"Birthday" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the nickname of Dog is applied with propriety, eats olives of five years old, and wild cornels, and can not bear to rack off his wine unless it be turned sour, and the smell of his oil you can not endure: which (though clothed in white he celebrates the wedding festival, his birthday, or any other festal days) he pours out himself by little and little from a horn cruet, that holds two pounds, upon his cabbage, [but at the same time] is lavish enough of ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... alliance of the King of Aragon had lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales might find elsewhere a more desirable bride. Henry's marriage with Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of fourteen; but on the eve of his fifteenth birthday he made a solemn protestation that the contract was null and void, and that he would not carry out his engagements.[62] This protest left him free to consider other proposals, and enhanced his value as a negotiable asset. More than once ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... utterly tired of himself and his own thoughts—knowing himself by heart, and finding the lesson a dreary one? Perhaps not. A girl's life seems all brightness. What should such happy young creatures know of that arid waste of years that lies beyond a man's thirtieth birthday, when his youth has not been a fortunate one? Ah, there is a break in the sky yonder; the rain will be ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... the girlhood of this delightful heroine that carry Rebecca through various stages to her eighteenth birthday. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sorry about—banging up my racket like this. The second time it came down on this club. Why do they carry those things? Perfectly fantastic, I'll say, going around with a club. But as long as you were asking me what I wanted for my birthday— ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... of a lake, and flying towards some rushes which grew near the shore he beheld a wild duck. Now, in the days that the king, his father, was alive, and he had everything to eat he could possibly wish for, the prince always had wild duck for his birthday dinner, so he quickly fitted an arrow to his bow and took a ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... a drawing-slate on my birthday," I replied, "but Joseph bothered me to lend it to him, and now he's broken the glass. It is so tiresome! But it's always the way if you ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... together. They cared only for the games made for two; all their goods were tacitly held in common, and a tradition still lives that David, when a new teacher asked his exact age, claimed his comrade's birthday, and then wondered why everybody laughed. They had a way of wandering off together to the woods, on Saturday. mornings, when the routine of chores could be hurried through, and always they bore with them a store of ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... sixteenth birthday, young Riley turned his back on the little schoolhouse and for a time wandered through the different fields of art, indulging a slender talent for painting until he thought he was destined for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... anchorites positively could not be colder, could not be chaster: and he no forest bird, but having the garden of the variety of fairest flowers at nod and blush about him! That was the truth. Even Henrietta's beauty had the effect of a princess's birthday doll admired on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... accident by false and pedantic rigour of calculation, that these two heads of the eagle—that head which looks westward for Roman Chronology, that which looks eastward for Grecian Chronology—do absolutely coincide as to their nativity. The birthday of Grecian authentic history everybody agrees to look upon as fixed to the establishment [the final establishment] of the Olympic games. And when was that? Generally, chronologers have placed this event just 776 years before Christ. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Morgan, as I helped her arrange her guests for Mark's birthday dinner. While she talked I paused to consider where to put Harriet Henderson and then dropped her card beside Mark's with a little ache in my heart as I tucked Cliff Gray in by Jessie Litton and left the place ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... or handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and divine, and one of them is Love." "And who," I said, "was his father, and who his mother?" "The tale," she said, "will take time; nevertheless I will tell you. On the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner was, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... upon Uncle Cephas must have been favorable, for when my next birthday rolled around there came with it a book from Uncle Cephas—my third love, Grimm's "Household Stories." With the perusal of this monumental work was born that passion for fairy tales and folklore which increased rather than diminished with my maturer years. Even at the present ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... of May 2, 1870, the day after my tenth birthday, that we sailed from Gravesend for Sydney, in the full-rigged clipper ship Ariadne, of London, with one hundred and forty-seven other emigrants and eighteen first-class passengers. It was, I ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... so far," I stammered, wishing with all my heart that I had made some definite plan for Dicky's birthday. I could see from my mother-in-law's manner that she had some cherished scheme in mind, and my prophetic soul told me that it would be something which I would not ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... just at that moment, the thirteenth fairy, who had not been invited, burst into the room. She pushed the good fairy aside and, before anyone could stop her, she cried out in a loud angry voice, "The princess shall prick her finger with a spindle, on her fifteenth birthday, and shall die!" In a moment all was excitement. The jealous old fairy rushed from the palace, but the people dashed after her. "Drive the wicked witch from the kingdom! Burn every spindle in the ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... mother," he continued, "but my father doesn't seem to mind if I am all black with oil from my car or the motor boats. What I want now is a wireless outfit. I'm going to strike Dad for one my birthday. It comes the last of this month and he might as well give me that as anything else. Do you suppose if he got it we could rig it ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... friendliness. She accepted a seat in the King's box at the opera; nay, she accepted a seat at the foot of the throne ("the throne she might once have expected to mount," remarks Hannah More), on the occasion of the King's speech in the House of Lords. It was the 10th of June, the birthday of Prince Charlie; and the woman who sat there so unconcernedly, kept a throne with the British arms in her ante-room, and made her servants address her as ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the discussions of the Japanese Society of Comparative Religion contains quite a minute statement of all the facts known as to these festivals, much too long in this connection, but among them there is not the slightest reference to the birthday feature attributed to ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... Upon his seventh birthday early in the morning he ran to his mother and cried, "Mother, send me now to Emain Macha, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Roman Catholics were the natural allies of royalty and aristocracy. But the help of these allies was contumeliously rejected by those politicians who make themselves ridiculous by carousing on Mr Pitt's birthday, while they abjure all Mr Pitt's principles. The consequence is, as you are forced to own, that there is not in the whole kingdom a Roman Catholic of note who is your friend. Therefore, whatever your inclinations may be, you must intrust ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... birthday has rolled around, and finds me still in the army. Two years have passed since we were lying quietly in camp near Washington. Little did I think at that time that the insurrection, which was then in process of organization, was of ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Horace put L100 in the Savings Bank for me on my last birthday. And the furniture at the flat is mine. I'd sell that and everything I've got, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... are three times as old as I am, and that is not becoming." This was cruel on Linda's part, and her words also were untrue. Linda would be twenty-one at her next birthday, whereas Herr Steinmarc had not ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... concert, that we visited the seat of Lord Bute upon the King's birthday; we dined and drank his Majesty's health at an inn, in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... to-morrow is your eighteenth birthday, and though I know that my "happy returns" will reach you a few hours too late, I cannot but ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... birthday. He was now nineteen. When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing accomplishing,—to see no rainbow of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... of the sweet hymn-prayer came to it probably about the time of its hundredth birthday; but it came to stay. Lowell Mason's "Naomi" blends with it like a ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Camusot in a melancholy voice; "I shall not dine with you. It is my wife's birthday, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... at the same time, most gracefully he answered me, but not with words. He sent me his tragedy 'Stella' bound in rose-colored satin. [Footnote: "Goethe in Berlin,"—Sketches from his life at the anniversary of his one hundredth birthday.] See there! it is before the bust of Apollo on my writing-table, where it has lain for ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... hide, Frederick," she said in a low tone, "'cause I thought he took ye. And ye ain't done nothin' to him, have ye? Ye was just out huntin' flies, wasn't ye, Frederick? Don't never stay long or ye'll git hit with a spear. Ezry Longman don't like ye nuther, 'cause I kisses ye, and 'cause, on my birthday, I hit his mug with a dishrag when he was tryin' to kiss me fifteen times, and was askin' me to marry ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... for a little girl's birthday," came from the Monkey on a Stick. "You are right, Tin Soldier, that doll was very clever at answering the riddles ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... the peasantry pronounce the word witness "wetness." At Derry Assizes a man said he had brought his "wetness" with him to corroborate his evidence. "Bless me," said the judge, "about what age are you?"—"Forty-two my last birthday, my lord," replied the witness. "Do you mean to tell the jury," said the judge, "that at your age you still have a wet nurse?"—"Of course I have, my lord." Counsel hereupon ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... than Chris did, and he was always teasing me to tell him the story I had told the others, and to read out the names of the flowers which "the real Queen" had in her "real paradise." He made Mother promise to try to get him a bulb of the real Dwarf Daffodil as his next birthday present, to put in ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... they began to build the city, it is universally agreed to have been the twenty-first of April, and that day the Romans annually keep holy, calling it their country's birthday. At first, they say, they sacrificed no living creatures on this day, thinking it fit to preserve the feast of their country's birthday pure and without stain of blood. Yet before ever the city was built, there was a feast of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the congratulations you have just offered me on the recurrence of the anniversary of my birthday, I thank you very kindly indeed. I do indeed hope that further experience may offer me new lights by which to be directed in my endeavors to secure prosperity to all who dwell within this Kingdom. But let me assure you that ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... seven little Emma was sent by her parents to her grandmother at Konigsberg, the city of Emanuel Kant, in Eastern Prussia. Save for occasional interruptions, she remained there till her 13th birthday. The first years in these surroundings do not exactly belong to her happiest recollections. The grandmother, indeed, was very amiable, but the numerous aunts of the household were concerned more with the spirit of practical rather than pure ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... whom he is the sneaking, hypocritical original. We hear him in anger declare his readiness to join the Jesuits and we join in the laugh at his discomfiture. The scene of The Royal Lieutenant, written to celebrate the hundredth recurrence of Goethe's birthday, is laid in the Seven Years' War in the house of Goethe's father in Frankfurt. The Riccaut-like figure of the Royal Lieutenant himself, Count Thorane, and his outlandish attempts to speak German, the clever portraits ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... nearly the end of July. My birthday occurred in the middle of September. I thought I knew that, as soon as possible after my majority, Mr. Bainrothe's conditions would ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... furnished the matter to be analysed. Miss Herschel's task was to prevent the introduction of water, which would have produced havoc on her carpet. For his first notion of building, "John" was indebted to the affection of his aunt, who, on his second or third birthday, lifted him in the trenches to lay the south corner-stone of the building which was added to Sir William's original house at Slough. On further reflection, she felt convinced that this incident occurred in the second year of her nephew's age, for she remembered being obliged to use "a deal of coaxing" ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... the discharges of artillery which our people were firing off at Michilimackinac, although the distance was nearly sixty miles. We thought it was an attempt of the enemy to retake that post, but we afterward learned that it was only a royal salute in honor of the birthday of the prince regent. We learned, however, during our stay at Saut Ste. Marie, that the Americans had really made a descent upon the island, but were compelled to retire with ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... again convince the committee that I was in the right place. I forbade them all payment, as I had refused it to the male students when they wished to pay me for their extra instruction on the manikin: but in a true, womanly way, they managed to learn the date of my birthday; when two or three, instead of attending the lecture, took possession of my room, which they decorated with flowers; while en the table they displayed presents to the amount of some hundred and twenty ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... woman had never forgotten that she had been named Easter because she was born on that day, and so she always claimed Easter Sunday as her birthday, and no amount of explanation would convince her that this was not ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Naturally she feared and hated the man of God, who was seeking to remove her; and she plotted against him with implacable malignity. She was only too successful, making use of her own daughter—not Antipas', but her first husband's—for her purpose. On the king's birthday Salome danced before Herod and so intoxicated him with her skill and beauty, that, heated and overcome, he promised—the promise showing the man—to give her whatever she might ask, even to the half of his kingdom; and when the young witch, well drilled by her mother in the craft ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... Smith, the president emeritus of the Karen Theological Seminary at Insein, and by his estimable wife, to whom I had had the privilege of presenting a memorial album, on behalf of all the teachers and missionaries, on the occasion of her seventy-sixth birthday. Doctor Smith and Mrs. Smith are honored and beloved by all who know them. Like myself, he has served the cause of theological education for forty years, and has now retired for partial rest. I am glad that my name can be in any way connected ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Nephew, afterwards Sir John Salusbury Life in Wales Character and Habits of Piozzi Brynbella Illness and Death of Piozzi Miss Thrale's Marriage The Conway Episode Anecdotes Celebration of her Eightieth Birthday Her Death and Will Madame D'Arblay's Parallel between Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael Character of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... side, though there is always an exquisite tremulous sensibility in his baffling art. A few months after his marriage he was attacked by the fatal malady, as was his unfortunate wife, and he was buried on his twenty-seventh birthday. Gustave Kahn notes that few followed him to the grave. He was unknown except to some choice spirits, the dozen superior persons of Huysmans, scattered throughout the universe. His wife survived him ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... among the spectators. High up in yonder pavilion, erected upon the border of the ice, are some persons whom you have seen very lately. In the center is Madame van Gleck. It is her birthday, you remember; she has the post of honor. There is Mynheer van Gleck, whose meerschaum has not really grown fast to his lips—it only appears so. There are Grandfather and Grandmother, whom you met at the Saint Nicholas fete. All the children are with them. It is so mild, ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... appearance. Talk of a new-married couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep their coach and six, or eat in plate. Mention the name of an absent lady, and it is ten to one but you learn something of her gown and petticoat. A ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthday furnishes conversation for a twelvemonth after. A furbelow of precious stones, a hat buttoned with a diamond, a brocade waistcoat or petticoat, are standing topics. In short, they consider only the drapery of the species, and never cast away a thought on those ornaments ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... am my own master!" he said as he entered the grotto. "No one commands me here!" And seating himself royally on a bench within the dark entrance, he continued, "This is my birthday. I am eight years old to-day. I wish I lived among the Spartans, then I should be beyond the control of women; but now I have to obey such a number of people—old Severia among the rest. Ah, if ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... 1786, he was introduced by Blacklock to all the literati, and within a fortnight he was writing to a friend: "I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect to see my birthday inscribed among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and the Battle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... had offered to pay twenty thousand pounds a year on her Majesty's birthday so long as the war should last, and after a peace, eighty thousand pounds annually for four years. The queen, on her part, fixed the sum total of the debt at nearly a million and a half sterling, and required instant payment of at least one hundred thousand pounds on account, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Revolution were not slow in according to their black compatriots that meed of praise which was their due. In almost every locality, either North or South, after the war, there lived one or two privileged negroes, who, on great occasions,—days of muster, 4th of July, Washington's birthday, and the like,—were treated with more than ordinary courtesy by the other people. That a great and dastardly wrong was committed upon many, in like manner in which Simon Lee[7] was treated, is true. Many negroes at the South, who fought ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... been talking of going to take luncheon in one of the country suburbs of Paris on Madame Dufour's birthday, and as they were looking forward very impatiently to the outing, they rose very early that morning. Monsieur Dufour had borrowed the milkman's wagon and drove himself. It was a very tidy, two-wheeled conveyance, with a cover supported by four iron rods, with curtains that had been drawn up, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of animals, with royal grace, Would celebrate his birthday in the chase. 'Twas not with bow and arrows, To slay some wretched sparrows; The lion hunts the wild boar of the wood, The antlered deer and stags, the fat and good. This time, the king, t' insure success, Took for his aide-de-camp an ass, A creature of stentorian voice, That felt much ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... view of the Abbey to be painted, a new book to read aloud or some music to try; the other evening it was raining torrents when I was about leaving and she insisted upon my staying all night; now she wishes me to remain for her birthday, which is on the 5th; she continues to watch me closely. Mad. Taverneau has been questioned—the mute, Blanchard, has been tortured ... Mad. Taverneau replied that she had known me for three years and that during this ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... mourning, there were no festivities on Rose's twenty-first birthday, though the boys had planned all sorts of rejoicings. Everyone felt particularly tender toward their girl on that day, remembering how "poor Charlie" had loved her, and they tried to show it in the gifts and good wishes ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sensible enough not to spoil herself by paint and powder, unlike that silly child, Helena, who was yet so much younger—twenty-two years younger, almost. It seemed incredible. But he could reckon Cynthia's age to a day; for they had known each other very well as children, and he had often given her a birthday present, till the moment when, in her third season, Cynthia had peremptorily put an end to the custom. Then he had gone abroad, and there had been a wide gap of years when they had never seen each ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... brightest hopes. All my pocket money had been spent on it, and as bulbs were dear and my weekly allowance small, in a fatal hour I had borrowed from Fraulein Wundermacher, selling her my independence, passing utterly into her power, forced as a result till my next birthday should come round to an unnatural suavity of speech and manner in her company, against which my very soul revolted. And after all, nothing came up. The labour of digging and watering, the anxious zeal with which I pounced on weeds, the poring ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... was only a small birthday luncheon, and the others of the party had either gone overnight or lived near, they were easily able to get a compartment to themselves, and Dudley was conscious of a pleasurable quickening of his pulses at the prospect of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... his birthday in 1520, from a fever contracted while searching for remains among the ruins of Rome. He realized from the first that his sickness was fatal, and he immediately set about disposing of his property. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... Elsie! I hope I shall grow old as beautifully as mamma does, so that people can write poetry to me if they feel like it! Here is Jack's, for Polly's birthday; he says he got the idea from a real poem which is just ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... John was terribly crushed when my guardian insisted on breaking off our engagement. Until my twenty-fourth birthday I am still bound to do as my guardian says, you know. John's life and early misfortune made him, as I have already said, morbidly sensitive and the thought that it would be a bar to anything we might plan in the future, had rendered ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... had seen her eighty-fifth birthday. Death must be near one so feeble, who was also eighty-five years of age. Lydia would be comfortably off when Mrs. Bell died, and she often reflected with satisfaction that this money, as she enjoyed it, need trouble her with no qualms of conscience—it was ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... Rosa's birthday, and Floracita busied herself in adorning the rooms with flowery festoons. After breakfast, Gerald placed a small parcel in the hand of each of the sisters. Rosa's contained her mother's diamond ring, and Flora's was her mother's gold watch, in the back of which was set a small locket-miniature ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... twentieth birthday was passed the Queen thought it was time that he should be married, so she commanded that the portraits of several princesses should be brought for him to see, and among the others was a picture of ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... seventh of November, the anniversary of my birthday, a circumstance which would alone suffice to imprint the date on my memory were I at all disposed to forget it. But that is not ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... "Nature," "My Books," are among the imperishable treasures of the English language. In descriptive pieces like "Keramos" and "The Hanging of the Crane," in such personal and occasional verses as "The Herons of Elmwood," "The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz," and the noble "Morituri Salutamus" written for his classmates in 1875, he exhibits his tenderness of affection and all the ripeness of his technical skill. But it was as a lyric poet, after all, that he won and held his immense audience throughout the English-speaking ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... February 25th was my birthday and it was the first day that the regiment I had helped to organize twenty-four years before went into action. I hoped it would be a fortunate day and that none of my officers or men would be hurt. Trench work is bad, and gun shot wounds there are usually fatal ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... this afternoon, though only half the distance had been accomplished, the silver trumpets blared out their welcome news that a camp was to be formed. As the men broke their ranks, the reason of their light march was announced by the decurions. It was the birthday of Geta, the younger son of the Emperor, and in his honour there would be games and a double ration of wine. But the iron discipline of the Roman army required that under all circumstances certain duties should be performed, and foremost among them that the camp should be made secure. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had not that ebb and flow of passion, nor that strong presentation of character which of all things are so necessary for the stage. Yet in other plays, notably in "Senor Valiente" and especially in "De Soto," and "Mary's Birthday," Miles showed that in him the dramatic note was not lacking, and in both he ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... day came for Cousin Helen to go home, Mrs. Dudley being now quite her old self. Loud were the regrets at her departure, and overwhelming were the thanks and blessings showered in loving profusion; but it was two weeks later, when Tom, Carrie, and the twins each sent her a birthday present, that an idea came to Miss Mortimer. She determined at once to carry it out, even though the process might cause her ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... the air. The best way to shorten winter is to prolong Christmas; and the only way to enjoy the sun of April is to be an April Fool. When people asked Bernard Shaw to attend the Stratford Tercentenary, he wrote back with characteristic contempt: "I do not keep my own birthday, and I cannot see why I should keep Shakespeare's." I think that if Mr. Shaw had always kept his own birthday he would be better able to understand Shakespeare's birthday—and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... called it the best lyric poem since Goethe. Compare C. F. Meyer's letter to Keller congratulating him on his seventieth birthday. Meyer praises Keller's poetry because of its "innere Heiterkeit," and continues: "Auch meine ich, dass Ihr fester Glaube an die Guete des Daseins die hoechste Bedeutung Ihrer Schriften ist. Ihnen ist wahrhaftig nichts ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... might soon be made, or that he should be relieved from his command, and retire to Merton, where at that distance he was planning and directing improvements. On his birthday he writes, "This day, my dearest Emma, I consider as more fortunate than common days, as by my coming into this world it has brought me so intimately acquainted with you. I well know that you will keep it, and have my dear Horatio to drink my health. Forty-six years ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... of a great President, whose birthday we honor today, closing his final State of the Union Message sixteen years ago, "We pray that we may be worthy of the unlimited opportunities that God ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... crowning point of this May was Hanny's birthday party. She was twelve years old. Dolly and Margaret came down to spend the day and help. Oddly enough, Hanny knew very few boys. First, she thought she would only have a girls' party. But there was Charlie, and some of her schoolmates ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... was the prompt reply. "It would tickle Daddy immensely to own such an unusual article, so I want to make him a present of it on his birthday." ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... also an obvious meaning in the adoption by the Jacobites of this flower as the emblem of the Pretender, to whose service they were secretly sworn. It was the white rose that was especially affected by the Stuarts, and the Pretender's birthday, the 10th of June, was for long known as 'White Rose Day,' much as 'Primrose Day' is now definitely associated with the late Lord Beaconsfield. The story of the Wars of the Roses is, of course, known to everybody, and how, in ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... extending a friendly welcome to a beginner found that beginner attacking landmarks in the world of letters, venturing to detest Ibsen and to ask William Archer whether he hung up his stocking on Ibsen's birthday, accusing Kipling of lack of patriotism. It is, said one angrily, "unbecoming to spend most of his time criticising his contemporaries." "His sense of mental perspective is an extremely deficient one." "The manufacture of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... fact it was getting nearly dark. On dismounting, helped off by the delightful Charley, she patted the neck of her horse and went up the steps. Her last ride. She was then within a few days of her sixteenth birthday, a slight figure in a riding habit, rather shorter than the average height for her age, in a black bowler hat from under which her fine rippling dark hair cut square at the ends was hanging well down her back. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Chojabasha, was burnt to the ground; and only a few weeks ago the same fate befell the suburb of Ejub along the whole length of the sea-front, and that, too, at the very time when the other part of the city was illuminated in honour of the birthday of Prince Murad. In Gallipoli a thunder-bolt struck the powder-magazine, and five hundred workmen were blown into the air. The Kiagadehane brook, in a single night, swelled to such an extent as to inundate the whole valley of Sweet Waters, and ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... were scorned by the waiters, the young men were surprised to find that to the gentlemen of the birthday-party their coming was of the utmost interest, and, though the tables were much too far apart for Roddy to hear what was said, he could see that many glances were cast in his direction, that the others were talking of him, and that, for some reason, ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... leader's capacity as well as a soldier's courage—that, as Fortinbras says of Hamlet, "He was likely had he been put on to have proved most royally." He had only completed his thirty-sixth year shortly before his death, and the poem in which he commemorated his birthday can never be read without feelings of genuine emotion. His death created a profound sensation, not only in England, but all through the civilized world. Not long since we were all favored with an opportunity ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I'll take care not to tell you next time, when I think I am looking specially old and ugly; as if people could not have that privilege, without being supposed to be at the last gasp! I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Dr. Brown for advice regardin' things 's she 's cooked him, not to speak o' that time he cut himself so bad pryin' at one o' her undercrusts. 'N,' just between you 'n' me, Mrs. Lathrop, he says it 's a secret 's he will carry to his grave unsealed as she give him a crock o' gherkins on his birthday, with a pair o' buttonhole ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... recovering himself from the effects of the injurious impression which his first admission was calculated to produce against him in the mind of his landlord. "Tipsy! No, no, sir; but the rason of it, sir, was this: it bein' my birthday, sir, I merely tuck a sup in the mornin', in honor o' the day. It's altogether a lucky day ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... not long after this that Margaret had a birthday, and she was taken to the kitchen to get her presents, which she thought the funniest thing in the world. There they all were, in the middle of the room: first her father's present, a little table with a white oilcloth cover ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... until the arrival of the eighth anniversary of my birthday, on the morning of which, soon after I had finished my breakfast, I was summoned to my father's studio. I was received somewhat coldly; and, after indicating to me the chair which he had placed for my occupation, my father resumed his work ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... last week was the seventieth birthday of Professor VIRCHOW. He has refused all titles and emoluments, observing that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... because he deserves well, which he does by no means approve of, gives him, that which he believes to be the fittest recompense of all merit, just nothing. He believes that the King's restoration being upon his birthday, he is bound to observe it all the days of his life, and grant, as some other kings have done upon the same occasion, whatever is demanded of him, though it were the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... day was the birthday in the little nest in the raspberries, and on my usual morning call I found four featherless birdlings, with beaks already yawning for food. Every morning, of course, I looked at the babies, but it was not till the eighth day ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Dr. Blessing's birthday, in honor of which we of course had a fete, our first great one on board. There was a double occasion for it. Our midday observation showed us to be in latitude 79 deg. 5' north; so we had passed one more degree. We had no fewer than five courses at dinner, and a more than usually elaborate concert ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's birthday, we shall receive news. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, "The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!" The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you, when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not now have been alive, if in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... had one ewe-sheep; and she brought forth, Early one season, and before her time, A weakly lamb. It chanced to be upon Jesus' birthday, when he was eight years old. So Mary said—"We'll name it after him,"— (Because she ever thought to please her child)— "And we will sign it with a small red cross Upon the back, a mark to know it by." And Jesus loved the lamb; and, as it grew Spotless and pure ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... away, in which Elsie said nothing more to Duncan of her plans. Robbie's birthday passed off, and Elsie did serve the cake and milk under the alder-tree, after all. She was even kind to the little lad, and played with the two boys. Robbie was trying hard to deserve her attention, running himself quite out of breath after the ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... exciting may be looked for at the reception in the following act. But Oscar Wilde was not content with this vague expectancy. He first defined it, and then he underlined the definition, in a perfectly natural and yet ingenious and skilful way. The day happens to be Lady Windermere's birthday, and at the beginning of the act her husband has given her a beautiful ostrich-feather fan. When he sends off the invitation, she turns upon him and says, "If that woman crosses my threshold, I shall strike her across the face with this fan." Here, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... I'll give you a kiss. Anything you like, Valeria. I shall be sixty-five next birthday; and I thought I knew something of women, at my time of life. It seems I know nothing. Loxley's Hotel is ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... as—as—it's beautiful as frosting on a birthday-cake!" cried Ruth, as she slipped her feet into the straps of her skees, preparing for her first lesson. "These skees seem so dreadfully long and unmanageable, now I get them on. Like seven-foot table-knives, and my silly feet like orange seeds in ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the bed and tickle and "grabble" in them. However, it has proved rather too exciting, and an edict has gone forth that hereafter I must play bear with them before supper, and give up the play when they have gone to bed. To-day was Archie's birthday, and Quentin resented Archie's having presents while he (Quentin) had none. With the appalling frankness of three years old, he remarked with great sincerity that "it made him miserable," and when taken to task for his lack of altruistic spirit he expressed ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... the Captain, "and I am Captain Pierre, and yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force, for it is the fete of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters have all come from their schools to dance at his birthday." ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... birthday crowns the growing year; A flower of Spring before the Spring is here; To sing of her and this fair day to keep The very Loves forsake their Winter sleep; Where'er she goes their circling wings they spread, And shower celestial roses o'er her head. I, too, would chant her worth and dare ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... way," he corrected. "That's all right when you're giving your age in school, but just now I'd rather hear you say that you will be sixteen on your next birthday, because sixteen and three make nineteen, and when you're nineteen you will be quite ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... received a visit from the restless young woman. To him she spoke not a word of the inferior classes, but as a special favourite of the diplomatist's, begged a gift of him for her proximate birthday. Pushed to explain what it was, she said, 'It's something I want you to do for a friend of mine, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Miss Blunt happened to intimate that she had a holiday on the morrow, it being the birthday of the lady in whose establishment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various |
