"Felicitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of one such evening, spent in the society of Saint Werner's friends—if I could write down but one such conversation, and at all express its vivacity, its quick flashes of thought and logic, its real desire for truth and knowledge, its friendly fearlessness, its felicitous illustrations, its unpremeditated wit, such a record, taken fresh from the life, would be worth all that I shall ever write. But youth flies, and as she flies all the bright colours fade from the wings of thought, and the bloom vanishes from the earnest eloquence ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... associations which give to words their full meaning are never absolutely the same in two languages. Love in English not only SOUNDS but IS different from amor in Latin, or amore in Italian. Even the most felicitous prose translation must fail therefore at times to afford the entire and precise ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... glorious laugh, and "throw (affectation) to the dogs; I'll have none of it." Now the farce begins: up starts the immortal hero himself, and makes his bow; a simultaneous display of "broad grins" welcomes his felicitous entree; and for a few seconds the scene resembles the appearance of a popular election candidate, Sir Francis Burdett, or his colleague, little Cam Hobhouse, on the hustings in Covent Garden; nothing is heard but one deafening shout of clamorous approbation. Observe ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... discovery of itself to us, as the appropriate attitude on our part, the dialectical spirit, which to the last will have its diffidence and reserve, its scruples and second thoughts. Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the "philosophic temper," in short, for which a survival of query ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... a felicitous arrangement of our organs of sense, that where one organ fails to convey to our inward man information regarding the outward world, another often steps in to supply its place, and perform the needful duty. We have said that Glynn Proctor ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... indeed, John Fletcher lost himself in the needs and spirit of his Master, finding in his increasingly clear view of God, his ever more intimate fellowship with Christ, abiding treasure and keen delight which were beyond even his power of felicitous expression. It was in keeping with his hourly experience that he exclaimed in a letter to Lady ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... complacent superiors to be called in. Garth's, unfair and violent though it is, nowhere offends against decency. As a work of art it cannot be ranked high, and is now deservedly forgotten, although it has many good lines and some felicitous satire. Garth lived to see the apothecaries gradually emancipate themselves from the ignominious regulations to which they consented when their vocation was first separated from the grocery trade. Four years after his death they obtained legal acknowledgment of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ingenious nor so felicitous as the language- expedient of the man who wished to leave some luggage at a railway station in Rome, and knowing nothing of any foreign tongue but a few Latin phrases, mostly of an obituary character, pointed several times to his effects, saying, "Requiescat in pace," and then, pointing again ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... greatest master of satire in English literature, and one of the truest painters of social life that any age has produced; not so much admired by women as by men; accurate in his delineation of character, though sometimes bitter and fierce; felicitous in plot, teaching lessons in morality, unveiling shams and hypocrisy, contemptuous of all fools and quacks, yet sad in his reflections ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... being a fair specimen of the very agreeable manner of the digressions in the above work, which is, perhaps, less practical than it might have been; but this defect is more than atoned for in the author's felicitous mode of intermingling with the main subject, some of the most curious facts and phenomena in natural history and philosophy so as to familiarize the angler with many causes and effects which altogether belong to a higher class of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... folding of the hands" may be fatal to all their most cherished purposes. The last of these masters of themselves and of their fortunes in hazardous and change-fraught times is Hieronymus Holzschuher, Duerer's friend. Only less felicitous because less harmonious in colour than the three former, this vivacious portrait of a ruddy, jovial, and white-haired patrician seen against a bright blue background might produce the effect of a Father Christmas, were it not for the resolute mouth and the puissant side-glance ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of which the Priest could only compound, from simples a symbolical imitation. Then came the various Sun-Gods, Adityas or Solar Attributes, Surya the Heavenly, Savitri the Progenitor, Pashan the Nourisher, Bagha the Felicitous, and Mitra ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... impatient and uncurbed mind feels? Why cannot my form accompany the bold flights of my mind and satisfy the craving I feel to resolve the vexed question that ever rises to my lips—"Is he alive?" O soul of mine, be patient, thou hast a felicitous tranquillity, which other men might envy thee! Sufficient for the hour is the consciousness thou hast that thy mission is a holy one! Onward, and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... does not rank high. His fame rests on his speeches. His eloquence was transcendent, so far as it was rendered vivid by passion. He knew how to move men; he understood human nature. No orator ever did so much by a single word, by felicitous expressions. In the tribune he was immovable. His self-possession never left him in the greatest disorders. He was always master of himself. His voice was full, manly, and sonorous, and pleased the ear; always powerful, yet flexible, it could be as distinctly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Klesmer," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, rising; and presently bringing him to Gwendolen, she left them to a dialogue which was agreeable on both sides, Herr Klesmer being a felicitous combination of the German, the Sclave and the Semite, with grand features, brown hair floating in artistic fashion, and brown eyes in spectacles. His English had little foreignness except its fluency; and his alarming cleverness was made less formidable just then by a certain softening air ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... pithy point of this passage stamps it as one of Bunyan's most felicitous descriptions. We who live in a later age may, indeed, suspect that he has somewhat antedated the death of Pagan, and the impotence of Pope; but his picture of their cave and its memorials, his delineation of the survivor of this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seldom the case that the person accords with the high qualification of the mind. Mr —- was a singular and felicitous exception to this mortifying rule. His deportment was truly dignified, his frame well-knit and robust, and his features were almost classically regular. His complexion was florid, and the expression of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... books from a second-hand bookseller arrived during dinner. Among them were the nine volumes of Pietro Gianone's Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli, a copy of which I ought to have possessed long ago. It is dedicated to the "Most Puissant and Felicitous Prince Charles VI, the Great, by God crowned Emperor of the Romans, King of Germany, Spain, Naples, Hungary, Bohemia, Sicily, etcetera." Is there a living soul in God's universe who has a spark of admiration for this most puissant and most felicitous monarch crowned by God Emperor ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... again under high obligations for services in the field, as always in the bureau, I add their names, etc.: Lieutenant-Colonel Hitchcock, Acting Inspector General; Major J. L. Smith, Captain R. E. Lee (as distinguished for felicitous execution as for science and daring), Captain Mason, Lieutenants Stevens, Beauregard, Tower, G. W. Smith, George B. McClellan, and Foster, all of the Engineers; Major Turnbull, Captain J. McClellan, and Lieutenant Hardcastle, Topographical ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk than wit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of vivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is called Imagination. He was like Jaques—though not a "Melancholy ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to restore the Union. Negro-worshipers from Massachusetts and slave-drivers from South Carolina entered the vast hall arm in arm. The great meeting rose to its feet, and walls and roof shook with applause. General John A. Dix of New York called the Convention to order, and, in an eloquent and felicitous speech, stated the objects of the assembly—to renew fraternal feeling between the sections, heal the wounds of war, obliterate bitter memories, and restore the Union of the fathers. Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin was chosen permanent president, and patriotic resolutions were adopted by acclamation. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... superficially different, is a variant of the same theme, presenting the product of life in masses; its inclusion of the indestructibility of the good is noticeable as a philosophical idea such as he rarely introduced in an explicit way. The felicitous allegory of "The Celestial Railroad" satirizes human nature without bitterness; but, while the universality of Bunyan's emblems is strikingly shown by the ease with which they are adapted to the new age of steam, the tale is, as it were, music transposed; the cleverness ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Franzen and Wallin. Franzen (1772-1847), a bishop, was celebrated for his lyrics of social life, and in many points resembles Wordsworth. The qualities of heart, the home affections, and the gladsome and felicitous appreciation of the beauty of life and nature found in his poems, give him his great charm. Archbishop Wallin (1779- 1839) is the great religious poet of Sweden. In his hymns there is a strength and majesty, a solemn splendor ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... as we call them in Scotland, are very rarely selected so much for their beauty, with reference to the surrounding scenery, as for conveniency; and hence it is that we find but few of them in positions which a view-hunter would term strikingly felicitous. When they are so, we rather presume the circumstance arises from its happening that eligibility and choice have agreed in determining the point. Yet, seriously, though the generality of farm-steadings have little to boast of as regards situation, there are many pleasing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... narrative poem was printed, under the name A Lover's Complaint. It tells in the first person the story of a girl who has been seduced by a plausible villain. It is a work of Shakespeare's youth, fresh and felicitous as youth's work often is, and ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with my name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally felicitous. The story of 'The Dying Clown,' for instance, crude as it is it has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the pit, and ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... expression of dislike and contempt which had driven the orphan from her adopted home; and, unable to decide on the most plausible solution to be offered her brother, she paced restlessly to and fro. Engrossed by no particularly felicitous reflections, she failed to notice Mazeppa's quick tramp, and remained in ignorance of the doctor's return until he entered the room, and stood beside her. His manner was hurried, his thoughts evidently preoccupied, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... had now lost all charm for him. The Hotel Drouot no longer tempted him. At that time, the goods of German residents, seized by the government, were being auctioned off;—a felicitous retaliation for the enforced journey which the fittings of the castle of Villeblanche had taken on the road to Berlin; but the agents told him in vain of the few competitors which he would now meet. He no longer felt attracted ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... CHIENS)." [Wilhelmina, ii. 114.] Reverend Abbot Mosheim (such his title; Head Churchman, theological chief of Helmstadt University in those parts, with a couple of extinct little ABBACIES near by, to help his stipend) preached next Sunday, "On the Marriage of the Righteous,"—felicitous appropriate Sermon, said a grateful public; [Text, Psalm, xcli. 12; "Sermon printed in Mosheim's Works."]—and in short, at Salzdahlum all goes, if not as merry as some marriage-bells, yet without jarring ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... vivacity, had Voltaire. Diderot had not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous, the least ready, of composers. His allegory of the avenue of thorns, the avenue of chestnut-trees, and the avenue of flowers, is an allegory, unskilful, obvious, poor, and not any more amusing than if it's matter had been set forth without any attempt at fanciful decoration. The blinded ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... her mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B.F. or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance with the French language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awkward, as B.F. devoted himself to it with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... legends told with a modern touch in poetic prose. They have a quality of quiet beauty which will commend them to many readers to whom the more realistic work of Mr. Phillpotts does not appeal, and the admirable illustrations by Frank Brangwyn are a felicitous accompaniment to the modulated prose ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... trampling of feet, as if bisons were beating the earth. Then I caught a distant view of a herd of quadrupeds, rushing up and down the swells—animals, which would have still remained unknown and undescribed, had it not been for a most felicitous accident! One, and he a noble specimen of the whole! was running a little apart from the rest. The herd made an inclination in my direction, in which the solitary animal coincided, and this brought him within fifty yards of the spot where I stood. I profited by the opportunity, and by ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to your Excellency as a friend; and assure you he is a Prince who has talent, but who will be the slave of his passions (SE FERA DOMINER PAR SES PASSIONS,"—not a felicitous prophecy, Herr General); "and will like nobody but such as encourage him therein. For me, I think all Princes are cast in the same mould; there is only a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found their equal in comic etching anywhere ... the picturesque details of the room are etched with the same felicitous intelligence; but the marvel of the work is in the expression of the strange little faces, and the energy of the comical wee limbs."[90] In The Witches' Frolic ["Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft"], we find a happy blending of the terrible and the grotesque. Look at the old hags floating ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the Divinity, he only reduces the Divinity into an An like himself." During the later ages, therefore, all theological speculations, though not forbidden, have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly into disuse. The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of a future state, more felicitous and more perfect than the present. If they have very vague notions of the doctrine of rewards and punishments, it is perhaps because they have no systems of rewards and punishments among themselves, for there are no crimes ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... way in which simple ones go about And draw a fine picture of things they don't know about! We all know a kitten, but come to a catamount The beast is a stranger when grown up to that amount, (A stranger we rather prefer should n't visit us, A felis whose advent is far from felicitous.) The boy who can boast that his trap has just got a mouse Must n't draw it and write underneath "hippopotamus"; Or say unveraciously, "This is an elephant,"— Don't think, let me beg, these examples irrelevant,— What ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... which it becomes identical with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily suspended. Newman wished Madame de Cintre so well that nothing he could think of doing for her in the future rose to the high standard which his present mood had set itself. She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony. This is what I mean by Newman's ...
— The American • Henry James
... his right as a delegate not to hear any more oratory, but, to proceed with the business of the convention. He gave the 'State Journal' an appreciated compliment by advising all the delegates who desired to know what his speech contained to buy this morning's 'State Journal.' His remarks were felicitous and he ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... it not have been planned and calculated beforehand, to bewilder and mislead?—It may well be doubted. No preconceived and elaborated programme can come up to the inspiration of the moment, which is genius. Such felicitous wording of subject-matter so objectionable: such an unassailable presentation of so indefensible a principle—could hardly have been the fruit of premeditation. Cornelia was allowing ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... else to do, he got out the manuscript of Aliris: A Romance of all Time, and read it through carefully from the beginning. To his surprise he found it very poor. Its language was felicitous in some spots, but stilted in most; the erudition was pedantic, and dragged in by the ears; the action was idiotic; and the proportions were padded until they no longer existed as proportions. He ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... you that at this very moment we have received sure tidings of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom we are not ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... though he detested America with the energy of fear—the fear of all who see its prosperity sapping the foundations of their class society. He died in 1865; and in 1867 his biography was published by Sir Theodore Martin, his collaborator. Martin's definition of Aytoun's place in literature is felicitous:— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the song's own sake is manifest; and this is shown in the variety of his treatment, and the delicate sense of music which determined his choice of metre. His descriptive writing is full of picturesque expression. The fifth hymn, 'Ad Incensum Lucernae,' is glorious with passionate colour and felicitous cadence, be he describing with precious solicitude for Christian archaeology the different means of artistic lighting, flambeaux, candles, lamps, or dreaming with all the rapture of a southern dream of the balmy ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... England by the Normans'—an original work of great value, though since overshadowed by the more minute 'History of the Norman Conquest,' by Professor Freeman. Yet Thierry's work is still of great interest, displaying gifts of the highest and rarest kind in felicitous combination. It shows the careful plodding of the antiquary, the keen vision of the man of the world, the passionate fervour of the politician, the calm dignity of the philosophic thinker, and the grandeur of the epic poet. Thierry succeeded in exhuming the dry bones of history, clothing ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... companionship in youth, the pure, unfettered, mystic attraction between the sexes in blossoming time, are practically unknown to the German social life. The full gloss of fancy, the velveting of manners, the felicitous fabrication of innocent emotions into a blessed garment of many colors, find their development outside the domain of Thor. Such associations have there no charming playtime, but forthwith make for permanent good or ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Belt Wheat Company paid the interest on the forged note, and the bank paid the Golden Belt Wheat Company interest on a daily ledger balance of nine thousand, and all went happily. The Larger Good accepted the sacrifices of truth, and went on its felicitous way. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... her with an alert and felicitous air. How could he help the falling out of this? Of course he could not ride upon the wagon and leave a farm-boy ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... perusal, make himself master of the style so far as to understand the story, and if that pleased or interested him, he finished the volume. But it was in vain to attempt fixing his attention on critical distinctions of philology, upon the difference of idiom, the beauty of felicitous expression, or the artificial combinations of syntax. 'I can read and understand a Latin author,' said young Edward, with the self-confidence and rash reasoning of fifteen, 'and Scaliger or Bentley could not do much more.' Alas! while he was thus permitted to read ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... broken metaphors, they will not bear being pushed to a logical conclusion or picked to pieces. The very transparent comparison which matches Michael Angelo with his own countryman, Dante, is after all more felicitous and truer. Michael Angelo with Lionardo are the great ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... field covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits,—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five feet deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called "The Pepper-Box," another "Uncle Sam's Well," another "The Reb-Trap," and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not to be mentioned tropical locality. Though this rude sort of nomenclature predominated, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... interesting subject for my fancies. The favoured individual whose daily walk might be between the yew-hedges on that elastic lawn; who should eat, drink, and sleep through the commonplace hours of this present time behind those mystical white shutters! But when the individual added to this felicitous dispensation of fortune the personal attributes of unparalleled beauty and pea-green satin; of having worn hoops, high heels, and powder; of countless lovers, and white brocade with pink rosebuds—well might I sit, my brain whirling ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... PHRASES A practical handbook of felicitous expressions for enriching the vocabulary. 12 mo, cloth, $1.60, net; by ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... On the other hand, there are always present Hazlitt's enthusiastic appreciation of what is good in letters, his combination of gusto with sound theory as to what is excellent in prose and verse, his felicitous method of expression, and the acuteness that kept him from that excessive and paradoxical admiration which both Lamb and Coleridge affected, and which has gained many more pupils than his own moderation. Nothing ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Frank, then put mind and muscle to the sore task of remaining with Spot. Jones was born on a saddle, and had been taking his meals in a saddle for about sixty-three years, and the bay horse could run. Run is not a felicitous word—he flew. And I was rendered mentally deranged for the moment to see that hundred paces between the bay and Spot materially lessen at every jump. Spot lengthened out, seemed to go down near the ground, and cut the air like a high-geared auto. If I had not heard the fast rhythmic beat of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... recognized here and there, among the wearisome successions of phrases, with their rugged proper names, episodes which seem something like a Chaldaean "Genesis" or "Veda;" now and then a bold flight of fancy, a sudden exaltation of thought, or a felicitous expression, arrests the attention and holds it captive for a time. In the narrative of the adventures of Grilgames, for instance, there is a certain nobility of character, and the sequence of events, in their natural and marvellous development, are handled with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... pours forth lamentations to his empty purse. He was evidently a friend of most of the prominent men of letters of his time, and he entered freely into the debauchery of the period. Thus his verse gives a representation of the debased manners of the day in gay society. His style was remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their subjects range from a touching outburst of genuine grief for a brother's death to a fugitive epigram of the most voluptuous triviality. His verses display ease and impetuosity, tumultuous merriment ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... proved a most felicitous question. The lady described material, took her measurements out of her purse, and discussed ruffles and tucks and described location and size of windows, during which talk the young girl was able to throw off the spell that had held ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... the way of the idea, and the latter appears not to have strength enough to clear the passage. Occasionally, a short, sharp sentence comes like a flash of lightning from the cloud of his verbiage, and relieves the twilight of his diction. There are but few felicitous phrases in his manifold volumes. He has hardly any of those happy combinations of words which stick fast to the memory, and do more than pages to express the author's meaning. He has little command of expression. His imagery ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... closer together, voices were lowered, and the discussion became general, each one offering his or her advice. Nothing was said to shock the proprieties. The ladies, in particular, were most expert in felicitous turns of phrase, charming subtleties of speech for expressing the most ticklish things. A foreigner would have understood nothing, the language was so carefully veiled. But as the slight coating of modesty with which every woman of the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... hesitation she started off in the flow of her discourse, which rolled smoothly and uninterruptedly on for nearly two hours. It was very apparent that it was not a cut and dried speech, for she was as fluent and as felicitous in her allusions to circumstances immediately around her as she was when she rose to a more exalted pitch of laudation of the "Union," or of execration of the old slavery system. Her voice was remarkable—as sweet as any woman's voice we ever ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... not altogether dissipated by the coolness of his kinsman, but he judged that any show of anger was unbefitting so felicitous an occasion, so he smiled slightly as he asked: "Who ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... this incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met and confronted by a sea phantom, whilst attempting to double the Cape of Storms, (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which one felicitous blunder did Csar a better service than all the truths which Greece and Rome could have furnished. In our own experience, we once witnessed a blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in his first electioneering contest with the Lowthers, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... principle, the varied and expressive forms yet conserved in his studio at Rome emphatically attest. He had obtained command of the vocabulary of his art; in expressing it, like all men who strive largely, he was unequal. Some of his creations are far more felicitous than others; he sometimes worked too fast, and sometimes undertook what did not greatly inspire him; but when we reflect on the limited period of his artist-life, on the intrepid advancement of its incipient stages under the pressure of narrow means and comparative solitude, on the extraordinary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... you are heartily welcome to it: 'Yet a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.' Laissez nous faire. Moreover, Dr. Grey, if you will courteously lend me your ears, I will favor you with a still more felicitous exposition of my ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... gloomy feelings in Mr. Carleton's mind, Mamma, by your felicitous suggestions. Mr. Carleton, did your ears receive a faint announcement of ham and eggs, which went quite through and through ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and spread it out carefully before her; these epistolary children of hers were tenderly dear to Miss Madigan. Her eye caught a phrase here and there that appeared to be singularly felicitous. This one, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Blumenbach had the merit of being the first, by the scientific application of a more accurate p 273 comparative anatomy, to throw light on the osteological branch of palaeontology — the archaeology of organic life; but the actual geognostic views of the doctrine of fossil remains, the felicitous combination of the zoological character with the order of succession, and the relative ages of strata, are due to the labors of George Cuvier and ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of unusual proportion, artistic workmanship, lyric inspiration; an absence of so much as a trace of morbid feeling, a felicitous and poetic choice of subjects and intuitive good taste raise the writer at once above the ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... are at least as strong in their talons as they are musical in their tongues. And hence the groves of Parnassus have in all ages rung with the screams of wrath and contest, frightfully mingling with the melodies of song. Akenside, by a felicitous conjunction of elements, which you could not have expected from other parts of his character, was entirely exempted from this defect, and not only warmly admired Pope, Young, Thomson, and Dyer, whose "Fleece" he corrected, but had kind words to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... what Burns, the never-to-be-forgotten Scottish poet, says in his Address to the Deil and Tam o' Shanter. In his own felicitous way he brings out the belief the ancient inhabitants had of visible devils, water-kelpies, spunkies, witches, charms, spells, and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... displays much constructive and descriptive power. He is most felicitous in his word pictures of scenery, and imparts a fascinating dash ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... use Mr. Stead's felicitous term) put their hands into our pockets because they know that, virtually, none of us will refuse to take their hands in our own afterwards, in friendly salutation. If notorious rascality entailed social outlawry the only ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... of good and kindness in thy daily life, for the result is a slight pleasurable sense that will seem to warm and delectate thee with felicitous self-laudings; and all that brings thy thoughts to thyself tends to invigorate that central principle by the growth of which thou art to give ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was the solitary occupant of a house built round a small court from which a flight of stone steps admitted to the darkened water. He had a felicitous turn for mechanics, and undertook the building of a raft with commodious rooms on it. Demedes went with him to select a place of anchorage, and afterward planned the structure to fit between four of the pillars in ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... A more felicitous embodiment of modern feeling was achieved by Donatello in "S. George" and "David." The former is a marble statue placed upon the north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... bore the news he had heard with creditable disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had built his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Roman literature. As an orator Cicero had a very happy natural talent. The extreme versatility of his mind, his lively imagination, his great sensitiveness, his inexhaustible richness of expression, which was never at a loss for a word or tone to suit any circumstances or mood, his felicitous memory, his splendid voice and impressive figure, all contributed to render him a powerful speaker. He himself left nothing undone to attain perfection. Not until he had spent a long time in laborious study and preparation did he make his debut as an orator; nor did he ever rest and think himself ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... is the most felicitous of all poets and the exquisite swallow-song in "The Princess" is especially recommended to the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... from a correspondent-besides the deep, quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author-appears to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, having been thoroughly studied, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... paradox and platitude, it is impossible that in its course it should not once and again touch upon some point worth notice, if not exploration. Even that miserable animal the "unattached writer" may gratefully and respectfully recognize his accurate apprehension and his felicitous application of well-nigh the most hackneyed verse in all the range of Shakespeare's—which yet is almost invariably misconstrued and misapplied—"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;" and this, as the poet goes on to explain, is that ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... harmonious reconcilable, conformable; in accordance with, in harmony with, in keeping with, in unison with, &c n.; at one with, of one mind, of a piece [Fr.]; consistent, compatible, proportionate; commensurate; on all fours. apt, apposite, pertinent, pat; to the point, to the purpose; happy, felicitous, germane, ad rem [Lat.], in point, on point, directly on point, bearing upon, applicable, relevant, admissible. fit adapted, in loco, a propos [Fr.], appropriate, seasonable, sortable, suitable, idoneous^, deft; meet &c (expedient) 646. at home, in one's proper element. Adv. a propos ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Mr. Emerson gave his first 'Conversation' in this course, which —— has arranged for him. He will make over fourteen hundred dollars by these readings. There was much new and excellent matter in the discourse to-day, and it was sown, as usual, with felicitous quotations. His introduction was gracefully done. He said he regarded the company around him as a society of friends whom it was a great pleasure to him to meet. He spoke of the value of literature, but also of the superior value ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Crusoe, and will continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer—four of them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous choice of situation. 'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offsprings of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of Defoe. Even an unpractised midwife would swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... at him estimatingly, at the same time wadding up a newspaper clipping from the desk in front of him. This he cast at the slumberer with felicitous accuracy. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... candour. There were monsters who out of sheer, crass good nature did offend; but even they took care to couple with their "remarks" an apologetic laugh, which was intended to convey that the joke, though carried far, was just a joke. The wags—the species was not yet extinct—were especially felicitous. They treated the subject as a very original piece of humour indeed. Their treatment of it gained them an occasional cuff in the ear, and they had to be discriminative in their choice of victims. Everybody was not to be wished "returns ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... stories are "Death," "The Federal Capital," "Paradise," "The Conquest," and "Mirage." Netto's short stories are very popular; at one time every other youth in Brazil was imitating his every mannerism. He is particularly felicitous in his descriptions of tropical nature, which teem with ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys. First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it up again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America. A little way beyond was another great hole, which they had emptied and not yet filled up. This held water, and all summer it stood there, with the near-by soil draining into ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... really notable command of the subtleties of English prosody and diction, combined with just a touch of foreign feeling. The artful employment of imperfect rhymes in "Raymond and Ida" illustrates what I mean. Occasionally, too, Mr. Ghose produces exactly the right phrase by means of a felicitous simplicity. Notice the line which I have ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... well as to learn to think; and this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, and an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual faculties. These are the true prompters of those felicitous expressions which give a tone congruous to the subject, and which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the beauty, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... with sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not felicitous. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not bear trifling. He then ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... only, had the "valuable assistance" of a large choir of snow-birds. The latter were twittering in every tree, while to this goodly accompaniment the sparrows were singing their loud, clear, thrush-like song. The combination was felicitous in the extreme. I would go a long way ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... unworthy of notice.[96] Johannes Mueller, a great Swiss celebrity, writes that the British Constitution occurred to somebody, perhaps to Halifax. This artless statement might not be approved by rigid lawyers as a faithful and felicitous indication of the manner of that mysterious growth of ages, from occult beginnings, that was never profaned by the invading wit of man;[97] but it is less grotesque than it appears. Lord Halifax was the most original writer ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... took Julius Hammer into my confidence, and he thought that I had given expression to the overflowing emotion of two loving young hearts in a very felicitous ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find yourself felicitous, take notes ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is the felicitous term given by Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott to the period of nearly three centuries following the campaign against the inhabitants of Canaan, when the Israelites took possession of their land. The Book of, Judges is a record ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... adaptable that all these parts, built at widely different times, at various and strongly-contrasted stages of the development of this English mediaeval architecture, together make a single building that appears to possess the most felicitous unity of general design and a perfectly wonderful diversity of sectional design, for every part is in complete sympathy with ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... betrays the zeal of an advocate, desirous of leading to a determinate and material conclusion, his address, like that of the apostle of temperance, is mostly mild and equable, with occasionally a little gentlemanly fervour to give animation to his discourse. His style is mostly felicitous, sometimes beautiful, lucid, precise, and elevated. In tone and manner of execution, in quiet steadiness of purpose, in the firm, intrepid spirit with which truth, or that which is conceived to be true, is followed, regardless of startling ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... talkers owe the same debt to writers of prose that these, for their part, owe to poets, it is the poets who must be accounted chief protectors, in the last resort, of our common inheritance. Every page of the works of that great exemplar of diction, Milton, is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible word. Sometimes he accepts the secondary and more usual meaning of a word only to enrich it by the interweaving of the primary and etymological meaning. Thus the seraph Abdiel, in the passage that ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... merely oral tradition, and few have exercised so wide and mighty an influence. The profound, many-sided and intimate knowledge of human nature which it evinces, its vast variety of incident, its wealth of tears and laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt for every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured periods, its sustained energy and animation of style must ever ensure for ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... account of his writings. After the death of Cardinal Beatoun he wrote the tragedy of 'The Cardinal,' a poem in which the spectre of the Cardinal is the spokesman, and which teems with good advice to all and sundry. The execution, however, is not so felicitous as the plan. In 1548 Lyndsay went to Denmark to negotiate a free trade with Scotland. On his return in 1550 he wrote his very pleasing and chivalric 'History of Squire Meldrum,' founded on the actual adventures of William ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a home, and now he was rudely flung adrift. It was true that the man was largely responsible for the troubles that had fallen upon him, but this was no reason for refusing him pity, and Cyril had his strong points. He had staunchly declined to profit by a felicitous change of fortune out of consideration for the relatives who had once disowned and the woman who had deserted him. Jernyngham had been a careless fool, and Prescott suspected that he was not likely to alter much in this respect, but he did not expect others to pay for his ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... the auxiliary part, and assistance of foreign princes and states, than by invasion of any; till common policy advised it, for a safer way, to strike first abroad, than at home to expect the war, in all which she was ever felicitous and victorious. ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and inquired if he had just come de l'autre cote, meaning the other side of the Atlantic, according to a common New-York idiom; but the Vicomte not unnaturally took it to mean from the other side of the road, and gave a corresponding answer in English as felicitous as Mr. Simpson's French. Then he digressed upon Ashburner, whom he saw to be an Englishman, in so pointed a manner, that Benson was obliged to introduce them; and the introduction was followed by an invitation on Simpson's part to the company to take a drink, which they did, somewhat to the consternation ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... a Latin poem into English. My readers, however, will no doubt remember that this epigram was also translated into English by Pope. Though the modern poet's version is to be preferred, the older translation contains one of the most felicitous lines ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... beg to compliment him on the motto in his title-page; it is felicitous. A motto should contain, as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Middle-Age history of Italy an interest of which it is not undeserving in itself, full as it is of curious exhibitions of character and contrivance, but to which politically it cannot lay claim, amid the social phenomena, so far grander in scale and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of other western nations. It is remarkable for keeping up an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... love of the country is sincere; his perception of natural phenomena exquisite; his shepherds and shepherdesses real swains and lasses; he has happily varied the conventional form of the pastoral by a felicitous lyrical treatment. Paradoxical as it may appear, Drayton was partly enabled to approach Theocritus so nearly by knowing him so imperfectly. Had he been acquainted with him otherwise than through Virgil, he would probably have been unable to refrain ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... shining garments. His transfiguration is at an end. Every action, almost every moment of his retirement, accurately chronicled by those who shared his solitude, have been placed before our eyes, in the most felicitous manner, by able and brilliant writers. The Emperor, shorn of the philosophical robe in which he had been conventionally arrayed for three centuries, shivers now in the cold ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 'strong' poetry; that seems to me to be generally the coarsest kind of romanticism— melodrama in fact. I want to have in poetry what we are getting in fiction—the best sort of realism. Realism is now abjuring the heroic theory; it has thrown over the old conventions, the felicitous coincidences, life arranged on ideal lines; and it has gone straight to life itself, strong, full-blooded, eager life, full of mistakes and blunders and failures and sharp disasters and fears. Life goes shambling along like a big dog, but it has got its nose on the scent of something. It is ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson |
