"Infelicitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not. Hence, therefore, in the indications of the countenance, they are only the hard cut lines, and rigid settings, and wasted hollows, that speak of past effort and painfulness of mental application, which are inconsistent with expression of moral feeling, for all these are of infelicitous augury; but not the full and serene development of habitual command in the look, and solemn thought in the brow, only these, in their unison with the signs of emotion, become softened and gradually confounded with a serenity and authority of nobler origin. But of the sweetness ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... parties—disturbed the appropriate interest of the scene, being irreconcilable with the allusive meaning of dancing in general, and laid a weight upon its gayety which no condescensions from the highest quarter could remove. This infelicitous arrangement forced the thoughts of all present upon the exalted rank of the parties which could dictate and exact so unusual an assortment. And that rank, again, it presented to us under one of its least happy aspects; as insulating a blooming young woman amidst the choir of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was the more capable of sacrifice—man or woman? Marya Dmitrievna immediately became agitated, began to assert that woman is the more capable, declared that she would prove it in two words, got entangled, and wound up by a decidedly infelicitous comparison. Varvara Pavlovna picked up a music-book, half-concealed herself with it, and leaning over in the direction of Panshin, nibbling at a biscuit, with a calm smile on her lips and in her glance, she remarked, in an undertone: ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... here still?' she said to him, startled, as he held out his hand. He replied by some comments on the music, a little lumbering and infelicitous, as all his small-talk was. She hardly listened, but presently she looked up nervously, compelled as it were by the great ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
