"Unpropitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... composed for the silver wedding of his parents. This was prepared without their knowledge, and in order that the non-musical Hensel might take part with the rest of the family, Mendelssohn wrote for him a number consisting wholly of one note repeated. Even with this aid the Muses were unpropitious in the performance, and Hensel could not hit the right pitch for this note, while all his neighbours tried to prompt him, and the young composer sat at the piano convulsed ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... in which the affections are wounded, as jealousy, love unrequited, friendship betrayed and the like. As, in despair from remorse, the whole life seems to be involved in one action: so in the despair we are now considering, the whole life appears to be shut up in the one unpropitious affection. Yet human nature, if fairly treated, is too large a thing to be suppressed into despair by one affection, however potent. We might imagine that if there were anything that would rob life of its strength and ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... had been out all the previous night at a most trying case, and body and brain were weary, his nerves all on edge, his patience nearly exhausted, and he had no time or inclination for unpleasant interruptions and unnecessary worries. Altogether there could not have been a much more unpropitious moment for any one to have gone to him than that which ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... The times were unpropitious to the buttered-toast question, and it had quite slipped out of my mind. I have never traced the string of associations which reminded me of it, on one certain morning. Once more I made bold to ask if I could have buttered toast. "Impossible," said ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the house for something after starting on a journey is unpropitious. To have it brought out is all ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... find someone to assume the duty for him; but one day everyone seemed engaged on some pursuit or other, so with every anticipation of a dull evening he went down to hall. He began to read Shelley but the surroundings were unpropitious. All about him sat huddled fragments of humanity scratching half-baked ideas with crossed nibs into dog-eared notebooks. There was a general air of unrest. Gordon tried Sinister Street; some of the episodes in Lepard Street were more in harmony ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Astonished and delighted, all Italy was swept by the golden torrent of Tasso's impassioned verses, that were intended to urge the Catholic princes of Europe to the inauguration of a new Crusade. Nor were the times unpropitious for such an event. Tunis, that hot-bed of infidelity, piracy and iniquity, was in the hands of the Christians; and the fleets of the Soldan had been well-nigh annihilated by Don John of Austria at ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... very unpropitious morning for a journey—muggy, damp, and drizzly. The horses in the stages that were going out, and had come through the city, were smoking so, that the outside passengers were invisible. The newspaper-sellers looked moist, and smelled mouldy; the wet ran off the hats of the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a singular influence over her young master, who was in the habit of consulting her with regard to his affairs, and nothing could have been more unpropitious to the success of grandpa's suit than the knowing she disapproved. Beside this, Guy had only the previous week lost a small amount loaned under similar circumstances. Standing silent for a moment, while he buried and reburied his shining patent leather boots in the hills of ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... comment. No one is more conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of Myths," which will be published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, I have ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the Park, enjoying to the full the keen, fresh odors of the Spring,—odors that even in London cannot altogether lose their sweetness, so long as hyacinths and violets consent to bloom, and almond-trees to flower, beneath the too often unpropitious murkiness of city skies. It had been raining, but now the clouds had rolled off, and the sun shone as brightly as it ever CAN shine on the English capital, sending sparkles of gold among the still wet foliage, and reviving the little crocuses, that had lately tumbled down in heaps on the grass, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... here by the scarcity of ferocious game, I was more fortunate in another enthusiasm which attacked me at almost the same time. For however unpropitious the hunting is on any given part of the earth's surface, there is everywhere and always an abundance of good hidden-treasure-seeking to be had. The garden, the attic, the tennis lawn all suffered. And my initiative was strengthened by the discovery of an incomparable book ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to live according to its primary intention, but in reality such direct satisfaction was impossible. A total defeat, on the other hand, would have extinguished the will itself and obliterated every human impulse seeking expression. Man's existence is proof enough that nature was not altogether unpropitious, but offered, in an unlooked-for direction, some thoroughfare to the soul. Roundabout imperfect methods were discovered by which something at least of what was craved might be secured. The individual perished, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day late in May—a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting, foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore. As he rode through Long-Ash Lane ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... that the extraordinary alternations of climate we had experienced for two months, was a circumstance quite unheard-of before in Pau, and we looked on ourselves as singularly unlucky in having, by chance, chosen a season so unpropitious. A few simple persons, who ventured to remark that the winter of last year was very similar, were told that they must have been mistaken; and some who recollected high winds were considered romancers. We looked at the strong contre-vents ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... a few miles from the town—so lonely that what are called lonely villages were teeming by comparison—there lived a man of curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet. The way to his house was crooked and miry—even difficult in the present unpropitious season. One evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel resounded like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused for shrouding himself to his ears and eyes, such a shrouded ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... had forcibly pointed out the defective patience of those, who, though submissive and composed under corrections, which proceeded immediately from the hand of God; such as sickness, loss of friends by death, or any misfortunes arising from unpropitious seasons, or other accidents; are querulous and rebellious, when the same Sovereign Disposer of events corrects them through the intervention of their enemies. Pride, envy, hatred, ingratitude, selfishness, and treachery, are evils permitted against ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... a pick from the hand of an astonished Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he still kept on his way, a quarter of a mile beyond the shaft. Here he stopped before a jagged hole in the hillside. Bared to the sky and air, the very openness of its abandonment, its unpropitious position, and distance from the strike in Mulrady's shaft had no doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... that about one in ten of these letters is dictated either by honest sympathy, the warm, uncritical recognition of youth (which I don't suppose any author would diminish, if he could), or the craving for encouragement, under unpropitious circumstances of growth. But how was I, in the beginning, to guess at the motives of the writers? They offered sugar-plums, which I swallowed without a suspicion of the drastic ingredients so many of them contained. Good Mrs. Sigourney kept a journal of her experiences in this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... known anything of women (at Isabel's age) he would never have appealed to her mercy in those plain terms, and at the unpropitious moment. "Pity you?" she repeated contemptuously. "Is that all you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!" She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into the pockets of her ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... near, and there was no time to lose. Yet the moment was most unpropitious, for a Seneca chief had lately been murdered by three scoundrel soldiers of the fort of Montreal; and, while they were undergoing their trial, it became known that three other Frenchmen had treacherously put to death several Iroquois of the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... He recollected their unpropitious journey—the exposure to cold and rain—that he had hurried on the invalids, till he had accomplished his own purposes. One had already gone; the other was fast following. Speculators have consciences and affections, and his ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... be your mistress on one condition only," said the woman, in reply to the nonsense I poured into her ear, carried away by the fervor of an improvised passion, to which everything was unpropitious. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... has followed thus far he has a tolerably fair notion of the unpropitious and eccentric surroundings amid which Field worked immediately after coming to Chicago. Out of this strange environment came as variegated a column of satire, wit, and personal persiflage as ever attracted and fascinated the readers of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Even should one of them be repaired, it cannot make the voyage this year. In all the port not one ship or fragata escaped, except one small boat, which was taken to send advices to Nueva Espana of the condition of this land, which is most unpropitious. By this calamity, so injurious to the community, the people have become greatly disheartened. Moreover, as I write this clause, we have had thus far no news of ships from Nueva Espana, although ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... say this of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly; whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air." ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... not taste the meat offered to a demon; and thus he starved in the midst of plenty. At night, when the kettle was slung, and the savage crew made merry around their fire, he crouched in a corner of the hut, gnawed by hunger, and pierced to the bone with cold. They thought his presence unpropitious to their hunting, and the women especially hated him. His demeanor at once astonished and incensed his masters. He brought them fire-wood, like a squaw; he did their bidding without a murmur, and patiently bore their abuse; ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... dwelt in the south, and came hither from the south, should hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem me very childish. Alas! what I here express I have long known while I suffered under an unpropitious heaven, and now may I joyful feel this joy as an exception, which we should enjoy everforth as an eternal necessity ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the fracture in the shaft is extending, and so, partially maimed, the old ship drags her 320 feet of length slowly along. The captain is continually in the engine-room, and we know when things are looking more unpropitious than usual by his coming up puffing his cigar with unusual strength of determination. It has been so far a very pleasant voyage. The moral, mental, and social qualities of my fellow-passengers are ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... a few days later Nona Davis became ill. The illness was only an attack of malarial fever, which Nona had been subject to ever since her childhood; nevertheless, the disease had never chosen a more unpropitious time for ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... broadside saved the English commander-in-chiefs ship from an early defeat. It took the crew of le Pluton, her new adversary, by surprise; for they had not been able to distinguish the precise position of their enemy; and, besides doing vast injury to both hull and people, drew her fire at an unpropitious moment. So uncertain and hasty, indeed, was the discharge the French ship gave in return, that no small portion of the contents of her guns passed ahead of the Plantagenet, and went into the larboard quarter of le Temeraire, the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that did his sagacity credit, that his footing in this quarter was only to be obtained by unusually slow and cautious means. Still, Mr. Bragg was a man of great decision, and, in his way, of very far-sighted views; and, singular as it may seem, at that unpropitious moment, he mentally determined that, at no very distant day, he would make Miss Eve Effingham ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... secret agents were, unknown to the king, all devoted to the parliaments, and consequently inimical to courtiers, favorites, and especially mistresses. God knows how they disposed of us! By these unpropitious channels the king had learnt all the hatred which was borne to madame de Pompadour. He was afraid of exciting the discontent of the people by announcing another mistress, and was no less intimidated at the severity ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... parsonage was a stretch of lawn, dotted with shrubs and cedars and shaded by two big silver-leaf poplars. It was on this lawn that, provided the night was fair, the strawberry festival was to be held. If the weather should be unpropitious the festival was to be in the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the birth of Kunti's sons and also of the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra the daughter of the king of the Madras privately addressed Pandu, saying, 'O slayer of foes, I have no complaint even if thou beest unpropitious to me. I have, O sinless one, also no complaint that though by birth I am superior to Kunti yet I am inferior to her in station. I do not grieve, O thou of Kuru's race, that Gandhari hath obtained a hundred sons. This, however, is my great grief that while Kunti and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... mourn the dark Winds o'er the lonely plain, And from pale noon sinks, ere the fifth cold hour, The transient light, Imagination's power, With Knowledge, and with Science in her train, Not unpropitious Hyems' icy reign Perceives; since in the deep and silent lour High themes the rapt concent'ring Thoughts explore, Freed from external Pleasure's glittering chain. Then most the understanding's culture pays Luxuriant harvest, nor shall ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... vexed me most of all was, that the Duchess and all the gentlemen did not cease drawing for a single moment, but coolly continued their occupation; so I was left to play to the chairs and tables, and the walls. My patience gave way under such unpropitious circumstances. I therefore began the Fischer variations, and after playing one half of them I rose. Then came eulogiums without end. I, however, said all that could be said—which was, that I could do myself no justice on such a piano, but I should be very glad to ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... Phidias considers improvement in music of sufficient consequence to encourage your visits to that dangerous woman," answered Philothea: "It was an unpropitious day for Athens when she came here to invest vice with all the allurements of beauty ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... by a formidable band of Tuaricks; and Laing, having received twenty-four wounds, was left for dead. He afterwards recovered by the care of his companions, though several splinters of bone were extracted from his head. Undismayed by this unpropitious accident, he after a short delay resumed his journey, and reached Tombuctoo on the 18th August, 1826. There he resided for a month, during which several letters from him reached England. He described the city as ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... replied, "but we'll be whipped in this wordy battle. And even a small defeat were an unpropitious sign on this expedition." ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... her sprightly chatter going when they sat down, though the temperature of the room and the sight of hot soup might have discouraged a less determined gayety. Moreover, there were details as unpropitious as the heat: the expiring roses expressed not beauty but pathos, and what faint odour they exhaled was no rival to the lusty emanations of the Brussels sprouts; at the head of the table, Adams, sitting low in his chair, appeared to be unable to flatten the ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... the dirty and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons contending hideously in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... very few, people down for that Sunday. They had all a special connection with Bray. Things had happened there before, and it was a party of healed memories that was to gather there. If, after all, the weather turned out to be hopelessly unpropitious, they could all sit in a ring round the fire, holding each other's hands. She felt sure they would like to do that. Probably there would be a great many tete-a-tetes in various corners, or, if it were warm, in various punts. But she felt sure that they would all hold ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... a hapless sufferer from beneath the table. It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if "every dog will have his day," he could not have selected a more unpropitious one than this. Mrs. Ogleton, too, had a pet—a favorite pug—whose squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow! yow! continued the brute—a chorus in which Flo instantly joined. Sooth to say, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... now by the blessing of the Almighty in the city of Oviedo, the capital of the Asturias, although at an unpropitious season, for the bray of war is at the gate, and there is the cry of the captains and the shouting. Castile is at the present time in the hands of the Carlists, who have captured and plundered Valladolid, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... matter, my fair coz?" asked Gerald, who was standing near and heard the sigh. "Are the Fates very unpropitious?" ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... house, shut the door after her, and disappeared. I stood, at the bottom of the steps, confounded at such strange and unexpected treatment. I could not withdraw till my purpose was accomplished. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door, and pulled the bell. A negro came, of a very unpropitious aspect, and, opening the door, looked at me in silence. To my question, Was Mrs. Maurice to be seen? he made some answer, in a jargon which I could not understand; but his words were immediately followed by an unseen person within the house:—"Mrs. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... But him the Goddess answer'd azure-eyed, Telemachus! Thou wilt, in part, thyself Fit speech devise, and heav'n will give the rest; For thou wast neither born, nor hast been train'd To manhood, under unpropitious Pow'rs. So saying, Minerva led him thence, whom he With nimble steps attending, soon arrived Among the multitude. There Nestor sat, And Nestor's sons, while, busily the feast 40 Tending, his num'rous followers roasted, some, The viands, some, transfix'd them with the spits. They seeing ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... not much above a week after the calculations, in all the glory of the purple of Manor Cross, the new Popenjoy was born. For it was a Popenjoy. The Fates, who had for some time past been unpropitious to the house of Brotherton, now smiled; and Fortune, who had been good to the Dean throughout, remained true to him also in this. The family had a new heir, a real Popenjoy; and the old Marchioness when the baby was shown to her for awhile forgot her sorrows ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the Mgussa's familiar motioned the Kamraviona and several officers to draw around him, when, in a very low tone, he gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations seemed unpropitious, for we immediately repaired to our boats and returned to our quarters. Here we no sooner arrived than a host of Wakungu, lately returned from the Unyoro war, came to pay their respects to the king: they had returned ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... crude but vehement way, was living through a boy's own high tragedy of love for a woman older than he and beyond his reach, and Piney knew for himself that Steering, in the most perfect flower of his capacity, had attained his destiny as a perfect lover, under circumstances most unpropitious. The fact that the woman who was the object of the boy's enraptured fancy had levied royal tribute upon the man's love in the same purple-mannered fashion brought boy and man close. Tacitly they recognised that the bond between them ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... figure in white descending amidst the foliage ahead. His instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk, scarcely analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the spot where their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically to enjoy the unpropitious elements arrayed against a friendship ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... prosperity: but it is the faithful page of biography that transmits to future generations the poverty, pain, wrong, hunger, wretchedness and torment, and every nameless misery that has been endured by those who have lived in obscurity, and groped their lonely way through a long series of unpropitious events, with but little help besides the light of nature. While the gilded monument displays in brightest colors the vanity of pomp, and the emptiness of nominal greatness, the biographical page, that lives in every line, is giving lessons ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the client has lost his fortune, the stage lawyer is even still happier. He comes down himself to tell the misfortune (he would not miss the job for worlds), and he takes care to choose the most unpropitious moment possible for breaking the news. On the eldest daughter's birthday, when there is a big party on, is his favorite time. He comes in about midnight and tells them just as they are going down ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... English friends at the Fonda de Madrid, got into an immense, lumbering yellow vehicle, drawn by ten mules, and started, trusting to my good luck and bad Spanish to get safely through. The commencement, however, was unpropitious, and very often a stumble at starting makes the whole journey limp. The near mule in the foremost span was a horse, ridden by our postillion, and nothing could prevent that horse from darting into all sorts of streets and alleys where we had no desire to go. As all mules have ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... hope of her husband's return for at least a year, likely eighteen months. What was to be done with her? What could be a more unpropitious fate than for a Colonial girl, used to an active life of exertion and usefulness, and trained to all domestic arts, to be set down in a great English household where there was really nothing for her to do, and usefulness or superintendence ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now summoned several of the king's officers to draw round him, and then, in a low voice, gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations appeared to have been unpropitious, for the party immediately repaired to their boats ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Chandler, U. S. N., commanding. In astronomical observations all work is at the mercy of the elements. Clear weather was, of course, a necessity to success at any station. In the present case the weather was on the whole unpropitious. While there was not a complete failure at any one station, the number or value of the observations was more or less impaired at all. Where the sky was nearly cloudless, the air was thick and hazy. This was especially the case ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... ourselves intelligible, by the last unintelligible, to our fellows. It has not seldom occurred to me (noting how in our national legislature everything runs to talk, as lettuces, if the season or the soil be unpropitious, shoot up lankly to seed, instead of forming handsome heads) that Babel was the first Congress, the earliest mill erected for the manufacture of gabble. In these days, what with Town Meetings, School Committees, Boards (lumber) ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Formosa, for the purpose of cruising off, and entering any of the rivers, in quest of vessels trading for slaves, where we might have reason to believe that the inhuman traffic was pursued. The weather was very unpropitious during the night, for we had it squally, with heavy rain, thunder and lightning; but it cleared up in the course of the morning, and, at noon, it was calm and fine;—soon after which we saw a strange vessel, which we supposed to be a slaver: we, therefore, used every effort ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... of real affection on both sides, obviously to all the world does not know, nor suspect, parts of the son's character familiar to his companions and equals. The truth is, that the position of looking up to another is extremely unpropitious to complete sincerity and openness with him. The fear of losing ground in his opinion or in his feelings is so strong, that even in an upright character, there is an unconscious tendency to show only the best side, or the side which, though not the best, is that ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... The weather was unpropitious, heavy fogs lay on the water, dissipated occasionally by fierce outbursts of wind. The Saxon fleet kept the sea. It was well that for a time the Danish fleet did not appear in sight, for the Saxons, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... waited a favourable opportunity to carry out his purpose, and in vain. The two sisters seemed to be inseparable in this time of trouble, and try as he might he could not get the interview for which he so ardently longed. The fates were unpropitious, and one after another his artifices were defeated until at last he was obliged to fall back upon the assistance of his friend, and ask him, as a last resource, to help him out of ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... themselves, and struck up an english country dance on one of the violins. The party attempted to dance it, but to show how arbitrary habit is, in the attempt, all those powers of grace, which they had before so beautifully displayed, retired as if influenced by the magic of some unpropitious spirit. Amongst the party, was a little girl, about nine years old, who was dressed in the highest style of fashion, and looked like a fashionable milliner's doll. This little spoiled child was accustomed to spend an hour ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... no time in gaining the plank runway that led to the dock, and finding an angle in the building, backed into it and waited, half-suspecting that he had stumbled into a trap. He reflected that both the hour and the circumstances were unpropitious; for in case he should meet with foul play, Marsh might plausibly claim that he had been mistaken for a marauder. He determined, therefore, to proceed with the greatest caution. From his momentary glimpse of the man as he made off, he knew that he was tall and active—just ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... same time write concisely. I wrote two pages more in the evening. Stayed at home all day. Indeed, the weather—sleety, rainy, stormy—forms no tempting prospect. Bogie, too, who sees his flourish going to wreck, is looking as spiteful as an angry fiend towards the unpropitious heavens. So I made a day of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... should have known better. Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after Fenelon's pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age,—an age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure. Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and without mercy, had ascended ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deprived of independence, of leisure, of quiet, he saw his dreams of future fame vanish like smoke, and the hated lawyer's office become a certainty, if he failed to make money by writing. In deadly fear of this, and with the paralysing consciousness that his present circumstances were peculiarly unpropitious as a literary education, he rebelled against the hard fate which denied him opportunity to work for fame. "Laure, Laure," he cries at this time, "my two only and immense desires—to be loved and to be celebrated—will ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... with Carew of Crompton, and possible even to become his bosom friend at a short notice, for his friendships, all made in wine, at play, or in the hunting-field, were soon cemented; but then, if the introduction was effected in an unpropitious time or manner, it was like enough to end in affront or downright insult. A gulf might be fixed just where you wanted a causeway, and of this—though he had feigned to inquire about it so innocently of the honest park-keeper—Richard Yorke was well aware. He had, as has ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... through the fingers, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. Adj. ill-timed, mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) 133; too late for; premature &c. (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, twenty- twenty hindsight. Adv. inopportunely &c. adj.; as ill luck ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his little band left Paris for the provinces. The times were unpropitious, for the wars of the Fronde at that time made the whole country a scene of confusion and danger. They had visited Bordeaux, and were protected by the governor of Guienne. While here, Moliere wrote and brought out a tragedy, which had so poor a success that he gave up tragedy. After a short provincial ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... luck in wheat? But thou wouldst not give ear to my speech, and now it behoveth thee to go to the astrologer and question him of thy star.' Accordingly the merchant betook himself to the astrologer and questioned him of his star, and the astrologer said to him, 'Thy star is unpropitious. Put not thy hand to any business, for thou wilt not prosper therein.' However, he paid no heed to the astrologer's words and said in himself, 'If I do my occasion,[FN103] I am not afraid of aught.' Then he took the other part of his money, after he had spent therefrom three ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... I hear the very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach, now once more preaching; I know well, that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. This long ago the ancient pagans knew And therefore of their own accord they offered To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities And human sacrifices bled to Typhon. [After a pause, serious, and in a more subdued manner. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... which now so impressively strikes the mind. As that was the time out of which all that is great and good in England and America has proceeded, in letters and in arms, in religion and in politics, we can easily understand how vast must have been the change, had not the winds of the North been so unpropitious to the purposes of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... slept at Perigny, about a league from the capital of Burgundy, so as to make the last stage of his journey thither in leisurely state. Unpropitious weather on Saturday, January 22d, the appointed day, made postponement of the ducal parade necessary, out of consideration for the precious hangings and costly ecclesiastical robes that were to grace the ceremonies of reception and investiture. Fortunately, Sunday, January 23d, dawned fair, and ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... I assure you, I could hardly persuade myself even to appear unfaithful to her. O Eliza! accuse me not of infidelity; for your image is my constant companion. A thousand times have I cursed the unpropitious stars which withheld from her a fortune. That would have enabled me to marry her; and with her even wedlock would have ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... mental atmosphere singularly unpropitious to formidable intellectual ventures, and one never feels that his essentially ecclesiastical mind ever really grasped the human plausibility of natural paganism. But Pascal went straight back to Montaigne, and, like Pater's Marius under the influence of Aristippus, begins his search after ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... weather was unpropitious: crossing the rivers became dangerous; trees had to be cut down to form temporary bridges. These obstacles cooled the spirit of volunteers, who passed rapidly from discontent to criticism, and from criticism ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... upon the elegant Mr. Chatterly the task of expressing the desire of the company to see the unknown artist, in a neat occasional copy of verses. The poor gentleman's muse, however, proved unpropitious; for he was able to proceed no farther than two lines in half an hour, which, coupled with its variations, we insert from the blotted manuscript, as Dr. Johnson has printed the alterations in ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... It forms a class of men, shrewd, vigilant, inventive; of men whose dexterity triumphs over the most perplexing combinations of circumstances, whose presaging instinct no sign of the times can elude. But it is an unpropitious season for the firm and masculine virtues. The statesman who enters on his career at such a time, can form no permanent connections, can make no accurate observations on the higher parts of political science. Before he can attach himself to a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... kingdom. These barbarians have nothing to do with our Great Flowery land. Such vassals may not interfere with our covenant. Weapons are out of place at such a meeting. As before the spirits, such conduct is unpropitious. In point of virtue, it is contrary to right. As between man and man, it is not polite.' The duke of Ch'i ordered the disturbers off, but Confucius withdrew, carrying the duke of Lu with him. The business proceeded, notwithstanding, and when the words of the alliance were being read on ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... home to the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between daylight and dusk. A mist was now hovering ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become acquainted. One thing was clear—any acquaintance with her could only, with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a flirtation; for he had high aims, and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Anne—who did not notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace girl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment implied therein if she had—got on her feet, and moved dizzily out to the front. She was ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... spot endeared to him by his early associations. It is quite possible that these particular salmon when on their way to the purlieus of marine fashion were somewhat discouraged at the jar and shock incident to their transit over the Falls. They may have concluded that the locality was unpropitious for the return trip, and then, consulting with salmon whose lines had been cast in more pleasant places, they may have ascended rivers of more conspicuous natural attractions and more agreeable to fish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... '"The fates were unpropitious to my day on the river, as matters required me in South Africa, from which place I propose to send you the famous speech you want. I quite see the importance, if true, of his utterance, but I can hardly think Kruger would have said it. I hope you will still hold to your intention of visiting ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... great gods, swore [to be true] to my requests, embracing me with your pliant arms more closely than the lofty oak is clasped by the ivy; that while the wolf should remain an enemy to the flock, and Orion, unpropitious to the sailors, should trouble the wintery sea, and while the air should fan the unshorn locks of Apollo, [so long you vowed] that this love should be mutual. O Neaera, who shall one day greatly grieve on account of my merit: ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... received no other education than that of a mechanic, and his outset in life was unpropitious. Young Hogarth was bound apprentice to a silversmith (whose name was Gamble) of some eminence; by whom he was confined to that branch of the trade, which consists in engraving arms and cyphers upon the plate. ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... of the documented facts. It is clear that, within a generation after Shakespeare's death, common opinion both in Stratford and London recognized that in the actor and dramatist a great man had passed away, that he had been in a worldly sense highly successful, though starting from unpropitious beginnings, that he wrote with great swiftness and ease, and that in his personal relations he was gentle, kindly, genial, and witty. That the bailiff's son who returned to his native town as a prosperous gentleman, is to be ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... treat the savages, and heathen people, in those parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of God."[D] This expedition left the shores of England, December 19, 1606, and, after a protracted voyage, occasioned by unpropitious winds, which kept them in sight of home for more than "six weeks," reached the capes of Virginia. The southern cape was christened "Henry," and the northern, "Charles," after the King's sons. This was on the 26th day of April, 1607. Accompanying ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... had grown desperate that he decided to do this. Wayland was not in the habit of getting into debt, and an insistent tailor and florist made his life miserable. With masculine obtuseness he chose the most unpropitious moment. Miss Sarah, after a hard day, had dropped into an easy-chair for a little rest after dinner. Wayland had forgotten the absence of the cook, and in the lamplight his ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... allegory the poet bewails his unhappy lot on having fallen on an age so unpropitious to poetry, contrasting it with the happy times so responsive to his predecessors who piped to a world prepared to dance to their music. However, he must toil and be satisfied if he can make a ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... became archbishop. The times were unpropitious for building. Yorkshire was suffering much from the black death, there was great poverty among the peasantry, and the diocese was in great need of discipline and reform. Thoresby gave himself up for nine years to this work, ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... not to betray any agitation, she could not help it that her tone was unusually high and hard, and her mother felt sure that something unpropitious had happened. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of irritation in such troubles which adds a whole armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... blue sky and fair sunlight, the bright and beautiful of the scene around them, those two saw and tasted; with hopeful though very grave hearts. The other poor lady saw nothing but a dirty steamboat and a very unpropitious company. Among these however were Eleanor's fellow-voyagers, Mr. Amos and his wife; and she was introduced to them now for the first time. Various circumstances had prevented ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... true reason within himself. In this way he earned the powerful malignity of the person in question, who would not depart until he had effected a number of very disagreeable prophecies connected with unpropitious omens and internal torments, all of which undoubtedly had a great influence on ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Yoshisada fair words indeed: "I profoundly praise your loyal services. My wish is to pacify the country by the assistance of your family, but heaven has not yet vouchsafed its aid. Our troops are worn out and the hour is unpropitious. Therefore, I make peace for the moment and bide my time. Do you repair to Echizen and use your best endeavours to promote the cause of the restoration. Lest you be called a rebel after my return to Kyoto, I order the Crown Prince to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... caught by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... a sense of injury which was annoyingly indefinite. It was true that Jack Meredith had come at a very unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could only have been the result of accident. It was really a case of the third person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms. Durnovo had vaguely felt in the presence of either a subtle ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... sincerity), whether any statesman—the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy—could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... stand upright, and you must build stepping-stones across the bog to enable them safely to reach the other side. Favourable circumstances will not change a man's heart or transform his nature, but unpropitious circumstances may render it absolutely impossible for him to escape, no matter how he may desire to extricate himself. The first step with these helpless, sunken creatures is to create the desire to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... derived through the Arabs from the Ptolemaic system, and Mr. Newbold, after most painstaking research, failed to discover any regular treatise on astronomy, though Arabic and Hindu tracts on interpretations of dreams, horoscopes, spells, propitious and unpropitious moments, auguries, talismans, love philters, medicinal magic and recipes for the destruction of people at a distance, are numerous. They acknowledge the solar year, but adopt the lunar, and reckon the months ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... a solid psychological advantage. The success of Buddhism in China was due to the fact that it presented religious emotion and speculation in the best form known there, and when it began to spread the intellectual soil was not unpropitious. The higher Taoist philosophy had made familiar the ideas of quietism and the contemplative life: the age was unsettled, harassed alike by foreign invasion and civil strife. In such times when even active natures tire of unsuccessful struggles, the asylum ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... and scratches, till that moment Unnoticed, you begin to comment; You never felt such bitter brambles, Such heavy soil, in all your rambles! You never felt your fleas so vicious! Till, sick of life so unpropitious, You wish at last, to end the passage, That you were ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the Union," and he continued to do so, subsequent to the ratification of the treaty between the United States and Spain. The report made by Power, the Baron's agent, of the dispositions of the western people, was altogether unpropitious to his design. He, however, delayed the delivery of the posts, to which the United States were entitled, under various pretences; still having the separation in view. His proceedings to effect this object are detailed, and will be read with interest. It is needless to say, that no ray ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... deprived of bread, to permit me to stain my whole existence with a crime? The child is gone to Heaven. Aye! there her sinlessness and innocence might give her a welcome, and she may be happy, but the blank left in my heart, the darkness of my mind, the cheerless and unpropitious future that unveils itself before my aching eyes, can never be obliterated until I am laid in the grave beside her, and my spirit has winged its flight to the home where she ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... than Isaaco's. In the great canoe,[6] which Isaaco had helped to load before departing, Mungo Park rowed away on November 17th, 1805, with the survivors of his company of forty, namely, four white men and five Negroes, including Amady, for crew. From the very outset the voyage proved unpropitious. Almost every village they passed on the river bank came out against them in canoes, armed with bows and arrows, pikes and assegais. Each member of the crew kept fifteen muskets in action; to kill and kill was the only chance of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... copper and an old chest of drawers, loading. His success at Faro had awakened a host of creditors; but, unless his bank had swelled to the size of the Bank of England, it could not have yielded a half-penny apiece for each. Epsom too had been unpropitious; and one creditor had actually seized and carried off Fox's goods, which did not seem worth removing. Yet, shortly after this, whom should Walpole find sauntering by his own door but Fox, who came up and talked to him at the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... state of all countries exhibits, in a greater or less degree, a prevalence of barbarism. The planting of colonies, or the formation of establishments in new countries, is ever attended with circumstances unpropitious to refinement. The force with which these circumstances act, will be increased or diminished in proportion to the remoteness or proximity of those new establishments, to older societies, in which the arts and sciences are cultivated; ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... will probably remain unsolved till the mystery of God contained in them shall have been fulfilled. One thing, however, they clearly reveal to us: that the future triumph of God's kingdom is certain, and that all the great movements in the history of the nations, however unpropitious they may seem at the time, are parts of the mighty plan of divine providence which shall end in making the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... of rage darkened the Chinaman's sallow features, and his eyes glittered with anger. Had the street been deserted he would have strangled her, then and there, after the pleasing Oriental fashion. But the time and place were unpropitious. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... there was no alarming interlude, like a herald of evil, to shake the nerves of the company—nothing more unpropitious than the contretemps to an unlucky lady of being overcome by the heat and seized with a fainting-fit, which caused her over-zealous supporters to remove her luxuriant powdered wig in order to give her greater air and coolness, so that she was fain, the moment ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... her from making it in eighteen days less, for she was then in sight of the harbour's mouth, when an unpropitious gale of wind blew her off. Otherwise she would have reached us one day sooner than the 'Lady Juliana'. It is a curious circumstance, that these two ships had sailed together from the river Thames, one bound to Port Jackson, and the other bound ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... its own magnitude as those of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn in proportion to their magnitude, they could be descried by any human observer. The patient, persevering, reverent temper of Herschel took no account, however, of any discouraging or unpropitious circumstances. What he did was to substitute for telescopes of the ordinary construction the new and gigantic forty-foot tube already described; and, thus, with unremitting vigilance and intense zeal, he arrived at the discovery ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... impending over the whole country, from southern slavery. The act of her late Convention, in depriving a large number of their own constituents (the colored people) of the elective franchise, heretofore possessed by them without any allegation of its abuse on their part, would seem to prove an unpropitious state of public sentiment. We would neither deny, nor elude, the force of such evidence. But when this measure of the convention is brought out and unfolded in its true light—shown to be a party measure to bring succor from the south—a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... announced that, should the weather prove unpropitious, a modified form of the proposed entertainment would be given in Great Hall, but no one seriously contemplated such a catastrophe. Providence was so invariably kind to "Revels" that the oldest student could not recall a day that had been less ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... seemed unpropitious as they set out together again soon after six. Rain had fallen in the night, yet not all the rain that there was overhead. There were still clouds hanging, mixed with the smoke from the chimneys; the hedges seemed dulled and black in spite of their green; the cinder path they walked ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... introduced his friend to Davies, the bookseller in Covent Garden, who as 'one of the best imitators of Johnson's voice and manner' only increased the ardour of Boswell for the meeting. Now the hour was come and the man. Yet surely never could there have been a more apparently unpropitious time chosen. Number 45 of the North Briton denouncing Bute and his Scotch favourites had appeared on April 23rd. The minister had bowed to the storm and resigned, while the writer of the libel ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... lances of light, in which the mighty stream, gray, mysterious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging onward with majestic sweep. Upon its bosom we are to be borne for a thousand miles. Our introduction has been unpropitious; it is to be hoped that on further acquaintance we may be better pleased with La ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... September as an unpropitious time for the production of novelties, the scheme arranged for the patrons of the Philharmonic Concert last night, under the direction of Sir Henry Peacham, was successful in bringing together an audience of eminently respectable dimensions. The occasion served for the launching under ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... for at that time he had the makings of a voluminous letter-writer. Yet it was only what one might expect. The whole world was unpropitious—obdurate indeed.... A splendid isolation ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... can usually tell when his customer is in a tearing hurry. It is an unpropitious time to make suggestions. The clerk must see things from the customer's point of view. It is permissible to suggest something else in place of the thing he has asked for but it is not good manners to make fun of it or to insist ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... stolen glance with half-averted eye, The hesitating gait, the quick rebuke Addressed to her companion, who would fain Have stayed her counterfeit departure; these Are signs not unpropitious to my suit. So eagerly the lover feeds his hopes, Claiming each ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... no great distance to travel to them, they will fill their hives both with honey and wax, in about a month or five weeks, and, if the season has proved fair and pleasant, in less time; but the bee-keeper must expect four out of every five seasons to be unpropitious to his little charge, and, therefore, he must be on the watch to assist them with food in ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... Yet unpropitious skies and chilly wind did not appear to keep people at home. The steamer was crowded, both with those who were sailing and those who were not. The gangways, staterooms were overrun not only by passengers, but by all sorts of visitors curious to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... own safety, he went often to the Red Wing Club. But he found Caesar wary, and he dared not be too abrupt. Time and again he was upon the verge of speaking out, but something invariably prevented, some inner voice warned him that the man's mood was unpropitious, that his extravagant caution was not yet satisfied. He allowed the Sicilian to feel him out to his heart's content, and, at last, seeing that he made no real progress, he set out one evening resolved to risk all in an effort to reach some ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... aid us!" cried the son of Minerva, "Venus is unpropitious to-night. All my trouble is vain." For when the black storm broke upon the little channel islet, Alaric Hobbs saw no way of a comfortable return to the Royal Victoria at St. Heliers. "I might leave all here and claim old Fraser's hospitality for a night. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... of struggle, for Constanze, though a devoted wife, was incapable of managing a home, and as their means were uncertain to start with, they were soon involved in a sea of monetary troubles, from which there seemed to be no prospect of their extricating themselves. An unpropitious note had been struck on the very day of the wedding, when it must have appeared to Mozart that he had committed a crime in robbing the family of one of its members. 'As soon as we were married,' he wrote ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... poor Nash can lay no claim. His one conspicuous dramatic effort is 'Summer's Last Will and Testament.' Nash wrote for bare existence—to use his own words, 'contending with the cold, and conversing with scarcity.' Nash lived in an unpropitious age. A recent French writer has placed him in the foremost rank of English writers. Dr. Jusserand, the author referred to, in his accounts of the English novel in the time of Shakespeare, tells us Nash was the most successful exponent in England of the picturesque ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... cheerful and orderly, that he was highly gratified, and exchanged personal tokens of friendship and hospitality with Xenophon. But when sacrifices came to be offered, for beginning the march homeward, the signs were so unpropitious, for three successive days, that Kleander could not bring himself to brave such auguries at the outset of his career. Accordingly, he told the generals, that the gods plainly forbade him, and reserved it for them, to conduct the army into Greece; that he should therefore sail ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... card parties,—it would just hold one table; for the rustle of faded silks, and the splendour of old china; for the delight of four by honours, and a little snug, quiet scandal between the deals; for affected gentility and real starvation. This should have been its destiny; but fate has been unpropitious: it belongs to a plump, merry, bustling dame, with four fat, rosy, noisy children, the very essence of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the sierra, with its splintered sides of porphyry and granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own volcanic fires, might seem equally unpropitious to the labors of the husbandman. And all communication between the parts of the long- extended territory might be thought to be precluded by the savage character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... was immediately acted upon; but the fates were unpropitious to Madame's anticipated visit to the lonely island. A few days before her intended departure, the Signor was taken seriously ill, and remained so for two or three weeks. He fretted and fumed, more on her account than his ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... it was if the chain of lightning seen in the sky appeared to pass from cloud to cloud above, instead of descending to the ground. On the other hand, thunder sounding as if it came from the southward, and lightning striking down to the earth, were both unpropitious omens. As to birds, some were of good omen, as vultures, eagles and woodpeckers. Others were evil, as ravens and owls. Various inferences were drawn too from the manner in which the birds that appeared in the air, were ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Honora was afraid of displeasing her domestic vizier, and rendering him for ever unpropitious to her little guests if she deferred his removal of the breakfast things beyond a reasonable hour. How was the awaking to be managed? Fright, tears, passion, what change would come when the poor little maid must awake to her grief! Honora would never have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a somewhat unpropitious commencement, and in 1774 the Court are found writing to Madras, to which Balambangan was subordinate, complaining of the "imprudent management and profuse conduct" ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... this, coupled with the numbers of American vessels protected by licenses, and the fewness of the American ships of war, may have indisposed the admiral and his officers to watch very closely an inhospitable shore, at a season unpropitious to active operations. Besides, as appears from letters already quoted, the commander-in-chief's personal predilection was more for the defensive than the offensive; to protect British trade by cruisers patrolling its routes, rather than ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the low indignant mutter of a triumphant people at those who had dared to set themselves above the popular clamour and ask for sanity. The intolerable longing that had become her constant companion would be fed by every device of unpropitious Circumstance. Again and again she would experience this impulse to go to him, and some night the blood would not recede from her brain ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... but seems to prefer the riches of the old hive, to the risks attending the formation of a new colony. It frequently happens, in our uncertain climate, that when all the necessary preparations have been made for swarming, the weather proves unpropitious for so long a time, that the young queens coming to maturity before the old one can leave, are all destroyed. This is a very frequent occurrence, and under such circumstances, swarming is almost certain to be prevented, for ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... work prosper in a soil so unpropitious and amid such hostile circumstances might well have quickened the faith of a man much colder and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... contracted at the command of the Lord; the apostasy of the people, and especially of the ten tribes, to whom the prophet was sent in the first instance, is typified by the adultery of the wife, by the divine punishment, and the unpropitious names which he gives to the children born by the adulterous wife. In chap. ii. 1-3, there follows the announcement of salvation more directly, and only with a simple allusion ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... that circumstances should be so unpropitious, Madame Theodore nevertheless ventured to ask for the loan of twenty sons; and this brought her sister's despair and confusion to a climax. "I really haven't a centime in the house," said she, "just ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Marquis, to speak of consequences which may be produced in the revolution of ages, by corruption of morals, profligacy of manners, and listlessness in the preservation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind, nor of the successful usurpations that may be established at such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins of liberty, however providentially guarded and secured, as these are contingencies against which no human prudence can effectually provide. It will at least be a recommendation to the proposed constitution ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... made reference in one of the last lines he was destined to write in this world. He fell ill in that pestilent town, as all the world knows. His constitution was strong enough; he had not lived a life of unpropitious preparation for a serious illness; but his heart was a danger. Typhoid is fatal to any heart-weakness, particularly in convalescence; and he was caught suddenly as he was growing ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... painted plumage." "Wherefore {give} me," he retorted, "a beauty that is dumb, if I am surpassed in voice?" "By the will of the Fates," {said she}, "have your respective qualities been assigned; beauty to you, strength to the Eagle, melody to the Nightingale, to the Raven presages, unpropitious omens to the Crow; all of {these} are ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... received by the Regent with a most unpropitious aspect. "In asking the pardon of the criminal," said he, "you display more zeal for the house of Van Horn, than for the service of the king." The noble deputies enforced the petition by every argument in their power. They supplicated the Regent to consider that the infamous punishment ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... of old fetters. This lackey takes a healthy enough view of the matter, for all his cynicisms. You must not take it too tragically. You have passed through your heart crisis—it comes to most of us—only with you it has happened late, and under unpropitious circumstances. That has tended to make it more severe than is usually the case. But now, let it be past and over, though naturally it will take some little time for your mind to regain its normal balance. What I regret most in the affair is, that it precludes the idea of marriage for you ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Thousand Islands, which sounds very romantic, but turned out rather a failure. There are in reality about 1,400 of these islands, where the river St. Lawrence issues from Lake Ontario. The morning was unpropitious, it being very rainy, and this, no doubt, helped to give them a dismal appearance. They are of all forms and sizes, some three miles long, and some hardly appearing above the water. The disappointment to us was their flatness, and their all being alike in their general aspect, being covered with ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... the armies of barbarians spread over them like the lava of Mount AEtna. The imminence of our danger manifestly called for generals already illustrious for their past achievements in war; but nevertheless, as if some unpropitious deity had made the selection, the men who were sought out for the chief military appointments were of tainted character. The chief among them were Lupicinus and Maximus, the one being count of Thrace, the other a leader ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the haymaking is finished at last, and by-and-by, when the leaves have fallen and the hunting commences, a good run drives away for the time at least the memory of so unpropitious a season. Then Mr. George some mild morning forms one of a little group of well-mounted farmers waiting at a quiet corner while the hounds draw a great wood. Two of them are men long past middle age, whose once tawny beards ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... recognized him before? Had her thick veil, and his position, and the general slight flurry of the misadventure, intercepted recognition until she heard his voice when he addressed Charley. Or had she known her lover at once, and rapidly decided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meeting after absence, and that she would pass on to Kings Port unrevealed, but then had found this plan become impossible through the collision between Charley and John? It was not until certain incidents of the days following brought Miss Rieppe's nature ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... maliciously permitted to remain unremoved; on him, perhaps from personal ill-feeling, Paul visited his own disappointment. With the return of peace there was no longer any plausible reason for the recall of the legation; Peto was dead, having survived his unpropitious honours but a few months: yet, unmoved by Pole's entreaties, the pope refused to permit him to resume his legatine functions, except so far as they were inherent in the archbishopric. The odious accusation of heresy was not withdrawn; and the torturing charge was left to embitter the peace of ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... lead an easy life. When they take a fancy to a house, they settle down near the gate, and the owner has to support them as long as the whim takes them to stay there. To use force against a dervish would be looked upon as an exceedingly unpropitious affair to the true believer. Then, too, I have little doubt but that they are capable of making good use of their steel bodkins. Why my dervish wished to give up his easy-going profession and take over the charge of my ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... as any of his brethren of the brush; his destination was invariably some wild spot, unfrequented—possibly even unknown—alike by painter and tourist. And there—if undisturbed—he would remain, diligently working all day in the open air during favourable weather; and, when the elements were unpropitious for work, taking long walks over solitary heaths and desolate mountain sides, or along the lonely shore. And when the first snows of winter came, reminding him that it was time to turn his face homeward ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... without any sort of regularity in their arrangement. Blank odes have been known in this country about as long as English sapphics and dactylics; and both have been considered, we believe, as a species of monsters, or exotics, that were not very likely to propagate, or thrive, in so unpropitious a climate. Mr. Southey, however, has made a vigorous effort for their naturalisation, and generously endangered his own reputation in their behalf. The melancholy fate of his English sapphics, we believe, is but too generally ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... given himself away for nothing in this case. He had been frank with himself—let alone with me—in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head. It ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with the street-boys, whatever their business may be. The boot-blacks lose least, but if the day be unpropitious their earnings are small. On such a day the Newsboys Lodge is a great resource. It supplies all that a boy actually needs—lodging and two meals—for the small sum of eighteen cents, and in cases of need will trust boys to ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... been equally unpropitious to the love-lorn Phoebe Wilkins. I fear the reader will be impatient at having this humble amour so often alluded to; but I confess I am apt to take a great interest in the love troubles of simple girls of this class. Few people have an idea of the world of care and perplexity that these poor ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... her morning endearments graciously, but Phyllis was glad the toast wasn't cold. She recognized unpropitious portents. ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... stores, with inherent powers to rise to distinction in the highest provinces of art and science, who yet are condemned by the obstructions which worldly circumstance throws in their way, to languish in obscurity—to live dejected and to die unknown. Some whose natural endowments would, under less unpropitious circumstances, qualify them to reach the summit of fame, are fettered by want of patronage and pecuniary distress, while others are cramped in their efforts by a complexional sensibility which they cannot overcome, and checked in enterprise ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... streets were banked up with snow-drifts. All traffic had been stopped, the roar of London was hushed, and every one who had the merest pretence of a fireside sought it on this memorable occasion. It was a wild night in the city, a wild night in the country, a wild night at sea, and certainly a most unpropitious night for the birth of a cat, an animal which is always associated with home and hearth. The fact remains that Peter was born on the night of one of the most ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... equally unpropitious to the lovelorn Phoebe Wilkins. I fear the reader will be impatient at having this humble amour so often alluded to; but I confess I am apt to take a great interest in the love troubles of simple girls of this class. Few people have an idea of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving |
