"Heaven-sent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extreme western border. There are in that section communities composed almost entirely of men who not only treat the few of the other sex who live among them, with a chivalrous respect, but who listen to their words as if they were heaven-sent messages. In one of the mining settlements of California, during the early years of that State, an epidemic fever broke out, and raged with great malignity among the miners. The settlement was more than two ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... creatures whose blood he suspects of being something deeper than red, who really look as if they were made from the earth and were going back to it, and who have nothing of that translucent pallor suggestive of heaven-sent and heaven-destined attributes. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... 1888 I made an effort to arouse the sportsmen whom I met to the necessity of a reform, but my exhortations fell on deaf ears. Naturally, the sweeping away of the remaining ducks by disease would suggest a heaven-sent judgment upon the slaughterers were it not for the fact that the last state of the unfortunate ducks is if anything ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... new-born within you, reechoed and fondly shared? Did he not bear away, for days and nights, the brightness of your smile, the bend of your angelic head, and the trip of the tiny boots? And when the Heaven-sent moment came for the tongue to tell what the heart had so long cherished in silence, was there not a partner before you who dealt out words which filled your soul with rapture, and helped you to win the dearest prize that earth affords,—a mutual love? And look farther on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... "Rather rough on Providence, Barker boy," said Stacy, "handing back the Heaven-sent gift so soon! Besides, what's to keep any prospector from coming along and making a strike of it? You know that's mining law—if you haven't preempted ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... first person who took possession of it had adapted to his own purposes: the largest with the natural chimney for the kitchen, the highest, as a dove-cote, the others for summer and winter storehouses. He had settled on the heaven-sent rock, and, like the wild birds, built ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... knew the gods were not so cruel. Oh man of my need," she cried, stretching out her arms to him, "oh heaven-sent, I see you only as a dark outline against the light of your room. But I know you. Your name is Noaks, isn't it? Dobson is mine. I am your Warden's grand-daughter. I am faint and foot-sore. I have ranged this desert city in search of—of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... his mind that Frank did not care tuppence whether the agent accepted the terms or not, but that he had taken this as a Heaven-sent opportunity ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... money to his tainted fortune. You can imagine the pins and needles he'd been on for a week, scared I'd get the tip and knowing if he even mentioned them runts at any price whatever that I'd be wise at once. That joke of the boys must of seemed heaven-sent to him. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Europe, rough-ridden by every species of delirium, except happily the murderous for most part, was a weltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine, at the Hotel-de-Ville; a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman, whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest and heaven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to be properly "the first stump-orator in the world, standing too on the highest stump,—for the time." A sorrowful spectacle to men of reflection, during the time he lasted, that ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... City of my Discontent, Down from the sky, up from the smoking deep Wild legends new and old burn round my bed While trees and grass and men are wrapped in sleep. Angels come down, with Christmas in their hearts, Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent; And, for a day, fair Peace have given me In this, the ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... falling above their defenders into mounds of graves: no remnants are here of chapel-altar, or temple porch, left shattered or silent by the power of some purer worship: no vestiges are here of sacred hearth and sweet homestead, left lonely through vicissitudes of fate, and heaven-sent sorrow. Nothing is here but the vain apparelings of pride sunk into dishonor, and vain appanages of delight now no more delightsome. The hill-waters, that once flowed and plashed in the garden fountains, now trickle sadly through the weeds that ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... "dear child, you are as full of surprises as this glorious day and the Hills. You've brought me a new sensation, a heaven-sent inspiration. What a partner you are! ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... book may seem to be merely a catalogue of "Don'ts", the gist of which is, "Don't write"; but that is to misread me. Short story writing is not easy, and I cannot make it so, even if I would; but it is far from my purpose to discourage any person who feels the Heaven-sent call to write, and who has the will and ability to respond to it. But that call is but a summons to labor—and to labor the severest and most persistent. To one who comes to it but half-heartedly, illy prepared, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... of innocence for vice has its complement in the approval with which unblemished reputations are regarded by those who have them not. Also, there was an unspoken tradition among her husband's people, as in many families, that while born Kildares, male or female, might exercise their Heaven-sent prerogative of behaving as they chose, it was for their mates to maintain the balance of discretion. Poor ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Egyptian force was annihilated. Some of the local irregulars escaped, but of the regular troops and their commanders not one. This decisive victory not merely confirmed the reputation of the Mahdi, and made most people in the Soudan believe that he was really a heaven-sent champion, but it also exposed the inferiority of the Government troops ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... toward her second-floor lodger were resolved into an abiding faith and high esteem. It was upon this auspicious day that the conviction took firm root in her mind that the Count Siccatif de Courtray was the heaven-sent ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... came the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a chain of hills seemed a series of heaven-sent earthworks. Every point in a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing upon these ramparts to-day, identical in general configuration in spite of the intervening centuries, one may imagine one's self ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of enthusiasm I complain of," he replied. "Instead of accepting it as the one heaven-sent remedy, people will use any other puffed and advertised stuff. Chemists are even lukewarm. A grain of mustard seed of faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year. Not that I want to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... do better. I hope and believe that it will know among its members no distinction of persons, creed, or party, but that it will conserve its place of assemblage as a high, pure ground, on which all such considerations shall merge into the one universal, heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be wiser and better. I hope and believe that it will always be expansive and elastic; for ever seeking to devise new means of enlarging the circle of its members, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... It's quite rusty in the joints. But never mind it! Tell me why you have come so early?' This seemed to Harold to be a heaven-sent opening; he rushed ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... pack up portably for use—together at the same time—appliances for health and recipes for strength, exercises for war, and pains to promote your wealth! My admiration is raised at every point. That you do study each of these pursuits in the right way, you are yourself a standing proof. Your look of heaven-sent health and general robustness we note with our eyes, while our ears have heard your reputation as a first-rate horseman ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... as heaven-sent aids, to help you more easily over, it may be, a wearying and dreary path. They are most probably sent in answer to prayer—in answer to the prayers of your own heart, or to those of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... of her fever, she continued for weeks to be unconscious of her surroundings, and the busy, stolid family, who cared for her, did not think it their business to seek out her friends. They simply accepted the duty of caring for her as Heaven-sent, and left the rest to ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... the unselfish mother-heart, willing to be bereft of even the Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may she find not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upon a wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to compose himself to sleep, but the more effort he made the broader awake he became. Sometimes it seems as if such unaccountable deviations from our ordinary habits were Heaven-sent. As Herbert lay awake he suddenly became aware of a conversation which was being carried on, in low tones, in the next room. The first voice he heard, he recognized ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... substitutes for a developed phonetic system seem to us, they were of great value to the uncultivated man. In his legends their introduction is usually ascribed to some heaven-sent benefactor, the antique characters were jealously adhered to, and the pictured scroll of bark, the quipu ball, the belt of wampum, were treasured with provident care, and their import minutely expounded to the most intelligent of the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the exalted pitch of lyrical enthusiasm. Horace only falls into the prevailing strain, and is not compromising himself by servile flattery, as some have thought, when he speaks in this Ode of Augustus as "from gods benign descended," and in others as "the heaven-sent son of Maia" (I. 2), or as reclining among the gods and quaffing nectar "with lip of deathless bloom" (III. 3). In lyrical poetry all this was quite in place. But when the poet contracts his wings, and ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... what I am told my knowledge is. But my well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing me with natural first-hand knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent compensations all that I have won and discovered with my good right hand. And with my left hand too; for with that I read, and it is as true and honourable as the other. By what half-development of human power has the left hand been neglected? ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... we should have been in Albany ere this. In these wild times, Annie, every chance-blown straw that points at evil, is likely to prove a faithful index; and if it serve to nerve the heart for it, we may call it heaven-sent indeed. Annie,—hear me calmly, my child,—the enemy, so at least goes the rumor, are nearer than we counted on this ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... of the men, who want to get through," smiled Dave, "Saturday evening is a heaven-sent chance to do a little more studying against a blue next week. As for Danny boy, I imagine he must have carried his grin up to Wilson's room. Or, maybe, to Jetson's. Danny has plenty of harbors where he's welcome to ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... heaven-sent method of avoiding the difficulty, and he had just got the envelope which had held Barbara's letter out of his pocket, intending to follow Jolland's example, when the Doctor's voice made him start guiltily and replace the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... it evidently in the light of ready assent, and in the twinkling of an eye he possessed himself of my portmanteau and other belongings, motioned me to follow him, which I did, and then found that my Heaven-sent friend had a ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... for a time the bestial coarseness which had grown on them during a life of bloodshed and rapine; they felt that they must go forth in a new spirit to a new career, and acknowledged the beauty of the holiness in which the heaven-sent Maid was leading ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... reader to suppose that I consider Lord Leverhulme a heaven-sent genius of statesmanship. The British constitution is twelve men in a box, and the very spirit of that arrangement is distrust of the expert. Moreover, there is wisdom in the Eastern legend which says that in making genius ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... heaven-sent bit of wreckage, exhausted and weary, until the light began to break in the east. I was numbed and shivering with cold—but I was alive and safe. That square yard of good and solid wood was as much to me as if it had been a floating island. And as the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... "But, my dear, heaven-sent friend, I no more want to go to Montpellier than you do!" he cried. "Montpellier is the last place on earth I desire to visit. You want to go to Nimes, and so do I. To the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... thereafter and had to have six stitches taken in his head besides. Oddly enough, the only place from which a brick was found to be missing was in the walk leading to the stables, and Butts, being a thrifty soul, filled up the vacant spot with the heaven-sent substitute, having found on investigation that it fitted the vacuum perfectly. It was Melissa who kept Watson from taking out a warrant for young Master Frederick. She spoke very sharply to the damaged footman ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... be an oak. Oak-groves, indeed, they choose for their own sake, neither do they celebrate any sacred rite without oak-leaves, so that they appear to be called Druids from the Greek word for this tree. Whatsoever mistletoe, then, groweth on such a tree they hold it for a heaven-sent sign, and count that tree as chosen by their God himself. Yet but very rarely is it so found, and, when found, is sought with no small observance; above all on the sixth day of the moon (which to this folk ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... rising has been brewing for some time. The tribesmen need a lesson, so does the Government. It is just a bubble—this. It will explode to-night. To be honest for once"—Carlyon smiled a little over his bandaging—"I did not expect this attack so soon. A Heaven-sent messenger has been among the tribesmen. They revere him almost as much as the great prophet himself. He has ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and fevers, we are in no condition to drive out the savages who have doubtless ere this entered into full possession of Fort Caroline. If we did regain the fort, what could we do save remain there until this heaven-sent store of provisions should be exhausted? and then would we not be in as sad a plight as before? No, your Excellency, let us return to our own land while we may, and not linger here longer in the hope of succor which seems ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... mirth and all his wanton raillery, he stood up with his face a-shine, and spake as if he were the heaven-sent messenger of hope. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... dishonourable act. Also, Aegisthus would have had the right to ask his name.—The unsuspiciousness of Aegisthus is partly natural; it was not thus, alone and unarmed, that he expected Orestes to stand before him. Partly it seems like a heaven-sent blindness. Even the omens do not warn him, though no doubt in a moment more they ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... were like that, Dick knew. A child could build anew their world for them and make it radiant with a heaven-sent wonder. He had never thought of Mabel as a mother. He had been almost afraid to meet her after two years away—her letters had given him no clue to her feelings; but then she rarely wrote of herself and she had never been the sort of person to complain. So he had come down to Sevenoaks ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... pantomimed the supposed deference of the butler. Then, loftily, "But, 'Shoo' says I. 'An optical delusion, my excellent Wick. A Christian man would be incapable of such a villainy. The billiard-room, that darksome cavern, on a heaven-sent day like this? Shucks,' says I. Yet"—his attitude became exhortative—"see how mighty is truth, see how she prevails, see how the scoffer is confounded. To the billiard-room I transport myself, sceptically, on the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... looked around for some means of flattening it, there flashed in upon him another idea—a perfectly heaven-sent idea, grisly under ordinary circumstances, as it might be. The bracelet was large and massive, and for it a new use suggested itself. Critically examining the skeletons, he selected two with the largest and strongest leg-bones. These he soon wrenched off, and, running one through the gold ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... would love thee alone for thy sake In bonds which adversity never could break. Should'st thou find such a treasure—then unlock thy heart, And place the bright gem in its innermost part; Watch over it tenderly—love it with pride; And gratefully crown it thy heaven-sent bride. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... hungry soil, gives drink unto the thirsting corn, and clothes the nakedness of nature. It is the ghost of unshed showers—atomized dew, precipitated in life-bestowing avalanches upon a dewless and parched shore; it is the good angel that stands between a careless people and contagion; it is heaven-sent nourishment. It makes strong the weak; makes wise the foolish—you don't go out a second time in midsummer without your wraps—and it is altogether the freshest, purest, sweetest, most picturesque, and most precious element in the physical geography of the Pacific Slope. It is worth more ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... head, that caused it to timidly wane and fall away from the porch, only however to reappear and wax larger a few minutes later at one of the side windows. The infant class hailing his appearance as a heaven-sent boon, the master was obliged to walk to the door and command him sternly away, when, retreating to the fence, he mounted the uppermost rail, and drawing a knife from his pocket, cut a long splinter from the rail, and began to whittle it in patient ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... time on shore was occupied in visiting persons suffering from ague, and in prescribing for them. What a blessing, indeed, can a clever medical man prove in such regions! He is like a heaven-sent messenger carrying relief to the sick ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... gentle winged choristers, and at another read "The Practice of Piety." {67a} For all that, my previous visions would not from my mind, but time after time broke in upon every other thought. They continued to trouble me until after careful reasoning I concluded that every vision is a heaven-sent warning against sin, and that therefore it was my duty to write them down as a warning to others also. And whilst occupied with this work, and sadly endeavouring to recall some of those awful memories, there fell upon me at my task such ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... tattered lad selling matches in the street, and you think there is nothing between him and the bleakness of immensity, between him and utter abasement, but a few tattered rags and a feeble musculature. And all unseen by you a host of heaven-sent fatuities swathes him about, even, maybe, as they swathe you about. Many men have never seen their own profiles or the backs of their heads, and for the back of your own mind no mirror has been invented. They ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... follow the advice of his uncle and marry. He was too fond of old slippers and tobacco. The cooking, too, under Mrs. Handyside's management was excellent, and she seemed, too, to have a heaven-sent faculty in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... So like unto the shaken reed? Of such poor clay? Such puny strength? That e'en throughout the breadth and length Of purer vision's stern domain We bend to serve and serve in vain? To some, indeed, strange power is lent To stand content. Love, heaven-sent, (For things or high or pure or rare) Shows likest God, makes Life less bare. And, ever and anon there stray In faint far-reaching virelay The songs of angels, Heav'nward-found, Of little ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Collins's tunnel, where just a knife-edge of the cave firelight cut over the boulder's top. "Keep still, Paulette—and for any sake don't move and kick Collins's devilish explosive he's got stuck in here somewhere," I said, exactly as if I were steady. Which I was not, because it was my unlooked for, heaven-sent chance to get square with Macartney. I sprang around the boulder to do it and saw Collins strike up the barrel of Marcia's rifle in Dunn's ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... been borne in upon me, Jervis," said he, "that you are the most companionable fellow in the world. You have the heaven-sent gift ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... came that she realized the completeness of the change. On 1 May she would have thanked Eddy politely for his trouble, adding, however, that she would really prefer not to meet poor Joe again. On 16 May she welcomed him as something Heaven-sent. The fact that she was to be employed outweighed a thousand-fold the fact that her ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... right glorious thing and set of things, this that Shakespeare has brought us? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?—And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the 'Prophet of God': and was he not greater ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... instantly recognised a critical moment of Madge's life, the moment when she found herself suddenly deprived of all resource but a friendly hospitality which she was too proud to make long use of, as a heaven-sent occasion for his ends. At another time, he would not have thought of making Madge his partner in an enterprise like the Irishman's—he feared her too much, and was too sensible of her dislike ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... such a heaven-sent relief to be able to leave something to somebody else, and be sure it will be carried out! With all due respect to the age and experience of the staff I found here, they are not very open to new ideas. As the John Grier Home was planned by its noble founder in 1875, so shall ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... transport riders from the northern frontier, lean, bearded, sun-dried, framed of steel and whipcord, sitting their horses like the riders of the Elgin marbles, swift and cunning as Boers, and far braver, they are the heaven-sent type of irregular troopers. It was they who had ridden out and made connection with the returning column ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... with the loss of their navies and armies, and they showed no bitterness against those that had turned them out, one speaking of the error of his Prime Minister by which he had lost his throne as "poor old Friedrich's Heaven-sent gift of tactlessness." ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... the most valiant men of war were moved by the confident outbursts of her patriotic courage; and the people everywhere welcomed her with faith and enthusiasm. Joan had as yet only just appeared, and already she was the heaven-sent interpretress of the nation's feeling, the hope of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... no reply to that. Indeed, she did not wait for a reply. Outside, things were happening—and, since Miss Georgie was dying of dullness, she hailed the disturbance as a Heaven-sent blessing, and ran to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... in utter despair, a gleam of unexpected help relieved them, even as the string breaks most easily when it is stretched tightest. For suddenly the weary men saw the twinkle of a fire at no great distance, and conceived a hope of prolonging their lives. Thorkill thought this fire a heaven-sent relief, and resolved to go ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... ashore. In the absence of rain the water ran clear as gin, and the marks made by the feet of Adelaide Melhuish's murderer were still perceptible. If only those misshapen blotches could reveal their secret! If only some Heaven-sent ray of intuition would enable him to put the police on the track of the criminal! Theoretically, a novelist and essayist should be a first-rate detective, yet, brought face to face with an actual felony, here was one who perforce remained ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... said Bud, accepting the commission as if it were Heaven-sent, and thereafter walked behind the two with his head in the clouds. He felt that he understood this great hero of the plains and was one with him at heart. There could be no higher honor than to be the servitor of ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... at that moment was something under three shillings. A gift of fifty pounds, therefore, which after all was not a gift but only the just return of my own money, was more than opportune—it was Heaven-sent. If I could have given way to my feelings I should have sprung up and wrung the little man's hands. As it was, however, I expect my face betrayed my joy. "Your Grace is exceedingly kind," I told him. "The money will be invaluable to ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... upon the face of the younger man, the light of a heaven-sent inspiration. He looked into his friend's face, and told ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... could not divine. She accepted her position, none the less, doubted nothing but that the secret hidden in these matters would some day be explained, and, according to her custom before the approach of all mundane events and circumstances affecting herself, viewed the present trial as heaven-sent to purify and strengthen. So your religious egotists are ever wont to read into the great waves of chance, as here and there a ripple from them sets their own little vessels shaking, as here and there some splash of foam, a puff of wind, strikes the nutshell which floats their lives, a personal, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... mother instinct, supreme in its selflessness, gave her the strength to continue: "We must not think of ourselves. Real love is heaven-sent. It is ours neither to give nor ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... play of Goldsmith's, and a trifle or so of George Colman—all recognised and all tolerated because of their old prescriptive respectability. But for a new author to aim at being literary's rather presumptuous; now tell me yourself, isn't it? Seems as if he was setting himself up for a heaven-sent genius, and trying to sit upon the older dramatists of the present generation. Melodrama, sensation, burlesque—that's all right enough—perfectly legitimate; but a real literary comic opera, with good words and good ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... The mocking light died out in his eyes, and he at once became intensely interested in my heaven-sent project. For fifteen or twenty minutes we discussed the dilapidated frescoes and he gave me the soundest sort of advice, based on a knowledge and experience that surprised me more than a little. He was thoroughly up in matters of art. His own chateau near Buda ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... succeeds. But a revulsion comes,—and then brass has to make a break-neck descent to reach its proper level below gold. There are others whom indolence deludes by some trash about "fits" of inspiration, for whose Heaven-sent spasms they are humbly to wait. There is, it seems, a lucky thought somewhere in the abyss of possibility, which is somehow, at some time, to step out of essence into substance, and take up its abode in their capacious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in "Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his Cathedral, new-crowned, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... name is 'Love,' that, amidst all the mutabilities and disillusions of our life, the pure love of a man and woman alone stands firm and beautiful, alone defies change and disappointment; that it is the heaven-sent salve for all our troubles, the remedy for our mistakes, the magic glass reflecting only what is true and good. But in the end her facts overcame his theories, and he might have spared himself the trouble of telling. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... deeply shocked. Of her own proud, half-disdainful consent to make possible the hackneyed compromising situation by marrying the rascal, and then—of his disappearance from the train. It was so terrible to her, such a Heaven-sent relief to me, in spite of my rage against Sullivan, that I laughed aloud. At which she looked ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Death, is He the food of the world; and we have not only to 'eat His flesh,' but to 'drink His blood,' if we would live. Nor can we lose sight of the symbol of His servants' task. They are the distributors of the heaven-sent bread. If they will but take their poor stores to Jesus, with the acknowledgment of their insufficiency, He will turn them into inexhaustible supplies, and they will find that 'there is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.' What Christ ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Heaven-sent bit of wood, he kept his face above the water while his spent strength was ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... up to her and kissed her. "You're a romantic little thing. That's because you probably married a heaven-sent man. We can't ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... light figure of the girl within his arms and hurried away. Aye, Effingston, heaven-sent was the sorrow which drove thee forth to seek solace from the night and stars; but, come, ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... number of narrow streets and out into some clear country. I chose a fine open bit of green turf as a goodly place for us to meet, and I warped Paddy through the gate and moved to the middle of the field. I drew my sword and saluted, and then turned away. I had told Paddy everything which a heaven-sent sense of instruction could suggest, and if he failed I could do no ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... very good thing for some of us. For without that Heaven-sent capacity the world could not ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... tried to respond with cheerfulness to the new affections that greeted her on every side; to fill each day with those duties, that by the alchemy of a pious nature are so often transmuted into pleasures. She was already beginning to learn the blessed and heaven-sent truth, that no life ought to be wrecked for the love of one human being, and that no sinless sorrow ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... conceived the present to be a heaven-sent opportunity to enlighten her concerning Joe's character, since the Pikes appeared to have been derelict in the performance of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Mexicans at work on the project; one and all they had held off. Likewise they refused to sell him grain and hay, which necessitated the hauling of feed from a distance. But now this accident to the boy might prove a heaven-sent chance to ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... another's gloom has brightened, Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came; If hand of mine another's task has lightened, It felt the guidance that it ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... assembly sat; and the Maid—all alone in her innocence, her purity, her sweetness, and gentle reverence—stood before them, day after day, to answer subtle questions, face a casuistry which sought to entrap her into contradiction or confusion, or to wring from her a confession that she was no heaven-sent messenger, but was led away by her ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her fill, Where'er she passed still noting everything, Then in the gardens heard the new birds sing And watched the red fish in the fountains play, And at the very faintest time of day Upon the grass lay sleeping for a while Midst heaven-sent dreams of bliss that made her smile; And when she woke the shades were lengthening, So to the place where she had heard them sing She came again, and through a little door Entered a chamber with a marble floor, Open a-top unto the outer air, Beneath which lay a bath of ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... battle grow keen. Heaven-sent winds Haunt alley and lane. Singing of life In town-meadows green After the ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... from the north and laying a course to weather the Head if possible before the weather broke. It was Mary's claim that Andrew had pointed it out to her and spoken of it—in a strange way, a kind of a wistful way, she said. And later that night, what better for a man on the way to exile than a heaven-sent, outbound India ship, hove to under the lee of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bare ten minutes to give me a parting visit. I also thank him for remembering me as he had promised. Shortly after he had gone the gaoler came to my cell with a sack of fresh straw to serve as a mattress. The young officer had paid him to extend me this slight privilege. To me it was like a Heaven-sent blessing, because it enabled me to seek a little repose without subjecting my ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... brow. "Piang is of our own blood, and we, one and all, wish him to be our charm boy, but there shall be no injustice done. Born under the same star, within the same hour, it is not for me to decide whether you or Piang is the Heaven-sent." Turning to the pandita, Kali whispered something. The old man nodded and ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... constitutional rights, not by orderly process of law or the ballot, but by the fearful arbitrament of the sword. And even as the thunderbolt fell and the Union trembled, came also unheralded one gaunt, heroic, heaven-sent man to lead the nation in its ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... kind, seemed at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as it really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and to silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician, who was heaven-sent in time of need, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... angrily resented, not knowing that their amiability was in part inspired by sympathy, Gwynne having told them the story of his cousin's tragic experience; although they did in truth regard him as a possibly heaven-sent solution of a problem that was causing them all, even ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... mountains, from the borders of Mayo, to sell the filly to the hotel-keeper for posting, and were primed to the lips with the tale of her hackney lineage. The hotel-keeper had unconditionally refused to trade, and here, when a heaven-sent alternative was delivered into their hands, they found themselves hampered by the coils of a cast-off lie. No shade, however, of hesitancy appeared on the open countenance of the friend. He approached Miss Fitzroy with a mincing step, a deprecating wave ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the churchyard sleep, while the father and mother sat at home, trying to supply by gin that very vital energy which fresh air and pure water, and the balmy breath of woods and heaths, were made by God to give; and how the little geranium did its best, like a heaven-sent angel, to right the wrong which man's ignorance had begotten, and drank in, day by day, the poisoned atmosphere, and formed it into fair green leaves, and breathed into the children's faces from every pore, whenever they bent over it, the life-giving oxygen ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... a cataclysm such as it would be blasphemy to predict could change the divinely established order whereby the territorial lord took tithes from his peasantry and pastured his game on their crops. The hierarchy which rested on the bowed back of the toiling serf and culminated in the figure of the heaven-sent King seemed to him as immutable as the everlasting hills. The men of his generation had not learned that it was built on a human foundation and that a sudden movement of the underlying mass might shake the structure to its pinnacle. The Marquess, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... verse we read the first: "And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin." Not what I have done, but what HE has done. Has He failed in His mission? Is He not able to do what He came for? Did ever any heaven-sent man fail yet? and could God's own Son fail? He was manifested to take ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... impression, thank heaven, cannot in the nature of things endure. She will meet some one worthy of her—with you, Tanty, kindest of hearts, I can safely trust her future. But that she should suffer now, and through me, that bright creature who flitted in upon my dark life, like some heaven-sent messenger—these are evil tidings. Tanty, you must take her away, you must distract her mind, you must tell her what a poor broken-down being I am, how little worthy of her sweet thoughts, and she will learn, soon learn, to forget me, to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... brim with rich and fragrant oil, Or torches dry this heaven-sent fire we feed; Or make us rushlights from the flowering reed And wax, whereon the bees have ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... which they were travelling now narrowed rapidly, and soon they were deep in the looming shadow of the pass, which seemed to end blindly farther on. But for the present it was a Heaven-sent refuge. At one point, where it widened somewhat, the horses and mules could stand, and there was even a little grass for them. A rill of water from the high rocks was a protection against what they had to fear most of all, thirst, and the three human beings ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... expect? You know what boys are. Naturally they take advantage of what to them is a heaven-sent opportunity," said little Hartopp. "What is the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... of these Heaven-sent inspirers, Tolstoy is the latest. But do not believe that in saying that he is Heaven-sent I attempt to explain aught. The highest is ever inexplicable, and it is the bane of modern science that it is ever ready to explain what cannot be explained. Before the highest we can only stand ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... about one foot in one bound in one-fortieth of a second, and he let rip one squeal in the process that sent away every other rat into the nearest available hole as if it had been fired there from a spring. Then the lady hedgehog took the Heaven-sent opportunity to complete her rolling-up completely, and Prickles took his own created opportunity to roll up almost more completely, and—well, they were rolled up into two balls, you see, and there is nothing more ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... sesterces L40,000), he was most anxious that his mother should marry an honest man who might reasonably be expected to treat his step-sons fairly. At this point, in the very nick of time, Apuleius was detained at Oea. Pontianus saw in him a heaven-sent step-father, and it was with this in his mind that he called upon Apuleius. He did not declare his intentions at once. He contented himself at first with dissuading Apuleius from pursuing his journey homeward till the next winter came ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... of the popular leader Moses, and the jealousy of the secular grandees is now directed against the class of hereditary priests, instead of against the extraordinary influence on the community of a heaven-sent hero. All these changes are the natural outcome of the importation of the hierocracy into Mosaic times. From the second version we can go further and understand the origin of the third. In the earlier version the princes of the tribe of Reuben were forced to give way to a prince of the tribe of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... year our Politics found a fresh vent through the establishment of The Harrovian. I had dabbled in composition ever since I was ten, and had printed both prose and verse before I entered Harrow School. So here was a heaven-sent contributor, and one morning, in the autumn of 1869, as I was coming out of First School, one[9] of the Editors overtook me ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... admiring gaze left no doubt as to the heaven-sent leader who was in his mind, and he had the satisfaction of detecting a gleam of eagerness in ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... with flowers and verdure crown'd, Where, in fond musings, or with music sweet, To earth a heaven-sent spirit takes her seat! She who from all the world has honour found. Forsaking me, to her my fond heart bound —Divorce for aye were welcome as discreet— Notes where the turf is mark'd by her fair feet, Or from these eyes for her in sorrow drown'd, Then inly ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... met the "heaven-sent, life-sustaining sea-breeze;" and now the broad and well-marked Wady Makn, with its rosy-pink sands, narrowed to a gut, flanked and choked on both sides, north and south, by rocks of the strangest tricolour, green-black, yellow-white, and rusty-red. The gloomy ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... human and makes a slip, a clerical error, now and again sufficient to expose his flank. And then the humble fighting-man can draw his drop of blood if he is quick about it. To this same long-suffering Jimmy was vouchsafed the heaven-sent opportunity, and he leapt at it. He got a chit from H.Q., dated 6/7/17, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... after Arnold left her. It was not for some time, at all events, that she arrived at the consideration—the process was naturally downward—that the soul of the marvel lay in the exact moment of its happening. Nothing could have been more heaven-sent than her precious perception, exactly then, that before the shining gift of Arnold's spiritual sympathy, all her desire for a lesser thing from him must creep away abashed for ever. Even when the lesser thing, by infinitely gradual expansion, again became the greater, it remained permanently ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... So fiercely beautiful in form and eye, Like war's wild planet in a summer sky; That youth to-day,—a proselyte, worth hordes Of cooler spirits and less practised swords,— Is come to join, all bravery and belief, The creed and standard of the heaven-sent Chief. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Quisante had followed Morewood's example and taken no notice of it. He stopped, turned to her with exaggerated deference, and greeted her obvious little carrying out of the metaphor as though it were a heaven-sent light. Somehow in doing this he seemed to fall all in an instant from lofty heights to depths almost beyond eyesight. While he complimented her elaborately, Morewood turned away in open impatience. Another topic was started, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... because they are not engaged in the struggle for life, are more capable of this aesthetic self-forgetfulness than they will afterwards be; and they need all of it that they can get, so that they may remember it and prize it in later years. In these heaven-sent moments they know what disinterestedness is. They have a test by which they can value all future experience and know the dullness and staleness of worldly success. Therefore it is a sin to check, more than need be, their ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... she frowned to herself for at last the world had come between them. For a week he had been idle, a heaven-sent companion in the barren loneliness of life; but now, when his powder and mining supplies arrived, he would become the old hard-working miner. He would go into his dark tunnel before the sun was up and not come out till it was low in the west, and instead of being clean ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... dazed for a moment, struck dumb by the grotesque horror of what she had heard. Then the light of Heaven-sent faith flashed through her and the courage of human love warmed her. She sprang to her father, sobbing, almost laughing in the joy of triumph. She flung herself across his knees and put her arms ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... things to see. Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven-sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... clump of green was what at first sight appeared to be a newly-opened grave, but was in reality a freshly-dug excavation; a heap of soil and stone, just flung out, lay by it; on this some hand had flung down a mattock; near it rested a pick. And suddenly, as by a heaven-sent inspiration, I saw things. We had stumbled on the graveyard which Salter Quick had wished to find; de Knaythville and Netherfield were identical terms which had got mixed up in his uneducated mind; here the missing treasure was buried, and we had walked into this utterly ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... into Hazel's mind that here was a Heaven-sent opportunity to reach the cabin without facing that hundred miles in the company of chance-hired strangers. But she did not broach the subject at once. Instead, she asked eagerly of Bill. Lauer told her that ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and caught his trout. But even this triumph did not remove a vague sense of disappointment which had come over him. He had often pictured to himself a Heaven-sent meeting with her in the woods, a walk with her, alone, where he could pick her the rarest flowers and herbs and show her his woodland friends; and it had only ended in this, and an exhibition of William Henry! He ought to have saved HER from something, and not her husband. Yet he had no ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... keep them separate. If so, poorly as her family could afford to suffer their part of the loss of the avails of the fall's work, she would cheerfully bear it, and even look upon the event in the light of a Heaven-sent mercy. But even of this poor comfort she was destined soon to be deprived. After the trial, Mark Elwood—who, however bravely he bore himself at first, on that occasion, was finally seen to quail under the terrible glances of Gaut—soon became strangely silent respecting the prosecution ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... district would be visited by a hailstorm. Sometimes she roamed about for weeks, nobody knew where, nobody knew why, and during all that time the hosts of grasshoppers, wood-lice, spiders, caterpillars, and other Heaven-sent plagues, multiplied terribly throughout the land; but the moment the old woman returned they all disappeared again in a day without ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... once taking his eyes from the Heaven-sent creature, mounted his war-steed, and sounded the bugle which hung at his girdle; and the great army, confiding in the wisdom of their leader, began to move. The white stag went first, steadily following ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... he said. "Got no senses yet! They little know they've been insulting their heaven-sent king and master. I see I must bring them to reason. Let me ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... about it, but accepted the idea as a heaven-sent inspiration which it was her duty to follow. She put on a shawl as if she were only going to take a walk in the moonlight and descended into the park accompanied by the gardener's daughter whom she had bribed to help her ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai |
