Government was a searching revision of our Bankruptcy jurisdiction, in the course of which his Commissionership was swept away, without leaving him a penny of compensation. "I voted for the Bankruptcy Court Bill," ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... ever changing, did not fail soon to disturb the felicity of this union. This was occasioned by the wound received by the Admiral, which had wrought the Huguenots up to a degree of desperation. The Queen my mother was reproached on that account in such terms by the elder Pardaillan and some other principal ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... and seeing that from the beginning of the world Fortune has made men the sport of divers accidents, and so it will continue until the end, the theme, so please you, shall in each case be the same; to wit, the fortune of such as after divers adventures have at last attained a goal of unexpected felicity. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... for two years more, after which, death would deliver him, and would cause him to pass into perfect repose, free from all pain. He communicated this to Francis, who said that the same thing had been communicated to him; and then, filled with joy, not only on account of the eternal felicity again promised him, but because the time was fixed when his soul was to be released from the prison of his body, he added this further couplet to his canticle: "Be Thou praised, my Lord, for death our sister, from which no living man can escape," etc. "Blessed are they ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... deeper need. But he who would reach a serener air must press forward strenuously; for as a mountain may have one bare and northern slope, and another sunlit and clothed with verdure, and yet there may be a path on each side to the summit, so it is with the ascent to this felicity. One lingers amid pleasant groves and laughing waters; another, undistracted by the beauty of any lower zone, but fixing his eyes upon the far summit, crosses the chill rocky slopes, never feeling the warmth of the sun and only seeing his brightness ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... characteristic consisted in their having nothing to do with the practical question before the people. They were thrown out by the interested defenders of Slavery, North and South, to divert attention from the main issue. In the fine felicity of their in appropriateness to the actual condition of the struggle between the Free and Slave States, they were almost a match for that renowned sermon, preached by a metropolitan bishop before an asylum for the blind, the halt, and the legless, on "The Moral Dangers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... many hundred miles from our families in the howling wilderness, I believe few would have equally enjoyed the happiness we experienced. I often observed to my brother, "You see now how little nature requires, to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... herself and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as happiness itself; and if you do not possess her for your wife, your best course is to confine the one you do possess, for the sake of your common felicity, to the region of ideas she was born in, for you must not forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy you, by setting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... We will love one another fondly, and live happily. As you are unable to come here, I will arrange matters. Should we remain a few months without seeing one another, do not forget me, and bear in mind that I am labouring for your felicity." ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... many a sunshiny hour Through redolent meadows, from flower to flower. And surely if changes like these may occur, Ye men who have reason, how could ye demur At change in superior orders of nature? And least in a species so sure to create your Felicity (if it is not the reverse: In such an event she is rather a curse). No one, that possesses a spark of the human, Would think of opposing the progress of woman; But all would be happy when one of her kind A sphere more refined and exalted should find— Should gracefully 'merge from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Penrith, on October 4, 1802, was not so much an importation into his existence of new emotion, as a development and intensification of feelings which had long been there. This marriage was the crowning stroke of Wordsworth's felicity—the poetic recompense for his steady advocacy of all simple and noble things. When he wished to illustrate the true dignity and delicacy of rustic lives he was always accustomed to refer to the Cumbrian folk. And now it seemed that Cumberland requited ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... degree, as the same authority, when exerted over sensible and rational creatures, whose condition, being compared to our own, makes it seem more agreeable and honourable. Comparison is in every case a sure method of augmenting our esteem of any thing. A rich man feels the felicity of his condition better by opposing it to that of a beggar. But there is a peculiar advantage in power, by the contrast, which is, in a manner, presented to us, betwixt ourselves and the person we command. The comparison is obvious and natural: The imagination finds it in the very subject: The ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the ground, and again rebuilt on the old foundation. Sulla having now triumphed over his opponents, undertook to build it, but nevertheless did not dedicate it; the only thing wanting to crown his felicity. That honor was reserved for Lutatius Catulus, whose name, amidst so many works of the Caesars, remained legible till the days of Vitellius. Such was the sacred building which was at this time reduced ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... irritated vision of her throwing herself upon consular sympathy. It seemed to me, for a moment, that to pass out of that gate with this yearning, straining, young creature, would be to pass into some mysterious felicity. If I were only a hero of romance, I would offer, myself, ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... ardently wish to see, and the more so on account of the kind, simple, and engaging invitation you have given me. It really affected me, and brought instantaneously to view those happy and peaceful scenes of domestic felicity, to which I am at present a stranger. You have all I can give you, a grateful acknowledgment of your kindness, and depend that I will in person acknowledge it on my ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... They had opportunities, which never can be hoped for again, of rooting out the Irish and their religion. 'Thorough' was their word. They dared everything, and shrunk from no consequences. They found Dublin full of Catholics; and on June 19, 1651, Mr. John Hewson had the felicity of making the following report on the state of religion ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... every now and then to disclose the white teeth which garnish an enormous mouth, takes her place before it. She is the presiding deity of the temple; and there is not a man present to whom it would not be the crowning felicity of the moment to obtain a smile from features so little used to the business of smiling, that one wonders how they would set about it if the necessity should ever arise. Every cap is doffed with a grim politeness peculiar to that class of humanity, and a series of compliments ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... substance of thought that will be of much service in the pursuit of other sciences. It has been found that it is not without rather notable service to young students as the basis of efforts in the art of literary presentation, a felicity to which teachers of this important art frequently give emphatic testimony. The secret seems to lie in the fact that physiography gives varied and vivid material susceptible of literary presentation, while the fixed qualities of the subject matter control the choice ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the first of these, as he sat in the door of the tent one evening after supper, watching the rich glow of sunshine that flooded a wide stretch of beautiful country in front of him, "this would be perfect felicity if only we had freedom to move about at our own pleasure and hunt up the treasures in botany, entomology, etcetera, that are scattered ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... that it may be called proper to mankind in every climate; so deeply rooted also in human belief, that it is found to survive in states of society during which all other fictions of the same order are entirely dismissed from influence. Mr. Crabbe, with his usual felicity, has called the belief in ghosts "the last lingering fiction of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... herself on superior buttonholes, which are worked with fine twist. She stitched them in her father's workshop, which was more comfortable than a stranger's, and better fitted for evading the Factory Acts. To-night she was radiant in silk and jewelry, and her pert snub nose had the insolence of felicity which Agamemnon deprecated. Seeing her, you would have as soon connected her with Esoteric Buddhism ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... eye, etc. In religious matters, also, they are on the same level, and about the only genuine shouting Methodists that remain are to be found in the colored churches. Indeed, I fear the negro tries to ignore or forget himself as far as possible, and that he would deem it felicity enough to play second fiddle to the white man all his days. He liked his master, but he likes the Yankee better, not because he regards him as his deliverer, but mainly because the two-handed thrift of the Northerner, his varied and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... she wrote, "whether felicity comes with her presence, and distraction with her absence,—whether her eyes make the morning brighter for thee, and her tears fall upon thy heart like molten lava,—whether heaven would be black and dismal without her company, and ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... gardening—tenacious of his seignorial rights, but indulgent to the last degree to his tenantry, by whom he was adored. Never was exemplified in a more remarkable manner the soothing influence of the recollections of a well-spent life on the felicity of its later years, or the fountains of happiness which may be opened in the breast itself from the calm serenity of conscious power and great achievement. He conversed much, with the farmers and peasants on his estate, whose houses he frequently entered, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... been overlooked by an invisible witness. The smith and Mother Bunch had not perceived Mdlle. de Cardoville standing on the threshold of the door. As Mother Bunch had said, this day, which dawned with all under such fatal auspices, had become for all a day of ineffable felicity. Adrienne, too, was full of joy, for Djalma had been faithful to her, Djalma loved her with passion. The odious appearances, of which she had been the dupe and victim, evidently formed part of a new plot of Rodin, and it only remained for Mdlle. de Cardoville ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... physicians have named by the expressive words "angina pectoris." They were right: it was anxiety of the heart which brought him to an untimely grave. He died of disappointed hope, of chilled religious aspirations, of mortified political expectations of social felicity. Who can estimate the influence, on so sensitive and enthusiastic a disposition, of the heart-rending anguish which his correspondence proves he felt at the failure of his long-cherished hopes and visions of bliss ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... talk. For the principles, the poetic aspect, of science he had a devoted interest. In literary matters I seldom heard his equal. Many and many is the book which I have been induced to read solely by hearing him sketch the purport in little sentences of extraordinary felicity. "The birth and fatal effects of Impulse in a prosaic soul," was a sketch he gave of a celebrated novel. On one subject he was always dumb—Economics. "It is the one subject on which I have never hazarded a remark successfully," he said to me once. "I can never appreciate the value of ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... enquire too minutely into the cause which might actuate him in this instance: suffice it to say, he immediately put the plan in execution; and in three days from the time he first saw the unfortunate Lieutenant, he had the superlative felicity of seeing him at liberty, and receiving an ample reward in the tearful eye and half articulated thanks ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... were so near, he did not seem, in the least, to envy, or even to take any notice of, the crowds of his countrymen collected to view them as objects which were rare and curious. During my stay, two or three of the natives came up, who seemed to share his felicity, and always called out, when there was an appearance of a favourable swell, as he sometimes missed it, by his back being turned, and looking about for it. By them I understood, that this exercise, which is called ehorooe, was frequent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... had become a province of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and that critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... life would with him be shortened, but rather an expectation of living to old age, judging from an expression in his Grace Abounding. when he enjoyed a good hope, and bright anticipation of heavenly felicity, 'I should often long and desire that the last days were come. O! thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that I might die quickly and be gone to rest.'[310] At that time he did not anticipate twelve years' imprisonment in a wretched jail, nor the consequent effects it must have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... serious duties, child, but the spirit and purity of an angel, a meekness that does not depress, and a character whose force rather relieves than injures the softness of thy sex, can temper the ills of this fickle world, and thou may'st justly hope to see a fair portion of that felicity which thy young imagination pictures in such golden colors. And thou," he added, turning to meet the embrace of Sigismund, "whoever thou art by the first disposition of Providence, thou art now rightfully dear to me. The husband of Melchior de Willading's daughter would ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... On seeing the object of his affection, the enraptured musician, the rival of Castero, rushed towards it with a cry of joyful surprise. He took the instrument in his hands—he devoured it with his eyes, and then, at the summit of his felicity, he clasped it to his bosom. The instrument was perfectly uninjured, without even a mark of the absurd injustice of its owner. Not a crack, not a fissure, only the two gracefully shaped Sec. Sec. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to which he gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his love the wings of his spirit; he feels, and he paints, he acts and meditates, he multiplies his sensations by thought, present felicity becomes threefold through aspiration for the future and memory of the past; and with it he mingles the exquisite delights of the soul, which makes him the prince of artists. Then the poet's passion becomes a fine poem in which human proportion is often set at nought. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... was directed to her material gain in this world's goods, and not to any sentimental consideration for her happiness. He flattered himself that by timely suggestion he had "stumped" at least half a dozen would-be candidates for Mildred's hand. He pooh-poohed love as a necessity for marital felicity, and would enforce his argument ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... did not procure that felicity at once. There were many difficulties to be got over before the noble spaniel would think of allowing his daughter to become the wife of plain Mr. Job. His son, also, of whom I have spoken previously, could not bear, at first, the idea of ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... parents, nobody's happiness is so great as mine!—If it proceeds thus from degree to degree, and is to be augmented by the charming hope, that the dear second author of our blessings, be the uniformly good as well as the partially kind man to us, what a felicity will this be! and if our prayers shall be heard, and we shall have the pleasure to think, that his advances in piety are owing not a little to them, and to the example God shall give us grace to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... and metrical felicity—he has thoroughly annotated the "Essay on Man"—but was acutely conscious of aridity and the absence of rapture and vision in Pope as in Dryden. He singled out as "the finest passage in the 'Essay on Man'" the eight lines in which Pope contrasts the majesty of the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... and the children began to rush and roll in wild delight on the grassy slope, and to fill their hands with the heather and ling, shrieking with delight. Wilmet had enough to do to watch over Angela in her toddling, tumbling felicity; while Felix, weighted with Robina on his back, Edgar, Fulbert, Clement, and Lance, ran in and out among the turf; and Alda, demurely walking by her papa, opined that it was 'very odd that the gentleman's name ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Felicity! Who ope'st to none that knocks, yet, laughing weak, Yield'st all to Love that will not seek, And who, though won, wilt droop and die, Unless wide doors bespeak thee free, How safe's the bond of thee and me, Since thee I cherish ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... views were more sublime, As he asked in all simplicity, "My youthful friends, what is the prime Of all mundane felicity?" ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... Better than most of these, perhaps, were the young men of the Mercury, raw, embarrassed, genuine young men, who, stopping him on the street, did not seem to know why they stopped him, who, lacking West's verbal felicity, could do nothing but take his hand, hot with the fear that they might be betrayed into expressing any feeling, and stammer out: "Doc, if you want anything—why dammit, Doc—you call ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... along his way, his feet as light as if they carried him to some destination of certain felicity, there was a cloud upon his heart. This arrangement which his mother had made in an hour of panic had disordered his plans and troubled the bright waters of his dreams. Plans and dreams were all his riches. They were the sole patrimony of value handed down from Peter Newbolt, the Kentucky gentleman, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... butterflies. What dazzling gowns, what flaring parasols, what joyous cavalcades on cart-horses, did we see on the road that led to the town! What a mixture of excitement, confusion, anxiety, and importance, possessed everybody! What frolic and felicity attended the popular gatherings on the beach, until the fatal moment when the gun fired for the first race! Then, as if at that signal, the clouds began to muster in ominous blackness; the deceitful sunlight disappeared; the rain came ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... going on was too terrible—the contending powers too visibly in presence of each other, for the practical, conscientious Norse mind to be content with the puny godships of a Roman Olympus. Nectar, Sensuality, and Inextinguishable Laughter were elements of felicity too mean for the nobler atmosphere of their Walhalla; and to those active temperaments and healthy minds,—invigorated and solemnized by the massive mould of the scenery around them,—Strength, Courage, Endurance, and above all Self-sacrifice—naturally seemed more essential ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... East by a mighty sea, here to recommence that experiment which hath partially failed elsewhere, and imparted sufficient measure of His spirit to chosen instruments to work out the problem of human happiness, and to conduct mankind to heights of felicity, beginning here and never ending?—the bare contemplation whereof causes my flesh to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... O my girl, My gold, my fortune, my felicity, Strength to my soul, death to mine enemy; Welcome the first beginner of my bliss! O Abigail, Abigail, that I had thee here too! Then my desires were fully satisfied: But I will practice thy enlargement thence: O girl! O gold! O beauty! O my bliss! ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... Countess Georges in proficiency on the piano, as the latter had "the genius of music, as of love"; and a long string of that wonderful young lady's perfections must have been rather wearying to those who had not the felicity of being acquainted with her. Apparently the young Countess possessed deep knowledge without pedantry, and was of delicious naivete, laughing like a little child; though this did not prevent her from showing religious enthusiasm about beautiful things. Further, she was of angelic ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... himself, the more he has to sacrifice himself. These conflictions probably led Kant to call life "a trial time, wherein most succumb, and in which even the best does not rejoice in his life." "Men betake themselves," says Fichte, "to the chase after felicity. . . . But as soon as they withdraw into themselves and ask themselves, 'Am I now happy?' the reply comes distinctly from the depth of their soul, 'Oh no; thou art still just as empty and destitute as before!' . . . They will in the ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... comfortable. I hear constantly from him and his rib. It appears to me that Lady B. sets about making him happy in the right way. I had many fears. Thank God that they do not appear likely to be realized. In short, there seems to me to be but one drawback to all our felicity, and that, alas, is the disposal of dear Newstead. I never shall feel reconciled to the loss of that sacred revered Abbey. The thought makes me more melancholy than perhaps the loss of an inanimate object ought ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Infantine Hope, Unknown, mystic Felicity Sangrael of childish quest much sought, aethereal "Real Tea" Thy faintest tint of yellow on the milk and water pale Like Midas' stain on Pactolus, gives ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Paris, seems an incorporation of European literature and politics; and his articles are, in my belief, the most valuable now contributed to any journal in the world. Willis is the lightest and most mercurial 'knight of the quill' in all the tournament. It is astonishing with what dexterity, felicity, and grace he touches off the veriest trifle of the day, investing the trite with originality, and giving the value of wit and poetry to the worthless and the dry. Pity that this brilliant 'quid nunc' should degenerate into a mere trifling 'arbiter elegantiarum,' and expend his buoyant and ductile ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of nascent spring encircling it like a garland, exhaling the aroma of countless buds and blossoms, embellished by conservatory, grapery, avenues of fruit and floral trees. Does not every object bespeak comfort, rural felicity, commercial success! ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Yturbide. Let us throw a thick veil over so irreparable a loss. It is true that, surviving such great misfortunes, I have been enabled to consecrate my existence and my vigilance to the peace, order, and felicity of this beloved country. But how difficult is the conduct of those who govern in the midst of the conflict of civil dissensions! In these, my conscience has chosen, and my resolution has never vacillated between ignominy and honour. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... myself elevated with this honor; for, even by the collision of resistance, to be the means of striking out sparkles of truth, if not merit, is at least felicity. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... agree with a Native of the torrid zone, pray therefore if possible procure for me two Stout Young Fellows, who have been accustomed to Country Business, and as I shall wish to see them happy, I am of opinion there is little felicity without a Communication with the Ladys, you may buy for each a clean young wife, who can wash and do the female offices about a farm. I shall begrudge no price, so hope we may, by your ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... from our families in the howling wilderness, I believe few would have equally enjoyed the happiness we experienced. I often observed to my brother, "You see now how little nature requires to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence; ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... accident division of news stories because of its frequent harmful effects on life and property. Men's pursuits are all a gamble on the weather. Usually a story about the weather depends for its value largely on the felicity of its language, though when there has been severe atmospheric disturbance, resulting in loss of life, destruction of property, or delayed traffic, a simple narrative of events is sufficient to hold the reader's attention. The following are different types of weather story, the first being ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... of your love of things humane, Things free, things fair, of truth, of tolerance, Right, justice, national felicity, Prompted belief and hope in such a man!— The matter is by now well forwarded, A house at Plassy hired as pivot-point From which the sanct intention can be worked, And soon made certain. To our good allies No risk attaches; ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... adoration which seizes the heart of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the charm, and fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she had dreamed long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri, that all this phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery and of the green mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red tiles, all this sick ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... quite lonely. I have George, whom I love as though he were a son of my own. And there is Aunt Felicity, as the children used to call her, who is certainly very fond of me, as I also ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... looking like the angel of the Apocalypse, so powerful and gentle. It seems as if I were realizing the dreams of the poets in my own person. Just think of the felicity of showing him my inscriptions with pencil and sculpturing-tool—and he so just and severe a critic! He is far the best critic I ever had. The agent of Heaven in this Concord plan was Elizabeth Hoar; a fit minister on such an ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... a struggle of genius against material conditions; and its successful accomplishment is comparable with the perfect presentment by a great poet of some well-worn elemental truth in a sonnet—of which the triumphant beauty comes less from the integral concept than from the exquisite felicity of expression that gives freshness to a hackneyed subject treated in ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... music for literature. In 1753 he wrote another essay for the Academy of Dijon, on the "Origin of the Inequality of Man," full of still more startling paradoxes than his first, in which he attempted to show, with great felicity of language, the superiority ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... is difficult to express my joy. The idea of army service was mingled in my head with that of liberty, and the pleasures offered by a great city like Saint Petersburg. I saw myself an officer in the Guards, which, in my opinion was the height of felicity. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... hospitable, liberal man (enthusiastic shouts from the poor relations, at all the adjectives; and especially at the two last). That his daughter may enjoy all the happiness, even he can desire; and that he may derive from the contemplation of her felicity all the gratification of heart and peace of mind which he so well deserves, is, I am persuaded, our united wish. So, let us drink their healths, and wish them prolonged life, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... dame by the comparative length of their respective aprons. In that soft and gelatinous body lies a whole world of vitality and quiet enjoyment. Somebody has styled fossiliferous rocks 'monuments of the felicity of past ages.' An undisturbed oyster-bed is a concentration of happiness in the present. Dormant though the several creatures there congregated seem, each individual is leading the beatified existence of an epicurean god. The world without—its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... spreading widely his pacific views. At the time of his death, which happened at an advanced age, the calumet of peace was everywhere smoked among the northern tribes, and their numbers had greatly increased. Wampum-hair was universally honored, and regarded as the cause of this felicity. But no wife ever cooked the venison in his lodge. With the dream of his youth vanished all predilection for the softer sex. He had loved and been disappointed. Where he expected to meet gentleness he had found pride. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... EXPRESSION.—Fourth, Shakspeare is remarkable for the power and felicity of his expression. He adapts his language to the persons who use it, and thus we pass from the pompous grandiloquence of king and herald to the common English and coarse conceits of clown and nurse and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the throwing of an additional flood of light on the already dazzling truths of Holy Writ. The uses of such a work are self-obvious; and when we add that the plan is carried out with all the lucidity, faithfulness, piety, honest reasoning, and felicity of thought and expression which mark its predecessors, we have only said enough to mark our sense of ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... always a number of them—that he has tamed—in his pockets or under his waistcoat. To loll back in his rocking-chair, to talk about geology, and pat the head of a large snake, when twining itself about his neck, is to him supreme felicity. Every year in the vacation he makes an excursion to the hills, and I was told that, upon one of these occasions, being taken up by the stage-coach, which had several members of Congress in it going ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the felicity of embracing his long-lost grandchild before he died. The child accepted him as her grandpapa, but begged that she might have as her dear papa besides, good old Zudar, who had loved ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... supplied these two aspects, the historical-romantic and the national-characteristic, with a felicity perhaps all the more unerring in that it seems to have been only partly conscious. The subject of 'the Forty-five' was now fully out of taboo, and yet retained an interest more than antiquarian. The author had the amplest stores of knowledge, and that sympathy which ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... ever. These characters and the images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest asunder possible, the distance between them is immense: yet the compass of knowledge and invention which the poet has shown in embodying these extreme creations of his genius is only greater than the truth and felicity with which he has identified each character with itself, or blended their different qualities together in the same story. What a contrast the character of Othello forms to that of Iago: at the same time, the force of conception with which these two figures are opposed to each other is rendered ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... class of composition, would have the most both to learn and unlearn. Accordingly, it was to the development of the plot and the arrangement of the incidents that I directed my chief attention;—and I sought to throw whatever belongs to poetry less into the diction and the "felicity of words" than into the construction of the story, the creation of the characters, and the ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
