"Forte" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as you know, was never my forte; some of my best friends have not had a letter from me in years. I live only in my notes (compositions), and one is scarcely finished when another is begun. As I am working now I often compose three, ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... d'avoir aujourd'hui Plus de nom que ... [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui, Et c'est de la que part cette secrete haine Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.' ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and breeches, who, no doubt, had something to do with the ceremonial of the Sessions. I saw, too, a procession of a good many old cabs and other carriages, filled with people, and a banner flaunting above each vehicle. These were the piano-forte makers of York, who were going out of town to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... longer go about among the country houses, but has to remain in the town and pass the night at different houses, especially of those gentlemen who take pleasure in tapping him on the nose. Anton Prokofievitch is very fond of good eating, and plays a good game at cards. Obeying orders always was his forte; so, taking his hat and cane, he set out at ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... affecting. We have observed that the critics are not decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that we are strongest in humour—others, that our power is in pathos. The judicious declare that our forte lies in both—in the two united, or alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... angle was a square inclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, 'during hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the 'English and mathematical.' Interspersed about the room, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... think so? (He says "Yes" with his eyes, bows, and moves up C. The piano is now forte. BELINDA accompanies him up a little, then stops. He turns in entrance up C., and they exchange glances. TREMAYNE exits to R., behind yew hedge. BELINDA stays looking after him, then moves down to back of table and picking up the book of poems, gives that happy sigh of hers, only even ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... surprise is your majesty's forte," exclaimed Count Hacke, endeavoring to give the conversation another direction. "Never before in my life did I feel my heart beat as it did when I crossed the threshold of this ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case, a lady was in the very act of being run over, immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know; but he was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... At a meeting at Apsley House the Tory Lords came to an unanimous resolution to throw out the Bill, and at one or two meetings at Lambeth the bishops agreed to do the same. The debate was heavy; Melbourne very unlike Lord Grey, whose forte was leading the House of Lords and making speeches on such occasions. Ellenborough spoke the best, I think. I hardly ever heard such unbroken fluency, and a good deal of stuff, too, in his speech. Ellice and Spring Rice both told ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... play for you gladly, Miss Travers, but waltz-music is not my forte. Let me see what else there is here." And he began turning over the sheets ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... than loud talkers. I resolved to try my utmost to be quiet and interesting, though at the same time it did occur to me as a little strange that, being so great an admirer of the species, she was not quiet and interesting herself. But being quiet was not my grandmother's forte; and it is generally understood that people always admire what they are not, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... marina, dove il Po discende Per aver pace co' seguaci sui. Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, Prese costui della bella persona Che mi fu tolta, e il modo ancor m' offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non mi abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte: 10 Caino attende chi vita ci spense.' Queste parole da lor ci fur porte. Da che io intesi quelle anime offense Chinai 'l viso, e tanto il tenni basso, Finche il Poeta mi disse: 'Che pense?' Quando ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... raised having subsided, Mademoiselle Cormon asked the reason of her success. Then began the /forte/ of the gossip. Du Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a monster, who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling Hospital supplied. His immoral habits were at last revealed! these Parisian saturnalias ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... plantation no sweet or easy thing; the political and ecclesiastical offenders enjoyed it still less, while the small criminal class found their punishment quite sufficiently severe. To this man the life must be a slow peine forte et dure, breaking his body with toil, crushing his soul with a hopeless degradation. The thought of escape must be ever present with him. But escape in the conventional manner, through pathless forests and over broad streams, was a thing rarely attained to. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... still your life from day to day, Nae "lente largo" in the play, But "allegretto forte" gay, Harmonious flow, A sweeping, kindling, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... sung one of the "Irish melodies," somebody said, "Everything that's national, is delightful." "Except the National Debt, ma'am," says Poole. Took tea at Vilamil's, and danced to the piano-forte. Wrote thirteen or fourteen lines before I went out. In talking of the organs in Gall's craniological system, Poole said he supposed a drunkard had ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... The Entertainment is written; and the rehearsals are in steady progress. All difficulties are provided for, but the one eternal difficulty of money. Miss Vanstone's resources stretch easily enough to the limits of our personal wants; including piano-forte hire for practice, and the purchase and making of the necessary dresses. But the expenses of starting the Entertainment are beyond the reach of any means we possess. A theatrical friend of mine here, whom I had hoped ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... began. The schoolmaster had read in Rabe's grammar: Nemo saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, and had always looked upon dancing as a species of insanity. True, he had watched puppies and calves dancing when they felt frisky, but he did not believe that Cicero's maxim applied to the animal world, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and by-and-by busy painting his great fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the "Last Judgment," which occupied him eight years; in 1542 he was appointed architect of St. Peter's, and he planned and built the dome; sculpture was his great forte, but his genius was equal to any task imposed on him, and he has left poems to show what he might have done in the domain of letters as he has done in those of arts, with which his fame ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... home at once, I wandered about the neighborhood, through street after street, until I found myself in another square, with a number of business-signs in it,—one of them that of a piano-forte firm, at sight of which, a thought came into my head. The next morning I went in, and requested to see the master. The man to whom I spoke stared, no doubt; but he went, and returning after a little while, during ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney becoming one ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... ils le vouloient. Pour nous, a force de rafiner, nous avons appauvri la notre, & n'ayant souvent qu'un terme propre a rendre une idee, nous aimons mieux affoiblir l'idee que de ne pas employer un terme noble.[3] Quelle perte pour ceux d'entre nos Ecrivains qui ont l'imagination forte, que celle de tant de mots que nous revoyons avec plaisir dans Amyot & dans Montagne. Ils ont commence par etre rejettes du beau style, parce qu'ils avoient passe dans le peuple; & ensuite rebutes par le peuple meme, qui a la longue est toujours ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... at Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) with terrible slaughter. "But the stout heart of the American nation quickly rallied, and inspired by the loyal determination of Abraham Lincoln the United States turned once more to their apparently hopeless task" (Colonel G. F. R. Henderson). McClellan's forte was organisation, and although at first slow in the field, he had assembled and trained a magnificent fighting force, with which he was "feeling his way to victory." He suffered defeat indeed at Gaines's Mill (June 27, 1862), the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... and her before us all. There will be no one present you can not trust. Your guardian, Sir Roger, and myself know already. Sardonyx is Mr. Walraven's lawyer, and silence is a lawyer's forte." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... later, when the Colonel appeared in the drawing-room, the violin was fetched, and Stella played it and sang afterwards to a piano-forte accompaniment. The performance was not of the same standard, by any means, as that which had delighted Thomas, for Stella did not feel the surroundings quite propitious. Still, with her voice and touch she could not fail, and the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... matter be needed, here we have it—Mr. B. was an editor. Irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. It was his strong point—his virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a Brownson to convince him that it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... their load's too great. "If I mistake not," he begins, "you'll find Viscus not more, nor Varius, to yoar mind: There's not a man can turn a verse so soon, Or dance so nimbly when he hears a tune: While, as for singing—ah! my forte is there: Tigellius' self might ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get piano-forte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published. By the time he had quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. His special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... and did not wish to be disturbed; also, that Mag had gone down to the village on an errand. She paused uncertainly at Jacqueline's door, but decided finally to respect the girl's desire for privacy, glad herself of a little longer respite before their meeting. Duplicity was not her forte, and she knew it. Her heart ached with tenderness for her child, a tenderness that she must ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf the noble ship and all on board ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Northern Star surely; constancy does not easily beset her. No, it was the Southern Cross. Take the cross as a symbol inclusive of more than Christian symbolism. Take it as a symbol signifying peine forte et dure. Is it not peculiarly characteristic of Africa to deal with us as she is doing? Does she not truly follow her star in banishing you, and shifting you, and ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... de Pontoise.—J'ai ordonne qu'on vous fasse prisonnier, parceque, ayant envoye une requisition a Pontoise pour des vivres, vous avez repondu que vous ne les donneriez pas, sans qu'on envoie une force militaire assez forte pour les prendre. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... answer to the question she had put, "Bones has some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his forte." ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... have known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,—the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,—the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat,—and, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... n'y ai cependant pas vu de granit en masse; seulement des granits feuilletes, des roches feuilletees, melangees de quartz et de mica; des fragmens meme de quartz pur; mais absolument aucun schiste purement argileux, ni aucune pierre calcaire, rien qui fit effervescence avec l'eau-forte, et la pate meme qui renferme ces cailloux n'en fait aucune. Leur forme varie; les uns sont arrondis et ont manifestement perdu leurs angles par le frottement; d'autres ont tous leurs angles vifs, quelques uns meme ont la forme rhomboidale qu'affectent si frequemment les roches de ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... in my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Stael's book, 'Sur la Revolution Francaise,' came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as every body did, eagerly to the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... meted out that "peine forte et dure," that acme of humiliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible that many a little girl in that room solemnly averred and believed she would kill herself before submitting to it. Pupasse's voluminous ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... covered my face with my hands, and commanded myself to God, with all the resignation that could be expected from a poor young fellow in my grievous circumstances, expecting to be cut off in the prima vera of his days, and to part for ever from—. Poo, that there line is not my forte. However, finding the haemorrhage by no means great, and that the wound was in fact slight, I took the captain's rather strong hint to be still, and lay quiet, until a 32—pound shot struck us bang on the quarter. The subdued force with which it came, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... this little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a white dress ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Monsieur le Directeur—and reincarcerated in the cabinot adjoining that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without food for twenty-four hours. "Mais, M'sieu' Jean," the Machine-Fixer said trembling, "Vous savez elle est forte. She gave the six of them a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result of their efforts, including le vieux (The Black Holster). But of course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon one woman. She was beaten badly, I tell you, before ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... sweet and sour, that were served, according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out from the beginning of ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... nothing occurred to interrupt the smooth current of Fanny's existence, until it was deemed advisable to engage a person properly qualified to give her instructions on that indispensable fixture to a fashionable parlor—the piano-forte. A teacher of some reputed talent was employed for this purpose; he was a Mr. Price, of Charlestown—and has since rendered himself somewhat famous for his amours in the above city with a married lady whom we shall call Mrs. Stout; he had for ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Oh, no; it doesn't hurt. I've been composing extemporaneous verse like that for fifteen years. Philosophy and rhyme are my forte. I've had some narrow escapes to be sure, but I've never been deserted by the muses. Now, as to my Sunday evening call. It seemed to be somewhat of a necessity, as I understand that the evidence will be closed in the Burnham case at the opening of ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... may be talked of in England, but to possess the very soul of harmony the world should come to the performance of this ode." Lady Fragrantia was at that moment drumming with her fingers on the edge of her fan, lost in a reverie, thinking she was playing upon——Was it a forte piano? ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... was his forte. There have been various rocks on which men have shattered their barks in their attempts to sail successfully into the harbours of parliamentary management. There is the great Senator who declares to himself that personally he will have neither friend nor foe. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... a personal affront, in a way of which the Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected on the slate, before she "seized the half- hour just previous to post-time to assure" her friends of this or of that; and Dr Johnson was, as she said, her model in these compositions. ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be applied as a 'scientific garb,' to the flight of a rifle ball, than to the fall of a dead body. And, if he had attained thus much, even of the science of language, it is just possible that the small forte and faculty of thought he himself possesses might have been energized so far as to perceive that the force of all inertly moving bodies, whether rifle stock, rifle ball, or rolling world, is under precisely one and the ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... had preceded it, in that the entire expense was to be borne by herself; and Mrs. Mills therefore only offered a feeble objection when the girl arranged that the front room upstairs was to be turned out, rout seats hired, and a few articles of furniture, including the piano-forte (which, at one perilous moment, threatened to remain for the rest of its life at the turn of the staircase), transferred from the shop parlour. Bulpert announced his intention of taking charge of the musical and dramatic part of the entertainment. Bulpert no longer considered himself a visitor ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... lucentium Naturam indagaverit Quidquid paulo audacius conjecit Ingenita temperans verecundia Ultro testantur hodie aequales Vera esse quae docuit pleraque Siquidem certiora futuris ingeniis subsidia Debitura est astronomia Agnoscent forte posteri Vitam utilem innocuam amabilem Non minus felici laborum exitu quam virtutibus Ornatam et vere eximiam Morte suis et bonis omnibus deflenda Nec tamen immatura clausit Die XXV Augusti A. D. ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... So doth the semly sonne bryht. When briddes singeth breme; Deowes donketh the dounes, Deores with huere derne rounes Domes forte deme; Wormes woweth under cloude, Wymmen waxeth wounder proude, So wel hit wol hem seme, Yef me shal wonte wille of on, This wunne weole y wole forgon Ant ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the Marquis who made the game. Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely covered in that second bout, which once more ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... No.—Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... a tutor—Cirindey of Corpus—whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean's niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quest of thee, valiant Roque, to find in thee if not a remedy at least relief in my misfortune; and not to keep thee in suspense, for I see thou dost not recognise me, I will tell thee who I am; I am Claudia Jeronima, the daughter of Simon Forte, thy good friend, and special enemy of Clauquel Torrellas, who is thine also as being of the faction opposed to thee. Thou knowest that this Torrellas has a son who is called, or at least was not two hours since, Don Vicente Torrellas. Well, to cut short the tale of my misfortune, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... far, the organist wipes his palms upon his trousers legs, squares his shoulders, and plunges into the program that he has played at all weddings for fifteen years past. It begins with Mendelssohn's Spring Song, pianissimo. Then comes Rubinstein's Melody in F, with a touch of forte toward the close, and then Nevin's "Oh, That We Two Were Maying" and then the Chopin waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, and then the Spring Song again, and then a free fantasia upon "The Rosary" and then a Moszkowski mazurka, and then the Dvorak Humoresque ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... wife's dowry, he was master of nearly a thousand pounds and a well-stocked farm; and increasing annual gains by his writings, seemed to augur future independence. But the Shepherd, not perceiving that literature was his forte, resolved to embark further in farming speculations; he took in lease the extensive farm of Mount Benger, adjoining Altrive Lake, expending his entire capital in the stocking. The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Mofletus Panis delicatioris species, qui diatim distribui solet Canonicis praebendariis; Tolosatibus Pain Moufflet, quasi Pain molet dictus; forte quod ejusmodi panes singulis diebus coquantur, atque recentes et ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... readers of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of their gay tints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... surprise, certainly, for it was the forte of the cardinal to prepare surprises for the agreeable entertainment of his guests. The ladies and gentlemen, the cardinals and princes of the Church, crowded around him begging for an explanation of the mystery, a ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... "is the most delicate test" of sanitary conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve the preservation ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... are great square edifices of a grand and gloomy aspect, built of dark blue stones (pietra forte) measuring from 3 to 4feet. The bases, to the height of from 20 to 30 feet, consist of coarsely chiselled rubble work, which lessens the baldness, and contributes character and effect to the from 200 to 300 feet of plain wall. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... fare best among the priests are the Jesuits, who returned from repeated banishment with the Austrians in this century. Their influence is very extended, and the confessional is their forte. Venetians say that with the old and the old-fashioned these crafty priests suggest remorse and impose penances; that with the young men and the latter-day thinkers they are men of the world, and pass off pleasant sins as trifles. All the students of the government ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... this forbearance misplaced—as was seen when, along in March, Jared's father ended his fifty unprofitable years of farm routine by dying suddenly and leaving things more or less at loose ends. Farming was not his forte—perhaps it is nobody's. He had never been able to make it pay, and he had gone in seeming willingness to shuffle off the general unsatisfactoriness of it all on to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... house and I EXPECT your honour will be after doing the same this year.' In this manner gifts are frequently turned into tributes. The high and low are not always dissimilar in their habits. It is said, that the Sublime Ottoman Forte is very apt to claim gifts as tributes: thus it is dangerous to send the Grand Seignor a fine horse on his birthday one year, lest on his next birthday he should expect a similar present, and should proceed to demonstrate the reasonableness of ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... course of the nerves, using gentle pressure upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Dominus, et famuli, et ancillae, a domo properantes, forte obliti, infantem in cunis jacentem secum non auferent, Daemones incipiunt commessari et vociferari, prospicereque per fenestras formis ursorum, luporum, felium, et monstrare pocula vino repleta. Ah, inquit pater, ubi infans ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... adapted to the didactic style, nor was it much to her taste. When writing in that style her pen did not seem to be entirely at ease, or to move quite at its own sweet will. Careful statement and nice theological distinctions were not her forte. And yet her mental grasp of Christian doctrine in its vital substance was very firm, and her power of observing, as well as depicting, the most delicate and varying phenomena of the spiritual life was like an instinct. A purer or more whole-hearted love of "the truth as it is in Jesus," ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... frontiers of Tunis and Tripoli. He is paid about eighteen-pence a day, cheap enough for his high political mission. The French are mighty fond of planting spies all over Barbary; but espionage is their forte. In the evening we arrived at the Salinæ[8], "salt pits," on the coast, where we found several small coasters loading with salt for Tripoli. Salt is also exported from this place to Europe. Here we brought up for the night, creeping ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... hasten with her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... l'arbuste effeuille, sur les chardons fletris Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure, On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure, Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter dans ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... revolver was empty, Dennis drew the sword attached to the saddle, and though he could not distinctly remember what happened, he saw that the blade was red from point to forte, when a parapet stopped the charge, and voices ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... to lose, and happy in the knowledge that no amount of bruises could do him any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer. Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action. Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... value was not to be despised, but thirst of fame and the desire of a more public position were the chief inducements to a man of Mr. Bridges' temperament, in which ambition and patriotism formed so prominent a part. Latin, however, was not Mr. Bridges' forte; he excelled rather in the higher branches of arithmetic and the abstruse sciences. His attainments, however, in the dead languages were beyond those of most of his contemporaries, as the letter he sent to the Master and Seniors will abundantly prove. It was chiefly owing to the great reverence ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... Alphabet Precis. Mr. Precis' peculiar forte was a singular happiness in official phraseology. Much that he wrote would doubtless have been considered in the purlieus of Paternoster Row as ungrammatical, if not unintelligible; but according to the syntax of Downing Street, it was equal to Macaulay, and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried in the courts of an orthodox morality and found lamentably wanting; or else, by way of giving them another chance, they are being subjected to the peine forte et dure of modern analysis, and are revealing hideous and melancholy meanings in the process. I have always believed that Hudibras owes its chilly treatment at the hands of critics—with the single and most genial exception ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... great forte is character-painting. This portraiture is accomplished with remarkable skill, the traits both individual and national being marked with great nicety ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... shortly after my coming to Llangollen. He said that he had been well acquainted with him, and had helped to carry him to the grave, adding, that he was something of a poet, but that he had always considered his forte lay in strong good sense rather than poetry. I mentioned Thomas Edwards, whose picture I had seen in Valle Crucis Abbey. He said that he knew him tolerably well, and that the last time he saw him was when he, Edwards, was about seventy ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in glass cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried them; they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in perfect time. Thereat he wondered. But the truth is, it was a house wherein precision reigned: a tuner and a clockmaker ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a human four-and-a-half-year-old travelling, for the best part of a summer, is an imposition upon herself, her parents, and the public at large. To leave her with Bart's mother, whose forte is Scotch crossed with Pennsylvania Dutch discipline, will probably be to find on her return that she has developed a quaking fear of the dark; while, if she goes to my mother, bless her! who has the beautiful and soothing Southern genius for ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... DEPARTMENT,—Though I enjoy reading the Home Department, I have never before written anything for it, as writing is not my forte, but I feel almost compelled to send this to express my indignation at the light sentence passed on those three men in the Smith assault case. I think it perfectly outrageous that they should get ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... with a sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity, for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the Chateau of La Roche Jagu, on the summit of a hill overhanging the river Trieux and defending the entrance. It has more of the character of a "maison forte" than of a "manoir," as was termed the habitation of a knight, and of those who holding a fief, yet did not possess the seignorial right to a castle with towers and donjon. The manoir might be ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... commodatam accepit, ad ipsam restituendam tenetur, vel ejus precium, si forte incendio, ruins, naufragio, ant latronum, vel hostium incursu, consumpta fuerit vel deperdita, substracts, vel ablata." Fol. 99 a, b. This has been thought a corrupt text (Guterbock, Bracton, by Coxe, p. 175; 2 Twiss, Bract. ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... manner to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these, however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have heard a whole ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Adelaide, solicitors, attorneys, conveyancers, proctors, barristers, are all united, and this reform, which works admirably, will probably soon be extended to the other colonies. What generally happens is, that one man with a penchant for the forum goes into partnership with another whose forte lies in the office; and thus, though all lawyers meet on an equality, the two branches of the profession practically remain apart. But the new regime offers great advantages to juniors, who are thus no longer ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... which exists, or did exist, in the popular mind; and fire, in an insurance sense, as distinct from explosion, was accurately defined by Justice McIlvaine, of the Supreme Court of Ohio (1872), in the case of the Union Insurance Company vs. Forte, i.e., an explosion was a remote cause of loss and not the proximate cause, when the fire was a burning of a gas jet which did not destroy, though the explosion caused by the burning gas-jet did destroy. Earlier than this decision, however (in 1852), Justice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Music at Leipsic, which, under his management, became so celebrated. Mendelssohn produced works in almost every department of musical composition, a great variety of chamber music, symphonies, overtures, one opera, and a very large collection of music for the piano-forte and organ. Probably his fame will last longer through the influence of three works—viz., the "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, which opened the new world of the romantic; the oratorio of "Elijah," which is in very many respects one ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... and he cast the pen aside with a sigh. "It is abominable work to write letters," he said; "I cannot comprehend why you, Gneisenau, who are so good a soldier, at the same time know so well how to wield the pen. It is not my forte, although I had a notion once to be a savant, and really become a sort of writer. In those calamitous days, subsequent to 1807, despair and ennui sought for some relief to my mind, and made me write a book, and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... short time it was really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to undergo the peine forte et dure as the condition of our presence! We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness itself, would have had us stay and sit down in comfort at the supper-table, after the crowd had ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... such occasions were adopted, the prisoner was three times brought before the Court, and called to plead; the consequences of persisting in standing mute being solemnly announced to him at each time. If he remained obdurate, the sentence of peine forte et dure was passed upon him; and, remanded to prison, he was put into a low and dark apartment. He would there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked for the most part. A weight of iron would be placed upon him, not quite enough to crush him. He would have ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and acids subjected to heat. The imports of barilla from the Canary Islands to this country are about 3,500 tons a-year. The United States of America, and of late years, Brazil, also, take off a few cargoes of this article. Lancerota produces, annually, about 300 tons of barilla; Forte ventura about ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... which we used to hear pronounced with great solemnity when the Psalms were read. It is a musical term, meaning, perhaps, something like our "Da Capo" or, possibly, "Forte"—a mark of expression like those Italian words which you find over the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... della spada mirando al segno; e la sua rossa strada ne brilla insino alle sue alpine porte. Tu tendi la potenza della morte come un arco tra il Vodice e l'Hermada; varchi l'Isonzo indomito ove guada la tua Vittoria col tuo pugno forte. Giovine sei, rinato dalla terra sitibonda, balzato su dal duro Carso col fiore dei tuio fanti imberbi. Questo, che in te si compie, anno di guerra splenda da te, avido del futuro, e al ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... simple et forte, Simbol de glorie et de piete, Tour de pauvres femmes mortes Pour leur Dieu et ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... one of the most prominent and interesting of all the sights of Boston, and the visitor is surprised to learn that it is due entirely to the energy and genius of one who, but thirty-four years previous to its erection, came to Boston a penniless stranger. The building is the famous piano-forte manufactory of Chickering & Sons, and its founder was Jonas Chickering, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... stepping-stones to success, you know." "That's good of you to say as much, Jack, old chap, when I do think up some of the greatest fool notions ever heard of," acknowledged Toby; "but it's my plan to keep right on, and encourage my brain to work along that groove. I feel it's going to be my forte in life to invent things. I'd rather be known as the man who had lightened the burdens of mankind than to be a famous general who had conquered ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Toujours est-il que ces grands rugissements de sauvage qu'il allait chercher dans le fond de sa gorge, en agitant sa forte crinire rouge, auraient fait frmir les plus braves. Moi-mme, Robinson, j'en avais quelquefois le c[oe]ur boulevers, et j'tais oblig de lui dire voix basse: "Pas si fort, Rouget, tu ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... alma bem aconselhada, que dais o seu a cujo he, o da terra ha terra: agora yreis despejada polla estrada, porque vencestes com fee forte guerra. ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... just been talking to Sir Thomas, my dear," he said. He tried to speak casually, and, as a natural result, infused so much meaning into his voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern coughed confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He abandoned it in favor of directness. "He was telling me that you had ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his forte: he was by nature ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... to warn us from trying to make too many genera out of these animals. Dr. Gray, whose particular forte—or shall I say weakness?—was minute subdivision, classed (in 1847) the Indian porcupines in three sub-families, Hystrix, Acanthion, and Atherura; and Acanthion he some years after (1866, see 'P. Z. S.' p. 308) divided again into three groups, OEdocephalus, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... and threw down a cent, without a word. One more did her a similar favor, and she left the store well satisfied with the visit. Pretty soon she came to a large piano-forte manufactory, where she knew that a great many men were employed. She went up-stairs to the counting-room, where she sold three sticks, and was about to enter the work-room, when a sign, "No admittance except on business," confronted ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... but how dost thou do? thou bard not of a thousand but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless, lank-jawed judges' upon the fortunate ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... promoturus; verisimile esse putavi, me turbulento hoc, suspicioso ac difficillimo tempore, sive citius, sive aliquanto tardius, in medio cursu abreptum iri. Quapropter ignarus quid de me futurum sit, quum Dei permissu in carceres et vincula forte detrudendus sim, ad omnem eventum scriptum hoc condidi: quod ut legere, et ex eo causam meam cognoscere velitis, etiam atque etiam rogo. Fiet enim, ut hac re non parvo labore liberemini, dum quod multis ambagibus inquirere vos audio, id totem aperta confessione ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... abstulimus, in navem conscendimus, domi cupientes. forte ut adsedi in stega, dum circumspecto, atque ego lembum conspicor longum. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... and seem only to have worked as much as was requisite to keep body and soul together. But, he adds, 'they possess a natural facility and quickness in acquiring the knowledge of the arts,' and musical performance was their forte. They were also employed as slaves in the households of the boyards, especially in the kitchens, which they made 'not less disgusting than the receptacles of swine.' They were bastinadoed, often in the presence ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... d'assainissement de la ville de Paris, dont je faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d'une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyaye me restera toujours en memoire parce que c'est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m'invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire asseoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: 'Je voudrais vous demander de m'accorder quelque chose. C'est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez pas la permission ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nisi forte insanit, neque in solitudine, neque in convivio honesto." That is, "No man dances, in private, or at any respectable entertainment, except he be drunk ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... had but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was entitled to peace he still had to fight ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... some forte—like huntin' an' such, But the sports o' the field didn't bother him much; Wuz just a plain dorg, an' contented to be On peaceable terms with the neighbors an' me; Used to fiddle an' squirm, and grunt "Oh, how nice!" When I tickled the back ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... little one was or was not affected by the evil eye of a secret enemy. If a pig was stolen, she was shrewd in her conjectures as to the direction its wrathful owner must take in the search. But her forte lay in bringing about love-matches. Many were the charms at her command for this purpose, and equally numerous the successes with which she was accredited. Some particulars of her doings in this direction were furnished by Jerry Magwire, a jolly car-man ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... wish I could. But it's not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert—the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for her sister. In fact, she was always blushing for her sister. She considered it to be her duty formally and officially to disavow her senior. So reprehensible did she feel Split's conduct to be that some one must blush for it; and as blushing was not Split's forte, Sissy did it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... like Sir Jarvy to hear that, my man of books," cried the fourth, who had satisfied himself that a book was not his own forte—"I fancy your instinct, doctor, will prevent you from whispering this in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... elementary problems to the less distracting task of finding out how to make your discovered degree of talent count for all that it may be worth. After trying your hand at a variety of subjects, you will find your forte. But take your time about it. Every adventure in composition teaches you something new about yourself, your art and the markets wherein you gain your daily bread. The way to learn to write—the only way—is by writing, and you never will know what you might do unless ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... some difficulty in justifying Washington's course by the opinion of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologics, 1 ma., 2 dae., Quaest. XCVI, Art. 4), who says that an unjust law is not binding in conscience "nisi forte propter vitandum scandalum vel turbationem." Aquinas is speaking of an unjust law which may be resisted unless scandal or tumult would result from resistance. Washington is speaking of a law which he considers right, but which he would not enforce if it should ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... was hearing the other side of the story from Captain Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with a face as white as a haddock and ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... of the most singular form you can imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every room ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... meant by the word 'Lord' his divinity or at least essential superhumanity. But the Socinian will not allow this; or, allowing it, denies St. Paul's authority in matters of speculative faith. As well then might I say, it is sufficient for you to believe and repeat the words 'forte miles reddens'; and though one of you mean by it "Perhaps I may be balloted for the militia," and the other understands it to mean, that "Reading is forty miles from London," you are still co-symbolists and believers! While a third person may say, I believe, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... campo quod forte jacebat, Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis. Vix illud lecti bis sex cervice subirent, Qualia nunc hominum producit ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... his impregnable tower before the fiend returns from the end of the world. When he comes to the tower he finds all his skill is naught, so he has recourse to artifice, which indeed has always been his forte. He begs piteously to be allowed one last look of his beloved princess. They can't refuse him so slight a favour, and make a tiny hole in the tower wall, but, tiny as it is, the Devil is able to pull the princess through it and instantly mounts on high with her. Now is the marksman's opportunity: ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... stage-clothes, and pushed towards the lamps, he would rub his eyes for a moment, and then consciousness and extraordinary humour returned to him together, and his acting suffered in no way from the excesses which had overwhelmed him. Eccentricity was his forte, and it was usually found necessary to have characters expressly written for him; but there can be no doubt that he was very highly esteemed by the playgoers of his time, who viewed his loss to ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... this novel is that most extraordinary of all punishments known to English criminal law, the peine forte et dure. The story is not, however, in any sense historical. A sketchy background of stirring history is introduced solely in order to heighten the personal danger of a brave man. The interest is domestic, and, perhaps, in some degree psychological. Around a pathetic piece of old jurisprudence ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... to interrupt this perilous business, hastily rang for wine and water; and as the gentlemen went to help themselves she gave them a general toast, as sitting down to the piano-forte, to the tune of— "Here's to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... disregarding him, "being very poor at present I am contemplating socialism as possibly my forte." ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... his forte. He had prepared himself well in advance; but though he kept coughing: hum! broum! though he kept running his finger around his shirt-collar to facilitate his delivery, the beginning of his speech stuck ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... die ueber ihrer Zeit standen und von ihren Gegensaetzen nicht beruehrt wurden.—BACHMANN, Hengstenberg, i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, aut solus non insanio; tertium enim non est, nisi (quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes.—HOBBES, quoted by DE MORGAN, June 3, 1858, Life of Sir W. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... forte putes me, quae facere ipse recusem, Cum recte tractant alii, laudare maligne; Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet; falsis terroribus implet, Ut magus; & modo me ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... Flossy, it so happened that Charlie Flint, after Marion had startled and disgusted him, sought refuge with her. She was pretty and dainty, and did not look strong-minded; not in the least as if her forte was to preach, so he made ready to have a running fire ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... : Manid[-o](s) [throughout text] Bois Forts [modern name Bois Forte, but "Forts" is common in early texts] INDEX: [all spellings unchanged] [Note 11] History of the Ojebway Indians, London [1843(?)] [question mark and brackets in original] sacred objects which Minab[-o]zho had deposited [word is ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... something toward next day's luncheon. Salad, fruit, and fresh eggs Maria bought for them in the old market. From the confectioners came loaves of pane santo, a sort of light cake made with arrowroot instead of flour; and sometimes, by way of treat, a square of pan forte da Siena, compounded of honey, almonds, and chocolate,—a mixture as pernicious as it is delicious, and which might take a medal anywhere for the sure ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... impression of reserve which these three mighty spirits, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Machiavelli, at moments convey. "Sed mihi haec ac talia audienti in incerto judicium est, fatone res mortalium et necessitate immutabili an forte volvantur; quippe sapientissimos veterum, quique sectam eorum aemulantur, diversos reperias, ac multis insitam opinionem non initia nostri, non finem, non denique homines dis curae; ideo creberrime tristia in bonos, laeta apud deteriores ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... at work as a veneerer in a piano-forte factory at Attica, when some tariff or other was passed or repealed; there came a great financial explosion, and our boss, among the rest, failed. He owed us all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan Whittemore—a real good ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... beginning of the twentieth century, two new voices have begun to be heard; at first sotto voce, they have risen through a murmurous pianissimo to a decorous non troppo forte, and they continue crescendo,—the voice of the teacher and the voice of the graduate. And the burden of their message is that no educational system is genuinely democratic which may ignore with impunity the criticisms and suggestions of the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Alberti's or Galuppi's, I forget which. His voice went like the wind, and his fingers leapt over the imaginary keys. The various passions succeeded one another on his face; you observed on it tenderness, anger, pleasure, sorrow; you felt the piano notes, the forte notes, and I am sure that a more skilful musician than myself would have recognised the piece by the movement and the character, by his gestures, and by a few notes of airs which escaped from him now and again. But the absurd thing was to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... morning after her arrival, having finished her piano-forte practice, touched her harp twice, and arpeggioed the Spanish Fandango on her guitar, Miss Betty read two paragraphs of "Gilbert" (for she was profoundly determined to pursue her tasks with diligence), but the open windows disclosing a world all sunshine and green leaves, she threw the book aside ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... and bewildered herself among the multitude of leaves that formed the cup of the rose, Mr. Gummage snatched the pencil from her hand, rubbed out the whole, and then drew it himself. It must be confessed that his forte lay in flowers, and he was extremely clever at them, "but," as he expressed it, "his scholars ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... with a Pathetic Drama, in One Act, called The Sorrows of Werther. (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) [Caste follows.] Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims got for the occasion. Orchestra. Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an ORDER can possibly be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to say that both arrangements were found, in course of time, to answer admirably? Miss Pritty discovered that housekeeping was her forte, and that she possessed powers of comprehension, in regard to financial matters connected with the payment of debts and dividends, such as she had all her previous life believed to be unattainable anywhere, save in the Bank of England or on ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Music and painting are not our forte. Cf. Hazlitt's review of the "Life of Reynolds" (X, 186-87): "Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind's eye: ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... know her, for although you are a Papist you are a brave man, and a gentleman. Still, sir, a Papist is not—curse it, this isn't handsome of me, Willy. I beg your pardon. Confound all religions if it goes to that. Still at the same time I'm bound to say as a loyal man that Protestantism is my forte, Mr. Reilly—there's where I'm strong, a touch of Hercules about me there, Mr. Reilly—Willy, I mean. Well, you are a thorough good fellow, Papist and all, though you—ahem!—never mind though, you shall see my daughter, and you shall hear ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 3. Would a piano-forte, which two years ago cost three hundred and fifty dollars, be taken at its present value in ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman |
