"Enviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... safest reliance for financial efficiency and independence has, on the contrary, been found to consist in ample resources unencumbered with debt, and in this respect the Federal Government occupies a singularly fortunate and truly enviable position. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... all our Protestant institutions would go to perdition, if Papists, although then mere serfs, were allowed to vote for members of parliament. They were equally puzzled to know why Roman Catholics were discontented, or what more their masters could reasonably do for them to add to the enviable happiness of their lot. 'We entreat you,' the Dublin corporation said to their Protestant brethren throughout the country—'we entreat you to join with us in using every honest means of persuading the Roman Catholics to rest content with ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... and gold-ringed and full of silent wonder, or, I should rather say, surprise. This never left him. To the last everything that presented itself to his gaze, though he had seen it a hundred times, seemed to fill him with fresh surprise. Nothing ever became familiar. What an enviable cast of mind! It must make the brightness ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... in all by 304 Dutchmen in favour of the Bill)* than to be guided by the overwhelming weight of public opinion that was against its passage. Thus it became clear that the Native's position in his own country was not an enviable one, for once a law was made prohibiting the sale of landed property to Natives, it would be almost impossible to get a South African Parliament ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the sentence, that the elder of Esmond's two kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other, when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked either way), that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Blanche. Then in a manner not in the least friendly, she continued: "I do not understand why you should apply to me. You and all the rest of your family have anything but an enviable reputation in Sairmeuse; still, as you are from that part of the country, I am willing to aid you a little on condition that you do not apply to ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... mind of a traveller with a night's journey behind him and an ocean crossing ahead of him, is not enviable. Frederick's condition was aggravated by a whirl of painful, partially warring recollections, which crowded into his mind, jostling and pushing one another aside in a ceaseless chase. For the sake of storing up strength for the events to come, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... thirty jugera of soil and to withhold from him the means of sowing his first crop or of making his first effort to turn pasture into arable land, was both useless and cruel; and we may imagine that the evicted possessors had not left their relinquished estates in a very enviable condition. The doors of the Aerarium were closed, for its key was in the hands of the senate; and Gracchus had to cast an anxious eye around for means for satisfying the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... seemed, though, to be very genuine in their admiration of us, and evinced great interest in our clothes, especially those of the quartermaster's wife, who, being a recent arrival in the Philippines, had yet the enviable trail of the Parisian serpent upon her apparel. One heavy cloth walking-skirt of hers, fitting smoothly over the hips and with no visible means by which it could be got into, animated the same inquiry from these people as good King George is said to have made anent the mystery of getting ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... evidently come in for one of those spells of fine weather which in those regions so often follow upon such a storm as had proved the undoing of the Royal Christopher. If the conditions had been different our lives would have been sufficiently enviable. Fair Island deserves its name; we had summer, food and water; so far as material comfort went, all ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... society! May that Providence which has hitherto protected you, still continue to pour down those blessings upon you, of which you appear to be so truly sensible, and for which you are justly thankful! May it throw round the shores of your enviable little Eden, 'cherubim and a flaming sword,' to guard its approaches from those who would endanger your peace; and above all, shield you from those, who would perplex and confuse your unsophisticated minds, by mysterious doctrines which they do not themselves comprehend! Remain steadfast ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... quite old enough yet to decide whether he will make a painter or a confectioner. The sight of the beautiful candies and cakes which he has seen in some of the shops, inclines him to the belief that a confectioner's lot is the more enviable one. He thinks it must be a charming occupation to make molasses-candy, and be able to eat as much as he wants. He must ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... and service quarters are located in the end sections where lumber used to be seasoned and other special work done. This unique bit of remodeling, combined with the pond as a main feature of landscape development, is both rare and enviable. Yet there are a surprising number of old commercial structures that lend themselves to remodeling into present day homes and by their very unconventionality take ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of passing all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose, dear Madame, I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage to step beyond the boundaries of this fine tranquil state. Yet, too, there have been times when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ from the wealthy—we others, birds of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the establishment of the liberty of the Press in England is full of interest, and tells the history of several books which involved their authors and publishers in many difficulties. The censors of books did not always occupy an enviable post, and were the objects of many attacks. "Catalogue" Fraser lost his office for daring to license Walker's book on the Eikon Basilike, which asserted that Gauden and not Charles I. was the author. His successor Bohun was deprived of his orffice as licenser and sent ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... had not heard me, which was the best thing she could do; and we sat some time without further speech. Mrs. Ambient had evidently the enviable English quality of being able to be silent without being restless. But at last she spoke; she asked me if there seemed to be many people in town. I gave her what satisfaction I could on this point, and we talked ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... enviable state of mind as he dropped the curtain and slumped back into his chair ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... world, returned to Tours in the same train with us, and to our surprise we found that he also was stopping at the Pension B——. The manner in which he said "My family always stop at the Pension B——" seemed to confer an enviable distinction upon the little hostel, and in a way to dim the ancient glories ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... but the gratification on their faces at the interest displayed is so unmistakable that I never now omit going through the whole business. This woman, the wife of one of the men who clean and feed the cows, has arrived at that enviable stage of existence when her children have all been confirmed and can go out to work, leaving her to spend her days in her clean and empty room in comparative dignity and peace. The children go to school till they are fourteen, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... which, doubtless, in abler hands, might easily have been wrought up into scenes of high interest and delectable pathos. But our humbler efforts must be limited by an attempt to describe man as God has made him, vulgar and unseemly as he may appear to sublimated faculties, to the possessors of which enviable qualifications we desire to say, at once, that we are determined to eschew all things supernaturally refined, as we would the devil. To all those, then, who are tired of the company of their species we would bluntly insinuate, that the sooner they throw aside our pages, and seize upon ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... has contributed no philosophic ideas to the speculative stock, nor has he developed any one great historic or social truth. His work is always full of a high spirit of manliness, probity, and honour; but he is not of that small band to whom we may apply Mackintosh's thrice and four times enviable panegyric on the eloquence of Dugald Stewart, that its peculiar glory consisted in having 'breathed the love of virtue into whole generations of pupils.' He has painted many striking pictures, and imparted a certain reality to our conception of many great scenes ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... Hospital of the Cedar Street Presbyterian Church, President of the Chamber of Commerce for twenty years, etc. Cadwallader David Golden (1769-1834), grandson of Cadwallader Colden, was Mayor of the city from 1818 to 1821, and made an enviable record in that office. James Lenox (1800-80), merchant, philanthropist, bibliophile, and founder of the Lenox Library, now incorporated in the New York Public Library, was one of the most useful citizens New York ever possessed. His public benefactions ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... spot certain small bundles tied up in coloured handkerchiefs, and, bringing these on shore, seated themselves upon some of the boxes and casks with which the wharf was lumbered, and, opening the bundles, produced therefrom their dinners, which they proceeded to discuss with quite an enviable appetite. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... examination at Sandhurst. He was a gentleman before he was gazetted, so, when the Empress announced that "Gentleman-Cadet Robert Hanna Wick" was posted as Second Lieutenant to the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Kram Bokhar, he became an officer and a gentleman, which is an enviable thing; and there was joy in the house of Wick where Mamma Wick and all the little Wicks fell upon their knees and offered incense to Bobby by ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... readily amalgamate, and be molded into new forms. It was written when the strife raged fiercest between ancient and modern ideals; and, finally, it was written in all the plenitude of my powers, when my soul was sanest and most joyful in the possession of an enviable optimism and an all-embracing love and sympathy for humanity that, to my misfortune, can never again ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... will overtake Lower Siam. History has shown, again and again, that the nation, particularly if it is as small and feeble as Siam, which forms a barrier between two portions of a powerful and aggressive empire is in anything but an enviable position. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... her quite the most interesting among notable men has made her house parties rather famous in an enviable way, and has given Lady Monson a marked reputation as a hostess. Her husband is the nephew of Sir Edmund Monson, the well-known ambassador to France, and Lady Monson is herself a famous beauty. Before her first marriage, to a wealthy ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... me, smilingly shook his head and said, "You are an enviable youth! Every time I think of you I think that. As a child amuses himself at an annual fair, you scamper through the world, feast your eyes on what you like to look at, take your pleasure in what you see, and build air-castles out ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... non-existence of miscroscopic animalcula, that the celebrated Spallanzani persuaded himself that he could see Animalcula infusoria which could be seen by nobody else. He attributed his own superiority of vision, in this respect, to long practice in using the microscope. The philosopher exulted in his enviable distinction, when a peasant, to whom he showed his animalcula, could perceive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... not thirty, I should judge, lying on his back, his head too low for comfort. He had been killed outright, and there was no distortion of feature. No more peaceful faces than one sees at times on the battlefield, and sudden death, despite the Litany, is not the least enviable exit. In this case there was something like a mild surprise on the countenance. The rather stolid face could never have been very expressive. An unposted letter was found on the dead man's body. It was written in German, and I was asked to interpret it, in case it should contain any important ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original place at table and take a revolving chair at the ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... you for the patience you have shown. The subject is now fully before you, and I conceive that you will agree with me that in the present case, the counsel for the plaintiff have undertaken a task of no ordinary difficulty. It seems a task by no means enviable under any of its different aspects; but really, in the whole course of my experience at the bar, it has never yet fallen to my lot to witness so startling a feat of legal legerdemain, as that attempted in this court-room by the counsel for the plaintiff. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's poem, "Bread, or the Poor", is an account of an industrious labourer who, by working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, attained to an enviable state of independence.) The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the aristocracy, the army, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... woman of culture and marked executive ability. For many years she had been the head of the school, and had won for it an enviable position among institutions of its kind. She had a large and valuable clientele, which ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... cavaliers were all from morning till night in the hands of their dancing and music masters, or at private study, or at rehearsal, preparing for the pageant, the representation of which fell to their share and won them enviable applause. Of course the burden of original invention fell upon the poets; and of the poets, Daniel and Jonson were the most heavily taxed. In 1616, James I., by patent, granted to Jonson an annuity for life of one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... more to seek more legitimate and profitable paths. Of course the fate of the Poles, prosperous though their country is beyond anything dreamed of in the days of its nominal independence, is not enviable to us. It were to be wished that they had been cured of the regular—or irregular—spasms of selecting a chief without losing their national autonomy. What we remark is, that the strain of that convulsion was greater than they or their neighbors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... greatest glory under heaven." The Yankees he considered (to use his expression) as "actilly the class-leaders in knowledge among all the Americans," and boasted that they have not only "gone ahead of all others," but had lately arrived at that most enviable NE PLUS ULTRA point, "goin' ahead of themselves." In short, he entertained no doubt that Slickville was the finest place in the greatest nation in the world, and the Slick family the ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a bear made a furious rush at him (2), and without wincing he grappled with her, and was pulled from his horse, receiving wounds the scars of which were visible through life; but in the end he slew the creature, nor did he forget him who first came to his aid, but made him enviable in ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... chances, the opportunities of the early bird, with which its path was strewn), with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery; so that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have inherited many objects of importance. There was no enviable bric-a-brac, with its provoking legend of cheapness, in the room in which I had seen her. Such a fact as that suggested bareness, but nonetheless it worked happily into the sentimental interest I had always taken in the early movements of my countrymen as visitors to Europe. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Moses, to be Prometheus. No doubt that image of himself he read in the faces of his friends, and in the loving eyes of the Countess Hatzfeldt—that glorious wonder-youth gifted equally with genius and beauty—must seem enviable enough, yet to his own heart how chill was this lonely greatness. And youth itself was passing—was ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... you have made for a long time. I have closely studied the question of economics, and have long ago come to the conclusion that the person of medium income is the only person who is truly happy. I am even inclined to believe that living from hand to mouth is the most enviable state of existence. You never know how the cards will turn up; but the excitement is intense. When I am a doctor, I shall watch people's faces with intense interest, wondering whether, when their next illness comes on, they will send for me; then there will be the counting up of my earnings, and ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... eternal farewell to, doubtless, by far the dearest,—happiest period of our existence, the dawn of life's day—that enviable time when "we have no lessons;" when the colt presses, with his unshod foot, the fresh and verdant meadow, while he wonders at the team toiling under a noontide sun, over the parched and arid fallow in ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... highest; he had also been invested with a most honourable personal distinction, which adds lustre even to nobility itself; which, at the same time that it was a reward for the past, ought to have been an incentive for the future:—He had been raised by a grateful Country to the proud and enviable station of representative in Parliament for the city in which your Lordships are now sitting; which, at the same time that it imposed on him the duty of watching, and if necessary, of animadverting on the conduct of others, especially bound him to guard the purity of his own. For all this, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... actor in the scenes of our legend. The mild and indolent descendants of the ancient colonists received their new compatriots without distrust, well knowing that the transfer raised them from the condition of subjects, to the more enviable distinction of citizens in a government of laws. The new rulers exercised their functions with discretion, and wielded their delegated authority without offence. In such a novel intermixture, however, of men born and nurtured in freedom, and the compliant minions ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... drove them to Saint Mary's Church, which stands in the quaint village of Warwick. Its old tower holds ten bells, and these play every four hours. There is a different tune for each day, which is always changed at midnight. The Warwick towns-people, living near their church, must have an enviable musical education, for they have continually dinned in their ears all sorts of tunes, from the "Easter Hymn" to ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... yielded the point. But I have been unhappy about it for a long while; I have shed many tears over it. This violence to my feelings, with my husband's brutal treatment, have been two causes of my unhappy married life. There is certainly no woman in Paris whose lot seems more enviable than mine, and yet, in reality, there is not one so much to be pitied. You will think I must be out of my senses to talk to you like this; but you know my father, and I cannot regard you as ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the Prince's letter. It was in German, and most courteously expressed. Julian Wemyss thought well of the man, and saw no reason why he should not assist, so far as he could, in settling Patsy in so enviable a position. It would be new, of course, but Patsy had been carefully taught. The best of blood ran in her veins, and by nature she was quick, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the Freelanders enjoyed not merely their pleasures, but their whole life. One gets the impression everywhere that care is unknown in this country. That ingenuous cheerfulness, which among us in Europe is the enviable privilege of the early years of youth, here sits upon every brow and beams from every eye. Go through any other civilised country you please, you will seldom, I might say never, find an adult upon whose countenance untroubled happiness, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... persons in Edinburgh would like to secure the best man in Mr. Hamerton," and Mr. Craik wrote about it: "You would be an ornament to the University, and might do useful and important work there. For many reasons the Scotch professorships are enviable, for this particularly—that the session is a short one, and would require short residence. It will be pleasant for all of us, your friends, if you go to Edinburgh, for it will compel you to come to England ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... England against the Gypsies, there can be little doubt that they lived a right merry and tranquil life, wandering about and pitching their tents wherever inclination led them: indeed, I can scarcely conceive any human condition more enviable than Gypsy life must have been in England during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth century, which were likewise the happy days for Englishmen in general; there was peace and plenty in the land, a contented ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... only, the double yellow rose, for instance, barely exists near London, yet this plant I have seen growing most luxuriantly, and producing a profusion of bloom, in the late Mr. MASON'S garden, Cheshunt, Herts, and in which various Orchis's also acquired nearly twice their usual size,—enviable spot! ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... men," wrote Sir Richard Bonnycastle, "were willing to sacrifice life and fortune rather than forego the enviable distinction of being British subjects." The stern adherence of the Pilgrim Fathers to their principles was quite equalled by the stern adherence of the Loyalists to their principles; but the privations and hardships ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Dr. Channing. However, a message from Chief Justice Marshall, through Judge Story, belongs with it: "Tell her I have read with great pleasure everything she has written, and wish she would write more." She had gained an enviable position in literature and she had done a great deal of useful work during the fifteen years since the timid appearance of "A New England Tale," but she seems to have regarded her books as simply a "by-product": "My author existence has always ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... description. His tastes—if he had any—were, as we have seen, simple; he had 900 pounds a year and a house; the neighbourhood was cheap, and for some time he had no children to be a drag upon him. Who was not to be envied, and if envied why then respected, if Theobald was not enviable? ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... circumstance, that under the disguise of Greek warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had attained, through the genius of Calprenede and Scuderi, an enviable immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have found in that endless desert of phraseology at once ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the three were Mr. Boodle and Mr. Tulk, (the "Mister" is given them in the college-lists out of respect for the long purses which have purchased them, the privilege of fellow-commoners or ballantiogennaioi), who enjoyed the same enviable distinction and happy privilege. By the screens were four or five sizars; a few more were scattered about in the passage waiting, whilst the servants hurriedly placed the dishes on the table set apart for them; and Julian was chatting to ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... us admit that his "neck-halter" sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby "an Auscultator of respectability," what avails it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... "students' quarter" in the gay city, and rented a couple of little rooms in an hotel meuble not far from the gardens of the Luxembourg. Medical students are never rich, and I was no exception to the rule, though, compared with many of my associates, my pecuniary position was one of enviable affluence. I had a library of my own, I drank wine at a franc the litre, and occasionally smoked cigars. My little apartment overlooked a wide street busy with incessant traffic, and on warm evenings, after returning from dinner at the restaurant ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... alone and in no enviable frame of mind. He was distrustful of himself, distrustful of the man who had made all this trouble, and distrustful of her, though he would not acknowledge it. Every baser instinct in him drove him to the meeting he declined. ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... heart that he could stand the trial of being groomsman where he had wanted to be groom—more especially since he was supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in the more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to any objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth, for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them together as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... Indians on the frontier for a long time, and the officers and men were tried and seasoned fighters. Lieutenant Halsey had been well known at the West Point balls as the "leader of the german." From the last of these balls he had gone straight to the field and three years had given him an enviable reputation for sang froid and determined bravery. He looked every inch the soldier as he walked along the trail, his cloak thrown back and his sword tucked under his arm. The doctor, who carried a Modoc bullet in some inaccessible ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... villa was to be finished shortly and that would necessitate a new round of entertainments and minor adjustments and no end of enviable publicity and comment. This diversion would take her through the late spring and summer, and in the fall she fully intended to take up dress reform and become a feminist. She had an idea of wearing nothing but draped Grecian robes—which ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... everything within their range of vision—flat green country, shaded farm-houses, encircling wooded hills and all—weighed it and sorted it and filed it away for future reference; and his clothes clung on him with almost that enviable fit found only in advertisements. Immediately he threw his luggage into the tonneau of the dingy automobile drawn up at the side of the lonely platform, and promptly climbed in after it. Spurred into purely mechanical action by this silent decisiveness, ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... and "Characteristics of Yankee Humour." She always had the rare gift of telling a story capitally, with ease, brevity, and dramatic effect, certain of the point or climax. I cannot think of any other woman of this country who has caused so much hearty laughter by this enviable gift. She can compress a word-picture or character-sketch into a few lines, as when she said of the early Yankee: "No matter how large a man he was, he had a look of shrinking and collapse about him. It looked as if the Lord had made him and then pinched him." And a woman who has ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... young gardener named Rougon, a rough-hewn peasant from the Basses-Alpes. This Rougon, after the death of the last of the male Fouques, who had engaged him for a term, had remained in the service of the deceased's daughter. From the situation of salaried servant he ascended rapidly to the enviable position of husband. This marriage was a first shock to public opinion. No one could comprehend why Adelaide preferred this poor fellow, coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarce able to speak French, to those other ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could desire. To be puffed by ignorance was not only humiliating, but perilous, and not more enviable than the reputation of the weather-prophet. He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidst which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himself as much as Mr. Wrench could ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... highest purpose of humanity, it was certainly fulfilled by Isaac Watts. His logical and other treatises have served to brace the intellects, methodise the studies, and concentrate the activities of thousands—we had nearly said of millions of minds. This has given him an enviable distinction, but he shone still more in that other province he so felicitously chose and so successfully occupied—that of the hearts of the young. One of his detractors called him 'Mother Watts.' He might have ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and her "situation," but the experiences she had gained through them, that gave her this advantage over the loud vague company. She had learned things they did not guess: shades of conduct, turns of speech, tricks of attitude—and easy and free and enviable as she thought them, she would not for the world have been back among them at the cost of knowing no ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Notwithstanding this enviable situation a clamour is excited, the people are agitated, and discord, with its train of evils, is prevailing. Some of our citizens, in the height of political prosperity, are seeking to destroy an ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... mother, and slipped away to Anne, with whom she spent the whole afternoon in eager whispered conversation, till the governess came to take her back to the fashionable boarding school where she was being trained to be a perfect great lady, and to make some enviable man happy in the future by the bestowal of ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... their disgrace in the sight of the nation by ridicule and reproach. Mr. Canning, in particular, assailed them both by his oratory and his pen, impugning even their motives. "All the talents," as this ministry was called, indeed, stood in no very enviable position in the sight of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... peace and neutrality for the whole 20th century, Sweden has achieved an enviable standard of living under a mixed system of high-tech capitalism and extensive welfare benefits. It has a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force. Timber, hydropower, and ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... As a matter of fact, the "R" does not stand for "royal," but for "railway," and the "T" is "transport," nothing so grandiose as "transportation." Now an R.T.O.'s job, though it may be a safe one, is not enviable. He is forced to combine the qualities of booking-clerk, station-master, goods-agent, information clerk, and day and night watchman all into one. In consequence of this it is necessary for the traveller's speech and attitude to be strictly soothing ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... surely one of the most enviable possessions of the successful pianist. Just what magnetism is and how it comes to be, few psychologists attempt to relate. We all have our theories, just why one pianist who often blunders as readily as a Rubinstein, or who displays his ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Relations.—One of the most significant improvements that has taken place is the establishment of a court of domestic relations, which already exists in several cities, and has made an enviable record. In the early experiments it seemed practicable in Kansas to make such a court a branch of the circuit and juvenile courts, so arranged that it would be possible to deal with the relations of the whole family; in Chicago the new tribunal was made a part of the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Montcalm was, at the period of which we write, in the flower of his age, and, it may be added, in the zenith of his fortunes. But even in that enviable situation, he was affable, and distinguished as much for his attention to the forms of courtesy, as for that chivalrous courage which, only two short years afterward, induced him to throw away his life on the plains of Abraham. Duncan, in turning his eyes from ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Will you step aside for a moment from the many duties, the interesting cares and soul-stirring pleasures of your enviable situation, and read a few lines from a stranger? They come to you, not from the cold and sterile regions of the North, nor from the luxuriant yet untamed wilds of the West, but from the bright ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... and purpose. The volumes are interesting and attractive in appearance, graphic in style, and wonderfully inspiring in subject matter, reaching an enviable mark in juvenile ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... thousand photographs of well-furnished rooms. The best were selected, and a series of photographic pages called "Inside of 100 Homes" was begun. The editor's woman friend had correctly pointed the way to him, for this series won for his magazine the enviable distinction of being the first magazine of standing to reach the then marvellous record of a circulation of one million copies a month. The editions containing the series were sold out as fast as ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... day of trial came, therefore, he was not in an enviable frame of mind. He knew that hundreds of eyes would be upon him, and that he would have a very undesirable publicity. Only a few weeks before the strike he had been spoken of as a possible candidate for ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... have called their most cheery side. He valued Bowshott because there was excellent hunting to be got there; just as he loved his place in Scotland because of the stalking and the fishing and the shooting, but that they were magnificent or enviable never entered his head. Fate had dealt very kindly with him, and its kindliness had provoked a charming geniality in the character of the young man whom it had treated with such lavish good fortune. ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... two classes, debtors and creditors. The creditor class has been erroneously supposed the more enviable. Never was there a greater misconception; and the hold it yet maintains upon opinion is a remarkable example of the obstinacy of error, notwithstanding the plainest lessons of experience. The debtor has the sympathies of mankind. He is seldom spoken of but with expressions of tenderness and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... answered, laying down my egg-spoon, "why in the world should I do anything? My position is a comfortable one. I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know), I enjoy an enviable social position: I am brother to Lord Burlesdon, and brother-in-law to that charming lady, his ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... praying-carpet and places the little oblong tablet from Kerbela in its customary position, preparatory to commencing his last prayers for the day, it is furthermore ascertained by the compass that he has been pretty accurate in his daily prostrations toward Mecca. With all these enviable advantages—the praying-carpet, the praying-stone, the holy rosary, and the happy accuracy as regards Mecca—the Aradan telegraph-jee is a Mussulman who ought to feel tolerably certain of a rose-garden, a gurgling rivulet, and any number of black-eyed houris to contribute ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... seat—he to have commenced a brawl, nay to have fastened a quarrel upon a man even then of some consideration and of high promise; a quarrel which finally tended to this result—shoot or be shot. That commissioner's situation and state of mind, for the succeeding night, were certainly not enviable: like Southey's erring painter, who had yielded to the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... conferring on her the same honor that I had done the chiefs and braves. Those whom I had honored were laughed at by the hundreds of the jealous, who had been decided unworthy the distinction, and were now amusing themselves with the very enviable honor which the great white medicine man had conferred especially on them, and was now to confer ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... up miserable photographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling good ones. I'm absolutely sick of it all." Carl frowned. "Alexandra, all the way out from New York I've been planning how I could deceive you and make you think me a very enviable fellow, and here I am telling you the truth the first night. I waste a lot of time pretending to people, and the joke of it is, I don't think I ever deceive any one. There are too many of my kind; people ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... is one of the rarest, as it is one of the most enviable of endowments. It is the power of instantaneously forming a judgment, and acting upon it, and includes not only moral courage, but self-possession. No matter how brave a man may be in the face of expected peril,—if he lacks ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... ladies' surprise, took the vacant place beside Sophy, instead of climbing up to the box. He had been to see his intended parish, and was an enviable man, for he was as proud of it as if it had been an intended wife, and Albinia, who knew it for a slice of dreary heath, was entertained with his raptures. Church, schools, and parsonage, each in their way were perfection or at least promised to be, and he had never been so ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... camp outfit they can be comfortable until the wagons are unloaded. Faye and I are staying with the commanding officer and his wife. Colonel Gardner is lieutenant colonel of the —th Infantry, and has a most enviable reputation as a post commander. As an officer, we have not seen him yet, but we do know that he can be a most charming host. He has already informed Faye that he intends to appoint him adjutant and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... The multiplicity of duties in the charge of the household affairs of such an institution, with the uncertain assistance to be found in such a place, may be better imagined than told. Under her satisfactory management the Vicksburg Home acquired an enviable reputation, and was the favorite stopping-place on the river. The great difficulty in conducting a Soldiers' Home in time of war, as every one knows who has been connected with one, is to keep it neat and clean, to have the floors, the tables, the beds sufficiently ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the Maumee Ottawas, so besotted in their habits on leaving Ohio, had already improved; were planting; had given up drink, and listened to teachers of the Gospel. He spoke of the Shawnese as being in a state of enviable advancement, &c. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... regretfully pointed out how his patron's readiness to accept the homage of other poets seemed to be thrusting him from the enviable place of pre-eminence ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... an enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... man or boy behind the counter was an enviable person. Many boys had no higher ambition than to be a store-keeper. I was now behind the counter, and although there was nothing in a dry goods shop to interest me as in the country store, with its varied assortment of goods, tools, crockery and candies, I felt rather ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... sixteenth century, being mentioned in The Complaynt of Scotland (1548) among the "sangis of natural music of the antiquite." Not much can be said for its "natural music," yet despite its roughness of form and enviable inconsistencies of spelling, it has always found grace with the poets. Rare Ben Jonson used to say that he would rather have been the author of Chevy Chase than of all his works; Addison honored the broadside version with two critiques in the Spectator; and Sir Philip Sidney, though ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... studied at Oriel College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow, and had Arnold, Keble, Newman, Pusey, and other eminent men as contemporaries; was a man of liberal views and sympathies, and much regarded for his sagacity and his skill in dialectics; his post as archbishop was no enviable one; is best known by his "Logic," for a time the standard work of the subject; he opposed the Tractarian movement, but was too latitudinarian for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... impressively, "has asked your sister to be his wife. It is a most wonderful piece of good fortune, as I suppose you will be prepared to admit. The Ferringhalls are of course without any pretence at family, but Sir John is a very rich man, and will be able to give Annabel a very enviable position in the world. The settlements which he has spoken of, too, are most munificent. No wonder we are anxious that nothing should happen to make ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never had met his superior with the rifle, and his knowledge of woodcraft was such that, although he had spent ten years on the border, his slowness of foot had never operated against him; nor once had he been outwitted by the red-men of the woods. Besides this, he had the enviable reputation of being a lucky individual—one whose rifle never missed fire, or sped wide of its mark—one to whom no unfortunate accident over occurred; so that, take him all in all, few hunters were safer in the wood than this same ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... does the problem of how to circumvent the culinary soarings of Mrs. Beaton, and yet obtain the same results . . . with eggs at the price they are! If some producing genius had not conceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song with a dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had not created the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of the lighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For, to dance at the end of her little ditty, and to have the chorus girls relieve her of further action at the end of the first verse, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... personality. Such women are not born often. Most of them lack opportunities. They never develop. They end obscurely. Here and there one survives to make her mark even in history. . . . And even that is not a very enviable fate. They are at another pole from the so-called dangerous women who are merely coquettes. A coquette has got to work for her success. The others have nothing to do but simply exist. You perceive the view I take ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... death, I hope you are mistaken, Aunt Flora, but I confess that yours is a most enviable frame ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... him. The one which related to Mrs. Buckner and the prospector he laid aside at once as too contemptible to be considered, but the other interested him. Gorham was setting himself above other men who held enviable positions in the business and social world. If this affidavit was true—and Covington saw no reason to doubt its authenticity—this demigod might hesitate to emphasize his superiority. With the legality of his marriage questioned, his Czarship might be weakened; and this, as Covington saw ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Castle, and met Miss Crotchet and her companion, who had turned back to meet them. Captain Fitzchrome was shortly after heartily welcomed by Mr. Crotchet, and the party separated to dress for dinner, the Captain being by no means in an enviable state of mind, and full of misgivings as to the extent of belief that he was bound to accord to the words of the ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... mind—innumerable difficulties presented themselves, and I was at last reduced to that stand-still point, in which, after continual vacillation, one only waits for the slightest impulse of persuasion from another, to adopt any, no matter what suggestion. In this enviable frame of mind I sat sipping my wine, and watching the clock for that hour at which, with a safe conscience, I might retire to my bed, when the waiter roused me by demanding if my name was Mr. Lorrequer, for that ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... into the most important state secrets, there was never the slightest reason to suspect their perfect discretion. They were, besides, very diligent, and endowed with much talent, so that his Majesty formed an excellent opinion of them. Their position was most enviable. Lodged in the palace, and consequently supplied with fuel and lights, they were also fed, and received each a salary of eight thousand francs. It might well have been thought that this sum would be sufficient for these gentlemen to live ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... How enviable to her sex is the position of that woman who labours for the fallen, and whose heart yields its kindred sympathy ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... for instance, be one of the ferocious wild-cats for which the island had been famous long before Wesley Coombs ever dreamed of settling there, Max felt that he would hardly find himself in an enviable position; since the gloom under the trees must prevent him from seeing how to ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of the party, as already stated, was Frank G. Carpenter, a bright young man born at Mansfield, Ohio, who has since made an enviable reputation as a copious and interesting letter writer for the press. His description of Havana is so true that I insert a few paragraphs ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they carry on them the shadows of battle smoke, and the rust of enviable wounds. Let us take his memory then gladly, and with true homage, rejoicing that its record of happiness appears as stainless as its history of honour, and well satisfied to find one picture in which something of the sunshine of high gallantry seems ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... but, at the opening of the war with Mexico, President Polk, actuated by partisan jealousy, kept Scott in Washington and assigned Zachary Taylor to the command of the armies in the field. Scott had already an enviable reputation, and had been an aspirant for the presidency, and Polk feared that a few victories would make him an invincible candidate. Perhaps he was afraid that Scott would ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... nonchalant air of one who was there merely to pass away a vacant hour, but his stakes were high and he played every shot. His calm, impassioned countenance bore the unmistakable stamp of the professional gambler, and, serene as a quiet mill-pond, he bore his losses or pocketed his winnings with the enviable sang froid which results from a long and intimate acquaintance with the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... on the Mexican border and elsewhere in the west since early in 1917. These four regiments were all sterling organizations dating their foundation back to the days immediately following the Civil war. Their record was and is an enviable one. It is no reflection on them that they were not chosen for overseas duty. The country needed a dependable force on the Mexican border, in Hawaii, the Philippines, and ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the clicking shears—a flush which was enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... no other claim upon the confidence of his fellow-creatures, sick or well. Yet even before the Dop Doctor brought his great unhealed sorrow and his quenchless thirst to Gueldersdorp, the smug, plump, grey-haired, pink-faced, neatly-dressed little humbug possessed an enviable practice. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... first met. He was not then what he is now, but he was handsome enough to create an excitement in town and to lift the girl he singled out into an enviable prominence. Unfortunately, I was that girl. I say unfortunately, because his good looks failed to arouse in me more than a passing admiration; and in accepting his attentions, I consulted my necessities and pride rather than the instincts of my better nature. When he asked me to marry him I ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... earlier years also the Pennsylvania had established its enviable record for conservative and non-speculative management. No railroad wrecker or stock speculator had ever had anything to do with the financial control of the company, and this tradition has been passed on from decade to decade. The stockholders themselves, ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... St. Patrick being the chief apostle of the new faith. In the sixth century Ireland sent forth missionaries from her monasteries to convert Great Britain and the nations of Northern Europe. From the eighth to the twelfth century Irish scholars held an enviable reputation. In fact, Ireland was the center of learning at one time. The arts, too, were cultivated by her people; and the round towers, still pointed out to travelers, are believed to be the remains of the architecture of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... stolidity of a fatalist, and in those last days of his radically artificial life he disclosed a welcome tenderness, a touch of the divine, none the less so for being common duty, shown in the few brief letters to his son's widow and to "our boys." This, and his enviable gift of being able to view the downs as well as the ups of life in the consoling humorous light, must modify the sterner judgment so easily passed upon his characteristic inculcation, if not practice, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... could be no difficulty in proving it. Such notoriety as Mr. Byron enjoyed was due, as appeared from the evidence of Lord Worthington and others, to his approaching marriage to a lady of distinction. Was it credible that a highly connected gentleman in this enviable position would engage in a prize-fight, risking disgrace and personal disfigurement, for a sum of money that could be no object to him, or for a glory that would appear to all his friends as little better ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... history, was first dragoman of the Swedish embassy in that city. He was educated at Paris, and among the manuscripts of the National Library, gathered the material for two works published in French, which gained him an enviable reputation. One was The Peoples of the Caucasus, by Abdul-Cassim, the traveller; the other The History of Mongolia, from Dschingis Khan to Timour; the second appeared at the Hague in 1835. M. D'Ohson served his country ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... enviable looking home," he muttered, "but it seems pride can dwell in a cottage." "Just pride can dwell in the cottage as well as in the mansion I hope," she replied, rising to open the door. "The morning is cold yet fine," she said, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... not in an enviable frame of mind. She had declined an invitation to a grand dinner party, for the sake of going to Allington, where it was always snowing or raining or doing something disagreeable, and her face was anything but pleasant as she ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... We are not blind, we see what goes on about us, but we are gentlemen, my dear sir, and we take our revenge like gentlemen.... But here,' added Shubin, uncovering another figure, 'as the artist according to modern aesthetic principles enjoys the enviable privilege of embodying in himself every sort of baseness which he can turn into a gem of creative art, we in the production of this gem, number two, have taken vengeance not as gentlemen, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... writer attended the district school at Cohoes. The high department did not enjoy a very enviable reputation for being possessed of that respect due from the pupils to teacher. During the year there had been at least four teachers in that department, the last one only remaining one week. The Board of Education had found it difficult to obtain ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the summons, these two great dignitaries arrived at the imperial gate in no enviable state of mind; but when the sultan had informed them of the tumult then raging in the capital, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... lack guests from the most refined classes of society. Such are the prospects of my future, and although I cannot say that I am content with them, yet I know that others will deem my position a most enviable one, and that ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... own feelings must have been scarcely enviable. They say that great enchantresses, from Medea and Circe downward, have generally been unhappy in their loves. Either they could not raise the spirit, or it proved unmanageable; either their affection was not returned, or its object was unfaithful at last. In the single case where ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... his preparations and, when the case opened, lost to all else in his case, he presented precisely that faculty (and that permission by convention) of complete detachment from his home that long she had known to be man's most outstanding and most enviable quality. He had no attention to spare for the consideration of her own problem and ambition, and she was too honourable to his interests, and too devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more significantly ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... younger days he thought nothing of these dividing lines of society; but as he had grown to be, as he considered, a young man—and, indeed, he really did possess more of that enviable bearing than most boys at the age of sixteen—he had come to realize that there was such a thing as a social difference between men whose Maker created ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... came out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment: To ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Australia Australia has an enviable, strong economy with a per capita GDP on par with the four dominant West European economies. Robust business and consumer confidence and high export prices for raw materials and agricultural products are fueling the economy, particularly in mining states. Australia's emphasis on ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... there?" said Rachel. "What an enviable position, to have the control of means of doing good that always falls to the women of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... insolence to present so wild a composition to one who has recorded two or three of the really impressive visions of the moving millions of England. You are the only man alive who can make the map of England crawl with life; a most creepy and enviable accomplishment. Why then should I trouble you with a book which, even if it achieves its object (which is monstrously unlikely) can only be a thundering ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... question at large about all the sciences, and see whether the same principle does not always hold. I know that in most arts you are the wisest of men, as I have heard you boasting in the agora at the tables of the money-changers, when you were setting forth the great and enviable stores of your wisdom; and you said that upon one occasion, when you went to the Olympic games, all that you had on your person was made by yourself. You began with your ring, which was of your own workmanship, and you said that you could engrave rings; and you had another seal which ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato
... myself, more discreet, sat quietly in the bow of the cutter; and for my own part, though I did not repent what I had done, my reflections were far from being enviable. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... knowledge alluded to, however, comes not by rhymes, but by experience alone, with a kind of intuitive confidence. Many long and hard years of study, and myriads of forgotten trials must have been gone through to give this enviable knowledge. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... peers' sons than a rough republican.' The admiration was apparently mutual, for Willis, in a letter to the author of Our Village, says: 'You are distinguished in the world as the "gentlewoman" among authoresses, as you are for your rank merely in literature. I have often thought you very enviable for the universality of that opinion about you. You share it with Sir Philip Sidney, who was in his day the gentleman among authors. I look with great interest for your new tragedy. I think your mind is essentially dramatic; and in that, in our time, you are alone. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... After exhibiting their enviable mental health, and rebutting the cavils of some of the speakers,—who could not bear, in Christian times, by Christian ladies, that heathen Greeks ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... intense materiality of what was left of his beard) come as near to being a disembodied spirit as any man can do and live. I noticed the preternatural sharpness of the ridge of his nose, the deep cavities of his temples, and I envied him. He was so reduced that he would probably die very soon. Enviable man! So near extinction—while I had to bear within me a tumult of suffering vitality, doubt, confusion, self-reproach, and an indefinite reluctance to meet the horrid logic of the situation. I could not help muttering: "I feel as if I were going ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the keys. Krafft yielded his place to her, and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. She played very well—even Maurice in his disturbance could, not but notice it—with a firm, masculine touch, and that inborn ease, that enviable appearance of perfect fitness, of being one with the instrument, which even the greatest players do not always attain. She had, besides, grip and rhythm, and long, close-knit hands insinuated themselves ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... provide for George was very eagerly accepted by the Virginian. My lord had not provided very well for his own brother to be sure, and his own position, peer as he was, was anything but enviable; but we believe what we wish to believe, and George Warrington chose to put great stress upon his kinsman's offer of patronage. Unlike the Warrington family, Lord Castlewood was quite gracious when he was made acquainted with George's engagement to Miss Lambert; came to wait upon her parents; ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hitherto unknown and unimportant sex; when an inner voice urges him to take his place in the ranks and keep step with the mighty army of his generation, Raymond was doomed to walk alone, a wistful outcast, regarding his enviable ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne |
