"Enviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a similar couch; but as boxes of equal height could not be found, her position was not enviable. The third lady preferred an uneasy posture among the ribs and cordage of the boat, and I lay down on the paving-stones of the quay, having found from experience that, in the matter of beds, flatness is the most indispensable of qualities, while hardness is not so awful as one might suppose. Where ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... should appear in public in long black robes, which on occasions of ceremony they should exchange for robes of red. He thinks that the principal persons of the colony should thus be induced to train up their children to so enviable a dignity; "and" he concludes, "as none of the councillors can afford to buy red robes, I hope that the King will vouchsafe to send out nine such; as for the black robes, they can ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... sacks, upon and between the motor sledges and upon the ice-house are grouped the dogs, thirty-three in all. They must perforce be chained up and they are given what shelter is afforded on deck, but their position is not enviable. The seas continually break on the weather bulwarks and scatter clouds of heavy spray over the backs of all who must venture into, the waist of the ship. The dogs sit with their tails to this invading water, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... tender, trusting, and all too explicit letter to a well-known and extremely impatient lady in London to account for his continued absence from her house. "So that is it!" said the lady, reading, and was at least in the enviable position of one who had confirmatory ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... was peace,' wrote Meredith, 'in Mr. Goren's shop. Badgered ministers, bankrupt merchants, diplomatists with a headache,—any of our modern grandees under difficulties,—might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren presided: and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed he had not succeeded the millions of antecedent ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... several weeks before, had taken on her the task of making, buying, or assembling from parts purchased a score or more of presents. As one of the chief aims of Hiawatha Institute was to teach wealthy men's daughters how to be economical, it goes without saying that each of these girls had on hand no enviable Winter Task. ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... miserable one to Phelim and the father. The loss of the ten guineas, and the feverish sickness produced from their debauch, rendered their situation not enviable. Some other small matters, too, in which Phelim was especially concerned, independent of the awkward situation in which he felt himself respecting the three calls on the following day, which was Sunday, added greater weight to ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the French and the Irish, to —— you know where. I have done so without a murmur, although it puts me into a ticklish position. Reinforcements are now to be diverted elsewhere and my command is not an enviable one. I quite understand the necessity of trying to maintain a barrier between Essen and Constantinople. I quite understand also the danger of doing so at the expense of this attenuated, exhausted ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... gracious subtlety which charms a woman, and she, hemmed in by his devices, overcome by his pleadings, attracted by his enviable personality, would come at last to his will. The evening before I had seen strong signs of the dramatic qualities of her nature. She had the gift of imagination, the epic spirit. Even three years previous I felt how she had seen every little incident of her daily life in a way which gave ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and in doing so he passed beneath the baignoire of Mademoiselle Noemie. She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which seemed meant as an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in spite of her enviable rise in the world. Newman passed into the foyer and walked through it. Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman seated on one of the divans. The gentleman's elbows were on his knees; he was leaning forward and staring at the pavement, lost apparently in meditations ...
— The American • Henry James
... important pieces make almost equal and very high demands alike on my sympathy and my admiration, and I hope you may long be enabled to cherish the enviable gift of finding utterance for Truths so deep in forms of so much power and beauty."—Letter from ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... the vilest waste in the crucible of their imaginations, so that no meanness, nor the sorrow born of the knowledge of meanness in others, ever darkens their path. Men who live in a pure atmosphere of their own creation, whom the worldly-wise pity as deluded fools, but who are perhaps the only really enviable people in the world. Notable, too, were the fanatics of the Kosinski type, stern heroic figures who seem strangely out of place in our humdrum world, whose practical work often strikes us as useless when it is not harmful, yet without whom the world would settle down into deadly lethargy and ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... has become a synonym for suffering; nor does the associating him with another domestic animal (if a second proverbial expression may be trusted) appear to mend his condition; but ill as he may fare with the cat, his position is less enviable when man is co-partner in the menage, against whose kicks and hard usage should he venture upon the lowest remonstrative growl, he is sure to receive a double portion of both for his pains; and thus it has ever been, for the condition of a dog cannot have changed materially since the creation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... is difficult to make descriptions of machinery and mechanism interesting, but Mr. Williams has the enviable knack of doing so, and it is hardly possible to open this book at any page without turning up something which you feel you must read; and then you cannot stop till you come to the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... eternal farewell to, doubtless, by far the dearest,—happiest period of our existence, the dawn of life's day—that enviable time when "we have no lessons;" when the colt presses, with his unshod foot, the fresh and verdant meadow, while he wonders at the team toiling under a noontide sun, over the parched and arid fallow ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... eating and sleeping make up much of life. Then the hearts of the great are corroded by cares and solicitudes which never visit the humble. Still, I do not deny that their condition is not far less enviable than ours. The slave who may be lashed, and tormented, and killed at his master's pleasure, drinks from a cup of which we never so much as taste. But over the whole of life, and throughout every condition of it, there are scattered evils and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... he, "in Lord Malice we have—the perfect Governor; a man of blameless and enviable life, and possessed abundantly of discreetness, judgment, administrative ability and power; the absolute type of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this tale, dear Hugh, without any association of its incidents with the old respectable chronicles of the Historians is what I should wish you could always do. That is the happy manner with Romance; that is the enviable aptness of the child. But when (by the favour of God) you grow older and more reflective, seeking perhaps for more in these pages than they meant to give, you may wonder that the streets, the lanes, the tenements herein set forth so much resemble those we know to-day, though less ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... enviable portion. Though warm-hearted and sympathetic, she was not nervous; powerful emotions could rouse and sway without exhausting her spirit. The tempest troubled and shook her while it lasted, but it left her elasticity unbent, and her freshness ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... now left unread, which is very far from being the case, his would be an enviable fame—for was he not one of the favored poets of Walter Scott, and whenever the closing scene of the great magician's life is read in the pages of Lockhart, must not Crabbe's name be brought upon the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... duty on the Mexican border and elsewhere in the west since early in 1917. These four regiments were all sterling organizations dating their foundation back to the days immediately following the Civil war. Their record was and is an enviable one. It is no reflection on them that they were not chosen for overseas duty. The country needed a dependable force on the Mexican border, in Hawaii, the Philippines, and in different ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... to boast; but I will say that I am satisfied with my summer's work, and go South feeling that I leave an enviable reputation behind me." And Mrs. Wing plumed herself with an air of immense importance, as she nodded and bridled from her perch ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... handkerchiefs, and, bringing these on shore, seated themselves upon some of the boxes and casks with which the wharf was lumbered, and, opening the bundles, produced therefrom their dinners, which they proceeded to discuss with quite an enviable appetite. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... a very great and enviable man, Mr. Florance, but I propose to save fifteen years on your twenty-five. I'll equal or better your position ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable. Just before the Revolution the lot of the common laborer was not an enviable one. His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison—usually an indescribably filthy hole awaited him the moment he ran into debt. The artisan fared somewhat better. He had spent, as a rule, seven ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... is a country-house. The mistress of a fine old hall and a cypher of a husband is apt to take a peculiar view of the duties of property. One might expect her to be content with so dignified and enviable a lot, and to pass tranquil days in coddling the cottagers, patronizing the rector's wife, and impressing her crotchet on the national school. But no—she is bitten with the tarantula of social success. She wants to "get on" in society. She ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... as if she had not heard me, which was the best thing she could do; and we sat some time without further speech. Mrs. Ambient had evidently the enviable English quality of being able to be silent without being restless. But at last she spoke; she asked me if there seemed to be many people in town. I gave her what satisfaction I could on this point, and we talked ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... metaphysical intellect known to the religious history of this country, who confirmed Calvinism as the creed of New England Puritans. The young Burr, on the death of his father and grandfather, inherited what was then considered as a fortune, and was graduated at Princeton in 1772, with no enviable reputation, being noted for his idleness and habits bordering on dissipation. He was a handsome and sprightly young man of sixteen, a favorite with women of all ages. He made choice of the profession of law, and commenced the study under Tappan ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... at the same time his cheeks became suddenly scarlet and his eyes flashed with the fire of inspiration—"the truth is this: the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine is the prettiest, sweetest woman in the whole world; happy and enviable is the man whose fortunate destiny will permit him to take her home as his bride, blessed above all men he on whom this noble, fascinating, and amiable girl bestows her love, whom she allows to enjoy the treasures of her mind and heart. Your highness said that the Princess Hollandine ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... torments, There's not a keener lash! Lives there a man so firm, who, while his heart Feels all the bitter horrors of his crime, Can reason down its agonizing throbs; And, after proper purpose of amendment, Can firmly force his jarring thoughts to peace? O, happy! happy! enviable man! O glorious magnanimity ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... present is become public property, no very enviable distinction in these unhappy times, and neither wished nor sought by myself. I have of late been subjected to circumstances which have rendered me obnoxious to the hatred of those who never forgive, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... and nobly cheerful, so verdant, so sweetly shadowed, and so presided over by the stately minster, and surrounded by ancient and comely habitations of Christian men. The most enchanting place, the most enviable as a residence in all this world, seemed to me that of the Bishop's secretary, standing in the rear of the cathedral, and bordering on the churchyard; so that you pass through hallowed precincts in order to come at it, and find it a Paradise, the holier and sweeter for the dead men who sleep so near. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... circumstances, with the pleasure of shooting and boating on the river, added to the glorious view it yields, and which is enough at any time to cheer the mind, render this neighbourhood one of the most enviable situations to live in that I have seen in Ireland. The face of the country gives every circumstance of beauty. From Killodeernan Hill, behind the new house building by Mr. Holmes, the whole is seen to great advantage. The spreading part of the Shannon, called Loch Derg, is commanded distinctly for ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... was reduced to ashes, with the exception of two churches and a few houses. The Administrator, Christian William, after receiving several wounds, was taken prisoner, with three of the burgomasters; most of the officers and magistrates had already met an enviable death. The avarice of the officers had saved 400 of the richest citizens, in the hope of extorting from them an exorbitant ransom. But this humanity was confined to the officers of the League, whom the ruthless barbarity ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... your husband (and the political characters which attract love are not very numerous), I now, with the fuller knowledge of an early period which this volume gives me, both admire and love him more. Your own personal share in the delineation is enviable. And the biographer more than vindicates the wisdom of your choice; his work is capital, but it could not have been achieved except with material of the first order. O for his aid in the present struggle, which, however, is proceeding to our heart's content. Believe ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... live there?" said Rachel. "What an enviable position, to have the control of means of doing good that always falls to the women of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... own dairies, while fresh fruit and vegetables are supplied daily. Fish and game in season are frequent, and the table being under the direct and personal supervision of the management has gained an enviable reputation. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... position has become less secure, less enviable, and the enemy more menacing, more daring and more intent in breaking in on us. The few dropping shots which opened the ball on the 20th have now duly blossomed into a rich harvest of bullets that sometimes continues for hours without intermission or break. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... was long faithful to him. Mademoiselle was jealous of it, and that often controlled him. I have heard Madame de Fontenelles ( a very enviable woman, of much intelligence, very truthful, and of singular virtue), I have heard her say, that being at Eu with Mademoiselle, M. de Lauzun came there and could not desist from running after the girls; ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... internajxo. Entrance eniro. Entrance cxarmi. Entreat petegi. Entreaty petego. Entry eniro. Entwine kunplekti. Enumerate denombri. Enunciate eldiri. Envelop envolvi. Envelope koverto. Envenom veneni. Enviable enviinda. Envious enviema. Environs cxirkauxajxo. Envoy sendito. Envy envii. Epaulet epoleto. Ephemeral mallonga, efemera. Epic epopea. Epic epopeo. Epicure epikuristo. Epidemic epidemio. Epidermis ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... among the greatest nations of the earth. He was still less than fifty, and he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of a happy, useful, and honourable life. Nevertheless, it is impossible to feel that Garfield's death was other than a noble and enviable one. He was cut off suddenly in the very moment of his brightest success, before the cares and disappointments of office had begun to dim the pleasure of his first unexpected triumph. He died a martyr to a good and honest cause, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... twenty-seven men and nearly twenty thousand dollars in money—exceeding in both items the demand made upon them. Nor is their record in the pursuits of peace less honorable, for in dairy products and in the rearing of fine cattle they have earned an enviable and well-deserved reputation. As a community it is cultured and industrious, and has ever been in full sympathy with progress in ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... understood, but began to feel uncomfortable at the thought of being called to account even for his small share in Stradella's arrest. As for the spy who had made the mistake, his lot would not be enviable if he was within the Legate's reach when the error ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... whether I ever find it rather dull," he said, "I am bound to say yes; on the other hand, if you ask me what career do you consider on the whole, taking the good with the bad, the most enjoyable and enviable, not to speak of its more serious side, of all careers, for a man, I am bound ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... good week of polo and riding and generally fooling round together had quickened his old allegiance to Lance, his newer allegiance to the brotherhood of action. He possessed no more enviable talent than his many-sided zest ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... fifth century, St. Patrick being the chief apostle of the new faith. In the sixth century Ireland sent forth missionaries from her monasteries to convert Great Britain and the nations of Northern Europe. From the eighth to the twelfth century Irish scholars held an enviable reputation. In fact, Ireland was the center of learning at one time. The arts, too, were cultivated by her people; and the round towers, still pointed out to travelers, are believed to be the remains of the architecture of the tenth century. The ruin of Ireland ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was governor of Jenna at the time of the visit of the Landers, must of necessity go down to the grave on the first intelligence of the demise of the king of Youriba, and as that monarch was a very aged man, the situation of the former was not the most enviable in the world. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... occasionally, to ease its conscience, donating, without any personal sacrifice, a little money to charity. I have been educated, as you have, in one of the most expensive schools in America; launched into society as an heiress; supposed to be in a very enviable position. I'm perfectly well; I can travel or stay at home. I can do as I please. I can gratify almost any want or desire; and yet when I honestly try to imagine Jesus living the life I have lived and am expected to live, and doing for the rest of my life ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Captain Smith, to try one voyage—so I became the ship's cousin. Contrary to the predictions of my friends, I returned determined to go again, and to become a sailor. Now a ship's cousin's berth is not always an enviable one, notwithstanding the consanguinity of its occupant to the planks beneath him, for he, usually feeling the importance of the relationship, is hated by officers and men, who annoy him in every possible way. But my case was an exception to the general rule. Although at the first ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... florid and loquacious, pouring out a stream of apology for his lateness to Olga, none of which was the least intelligible to Lucia. She guessed what he was saying, and next moment Olga, who apparently understood him perfectly, and told him with an enviable fluency that he was not late at all, was introducing him to her, and explaining that "la Signora" (Lucia understood this) and her husband talked Italian. She did not need to reply to some torrent ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... but he had lost Freda; he was in the position of the starving man who has received a gift of bon-bons, but so craves for bread that they half sicken him. I used now and then to watch his face when, as often happened, someone said: "What an enviable fellow you are, Vaughan, to get on like this!" or, "What wouldn't I give to change places with you!" He would invariably smile and turn the conversation; but there was a look in his eyes at such times that I hated to see—it always made ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... early days of football Yale's record was an enviable one. The schedules included, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Columbia, Stevens Institute of Technology, Dartmouth, Amherst, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... that we have a better proposition for the future right here, that we have right here in the North the building material in the shagbark hickory and the black walnut for a nut industry that will rival or even surpass the enviable position the pecan holds today. Was I correct or was I wrong? A second trip last winter has served only to imbed that idea into a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... in front of him, the sentry was about to fire, but, being restrained by an officer, challenged instead and exclaimed in a voice full of intent, "Speak! Who are you?" The stray, whose position between the two lines was not an enviable one, replied hurriedly, "Private William M——, of Subiaco, Western Australia." "Come in, you ruddy fool," rejoined the disappointed sentry. But M——'s luck was still out, for, in endeavouring to respond to the invitation, he got foul of the wire entanglements and crashed heavily ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... monster in my own estimation, if I could approach the fatal Finis of this melancholy trial, without painful emotions of profound regret, that the solemn responsibility of my official position makes me the reluctant bearer of the last stern message uttered by retributive justice. How infinitely more enviable the duty of the Amicus Curiae, my gallant friend and quondam colleague, who in voluntary defence has so ingeniously, eloquently and nobly led a forlorn hope, that he knew was already irretrievably lost? Desperate, indeed, must ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... returned to his house, was in a state of mind by no means enviable. Missing her at tea, he had asked Miss Bennet where she was, and hearing she had not left word, he could scarce conceal his chagrin. Knowing, however, how few were her acquaintances in town, he soon concluded she was with Miss Belfield, but, not satisfied with sending Mr Delvile's messenger ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... marvellous store of gifts he had brought for them—guns, swords, hatchets, kettles, gunpowder, bullets, red cloth, blue cloth, hand-mirrors, knives, shirts, awls, scissors, needles, hawks' bells, vermilion, beads, and other enviable commodities, of the like of which they had never dreamed. Two hundred savages gathered before the French tents, where Bourgmont, with the gifts spread on the ground before him, stood with a French flag in his hand, surrounded by his officers and the Indian ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... inattentive, and immoral creature, man. And the more I read history and the more I see of mankind, the more I recognise the value of the Puritan discipline." And in that same Address he "founded his best hopes for that so enviable and unbounded country in which he was speaking, America, on the fact that so many of its millions had passed through the Puritan discipline." John Milton was a product of that discipline on the one hand, as John Bunyan was on the other. Christiana was another of its products in the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... cause that he was restless and disturbed; within the last three days he had by his own instability of purpose, and vacillating tastes and temper brought himself down from as enviable a position as well can be imagined, to one ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... a most enviable way of putting aside disagreeable subjects," persisted Hilda, "for discussion at ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... to make them distinguished and romantic figures. Who but feels that Wilson, Blake, Reynolds, Turner, and Rossetti were remarkable men? Others have had that facility and exquisiteness of handling which gives us the enviable and almost inexhaustible producer of charming objects—Hogarth, Cotman, Keene, Whistler, Conder, Steer, Davies. Indeed, with the exceptions of Blake and Rossetti—two heavy-handed men of genius—and ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... and prosecute the contest with vigor. Once initiated there were but few public men who would have the courage to oppose it. Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate "war, pestilence, and famine," than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun. The history of the defeated rebel will be honorable hereafter, compared with that of the Northern man who ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... shown. The subject is now fully before you, and I conceive that you will agree with me that in the present case, the counsel for the plaintiff have undertaken a task of no ordinary difficulty. It seems a task by no means enviable under any of its different aspects; but really, in the whole course of my experience at the bar, it has never yet fallen to my lot to witness so startling a feat of legal legerdemain, as that attempted in this court-room by the counsel for ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... days after reaching Baghdad I left for Samarra, which was at that time the Tigris front. I was attached to the Royal Engineers, and my immediate commander was Major Morin, D.S.O., an able officer with an enviable record in France and Mesopotamia. The advance army of the Tigris was the Third Indian Army Corps, under the command of General Cobbe, a possessor of the coveted, and invariably merited, Victoria Cross. The Engineers were efficiently ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... was truly an event, my dear friend, not only for me but for our Museum. . .How happy you are, and how enviable has been your scientific career, since you have had your home in free America! The founder of a magnificent institution, to which your glorious name will forever remain attached, you have the means of carrying out whatever undertaking commends itself to you as useful. Men and things, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... were near the Castle, and met Miss Crotchet and her companion, who had turned back to meet them. Captain Fitzchrome was shortly after heartily welcomed by Mr. Crotchet, and the party separated to dress for dinner, the Captain being by no means in an enviable state of mind, and full of misgivings as to the extent of belief that he was bound to accord to the words of ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... became a Fellow, and had Arnold, Keble, Newman, Pusey, and other eminent men as contemporaries; was a man of liberal views and sympathies, and much regarded for his sagacity and his skill in dialectics; his post as archbishop was no enviable one; is best known by his "Logic," for a time the standard work of the subject; he opposed the Tractarian movement, but was too latitudinarian for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... monarch; I should be one. A curse light on me the hour I can mention it without a burning blush. Oh, shame! shame on the blood of my father's son! Can my mouth own that I once was one? Yes, sir! you see before you the most injured, the least enviable of human beings. I ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... been seen, the reader will not be astonished on his arrival with us at the Dairy Farm, to find every arrangement in accordance with the fine condition of the cows, and the enviable (to all other cows) circumstances in which they live. The cow-sheds are divided into fifty stalls, each; and the appearance presented reminded one of the neatness and order of cavalry stables. Each stall is marked with a number; a corresponding number is marked ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of New York. Directing his attention to the 14,000 living in the metropolis, the editor said that the condition of 4,000 of them approached that of comfort; 1,000 of the number having substantial wealth, or that one out of every ten was in a pleasant and enviable social condition. As this pessimist was compelled to concede that this was not a bad showing for an oppressed people he goes off on another line, saying: "Everywhere the Negro, whatever his wealth or education or talents, is excluded from social ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Christiern was scarce able to keep his army from starvation. One by one the strongholds which he had seized surrendered, till finally his entire army was forced to yield, and Sweden, from her place as a weak and down-trodden Danish province, attained an enviable position among the great monarchies of Europe. The key to this marvellous transformation in the two parties can be found only in the characters of their respective leaders. The people were horrified by the brutal cruelties ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... pictorial style, a very high standard of correctness and an enviable balance of executive endowments. The point of technique in which he excelled least was perhaps that of discriminating the varying textures of different objects and surfaces. There is not much elevation or ideality in his works—much more of reality. His chiaroscuro is not carried out according ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... counter of the schooner which was their destination, the young man noted that she was the Drusilla M. Alden, a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master, whose nickname was "Old Mull." He had not recognized him under the name of Captain Downs when the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to fire him, altogether dissimilar to the glow which he was wont to feel when plunging into a dangerous phase of a professional case. He slowly drew from his pocket the typed note-paper which had nestled in such enviable intimacy with that courageous heart. The faint fragrance of her exquisite flesh clung to it still. He held it to his lips and kissed it. Then he stopped, to turn about and look upward at the tall hostelry ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... in the forest barrier. If it was a slight blush in recognition of his admiration she wondered at her capacity for blushing. However, Marie Antoinette coloured from temple to throat on the scaffold. But the girl knew that the poor Queen's fate was an enviable one compared to what awaited her if she fell into the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... all but an entire century has been unhesitatingly proclaimed the favourite poet of the French nation, was by no means during his lifetime in so enviable a situation, and, notwithstanding many an instance of brilliant success, could not rest as yet in the pleasing and undisturbed possession of his fame. His merit in giving the last polish to the French language, his unrivalled excellence both of expression ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... may be prevented and the cook enjoy an enviable esteem by the judicious use of herbs, singly or in combination. It is greatly to be regretted that the uses of these humble plants, which seem to fall lower than the dignity of the title "vegetable," should be so little ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... life had been rudely shaken, if not entirely wrecked, by Stephen's visit. Up to that time, Lady Barbara—who had been nearly three weeks with Martha—had not only delighted in her work, but had shown an enviable pride in keeping pace with her employer's engagements, often working rather late into the night to finish ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... perception that was one of her leading gifts. From this artificial atmosphere of constraint, it was inevitable that she should welcome hours of escape into her mother's unpretending domestic circle; and already at ten years old she had pronounced the lot of a scullery-maid enviable, compared to that of ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of the huge ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... time, to par—who would not only tell him this, but proceed to demonstrate that his knowledge was accurate by doing it. Mr. Stener was an inexperienced man at the time in the matter of finance. Mr. Cowperwood was an active young man with an enviable record as a broker and a trader on 'change. He proceeded to demonstrate to Mr. Stener not only in theory, but in fact, how this thing of bringing city loan to par could be done. He made an arrangement at that time with ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... seldom received their wages, have supported large families by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's poem, "Bread, or the Poor", is an account of an industrious labourer who, by working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, attained to an enviable state of independence.) The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the aristocracy, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is my conduct, in return for which I am rewarded with—the calumnies of half the world. You thought, I daresay, I was going to end my sentence different, and say that a host of people have given me the enviable title "beautiful and good." ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... and capable though she was to cope with the world, her lot was not an enviable one. It was with Godspeed, not the maledictions of one's neighbors, that she had hoped to leave the place which had sheltered her so long. And Padre Antonio—how could she part ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the best of her way out of the wood across lots to the road. She was not in a particularly enviable case. Amelia Wheeler was presumably in her bed, and she saw nothing for it but to take the ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... also more audacity than I cared about, with enviable health, mettle, and vitality. I may not have occasion to report any of this young lady's speeches (they would scarcely bear it), and am therefore the more anxious to describe her without injustice. I confess to some little prejudice against her. I ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... be confessed that Tom and Sam felt in anything but an enviable position. They knew Dan Baxter thoroughly, and knew he would stop at ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... Phalanx before Petersburg was far from being enviable. Smarting under the thrashing they had received from Hinks' division, the confederates were ever ready now to slaughter the "niggers" when advantage offered them the opportunity. A steady, incessant fire was kept up against the positions the Phalanx occupied, and their movements were watched with ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... it, and I rolled him over in a confused cloud of smoke and crackling bushes. In a moment he was on his legs again, but going off through the thick underwood at a pace that in my helpless state soon left me far behind. His state must have been far from enviable, as he left portions of his entrails all along his track. V. had killed his bear; he weighed about two hundred pounds, and measured fourteen inches round the arm, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... exhaust all the fountains of oratory. You complain as justly that my letters have been to you very few and very short; but I, on the other hand, do not so much grieve that I have been remiss in a duty so pleasant and so enviable, as I rejoice, and all but exult, at having such a place in your friendship, as that you should care to ask for frequent letters from me. That I should never have written to you for over more than three years, I pray you will ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... painful. It loses its terror as it draws nearer, especially when one thinks what it would be if one were not allowed to die." Tennyson has expressed in Tithonus the idea at which Froude glances, and from which he averts his gaze. Carlyle's senility was not enviable, and even that sturdy veteran Stratford Canning* told Gladstone that longevity was "not a blessing." Like Cephalus at the opening of Plato's Republic, Froude found that he could see more clearly when the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the service that has won more enviable renown than the glorious old 5th; and, although I have met them but twice in my peregrinations, I can not let them go unnoticed in this volume. Many of the boys I knew intimately—none better than young ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... French court ball on days of most special ceremony, a somewhat solemn affair, which required graciousness such as that of Marie Antoinette to make admission to every one a very enviable privilege; even though its stiffness had been in some degree relieved by a new regulation of the queen, that the invitations, which had hitherto been confined to matrons, should be extended to unmarried girls. Scarcely any change produced greater consternation among the admirers of old customs. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... affirmation that Don Carlos is faithful to the good traditions of the old and glorious Spanish monarchy, and that he believed he would be found to act also as "a man of the present age." The last sentence is a prayer to his brother, "who had the enviable privilege of serving in the Papal army," to ask their spiritual king at Rome for his apostolic benediction for Spain ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... paces from Mr. Wolston's bed, whom the two young girls were tending with anxious solicitude, and whose sickness was almost enviable, so many were ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... the funeral of a young lady, the only child of very wealthy parents, who resided in of Bedford-square. The heiress of their enviable riches was a very delicate, fragile-looking girl, and on the day that she attained her majority her parents gave a large dinner party, followed by a ball in the evening, to celebrate the event. It was during the winter; the night was very cold, the crowded rooms overheated, the young ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... a dozen battles, chancing to glance over these pages, may say that the dangers and horrors of those last five months have been underrated. They, however, belong to a comparatively small and enviable minority. Those who turned the tide in July, 1918, and who knocked the line at St. Mihiel into its proper place in September, also bore the brunt on the Meuse and the dreary mud-spattered monotony of the Army of Occupation. ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... comfortable living. Married to the woman of his early choice, he had become the father of two straight-limbed, healthy, and intelligent children; and then, for another twenty years, he felt that he would not care to change his lot with that of the most enviable of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of the Great Atlantic", by Anne Vyne Tillery Renshaw, is a grim and moving bit of verse, cast in the same primitively stirring metre which this author used in her professionally published poem, "The Chant of Iron". Mrs. Renshaw possesses an enviable power to reach the emotions through ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... abilities, physical and mental. She had neither under-nor over-rated them. She had smiled back at her reflection in her mirror, showing two rows of little milk-white teeth, and being well enough satisfied with being a charming young person with a secure complexion and enviable self-poise. She understood herself, and attained perfection in the art of understanding others. Her rather sharp experience had not allowed her to look in the glass in guileless ignorance of what she saw there, and perhaps this made her all ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stayed on Thee." "Perfect peace!"—what a blessed attainment! My soul! is it thine? Sure I am it is not, if thou art seeking it in a perishable world, or in the perishable creature, or in thy perishable self. Although thou hast all that the world would call enviable and happy, unless thou hast peace in God, and with God, all else is unworthy of the name;—a spurious thing, which the first breath of adversity will shatter, and the hour of death utterly annihilate! Perfect peace! What is it? It is ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... came out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable now compared to this punishment: To live! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... all of these customs have been tried in various parts of the world and at various times, and seldom has the condition of woman approached even so enviable a place as that of the female animal, except in the comparatively short periods when women have been the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... regretfully pointed out how his patron's readiness to accept the homage of other poets seemed to be thrusting him from the enviable place of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of these suicides are only simulated. The wily victim buys some innocuous preparation which sends him into convulsions with ghastly symptoms of poisoning, and, after treatment, remains the enviable hero of a mysterious masculine passion. Ask any town apothecary. A doctor friend of mine lately analysed the results of his benevolent exertions upon a young man who had been seen to drink some dreadful liquid out of a ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... train to Hudova, and reached aviation headquarters, where I was given a fine welcome in the barracks. The aviators all live in wooden shacks, in a dreary neighborhood. This is not an enviable place to be, especially since they have had nothing to ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... everything within their range of vision—flat green country, shaded farm-houses, encircling wooded hills and all—weighed it and sorted it and filed it away for future reference; and his clothes clung on him with almost that enviable fit found only in advertisements. Immediately he threw his luggage into the tonneau of the dingy automobile drawn up at the side of the lonely platform, and promptly climbed in after it. Spurred into purely mechanical ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... traced the growth of civilisation; the originality of Chastellux lay in concentrating attention on the eudaemonic issue, in examining each historical period for the purpose of discovering whether people on the whole were happy and enviable. Has there ever been a time, he inquired, in which public felicity was greater than in our own, in which it would have been desirable to remain for ever, and to which it would ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... there were few young men in England who occupied a more enviable position. He had a beautiful home; sufficient, but not overwhelming, wealth; a property which gave full scope for all the gifts of management and administration which he might possess; the devoted love of his family, and the goodwill even of those who ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Mr. Hastings walked away, wondering if every husband, at the expiration of fifteen months, reached the enviable position of being "only Howard!" Half an hour later, and Ella Hastings, having left orders with Mrs. Leah for a "company dinner," was riding down the shaded avenue into the highway, where she bade the coachman drive in the direction ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... Paul in whatsoever state he is therein to be content. It was the loveliest of mornings, however, to be abroad in upon any terms, and Malcolm hardly needed the resources of one who knew both how to be abased and how to abound —enviable perfection—-for the enjoyment of even a long walk. Heaven and earth were just settling to the work of the day after their morning prayer, and the whole face of things yet wore something of that look of expectation which one who mingled ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... indispensable complement to the scene, even although better conduct in the community was to be inferred. How so striking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still more leading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence of nature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. He took what fell in his way—magistracies, bank directorships, or what else, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means, always in the front social position, and, of course, in universal ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... is enviable enough: I have a pleasant room, with a fig-tree growing before my window, beneath which Captain B——n and myself breakfast daily, well shaded from sun and dust; not a musquito disputes possession with us; and the dinner-table ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... upon Stilicho for his hero. The form, he then decided, should be dramatic. Upon "Stilicho" he had now been engaged for a year, and to-night he is writing the last words of the last scene. Shortly after twelve he has finished it, and, throwing down his pen, he paces about the room with enviable feelings. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... them by the same means in wholesale or retail. We need hardly add that the working of mines and manufactories was conducted entirely by slaves. The situation of these slaves was, no doubt, far from enviable, and was throughout less favourable than that of slaves in Greece; but, if we leave out of account the classes last mentioned, the industrial slaves found their position on the whole more tolerable than the rural serfs. They had more frequently a family and a practically independent ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... woodcraft was such that, although he had spent ten years on the border, his slowness of foot had never operated against him; nor once had he been outwitted by the red-men of the woods. Besides this, he had the enviable reputation of being a lucky individual—one whose rifle never missed fire, or sped wide of its mark—one to whom no unfortunate accident over occurred; so that, take him all in all, few hunters were safer in the wood than this ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... baby tea-table, is pleased with the notion that she is like her mamma; and, before she can have any idea of the real pleasures of conversation and society, she is confirmed in the persuasion, that tattling and visiting are some of the most enviable privileges of grown people; a set of beings whom she believes to be in possession of all the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of walking to church on holy-days, preceded by a phalanx of halberdiers, in habiliments fashioned as in former times, seems, in the eyes of many a guild brother, to be a very enviable pitch of worldly grandeur. Few persons were ever more proud of civic honours than the Thane of Fife, but he knew well how to turn his political influence to the best account. The council, court, and other ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott |
