"Unpropitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cold and chilly, with a grey biting east wind, making the whole scene appear as if it were looked at through ground glass; and neither the porter nor the porter's wife had thought it expedient to venture forth from their snug bed at such an unpropitious moment. A second time Wilton applied his hand to the bell, and with more success than before, for in stays and petticoat, unlaced and half tied, forth rushed the grumbling porter's wife, with a murmured "Marry come up: people are in great haste: I wonder ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... had known anything of women (at Isabel's age) he would never have appealed to her mercy in those plain terms, and at the unpropitious moment. "Pity you?" she repeated contemptuously. "Is that all you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!" She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into the pockets of her apron. That was how she pitied him! ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... accosts the man of many years. But him the Goddess answer'd azure-eyed, Telemachus! Thou wilt, in part, thyself Fit speech devise, and heav'n will give the rest; For thou wast neither born, nor hast been train'd To manhood, under unpropitious Pow'rs. So saying, Minerva led him thence, whom he With nimble steps attending, soon arrived Among the multitude. There Nestor sat, And Nestor's sons, while, busily the feast 40 Tending, his num'rous followers roasted, some, The viands, some, transfix'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... place eminently adapted to study and education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other, is in danger of yielding to the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... I hear the very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach to me, now once more preaching; 75 I know well, that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offered 80 To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities: And human ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... somewhat unpropitious commencement, and in 1774 the Court are found writing to Madras, to which Balambangan was subordinate, complaining of the "imprudent management and profuse conduct" ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... and stupid in many matters, is in others sometimes extremely acute and penetrating. For some years previous to the time laid in our tale, the family of Condy Dalton began to decline very perceptibly in their circumstances. There had been unpropitious seasons; there had been failure of crops and disease among the cattle—and, perhaps what was the worst scourge of all, there existed a bad landlord in the person of Dick-o'-the-Grange. So long, however, as they continued prosperous, their known principles of ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... outnumbered the army of Gustavus, and the officers of Wallenstein unanimously advised to give battle. Wallenstein was a superstitious man and deeply devoted to astrological science. He consulted his astrologers, and they declared the stars to be unpropitious to Gustavus. This at once decided him. He resolved, however, to act on the defensive, and through the night employed the energies of his army in throwing up intrenchments. In the earliest dawn of the morning mass was celebrated throughout the whole camp, and Wallenstein on horseback rode along ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... tribune replied, "but we'll be whipped in this wordy battle. And even a small defeat were an unpropitious ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the English commander-in-chiefs ship from an early defeat. It took the crew of le Pluton, her new adversary, by surprise; for they had not been able to distinguish the precise position of their enemy; and, besides doing vast injury to both hull and people, drew her fire at an unpropitious moment. So uncertain and hasty, indeed, was the discharge the French ship gave in return, that no small portion of the contents of her guns passed ahead of the Plantagenet, and went into the larboard quarter of le Temeraire, the French admiral's ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to commence a newspaper in partnership with U. J. Jones. This enterprise was not a successful one, and with his companion he went to Cincinnati, where he enlisted in another newspaper speculation. The result of that attempt was equally unpropitious. Dissolving their interests, Mr. Kelly then removed with his family to New York. Here he commenced a journal devoted to theatrical and musical criticism, and intelligence, entitled "The Archer." Mr. J. W. Taylor was a partner with ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... plumage." "Wherefore {give} me," he retorted, "a beauty that is dumb, if I am surpassed in voice?" "By the will of the Fates," {said she}, "have your respective qualities been assigned; beauty to you, strength to the Eagle, melody to the Nightingale, to the Raven presages, unpropitious omens to the Crow; all of {these} are ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... turning round, he perceived close to his elbow a man in no very respectable attire, so far as the obscurity would allow him to judge, but half muffled up in a cloak, and armed with a stout bludgeon. Much as he had just now been wishing for some guide, he yet could not congratulate himself on so unpropitious a rencontre. The stranger's dress and unceremonious greeting were not more suspicious than the abruptness of his appearance: for Bertram felt convinced that he must have way-laid him. Assuming however as much composure as he could, he demanded ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... words tell others of her love; For, on the wings of earnest prayer ascending, It rises, and is registered above. O, such is love-all other is fictitious; All other's vanquished by disease and pain; But this, which lives when fate is unpropitious, Shall rise to heaven, and there ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... religious wars of the Cevennes-farther back even than the Roman occupation of Gaul, when we would describe the townlings of the Causses and the banks of the Tarn. Their story is of more ancient date than any of recorded time. The very Causses, stony, arid wildernesses, so unpropitious to human needs, so scantily populated in our own day, were evidently inhabited from remote antiquity. Not only have dolmens, tumuli, and bronze implements been found hereabouts in abundance, but also cave-dwellings and traces of the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... juncture the Mgussa's familiar motioned the Kamraviona and several officers to draw around him, when, in a very low tone, he gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations seemed unpropitious, for we immediately repaired to our boats and returned to our quarters. Here we no sooner arrived than a host of Wakungu, lately returned from the Unyoro war, came to pay their respects to the king: they had returned six days or more, but etiquette had forbidden their approaching majesty sooner. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... brought us in a short time to a good supply of drinkable, though very brackish water. The sandstone hills before us and to the northward, were covered with low shrubs and the broad-leaved tea-tree, with wiry and stiff grasses, and looked very unpropitious. The rock was composed of quartz pebbles of different colours, imbedded in a red ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... my great day. I agreed to make my entrance to Montreal, for the purpose of being inaugurated. The morning was unpropitious. There had been a tremendous storm during the night, and the snow had drifted so much that it seemed doubtful whether a sleigh could go from hence to town (about four miles). I said that I had no notion of being deterred by weather. Accordingly, I got into a one-horse ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... 1614 the "Restless" was launched. Immediately Captain Block entered upon an exploring tour through what is now called the East River. He gave the whole river the name of the Hellegat, from a branch of the river Scheldt in East Flanders. The unpropitious name still adheres to the tumultuous point of whirling eddies where the waters of the sound unite with ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... know not which. But these secret agents were, unknown to the king, all devoted to the parliaments, and consequently inimical to courtiers, favorites, and especially mistresses. God knows how they disposed of us! By these unpropitious channels the king had learnt all the hatred which was borne to madame de Pompadour. He was afraid of exciting the discontent of the people by announcing another mistress, and was no less intimidated at the severity ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... and listless apathy, which belied the general expression of his dark and rugged features. He seemed a very tall man, but was scarce better clad than the younger. He had on a loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious. Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... provoked and invited the assault," she replied, smiling. "But I trust, Mr. Wayne, that the cloud which is gathering above our country will not darken the sunshine of your visit at Riverside manor. It is unfortunate that you should have come at an unpropitious moment, when we cannot promise you that perhaps there will not be some cold looks here and there among the townsfolk, to give you a false impression ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... with an unfriendly eye the perspective of our growing greatness. In a review of these transactions we may trace some of the causes which would be likely to embroil the States with each other, if it should be their unpropitious destiny to become disunited. The competitions of commerce would be another fruitful source of contention. The States less favorably circumstanced would be desirous of escaping from the disadvantages of local situation, and of sharing in the advantages of their more fortunate ...
— The Federalist Papers
... chilled by the east wind, whirling showers of hail, and even when the riverbanks are sweet with primroses, the bluff tops of the border hills are often bleak with late snow. This state of things is less unpropitious to angling than might be expected. A hardy race of trout will sometimes rise freely to the artificial fly when the natural fly is destroyed, and the angler is almost blinded with dusty snowflakes. All through midsummer the Scotch rivers lose their chief attractions. The bracken has ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... John of Thoresby became archbishop. The times were unpropitious for building. Yorkshire was suffering much from the black death, there was great poverty among the peasantry, and the diocese was in great need of discipline and reform. Thoresby gave himself up for nine years ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... that of Orpheus in hades, seemed to soothe all unpropitious powers with a sudden spell. The Fire began to slacken, the kettles began to lull, the meat began to cook, the irons began to cool, the clothes began to behave, the spirits began to rise, and the collar was finished off with most triumphant success. John watched the change, and, though ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... facts. It is clear that, within a generation after Shakespeare's death, common opinion both in Stratford and London recognized that in the actor and dramatist a great man had passed away, that he had been in a worldly sense highly successful, though starting from unpropitious beginnings, that he wrote with great swiftness and ease, and that in his personal relations he was gentle, kindly, genial, and witty. That the bailiff's son who returned to his native town as a prosperous gentleman, is to be identified with the actor and shareholder of the London theaters, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... very much the appearance of a fool's bauble. They lead an easy life. When they take a fancy to a house, they settle down near the gate, and the owner has to support them as long as the whim takes them to stay there. To use force against a dervish would be looked upon as an exceedingly unpropitious affair to the true believer. Then, too, I have little doubt but that they are capable of making good use of their steel bodkins. Why my dervish wished to give up his easy-going profession and take over the ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... typified by a marriage which the prophet contracted at the command of the Lord; the apostasy of the people, and especially of the ten tribes, to whom the prophet was sent in the first instance, is typified by the adultery of the wife, by the divine punishment, and the unpropitious names which he gives to the children born by the adulterous wife. In chap. ii. 1-3, there follows the announcement of salvation more directly, and only with a ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... person who had come to him, Ling made a number of polished excuses in declining, hiding the true reason within himself. In this way he earned the powerful malignity of the person in question, who would not depart until he had effected a number of very disagreeable prophecies connected with unpropitious omens and internal torments, all of which undoubtedly had a great influence on Ling's life ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... discussed during the summer that followed; and, although he never came, Wilma was always alarming the family, when affairs were especially unpropitious, by the query, "What if he should suddenly drop in ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... her husband's return for at least a year, likely eighteen months. What was to be done with her? What could be a more unpropitious fate than for a Colonial girl, used to an active life of exertion and usefulness, and trained to all domestic arts, to be set down in a great English household where there was really nothing for her to do, and usefulness or superintendence would have been interfering; besides, as Miles had ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waited a favourable opportunity to carry out his purpose, and in vain. The two sisters seemed to be inseparable in this time of trouble, and try as he might he could not get the interview for which he so ardently longed. The fates were unpropitious, and one after another his artifices were defeated until at last he was obliged to fall back upon the assistance of his friend, and ask him, as a last resource, to help him out of ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... by publishing a collection of them. He transmitted the manuscript to Mr. Strahan, the printer, who after keeping it for some time, wrote a letter to him, discouraging the publication[285]. Such at first was the unpropitious state of one of the most successful theological books that has ever appeared. Mr. Strahan, however, had sent one of the sermons to Dr. Johnson for his opinion; and after his unfavourable letter to Dr. Blair had been sent off, he received from Johnson on Christmas-eve, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) 133; too late for; premature &c. (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, twenty- twenty ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Even the weather seemed unpropitious as they set out together again soon after six. Rain had fallen in the night, yet not all the rain that there was overhead. There were still clouds hanging, mixed with the smoke from the chimneys; the hedges seemed dulled and black in spite of their green; the cinder path they walked on was depressing, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... in proportion to its own magnitude as those of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn in proportion to their magnitude, they could be descried by any human observer. The patient, persevering, reverent temper of Herschel took no account, however, of any discouraging or unpropitious circumstances. What he did was to substitute for telescopes of the ordinary construction the new and gigantic forty-foot tube already described; and, thus, with unremitting vigilance and intense zeal, he arrived at the discovery (between January 4, 1787, and February 28, 1794) of the six satellites ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... exclamation leaped away and vanished into the gloom. Boyd lost no time in gaining the plank runway that led to the dock, and finding an angle in the building, backed into it and waited, half-suspecting that he had stumbled into a trap. He reflected that both the hour and the circumstances were unpropitious; for in case he should meet with foul play, Marsh might plausibly claim that he had been mistaken for a marauder. He determined, therefore, to proceed with the greatest caution. From his momentary glimpse of the man as he made off, he knew that he was tall ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... wondered that he had not reminded her of it; but perhaps he had forgotten too? She soon let go that reminiscence, and with a light heart, in anticipation of the future which had appeared in the distance so unpropitious, she talked of it to madame with a thousand random speculations, until madame was tired of the subject. And then she talked of it to Babette, who having no private disappointments in connection therewith, proved patiently ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... warn'd by me, ye pigmy wits, beware, Nor with immortal Scaliger compare. For me, though his example strike my view, Oh! not for me his footsteps to pursue. Whether first nature, unpropitious, cold, This clay compounded in a ruder mould; Or the slow current, loit'ring at my heart, No gleam of wit or fancy can impart; Whate'er the cause, from me no numbers flow, No visions warm me, and no raptures glow. A mind like Scaliger's, superior still, No grief ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... matters had grown desperate that he decided to do this. Wayland was not in the habit of getting into debt, and an insistent tailor and florist made his life miserable. With masculine obtuseness he chose the most unpropitious moment. Miss Sarah, after a hard day, had dropped into an easy-chair for a little rest after dinner. Wayland had forgotten the absence of the cook, and in the lamplight his aunt looked ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... and the parsonage was a stretch of lawn, dotted with shrubs and cedars and shaded by two big silver-leaf poplars. It was on this lawn that, provided the night was fair, the strawberry festival was to be held. If the weather should be unpropitious the festival was to be ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with Carew of Crompton, and possible even to become his bosom friend at a short notice, for his friendships, all made in wine, at play, or in the hunting-field, were soon cemented; but then, if the introduction was effected in an unpropitious time or manner, it was like enough to end in affront or downright insult. A gulf might be fixed just where you wanted a causeway, and of this—though he had feigned to inquire about it so innocently of the honest park-keeper—Richard Yorke was well aware. He had, as has been hinted, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... not sure that I do. Is it because the moneygods have been unpropitious—because these robber ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... in years. He had entered upon the winter of life, that sprinkles the head with snow that never melts, but he was still hale, ruddy, and active. Nature had, indeed, moulded him in an unpropitious hour for personal comeliness, but in compensation had seated a great heart and a graceful mind in a body low of stature, and marked by a slight deformity. His piercing eyes, luminous with intelligence and full of sympathy for everything noble and elevated, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Captain Baudin, in order to render this hydrographical survey complete, should have followed out his instructions, and penetrated beyond St. Peter and St. Francis Islands. The weather, however, was too unpropitious, and this exploration was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... mystery of God contained in them shall have been fulfilled. One thing, however, they clearly reveal to us: that the future triumph of God's kingdom is certain, and that all the great movements in the history of the nations, however unpropitious they may seem at the time, are parts of the mighty plan of divine providence which shall end in making the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... drenched the roads and the countryside for more than fifty leagues around. Happily the army did not see this as a bad omen, as the soldiers considered violent thunder-storms were something to be expected in summer. The Russians too, every bit as superstitious as some of the French, had an unpropitious omen, for during the night of 23rd-24th of June the Emperor Alexander escaped with his life when, at a ball in Wilna, the floor of a room collapsed under the chair on which he was sitting, at the very hour when the first French boat, carrying a detachment of Napoleon's troops, reached ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... 'perim 'longa 'crub." Peter and Barney were then despatched with orders to camp out that night and look for them all next day. A steer having been killed last night, the day was passed in jerking him. The day was very unpropitious as there had been a shower of rain in the morning, and there was no sun, so it had to be smoked with manure in one of the tents. What with the mosquitoes and sand-flies, men, horses, and cattle were kept in a continual fever. The horses would ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the tradesman on rather an extended scale; conferring and settling with all the booksellers in the respective towns, as to the means of conveyance, allowance, remittances, &c. he thus wrote in a dejected mood, to his friend Mr. Wade,—an unpropitious state of mind for a new enterprise, and very different from those sanguine hopes which he had expressed on ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the hotel, where a company of persons were trying, with that too formal cordiality peculiar to English people, who are accidentally thrown together in the course of a holiday, to get rid of the depression which results upon dishearteningly unpropitious weather. Music, as usual, was the gracious angel employed to banish the fiend of ennui, but among those who took no part either in the singing or playing, other than that of an enforced auditor, was the elderly gentleman, my quondam acquaintance of the porch, who stood apart ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to literature was Vasily Kirillovitch Trediakovsky (born at Astrakhan in 1703), the son and grandson of priests, who was educated in Russia and abroad. When he decided, on his return from abroad in 1730, to adopt literature as a profession, the times were extremely unpropitious. He had, long before, during his student days in Moscow, written syllabic verses, an elegy on the death of Peter the Great, and a couple of dramas, which were acted by his fellow-students. In 1732 he became the court poet, or laureate ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... much for Jack, who turned to shake his assegais at her: the movement was unpropitious, for he stumbled and fell, but gathered himself up, caught up to the horse, and trotted on again, keeping on in the most untiring way, till a flight of carrion birds was sighted, hovering about the granite boulders, and perching here and ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... would be no great loss. Above all things, no renewing of old fetters. This lackey takes a healthy enough view of the matter, for all his cynicisms. You must not take it too tragically. You have passed through your heart crisis—it comes to most of us—only with you it has happened late, and under unpropitious circumstances. That has tended to make it more severe than is usually the case. But now, let it be past and over, though naturally it will take some little time for your mind to regain its normal balance. What I regret most in the affair is, that it precludes ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Such a period is eminently favourable to the growth of quick and active talents. It forms a class of men, shrewd, vigilant, inventive; of men whose dexterity triumphs over the most perplexing combinations of circumstances, whose presaging instinct no sign of the times can elude. But it is an unpropitious season for the firm and masculine virtues. The statesman who enters on his career at such a time, can form no permanent connections, can make no accurate observations on the higher parts of political science. Before he can ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... physician. Doctor Mayerne's abilities were so distinguished, that his Protestant faith alone, prevented him from occupying the same eminent position in the court of France that he did in that of England. The doctor's presence at the banquet was unpropitious; it was natural he should befriend a countrywoman and a Huguenot like himself, and, possessing the royal ear, he might make such representations as he pleased to the King of what should occur. Sir Francis hoped he would be gone ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... summoned several of the king's officers to draw round him, and then, in a low voice, gave them all the orders of the deep, and walked away. His revelations appeared to have been unpropitious, for the party immediately repaired to their boats ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... touched with compassion for the fate of those to whom fortune had been so unpropitious, Catharine's husband sent all who still retained a breath of life to the hospitals and ambulances. He was just on the point of leaving this desolate spot, when, casting his eye on a heap of corpses being covered over with earth, he noticed a Polish officer of high rank, decorated with numerous crosses ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... someone to assume the duty for him; but one day everyone seemed engaged on some pursuit or other, so with every anticipation of a dull evening he went down to hall. He began to read Shelley but the surroundings were unpropitious. All about him sat huddled fragments of humanity scratching half-baked ideas with crossed nibs into dog-eared notebooks. There was a general air of unrest. Gordon tried Sinister Street; some of the episodes in ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... conspicuous for kindliness of heart, or intellectually distinguished in any walk of life? I should be glad to know his name. A sorry crew! Not because they drink water, but because the state of mind which makes them dread alcohol is unpropitious to the hatching of any generous idea. WHEN MEN HAVE WELL DRUNK. I like that phrase. WHEN MEN HAVE WELL DRUNK. I am inclined to think that the Aramaic text has not been tampered with at this point. What ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Where'er she moved was death. There was a flash Of scorn that lighted up her fiery eye, A glance of wrath upon her countenance— There was a terror in her frenzied arm That struck dismay into the boldest heart. Alas for her, Fortune was unpropitious! Her fearless valor found an overmatch In the experienced prudence of Aurelian; And scarcely could the desert's hardy sons Cope with the practiced legions of the empire. The battle gained, Palmyra taken, sacked— ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become acquainted. One thing was clear—any acquaintance with her could only, with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... direction as any of his brethren of the brush; his destination was invariably some wild spot, unfrequented—possibly even unknown—alike by painter and tourist. And there—if undisturbed—he would remain, diligently working all day in the open air during favourable weather; and, when the elements were unpropitious for work, taking long walks over solitary heaths and desolate mountain sides, or along the lonely shore. And when the first snows of winter came, reminding him that it was time to turn his face homeward once more, he would pack up his paraphernalia and return to town, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... fair coz?" asked Gerald, who was standing near and heard the sigh. "Are the Fates very unpropitious?" ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... delayed, the haymaking is finished at last, and by-and-by, when the leaves have fallen and the hunting commences, a good run drives away for the time at least the memory of so unpropitious a season. Then Mr. George some mild morning forms one of a little group of well-mounted farmers waiting at a quiet corner while the hounds draw a great wood. Two of them are men long past middle age, whose once tawny beards ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... unpropitious to the buttered-toast question, and it had quite slipped out of my mind. I have never traced the string of associations which reminded me of it, on one certain morning. Once more I made bold to ask if I could have buttered toast. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... much exposed, and the armies of barbarians spread over them like the lava of Mount AEtna. The imminence of our danger manifestly called for generals already illustrious for their past achievements in war; but nevertheless, as if some unpropitious deity had made the selection, the men who were sought out for the chief military appointments were of tainted character. The chief among them were Lupicinus and Maximus, the one being count of Thrace, the other a leader notoriously ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... ended in matrimony. His first match was unpropitious. Foiled in his attempts upon the chastity of a lady of great beauty and high honor, he was rash enough to marry her; rash, we say, for from that fatal hour all became as darkness; the curtain fell upon the comedy of his life, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that name, and who have acquired a reputation to which poor Nash can lay no claim. His one conspicuous dramatic effort is 'Summer's Last Will and Testament.' Nash wrote for bare existence—to use his own words, 'contending with the cold, and conversing with scarcity.' Nash lived in an unpropitious age. A recent French writer has placed him in the foremost rank of English writers. Dr. Jusserand, the author referred to, in his accounts of the English novel in the time of Shakespeare, tells us Nash was the most successful exponent in England of the picturesque novel. The picturesque novel ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... It was an unpropitious beginning for the new term. Glory was obliged to refuse three times to recite, on the plea of her lost books, and double lessons loomed ahead of her dismally. But not for long—Glory never allowed "making up" to dispirit her unduly. ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... absent, to become his successor; and in spite of the efforts of the government they put off the day of election until he came to Rome from the army. He was elected consul by the votes of all the tribes, but it thundered at the time, and as the priests declared this an unpropitious omen, but did not dare openly to oppose his election for fear of the people, he himself voluntarily resigned his office. But he did not avoid military service, but was created proconsul, and returning to Nola and his army he harassed those ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... that this planet was never in an eclipse, but it threatened them with some mighty disaster: of this they quoted several ancient examples among the kings of Persia, who, after an eclipse, had always found their gods unpropitious in the day of battle. "Nothing," says Quintus Curtius,[125] "is so effectual as superstition for keeping the vulgar under. Be they ever so unruly and inconstant, if once their minds are possessed with the vain visions of religion, they are ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... he had expected her to say. He had plainly lost ground with her since their talk on the Madison campus, and he wanted to justify himself, to convince her of his rectitude, and of her failure to understand his part in the convention, but the time and place were unpropitious. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... page of biography that transmits to future generations the poverty, pain, wrong, hunger, wretchedness and torment, and every nameless misery that has been endured by those who have lived in obscurity, and groped their lonely way through a long series of unpropitious events, with but little help besides the light of nature. While the gilded monument displays in brightest colors the vanity of pomp, and the emptiness of nominal greatness, the biographical page, that lives in every line, is giving lessons of fortitude ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... swept The bright, close, sheltering bowers, where merrily Rang out thy notes—as of a haunting sprite, There domiciled—the long blue summer through? Moulders untenanted thy trim-built nest, And do the unpropitious fates deny Food for thy little wants, and Penury, With tiny grip, drive thee to dubious walls,— Though terrors flutter at thy panting heart,— To stay the pangs which must be satisfied? Alas! the dire sway of Necessity Oft makes the darkest, most repugnant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... conveyed them into an unfrequented part of the garden, and as soon as they were out of sight of all but a few stragglers, he suddenly stopt, and, in great agitation, said, "my chaise will soon be ready, and I shall take of you a long farewell!— all my affairs are unpropitious to my speedy return:—the wine is now mounting into my head, and perhaps I may not be able to say much by and by. I fear I have been cruel to you, Priscilla, and I begin to wish I had spared you this parting scene; yet let it not be banished your remembrance, but think of it when you are ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... shrewdness, and his red cheeks habitual devotion to the national beverage. He was apparently a youth of the sort that Nature is constantly turning out by the thousand—mere weaker copies of progenitors, who by an unpropitious marriage have enfeebled instead of strengthening the type. Circumstances might have made anything of him in a small way; for, as his countenance indicated, he had no very pronounced proclivities, either good or bad. He had spent his boyhood in a gymnasium, where he ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and unpropitious corner on which they stood, with the shriek of the "elevated" and the tumult of trams and waggons contending ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... blessing of the Almighty in the city of Oviedo, the capital of the Asturias, although at an unpropitious season, for the bray of war is at the gate, and there is the cry of the captains and the shouting. Castile is at the present time in the hands of the Carlists, who have captured and plundered Valladolid, in ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... your mistress on one condition only," said the woman, in reply to the nonsense I poured into her ear, carried away by the fervor of an improvised passion, to which everything was unpropitious. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... really and truly should be spoken of. There is no country, however fair, that has not some drawback or other. There are no hopes, however promising, that may not be blighted; no prospects, however encouraging, that may not wither. Unfitness for the new field of enterprise on which a man may enter—unpropitious seasons, the designs of others, or unforeseen misfortunes; one or more of these may combine to bring about results very opposite from those we had anticipated. I would not therefore take upon myself the responsibility of giving advice, but enter upon a general description of the province of South ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... extremity of the American continent, however, we met with heavy weather and foul winds. We were now in the month that corresponds to November in the northern hemisphere, and had to double The Horn at that unpropitious season of the year, going westward. There is no part of the world of which navigators have given accounts so conflicting, as of this celebrated passage. Each man appears to have described it as he found it, himself, while no two ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs. 'O papa, papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one another, papa—O, so much! And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don't want in ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... despotic hand of authority tears asunder hearts united by the softest ties, and sacrifices the prospect of felicity to ridiculous and unmeaning prejudices. Let us, my Matilda, pity those whose fate is thus unpropitious, but let us not voluntarily subject ourselves to their misfortune. No voice is raised to forbid our union. Heaven and earth command us to ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... that he continued "for some years before his death" to resort to the above-named house; "at which place several inquisitive gentlemen received from his own mouth the confirmation of those particulars which seemed dubious, or carried with them the air of romance." The period was certainly unpropitious for any but a writer of fiction, and Drury seems to have anticipated no higher rank for his Treatise, in point of authenticity, than that occupied by the several members of the Robinson Crusoe school. He, however, positively affirms it to be "a plain honest ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... mountains. A bird of prey screams amid the stillness. Here and there we see some wretched hovels; I am told that those on the heights are dens without windows, and from which the smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. Many of the old men are blind. What an unpropitious abode ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... handicapped here by the scarcity of ferocious game, I was more fortunate in another enthusiasm which attacked me at almost the same time. For however unpropitious the hunting is on any given part of the earth's surface, there is everywhere and always an abundance of good hidden-treasure-seeking to be had. The garden, the attic, the tennis lawn all suffered. And my initiative was strengthened by the discovery of an incomparable ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... woman is at liberty to marry again. The Nais worship all the ordinary Hindu deities. On the Dasahra and Diwali festivals they wash and revere their implements, the razor, scissors and nail-pruners. They pay regard to omens. It is unpropitious to sneeze or hear the report of a gun when about to commence any business; and when a man is starting on a journey, if a cat, a squirrel, a hare or a snake should cross the road in front of him he will give it up and return home. The bodies ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... With unpropitious frowns had the Elector witnessed the first tender greeting exchanged between the Electress and her son. Now, when his sisters in their turn engrossed him and the mother stood looking on in transport, now the Elector turned round to Schwarzenberg, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... version of the tale published in the Atlantic Monthly (Vol. 51, 1883), he makes his immaculate Bostonian, Mr. Winterbourne, marry Daisy with a full consciousness of all she was and had been. As I understand her, Miss Daisy Miller, in spite of her somewhat unpropitious early surroundings, was a young woman entirely able to appreciate the very best when she met it. She at once recognised the superiority of Winterbourne to the men she had hitherto known, and she also recognised that her "style" was not the "style" of him or of his associates. But she ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of Dasht-bi-Dowlat, or "The Unpropitious Plain," lies between Mastung and Quetta. The name, however, only applies after the harvest has been gathered, for next to Mastung this is one of the most fertile spots in Baluchistan. Dasht-bi-Dowlat is mainly cultivated by wandering tribes. The inhabitants ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... and to him there was also dedicated a shrine and a festival, the Terminalia. This god Terminus, as the Roman historian has it, was alone in refusing to yield to Jupiter because 'while the birds allowed the deconsecration of all the other sanctuaries, in the shrine of Terminus alone they were unpropitious.'[109] Livy tells this story in the first book of his History, and again in Book 5 he narrates how 'when after the taking of auguries the Capitol was being cleared, Juventas [Youth] and Terminus would not allow themselves to be moved.'[110] This omen was welcomed with universal rejoicing, for ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... cut him, for at that time he had the makings of a voluminous letter-writer. Yet it was only what one might expect. The whole world was unpropitious—obdurate indeed.... A ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... probably very good for her, part of the experience which should mould the citizen. Gerda shrank from no experience. At the corner of Bouverie Street they met a painted girl out for hire, strayed for some reason into this unpropitious locality. For the moment Gerda had fallen behind and Barry seemed alone. The girl stopped in his path, looked up in his face enquiringly, and he pushed his way, not urgently, past her. The next moment Gerda's hand caught ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... disappeared. I stood, at the bottom of the steps, confounded at such strange and unexpected treatment. I could not withdraw till my purpose was accomplished. After a moment's pause, I stepped to the door, and pulled the bell. A negro came, of a very unpropitious aspect, and, opening the door, looked at me in silence. To my question, Was Mrs. Maurice to be seen? he made some answer, in a jargon which I could not understand; but his words were immediately followed by an unseen ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... fevered lips? Perhaps, amid the noble and disinterested toils of the expedition, his heart would outgrow all love for me, and when we met again I should see my power was gone. I pondered much on this; I believed at last that the solitude, the isolation, would be not unpropitious to me. From the little world of the ice-locked vessel his thoughts would turn to the greater world he had left, and I should be remembered. When he returned we should be much together. His mother was dead; our house was the only place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... may be produced in the revolution of ages, by corruption of morals, profligacy of manners, and listlessness in the preservation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind, nor of the successful usurpations that may be established at such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins of liberty, however providentially guarded and secured, as these are contingencies against which no human prudence can effectually provide. It will at least be a recommendation to the proposed constitution that it is provided with ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... fine genius, great wit, and a brilliant imagination; "but there was," he adds, "a certain eccentricity and want of prudence in his character, that involved him in distresses, and reduced him to situations uncongenial with his feelings, and unpropitious to the cultivation and encouragement of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... bears and boars in the forest, with a couple of hundred peasants as beaters, had been arranged by the Natchalnik for his guest's amusement; but their plans were frustrated by the unpropitious state of the weather; and as soon as it became favourable, we find Mr Paton again in motion, ascending the eastern branch of the Morava to Alexinate, the quarantine station on the Bulgarian frontier, where the British govermnent has established ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... an era of propitious fortune; while those extremely vicious correspond, at the time of their existence, with an era of calamity. When those who coexist with propitious fortune come into life, the world is in order; when those who coexist with unpropitious fortune come into life, the world is in danger. Yao, Shun, Yue, Ch'eng T'ang, Wen Wang, Wu Wang, Chou Kung, Chao Kung, Confucius, Mencius, T'ung Hu, Han Hsin, Chou Tzu, Ch'eng Tzu, Chu Tzu and Chang Tzu were ordained to see light in an auspicious era. Whereas Ch'i Yu, Kung Kung, Chieh Wang, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... The party attempted to dance it, but to show how arbitrary habit is, in the attempt, all those powers of grace, which they had before so beautifully displayed, retired as if influenced by the magic of some unpropitious spirit. Amongst the party, was a little girl, about nine years old, who was dressed in the highest style of fashion, and looked like a fashionable milliner's doll. This little spoiled child was accustomed to spend an hour at her toilette every morning, and to be tricked ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... foreign nations too, that, in order to cover our participation in guilt, and our common interest in the plunder of the East, we have invented a set of scholastic distinctions, abhorrent to the common sense and unpropitious to the common necessities of mankind, by which we are to deny ourselves the knowledge of what the rest of the world knows, and what so great a part of the world both knows and feels. I do not deprecate ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... followed thus far he has a tolerably fair notion of the unpropitious and eccentric surroundings amid which Field worked immediately after coming to Chicago. Out of this strange environment came as variegated a column of satire, wit, and personal persiflage as ever attracted and fascinated the readers ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... spent the greater part of the afternoon and evening with us, hearing sister M. read from the books which have already been written in their language. We, however, soon found that we had arrived in a most unpropitious time; for almost every man in the vicinity was in a state ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... he had been instrumental in producing, as well as in communicating the tidings of her death. Propitious to us, the friends of Pleyel, to whom has thereby been secured the enjoyment of his society; and not unpropitious to himself; for though this object of his love be snatched away, is there not another who is able and willing to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... was lowered, her closed lips quivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordon directly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental, dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and, discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up and departed for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse into ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the day might be, yet its opening to the eyes of Lady Mary Bloxam seemed unpropitious in the extreme. Lionel Beauchamp received her and Blanche with grave courtesy, but no more; indeed, his manner to Miss Bloxam touched upon the ceremonious. It was true that as a host he could hardly be expected to devote much time to any individual guest; but ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... witches; and witches themselves have been said to borrow their shapes when on their mysterious expeditions. I was once told, that Lord Cochrane was accompanied by a favourite black cat in a cruise through the northern seas. The weather had been most unpropitious; no day had passed without some untoward circumstance, and the sailors were not slow in attributing the whole to the influence of the black cat on board. This came to Lord Cochrane's ears, and knowing that any attempt to reason his men out of so absurd a notion was perfectly useless, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... only bird test known to the Romans. Before a battle those people consulted their game fowl to ascertain whether or not victory was about to attend their arms. If the birds picked up briskly the food thrown to them victory was theirs, if they did so sluggishly the omen was unpropitious, and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... previous night at a most trying case, and body and brain were weary, his nerves all on edge, his patience nearly exhausted, and he had no time or inclination for unpleasant interruptions and unnecessary worries. Altogether there could not have been a much more unpropitious moment for any one to have gone to him than that ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... go back into the house for something after starting on a journey is unpropitious. To have it brought out is ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... Isaurians, and Huns (Ephthalites?) served under his standard; and a sudden incursion was made into the Roman territory, for which the imperial officers were wholly unprepared. A considerable impression would probably have been produced, had not the weather proved exceedingly unpropitious. Storms of rain and hail hindered the advance of the Persian troops, and allowed the Roman generals a breathing space, during which they collected an army. But the Emperor Theodosius was anxious ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... at an unpropitious moment, for the colonel was in a cold fury, and the object of his wrath was Crewe, who sat with folded arms and tense face, ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... above a week after the calculations, in all the glory of the purple of Manor Cross, the new Popenjoy was born. For it was a Popenjoy. The Fates, who had for some time past been unpropitious to the house of Brotherton, now smiled; and Fortune, who had been good to the Dean throughout, remained true to him also in this. The family had a new heir, a real Popenjoy; and the old Marchioness when the baby ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... cannot say this of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly; whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air." ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... the Priory to meet Angela, to whom it was now a comfort and pleasure to talk of her treasure, so much less lost to her than in the uncongenial surroundings threatened at Coalham. And the invitation, followed by the proposal, came at a not unpropitious moment. A railway company, after much surveying, much disputing, and many heartburnings, were actually obtaining an Act of Parliament, empowering it to lay its cruel hands upon the Goyle, running its viaducts down the ravine of Arnscombe, and destroy all the peace and privacy! It did much, as Agatha ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Derrick had before introduced his friend to Davies, the bookseller in Covent Garden, who as 'one of the best imitators of Johnson's voice and manner' only increased the ardour of Boswell for the meeting. Now the hour was come and the man. Yet surely never could there have been a more apparently unpropitious time chosen. Number 45 of the North Briton denouncing Bute and his Scotch favourites had appeared on April 23rd. The minister had bowed to the storm and resigned, while the writer of the libel had been arrested under a general warrant and discharged on the 30th of the month ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the soul at the society of the parrot. Bewailing his misfortune, he was railing at the revolutions of the skies; and, wringing the hands of chagrin, was lamenting his condition, and saying: "What an unpropitious fate is this; what ill-luck, and untoward fortune! Could they any way suit the dignity of me, who would in my day strut with my fellow-crows along the wall of a garden:—It were durance sufficient for a good and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... home to the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... irritation in such troubles which adds a whole armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... putting the Southern States wholly and the General Government partially into the hands of negroes is proposed at a time peculiarly unpropitious. The foundations of society have been broken up by civil war. Industry must be reorganized, justice reestablished, public credit maintained, and order brought out of confusion. To accomplish these ends would require ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... have a few, a very few, people down for that Sunday. They had all a special connection with Bray. Things had happened there before, and it was a party of healed memories that was to gather there. If, after all, the weather turned out to be hopelessly unpropitious, they could all sit in a ring round the fire, holding each other's hands. She felt sure they would like to do that. Probably there would be a great many tete-a-tetes in various corners, or, if it were warm, in various punts. But she felt sure that they would all hold hands in ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson |
