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Augury   Listen
noun
Augury  n.  (pl. auguries)  
1.
The art or practice of foretelling events by observing the actions of birds, etc.; divination.
2.
An omen; prediction; prognostication; indication of the future; presage. "From their flight strange auguries she drew." "He resigned himself... with a docility that gave little augury of his future greatness."
3.
A rite, ceremony, or observation of an augur.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Augury" Quotes from Famous Books



... and said, "An augury is a solemn affair, and no disrespect must be allowed to nature's oracle, which in this case is a chestnut burr;" and he speedily ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... cavalier was in the meanwhile guided to the water-side by the Pensioner, who showed him considerable respect; a circumstance which, to persons in his situation, may be considered as an augury of no small consequence. He ushered him into one of the wherries which lay ready to attend the Queen's barge, which was already proceeding; up the river, with the advantage of that flood-tide of which, in the course of their descent, Blount had ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... red-hot anthracite coal or the red-hot air-tight stove burns out all the vital part of the air, so that healthy plants in a few days wither and begin to drop their leaves, it is a sign that the air must be looked to and reformed. It is a fatal augury for a room that plants cannot be made to thrive in it. Plants should not turn pale, be long-jointed, long-leaved, and spindling; and where they grow in this way, we may be certain that there is a want of vitality for human beings. But where plants appear as they do in the open air, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... "I shall not budge from here, till Paris is taken," she said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur of Montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt this important and welcome addition to their number ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... was Freda who had recognized the young Saxon, and the pleasure which her face evinced when her father proposed to purchase him from Bijorn angered him still more. In his heart he cursed the horse whose welcoming neigh had in the first instance saved Edmund's life, and the trial by augury which had confirmed the first omen. After the banquet was over Siegbert requested Edmund to relate ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... continued Eunana, glancing toward Herhor, "I and my people, as piety enjoins, rendered homage to the golden symbols of the sun, and halted. That augury is of such import that no man of us would make a ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... Elated by this augury of further victory, the republicans prepared for the decisive blow. Wuermser, though checked on August 3rd, had been so far reinforced from Mantua as still to indulge hopes of driving the French from Castiglione ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... spirits in the other world have knowledge of human affairs, can Mr. Cartwright be now altogether satisfied with his rogue's augury as to the capacities of the New England Puritans, when he intends to pick pockets in the New World, having made the Old too hot ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of the double snipe in the Campagna of Rome, a great flight appeared on the 3rd of April, and the day after heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients was a good deal founded upon the observation of the instincts of birds. There are many superstitions of the vulgar owing to the same source. For anglers, in spring, it is always unlucky ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... fellow-citizens; he was still more eminent in private and at home. What a wealth of conversation! What weighty maxims! What a wide acquaintance with ancient history! What an accurate knowledge of the science of augury! For a Roman, too, he had a great tincture of letters. He had a tenacious memory for military history of every sort, whether of Roman or foreign wars. And I used at that time to enjoy his conversation with a passionate eagerness, as though I already divined, what actually ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... their own lives, could combine a candour so absolute with so much of dignity—who could treat their personal history so impartially as a means of conveying lessons of general truth—or who, while chronicling such small things, could remain so great. The Prelude is a book of good augury for human nature. We feel in reading it as if the stock of mankind were sound. The soul seems going on from strength to strength by the mere development of her inborn power. And the scene with which the poem at once opens and concludes—the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... Virginia regiments, deployed in well-ordered array on the height above. "Look!" he shouted, "there is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!" The men took up the cry; and the happy augury of the expression, applied at a time when defeat seemed imminent and hearts were failing, was remembered when the danger ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... fond embrace of parents and a sister, which for me was a sweet augury at my departure, greeted me ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... discovered where he was. Discovered in his retreat, Amphiaraues accompanied the Argives, and while, according to the rules of the soothsaying art, he was observing a flight of birds, in order to derive an augury from it, his horses fell down a precipice, and he lost his life. Statius and other writers, to describe this event in a poetical manner, say that the earth opened and swallowed up ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... as to its particular state there was a diversity of belief. As among other people, also, the offices of religion were not only directed to the present benefit of individuals, but also to the discovery of future events by various processes of divination and augury ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... your favorable augury will prove true. Your earlier letter I have not received. But I was heartily delighted with your last. Shortly before receiving it I had been hearing a number of excellent things about the composer, conductor and friend Herbeck, all of which tallied perfectly with what I remembered ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... augury of permanent quiet. Brackenridge, who was a keen observer of men, says of the temper of the western population at this period: "I had seen the spirit which prevailed at the Stamp Act, and at the commencement of the revolution ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... Denmark, under the name of comte de ———, and the other a nobleman of his suite. Christian VII appeared to me a very handsome man. He had large and singularly expressive eyes; too much so, perhaps, for their brilliancy was not of good augury; and I was not surprised at hearing subsequently that his reason had abandoned him, altho' he possessed and exerted his wit most perfectly during our conversation, in which he displayed the greatest gallantry. I could not reproach him with one single expression that was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... all sides with memorial tablets. This boulder was carried to its present position by the goddess herself, the monument and bridges were built to detain it where it lay, and the temple afterwards erected to commemorate an event of such happy augury ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... only one explanation possible. This continual shifting of the Colonel, ever under the charge of those rascally dragoons, commanded now by a man whose familiarity with Tixall was an evil augury, meant one thing only. Soon, perhaps within an hour or two, there would be fighting, and under cover of that a stab in the back or a bullet in the head would clear the Colonel out of Brocton's path ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... words, regarded the interview as a contrivance to reconcile Francis and the emperor through the intervention of the pope, as a preliminary for a packed council, and for a holy war against the Lutherans,[168]—a combination of ominous augury to Christendom, from the consequences or which, if Germany was to be the first sufferer, England would be ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... now, and tell me do you hear anything. That's the sound of bees swarming at the window. That's a good augury for you, Christy. ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... this action might be the turning-point in the first stage of the great Somme battle. We strained our eyes into the darkness studying, as a mariner studies the sky, the signs with which we had grown familiar as indicative of results. There was a good augury in the comparatively slight German shell fire in response, though we were reminded that it might at any ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... to his armpits in the bog of Civil Service Reform, described as "Spinney's Walk-Over" (a happy blending, as Nick called it, of serious principle and humorous suggestion), I appeared on the door-steps and delivered a few halting sentences of gratitude and augury for success, which were received with loud plaudits and the rattle of the drum corps. Thereupon I invited the battalion to enter and partake of a little simple hospitality, which they hastened to do to the number of two hundred, including ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... safety, gave a charm the more to the magnificent young King, handsome, noble, brave, and full of universal friendliness and sympathy, who comes forth smiling in the face of fate, ready to turn back every gloomy augury and bring in another golden age. Pitscottie's description is full ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... man in better mood for the rush and thrill of the motor than I, after the conquering of Miss Van Buren. It was but a shadow victory, a tempest in a tea-pot, yet it was so good an augury of a further triumph for which I hoped in future, that the joy of it went fizzily to my head, and I could have shouted, if I had been alone in some desert place with nobody by to know that it was a Dutchman who made a fool ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... which issued from its precincts. The calm and anxious gravity which it might be supposed would have presided in councils held on such important subjects, and at a period so critical, seemed to have given place to discord wild, and loud uproar, which fell on the ear of their new ally as an evil augury of their future measures. As they approached the door, they found it open indeed, but choked up with the bodies and heads of countrymen, who, though no members of the council, felt no scruple in intruding ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... one, drinking its water, which was mildewy, and eating the last particle of the meat. A little later she found a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day was out, she found the outrigger. Every find was an augury. The pearl was a talisman. Late in the afternoon she saw a wooden box floating low in the water. When she dragged it out on the beach its contents rattled, and inside she found ten tins of salmon. She opened one by hammering it on the canoe. When a leak was started, she drained the ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... juniper tree, portends happiness and wealth out of sorrow and depressed conditions. For a young woman, this dreams omens a bright future after disappointing love affairs. To the sick, this is an augury of speedy recovery. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... all allowed to be the most skillful archer that was either among the Greeks or barbarians. Now this man, as people were in great numbers passing along the road, and a certain augur was observing an augury by a bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they staid for. Hereupon the augur showed him the bird from whence he took his augury, and told him that if the bird staid where he was, they ought all to stand still; but that if he got up, and flew onward, they must ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... contemptible artist, told him she was ashamed of him, took the rope out of his hand, and tied the knot irreproachably herself. The crowd saluted her with a festal roll, long and loud, of vivas; and this word viva of good augury—but ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... lifted and broke, showing blue sky and one streak of sunshine. But the augury was without warrant. The wind increased. A huge black pall bore down from the mountains and it brought rain that could be seen falling in sheets from above and approaching like a swiftly moving wall. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... no answer; but I saw by the expression of his countenance that he had no better augury of my fate than I had. However, the enemy was approaching, and for the last three days he had solicited the Provisional Government to place a frigate at his disposal, with which he might proceed to America. It had been ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... headland the elements of two hemispheres meet and contend. As Dias saw it, so he named it, 'The Cape of Storms'. But his master, John II, seeing in the discovery a promise that India, the goal of the national ambition, would be reached, named it with happier augury 'The Cape of Good Hope'. No fitter name could have been given to that turning-point in the history of mankind. Europe, in truth, was on the brink of achievements destined to breach barriers, which had enclosed ...
— Progress and History • Various

... world for shyness; and Hilary led the way to the drawing-room with recovered equanimity. She had only had time for a quick hand-shake with the other visitor, but the glance which had been exchanged between them was delightful in its memory of past meetings—its augury of good ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of that office his heart was singing with joy. The clouds had rolled away once more, and the future looked particularly bright. He only hoped it would be an augury of success in store for the Chester nine in their ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... pre-eminent Virginian, so John Adams was, beyond all dispute, the foremost New Englander. Ten States voted in the election, casting sixty-nine electoral ballots. Washington received the whole sixty-nine; and our government began with the happy augury of an unanimous choice for its head. For Vice-President, John Adams received thirty-four votes; John Jay nine; R.H. Harrison six; John Rutledge six; John Hancock four; and ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... reference whatever. [Laughter.] Having started your society on a basis so different from that which characterizes the units of the society is an evidence of how you have become permeated and tinctured with Yankee influences. I am glad to hear of your financial prosperity. It is a good augury, a hopeful sign of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... race Appanages, ducal Aquarius Archives Area of Ancient China Army organization Army provision Army, standing Arrows Arsenals Assassinations of princes Assyria. See Babylonia Astrology Astronomy Atlantic Augury. See Oracles Augustus, title August Emperor (see First); Second); (Both); (Third) Authorities ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... advised—the Chieftain's plan 55 Bespeaks the father of his clan. But wherefore sleeps Sir Roderick Dhu Apart from all his followers true?" "It is, because last evening-tide Brian an augury hath tried, 60 Of that dread kind which must not be Unless in dread extremity, The Taghairm called; by which, afar, Our sires foresaw the events of war. Duncraggan's ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... scintillated a great deal. He did not think it was a sign of rain, as the peasants believe. He had observed, on the contrary, that nine times in ten the scintillation of stars was an augury of fine weather. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... the brothers. The story goes that Romulus wished to have the city built on the Palatine Hill, Remus on the Aventine Hill; and that, as they could not agree, they referred the matter to their grandfather, who advised them to settle it by augury,—or by watching and forming conclusions from the flight of birds. This long continued the favorite Roman mode of settling difficult questions. It was easier than the Greek plan of going to Delphi to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... follow; and from a cloudy morning she foretold a bad day. But Zoza, meanwhile, began to enchant all around her with the sweetness of her words, relating her sorrows from first to last, and beginning with her natural melancholy, the unhappy augury of all she had to suffer. Then she went on to tell of the old woman's curse, her painful wanderings, her arrival at the fountain, her bitter weeping, and the treacherous sleep which had been the cause ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... Pindar, that a swarm of bees settled upon his lips, and fed him with honey, when he was left exposed upon the highway. It probably had some foundation in fact, whatever may be thought of the implied augury of the special favour of the gods which is said to have been drawn from it at the time. In any case, the picture of the strayed child, sleeping unconscious of its danger, with its hands full of wild- ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... had the Notables been free to work out the future of Egypt, it is impossible to say. The fate of the Young Turkish party and of Midhat's constitution of December 1877 formed by no means a hopeful augury. In the abstract there is much to be said for the two chief demands of the Notables—that the Khedive's Ministers should be responsible to the people's representatives, and that the Dual Control of Great Britain and France should be limited ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... question to a servant. This conjunction of circumstances led to his immediately afterwards presenting himself before the young ladies in a posture, which in ancient times would not have been considered one of favourable augury for his suit; since the gondoliers of the young ladies, having been put to some inconvenience by the chase, so neatly brought their own boat in the gentlest collision with the bark of Mr Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman over like a larger species ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit, as well as a more poetic comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too roughly, is expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as evidence of her ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Telephium).—Also called Midsummer May; grows in Otterbourne Park, and a large bunch on the Romsey Road. An old woman described having tried the augury, having laid the plants in pairs on Midsummer Eve, naming them after pairs of sweethearts. Those that twisted away from each other ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen prophet. He spake no word whatever about dominion; all he dared conjecture for his city was safety. Even that is put in a highly hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the material ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... left Naples foreboding disastrous events to that kingdom. Among these, the assassination of Andrew, on the 18th of September, 1345, was one that fulfilled his augury. The particulars of this murder reached Petrarch on his arrival at Avignon, in a ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... brings down frigid abstractions from the skies in the shape of Virtus[552] and Pietas.[553] Again, while auguries and prophecies play a legitimate part in such a work, nothing can justify, and only the passion of the Silver Age for the supernatural can explain, the protraction of the scenes of augury at Thebes and Argos to 114 and 239 lines respectively. Equally disproportionate are the catalogues of the Argive and the Theban armies, making between them close on 400 lines.[554] Nor is imitation of Vergil the slightest justification ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... company of those who wished to flee from the tyrant, Dido seized the ships, loaded them with the gold, and fled to Libya, where she is now erecting the walls and towers of New Carthage. I would advise thee to hasten forward and seek our queen. If augury fail me not, I read from yonder flight of swans the return of thy ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... warfare on the Land Conference findings. The Standing Committee of the Catholic Hierarchy left no room for doubt as to their views. They declared the holding of the Land Conference "to be an event of the best augury for the future welfare of both classes" (landlords and tenants), and they expressed the hope that its unanimity would result in legislation which would settle the Land Question once for all "and give the Irish people of every ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... General Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff, was the practical director of military operations. General von Moltke was a nephew of the great strategist of 1870, and his name possibly appealed as of happy augury for repeating the former ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... there were the results of another system of things which still gave a salutary cheek to the more radical tendencies; but the second generation there could hardly have shown equal, certainly not the same, character." A confirmation of this augury is the fact that the cast of the community became decidedly more Fourieristic before it disbanded; and it is not impossible that another generation might have decolorized and seriously deformed human existence among them. Theories and opinions were very openly ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... come to pass that Thera shall be mother-city of mighty commonwealths, even the augury that once at the outpourings of the Tritonian lake Euphemos leaping from the prow took at the hands of a god who in the likeness of man tendered this present to the stranger of a clod of earth; and the Father Kronian Zeus confirmed it with ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... is well advised,—the Chieftain's plan Bespeaks the father of his clan. But wherefore sleeps Sir Roderick Dhu Apart from all his followers true?' 'It is because last evening-tide Brian an augury hath tried, Of that dread kind which must not be Unless in dread extremity, The Taghairm called; by which, afar, Our sires foresaw the events of war. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... man forespent, While God his angel Gabriel sent The couch of Carlemaine to guard. All night the angel kept watch and ward, And in a vision to Karl presaged A coming battle against him waged. 'Twas shown in fearful augury; The king looked upward to the sky— There saw he lightning, and hail, and storm, Wind and tempest in fearful form. A dread apparel of fire and flame, Down at once on his host they came. Their ashen lances the flames enfold, And their bucklers in to ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... careered about in the garden, his only resource against tears; and Sophy came in very still, very pale, and incapable of uttering a word or shedding a tear. Albinia was much concerned, for she could not bear to have sent him away without a more real adieu, and word of blessing and good augury; it made her feel herself truly unforgiving, and perhaps turned her heart back to him more fully and fondly than any exchange of sentiment would have done. But she had not much time to dwell on this omission, for poor Mrs. Meadows missed him sorely, and after two days' ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... met. His promise was undeniable. The vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be hopefuller. The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was, the baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision. He said to his intimates: "Every act, every fostered inclination, almost ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that their situation, during this day and night, appeared nearly desperate. In the night Xenophon had a dream—the first which he has told us since his dream on the terrific night after the seizure of the generals—but on this occasion, of augury[62] more unequivocally good. He dreamt that he was bound in chains, but that his chains on a sudden dropt off spontaneously; on the faith of which, he told Cheirisophus at daybreak that he had good hopes of preservation; ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... telling my story as promptly and connectedly as my exhaustion and agitation would permit. My tale was patiently listened to by the two or three men whom I found on duty in the office. When I had done, they smiled and shook their heads; expressions which I considered as no good augury of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... as god of the violent wind-storms, which destroy the houses and crops, and as one, who, in his own history, was driven from his kingdom and lost his all, was not considered a deity of invariably good augury. His day and sign, ce acatl, One Reed, was of bad omen. A person born on it would not succeed in life.[1] His plans and possessions would be lost, blown away, as it were, by the wind, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... weight of that treatment with which his slighted guest had, not indecorously, retaliated upon him, now supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain Delano's hand, stood tremulous; too much agitated to speak. But the good augury hence drawn was suddenly dashed, by his resuming all his previous reserve, with augmented gloom, as, with half-averted eyes, he silently reseated himself on his cushions. With a corresponding return of his own chilled feelings, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... to me a peculiar pleasure to speak to-day under such distinguished auspices as yours, Prince Fouad,[4] before this National University, and it is of good augury for the great cause of higher education in Egypt that it should have enlisted the special interest of so distinguished and eminent a man. The Arabic-speaking world produced the great University of Cordova, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... utterance to a superstition then common. From these words it would seem that the raven was considered a sign of evil augury to a person whose house was about to be entered by a visitor, for his croaking forebode treachery. But the raven's croaking was thought to foretell misfortune to a person about to enter another's ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... still leaves in recognized dominion, over fair regions of great future import, a system whose hopelessness of political and social improvement the lapse of time renders continually more certain,—an evil augury for the future, if a turning tide shall find it unchanged, an outpost of barbarism ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... came, accompanied by Maison-Rouge; from the latter's manner I drew the most favorable augury; however, when I asked to speak in private, or, at least, to whisper to the doctor, he made some difficulties, which I removed with a smile. 'At least,' said he, 'no one must know that I am out of hearing. I should lose my place if it were known ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... a tree, on which are painted the figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches, shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals is a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of these strapping hens is good augury;—hark, a cackle from the barn—another egg is laid—and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, and clapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultana till the welkin rings. "Turn ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... be counted as belonging definitely to the new religion are few and scattered and unconfessed, their realisations are still uncertain and incomplete. But that is no augury for the continuance of this state of affairs even for the next few decades. There are many signs that the revival is coming very swiftly, it may be coming as swiftly as the morning comes after a tropical night. It may seem at present as though ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... world' has in some instances sent forth mysterious types of the cardinal events, in the great historic drama of our planet. One has been noticed by a German author, and it is placed beyond the limits of any rational scepticism; I mean the coincidence between the augury derived from the flight of the twelve vultures as types of the duration of the Roman empire, i. e. Western Empire, for twelve centuries, and the actual event. This augury we know to have been recorded many centuries before its consummation; so that no juggling or collusion ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... "An augury of the catastrophe which was later to cost this unfortunate man his life," replied the unknown sadly. "Have you never experienced ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... circumstance, Sir, of happy augury for the motion before the House, that almost all those who have opposed it have declared themselves hostile on principle to Parliamentary Reform. Two Members, I think, have confessed that, though they disapprove of the plan now submitted to us, they are forced to admit the necessity of a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... I swung over the side of the boat into the water, when I found myself knee-deep. Olivia looked from me to Tardif with a flushed face—an augury that made my pulses leap. Why should her face never change when he carried her in his arms? Why should she ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... tout, as said Voltaire of Habbakuk and another agnostic Frenchman of the Prophet Zerubbabel. This was indeed high praise considering the Saturday's sympathy with and affection for the dead level, for the average man; but as an augury of ill it was a brutum fulmen. No. iv. (August 30, '87) was, strange to say, in tone almost civil and ended with ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... marriage, that her dependence upon him might be more complete. Later, if all went well, the concession could have been made—if, for instance, she became a mother. But then returned the exasperating thought that Rhoda had overcome his will. Was not that a beginning of evil augury? ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... peculiar distinction. The strain heard in the "Nativity Ode," in the "Solemn Music," and in "Lycidas," is of a higher mood, as regards metrical construction, than anything that had thrilled the English ear before, giving no uncertain augury of him who was to show what sonorous metal lay silent till he touched the keys in the epical organ-pipes of our various language, that have never since felt the strain of such prevailing breath. It was in the larger movements of metre that Milton was great ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... Augury and divination, the shrines of Ammon, and of Delphi, the Persian Magi, and the Etruscan seers, the Chaldean astrologers, the Sibyl herself, are described as still discharging their prophetic functions, and celebrating the natal day of this Christian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... among all classes of the community in England and Scotland wherever I have of late had an opportunity of hearing any expression of the public mind. Crowds at any public gathering have always given cheers for Canada. The great gathering of to-day is a renewed symptom of the same favourable augury, for a good augury I hold it to be, that men in the old country are ready to call "Hurrah for Canada!" On the other side of the ocean they are as ready to call "Hurrah for the old country!" and these cries are ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... own! May they be for you both an augury of good! Mind and return home, Le Gardeur, after your visit. I shall sit up to await your arrival, to congratulate you;" and, after a pause, she added, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... complication of mortal diseases, so widely spread and deeply seated that at present there is no hope of regeneration. The best hope is that its decay may provide the soil in which seed may be sown of a far-distant growth of happier augury. Such dismal forebodings are no novelty. Every age produces its prophecies of coming woes. Nothing would be easier than to make out a catena of testimonies from great men at every stage of the world's history, declaring each in turn that the cup of iniquity was now at last overflowing, and that corruption ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... hope, and too artfully assisted to deceive the count and the marquis under the guise of simple friendship. Letters passed between them in books given into one another's hands with an audacious openness of the saddest augury for the future of the pair, and Nevil could be so lost to reason as to glory in Renee's intrepidity, which he justified by their mutual situation, and cherished for a proof that she was getting courage. In fine, Rosamund abandoned her task of pleading. Nevil's communications gave the case a worse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... people or natives whom the boy had enlisted came pouring into the camp, Cin-au'-aev and To-go'-a were engaged in telling them of the wonderful thing that had happened to the boy, and that now there were two; and they all held it to be an augury of a successful expedition to the land of Stone Shirt. And they started ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... that no time could be more fitting than this. Certainly, if Fra Domenico walked through the fire unhurt, that would be a miracle, and the faith and ardour of that good brother were felt to be a cheering augury; but Savonarola was acutely conscious that the secret longing of his followers to see him accept the challenge had not been dissipated by any reasons he ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... remote spot where Clarissa sat, not far from his daughter. My lady saw those curious glances, and was delighted to see them. They might mean nothing, of course; but to that sanguine spirit they seemed an augury of success for the scheme which had been for a long time hatching in the matron's ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... Adrienne, to encourage him, showed him Frisky, and said to him gayly: "This poor little animal, to which I am very much attached, will always afford me a lively remembrance of your obliging complaisance, sir. And this visit seems to me to be of happy augury; I know not what good presentiment whispers to me, that perhaps I shall have the pleasure of being useful to you in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... accomplished. Tired out by these Saxon delays, I put myself at the head of my Army of Bohemia [Keith's hitherto]; and marched from Aussig to—a Name which seemed to me of good augury, being yours,—to the Village of Welmina [Battle was called OF WELMINA, by the Prussians at first]. I found the Austrians here, near Lobositz; and, after a Fight of seven hours, forced them to run. Nobody of your acquaintance is killed, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle

... you, Lady Mary, on so favourable an augury," said Pansey Cottrell, as he leisurely consumed ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... Wicklow and Lord Fitzgerald made yet ampler concessions than his grace; and the Marquis of Lansdowne argued on this, that they assented to the principles of the bill; and that, therefore, no further delay should take place in its progress. Lord Brougham said that he drew no happy augury of the fate of the bill from the very significant speech of the Duke of Wellington. He would not say any sinister motive lurked in his proposition for delay; but if he was averse to the present measure, as he appeared to be, why did he not throw it out altogether? It was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... vast numbers of them bearing birds of different species, in curious wicker baskets; which they displayed to the hero as he passed, and then giving them their liberty, watched their flight with all the anxiety and assumed importance of the ancient Roman augury. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... deep mourning, but presented himself serenely and made a profound bow, even though the visit of the friars had not appeared to him to be a good augury. The Captain-General ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... London, fifty tunnes, and the Moonshine, of Dartmouth, thirty-five tunnes, the ship Mermayd, of a hundred and twenty tunnes, and a pinesse of tenne tunnes named the North Starre.'[5] But in spite of this name of good augury the little pinnace never came home again, and one can only admire with awe the daring that ventured to sail a boat of ten tons across the boisterous Atlantic into the unknown Arctic Seas. Traces of Davis's wanderings along the coasts of North America may still be found in the names he bestowed on ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... B——, 'I am superstitious, and have recollected that memorials with a point are of less fortunate augury; I will, therefore, request you to accept, instead of the pin, the enclosed chain, which is of so slight a value that you need not hesitate. As you wished for something worn, I can only say, that it has been worn oftener and longer than the other. It is of Venetian manufacture; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there was another sort of insight, purely scientific, into the mysteries of nature, inherited and expressed by him; a certain acquaintance with her hidden powers, and a certain augury of her possible future development, if men could only attain to it, far beyond the mere rapt enthusiasm of a poet, or the so-called second-sight of a seer. Whether this peculiar faith of his was derived by tradition, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... betrothed parties are concerned in them. The cries of birds and deer are important; those heard about the house are likely to be bad omens, and it is sought to compensate for these by sending a man skilled in augury to seek good omens in the jungle, such as the whistle of the Trogan and of the spider-hunter, and the flight of the hawk from right to left high up in the sky. If the omens are persistently and predominantly bad, the marriage is put off for ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... "This is bold augury, Signore," returned she who was evidently the oldest of the two, glancing a look at her companion as if to note the effect of this gallant speech. "Venice has a name for the beauty of its dames, and the sun of Italy warms ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... as to their impression of my marvellous speech. I had not long to wait. Less than ten minutes later I was once more summoned into the presence of M. le Juge; and this time the minions of the law were ordered to remain in the antechamber. I thought this was of good augury; and I waited to hear M. le Juge give forth the order that would at once set me free. But it was M. Mosenstein who first addressed me, and in very truth surprise rendered me momentarily dumb when he ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... at a twelvemonths' end, when a final decision might be had, whether to name it "The Oasis" or "Sahara." So, at last, finding it impracticable to hammer out anything better, we resolved that the spot should still be Blithedale, as being of good augury enough. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... (a.u. 505)] 25. The second part of the augury is transmitted to us by Dio Cassius Cocceianus, who says that they keep tame birds which eat barley, and put barley grains in front of them when they seek an omen. If, then, in the course of eating the birds do not strike the barley ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... and love-sick niece, holding a long conference with one of these old sibyls behind a large tree in the avenue, and often looking round to see that she was not observed. I make no doubt that she was endeavouring to get some favourable augury about the result of her love quarrel with young Ready-Money, as oracles have always been more consulted on love affairs than upon anything else. I fear, however, that in this instance the response was not so favourable as usual, for I perceived poor Phoebe ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... returned the morning of the third day to close the deal. He said he had missed his train on the previous day, and being a superstitious man he regarded that as an augury of evil. Nevertheless he had resolved to take the stuff even at a price that was ruinous. He unfolded two hundred dollars in the presence of Clem, and wished to know if he might send a wagon at once. Clem brought back word from Miss Caroline, who had declined to appear, that the strange gentleman ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... being punished for this action.—XII. Julian prepares an expedition against the Persians, and, in order to know beforehand the result of the war, he consults the oracles; and sacrifices innumerable victims, devoting himself wholly to soothsaying and augury.—XIII. He unjustly attributes the burning of the temple of Apollo at Daphne to the Christians, and orders the great church at Antioch to be shut up.—XIV. He sacrifices to Jupiter on Mount Casius—Why ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... believe that nothing great or lasting can be done except by inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury.— ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... stable, and republicanism an unstable system. It was but a very short time before the fall of Richmond that I heard an Englishman, so far from anticipating the catastrophe of the South, repeat the threadbare augury of the Times and other journals, that the remaining Federal States would yet split up into a Western and an Eastern aggregation. The Cerberus of Democracy was to start his three heads off on three different roads, by that process common in many of the lower animal organisms, known to zooelogists ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... more strongly assured as she more and more mastered the difficulties of her work. To perform such a great lyric character at the age of fifteen, with even a fair share of ability, was a glowing augury. ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... not at his request, the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamers christened one of their ocean greyhounds Wilhelm der Grosse. The mere fact that people discuss the question in his lifetime is of happy augury for the Emperor. Perhaps some other epithet will be found for him. "Puffing Billy" is one of his titles among English officers, taken from the name given locally to Stephenson's first locomotive. But history has many ranks in her peerage and many epithets at her disposal—great, good, fair, lionhearted, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... of life which to Brian's fancy haunted the highway, Kenny had delightful substitute, fairies quaffing nectar from flower-cups of dew or riding bridle paths of cloud on bits of straw. In everything he chose to find an augury, from the night of birds to the way of the wind, the curl of smoke or the color of a cloud. Thirsty he longed for the drinking horn of Bran Galed or better still of Finn, for Finn's horn held whatever ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... Magus, got by Gellius out of his mother (Marriage nefand!) who shall Persian augury learn. Needs it a Magus begot of son upon mother who bare him, If that impious faith, Persian religion be fact, So may their issue adore busy gods with recognised verses 5 Melting in altar-flame fatness ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... led the Mysians, but his skill in augury availed not to save him from destruction, for he fell by the hand of the fleet descendant of Aeacus in the river, where he slew others ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... 7: An epithet derived from [Greek: sminthos], the Phrygian name for a mouse: either because Apollo had put an end to a plague of mice among that people, or because a mouse was thought emblematical of augury.—Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 68, observes that this "worship of Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and its neighbouring territory, dates before the earliest period of AEolic colonization." On the ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... breakfast again," Maraton declared. "It is a good augury that the first words I have heard from one of ourselves have been words such as your brother has spoken. To tell you the truth, I came over here in fear and trembling. Some of your leaders ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... old religious customs, such as the Augury of Public Health, and identified himself closely with the rites and customs of the people. He inculcated that sense of duty which the Romans called pietas, and attempted to improve the morals of the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... Giuseppe de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention, however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... its errand went That huge ferocious armament, An awful cloud, in dust and gloom, With threatening thunders from its womb Poured in sad augury a flood Of rushing water mixt with blood. The monarch's steeds, though strong and fleet, Stumbled and fell: and yet their feet Passed o'er the bed of flowers that lay Fresh gathered on the royal way. No gleam of sunlight struggled through The sombre pall of midnight hue, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... we defy augury; there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. [55] If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... returned with his spraddling milch-nannies, he found a second stool placed alongside the first. It was a happy augury; his attentions, then, were not altogether distasteful. He seated himself gravely upon the stool, and when Katrina had done milking, she came and occupied the other. He mechanically renewed his proposal. Then the artless maid proceeded to recapitulate the obstacles to the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... less than a day's acquaintance, have become roommates. Henry Martin was about Sam's age, but much more thoughtful and sedate. He had begun to think of the future, and to provide for it. This is always an encouraging sign, and an augury of success. Sam had not got so far yet. He had been in the habit of living from day to day without much thought of the morrow. Whether he would be favorably affected by Henry's example ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger

... porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque exspectare lucem consueverat:"—i. e., But, above all, he was tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness; for he enjoyed not more than three hours of nocturnal repose; nor these even in pure untroubled rest, but agitated by phantasmata of portentous augury; as, for example, upon one occasion he fancied that he saw the sea, under some definite impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence it was, and from this incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he had ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... I haue entertained thee, Partly that I haue neede of such a youth, That can with some discretion doe my businesse: For 'tis no trusting to yond foolish Lowt; But chiefely, for thy face, and thy behauiour, Which (if my Augury deceiue me not) Witnesse good bringing vp, fortune, and truth: Therefore know thee, for this I entertaine thee. Go presently, and take this Ring with thee, Deliuer it to Madam Siluia; She lou'd me well, deliuer'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... with the screech owl referring to death, it is interesting to note that among the Nahuas the owl is considered of unlucky augury and is usually found in the "House of Death" and "of Drought", as contrasted with the turkey, considered as a bird of good fortune, and found ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... than his colleagues, bade the Assembly confide in their invisible sentinel, the people. Thus the majority of the Chamber, with the clearest warning of danger, insisted on giving the aggressor every possible advantage. If the imbecility of opponents is the best augury of success in a bold enterprise, the President had indeed little reason to ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... over their lovely petals. You wish me a rose-strewn itinerary, all conceivable forms of 'good luck'; as though you stood on tip-toe and shouted after me: 'Gluck auf.' As a happy augury, I accept it. Like the old Romans, you have offered up for me a dainty sacrifice to propitiate Domiduca—the goddess who grants ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... true to the party you have made your own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his. Then he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:[239] "No augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you come to me for the holidays. Your bath shall be ready for you: your sister and mother shall be of the party." And ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... Two, indeed, are sworn to us; but the third cannot be come at. He must be cut down afterwards; and, indeed, when so many men must fall, what matters a eunuch more or less? Thus it shall be, then. To-morrow night, at three hours before midnight thou dost cast the final augury of the issue of the war. And then thou wilt, as is agreed, descend alone with me, having the signet, to the outer chamber of the Queen's apartment. For the vessel bearing orders to the Legions sails from Alexandria at the following dawn; and alone with Cleopatra, since she wills ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... On passing the threshold it is proper to say, "Bismillah, i.e., in the name of God;" not to do so would be looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for those within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on coming about half-way across the room, he gives to all present, but looking specially at the master of the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... lute she tied With black and purple scarfs by her left side. Apollo gave it, and her skill withal, And she was term'd his dwarf, she was so small: Yet great in virtue, for his beams enclos'd His virtues in her; never was propos'd Riddle to her, or augury, strange or new, But she resolv'd it; never slight tale flew From her charm'd lips without important sense, Shown in some grave succeeding consequence. This little sylvan, with her songs and tales, Gave such estate ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... to have a bad meaning in art. Visions of Whistler come before you when you hear it. Such visions are not of the best possible augury, for who ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... reached their belts. They climbed aboard their boats, and raised the sails. And soon a line of great white wings was vanishing into the mist, madly rushing seaward through the white caps, under a sky already lowering with tempest and black with the scowl of fateful augury. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... signified, they said, that they would perish in the jungles, and the hare or some other animal of the forest would drink water from their skulls. "We know that the hare was used in Brittany as an animal of augury for foretelling the future; and all animals of augury were once venerated." [706] The hare has still some remnant of sanctity among the Hindus. Women will not eat its flesh, and men eat the flesh of wild hares only, not of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... sooths his wife with words Of cheering import: "Right, if I divine, "No impious deed the deity desires: "Earth is our mighty mother, and her bones "The stony rocks within her;—these behind "Our backs to cast, the oracle commands." With joy th' auspicious augury she hears, But joy with doubt commingled, both so much The heavenly words distrust; yet still they hope The essay cannot harm. The temple left, Their heads they cover, and their vests unbind; And o'er their heads as order'd heave the stones. The stones—(incredible! unless ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... joyous Book of Spring Lies open, writ in blossoms; not a bird Of evil augury is seen or heard: Come now, like Pan's old crew, we'll dance and sing, Or Oberon's: for hill and valley ring To ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... night and woke with new sinews. I saw that the sun was shining and the sky untroubled. A squaw brought me broth, and I drank it hungrily and tried to see no evil augury in the fact that I was served by a woman. I flattered her, and asked her ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... clasped, loving each other, if possible, better than ever. He now and then repeated some loving greeting which she was to bear home; and she tried to restrain her tears, at the separation she was forced to rejoice in, a parting which gave no augury of meeting again, the renewal of an exile from which there was no present hope of return. Harry looked at Dr. Bathurst to intimate it was time to be gone. The clergyman came close to the brother and sister, and instead of speaking his own words, ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... seemingly good augury for the cause of a suppliant man, however little for the man himself, when she who has much to pardon can depict him in a manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse the miniature man-child ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... stakes of which were so high as to carry life and death with them in the balance. But for them the sun shone brightly. It was enough that they played the game and shared the risks together. The jocund morning was in their hearts, and brought with it an augury of success based on nothing so humdrum or tangible ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... this, he did reverence and thought it a great matter that his offence had turned out for his profit and moreover that he had been invited to dinner with happy augury; 127 and so he went to his house. And having entered it straightway, he sent forth his son, for he had one only son of about thirteen years old, bidding him go to the palace of Astyages and do whatsoever the king should command; and he himself ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... various innovations took place at Rome. Before the end of the monarchy the Romans had begun to build houses for their gods, after being for 170 years, we are told, without any such arrangement. The Roman "templum" was not originally a building, but a space marked off, according to the rules of augury, for the observation of signs. A part of the sky was also marked off for such "observation" and "contemplation." On such a holy site, on the Capitoline hill, there was founded by the earlier Tarquin the temple of Jupiter which always continued to be the principal site of Roman religion. Its ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... betraying his friends; De Rolandis was hung on the 23rd of April 1796. Such was the origin of the flag, but, until 1831, the Carbonaro red, blue and black was the common standard of the revolution. From that year forth, the destinies of Italy were accomplished under the colours of better augury, so fit to recall her fiery volcanoes, her wooded Apennines, her snow-crowned Alps; colours which in one sense she receives from Dante, who clothes in them the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... Herr Freudenberg replied, grasping the hand which had been offered to him, "are a happy augury. When we meet again, I shall be able to prove the coming of the things of which ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... for greater perfection of product, but it does not make for variety and human interest, nor for high-quality varieties. We shall still improve it. Masterful men will perfect organizations. The high character and attainment of the commanding fruit-growers, nurserymen and dealers are good augury for the future. But all this is not sufficient. Quantity-production will be an increasing source of wealth, but it cannot satisfy ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... decree of this most excellent city of Venice, of us the prince, and of the senate, you are to be commander and captain-general of all our forces and armaments on terra firma. Take from our hands this truncheon, with good augury and fortune, as sign and warrant of your power. Be it your care and effort, with dignity and splendor to maintain and to defend the majesty, the loyalty, and the principles of this empire. Neither provoking, nor yet provoked, unless at our command, shall you break into ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... power to stand on that 90th of latitude, and plant an impious right foot on the head of the earth—just as it had been given into the absolute power of Adam to stretch an impious right hand, and pluck of the Fruit of Knowledge; but, said he—his voice pealing now into one long proclamation of awful augury—just as the abuse of that power had been followed in the one case by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, he warned the entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a lowering ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... on entering, goes to a counter where he buys tapers and incense-sticks, together with some implements of superstition such as rods or inscribed cards. After burning incense he draws a card or throws the rods up into the air and takes an augury from the result. Though the contrast presented in Siam makes the degradation more glaring, yet these temples in Bangkok are not worse than many which I have seen in China. I gladly set on the other side of the account some ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... from the rock were safely landed, notwithstanding the augury of the seamen in consequence of their being sent away ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... August; for it is always a name of dread augury to the Tyroleans, by reason of those bitter struggles and midnight shots and untimely deaths which come from those meetings of jager and hunter in the Bayerischenwald. But the train stopped; Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by turns, and shaking like a little aspen leaf, felt himself ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... your first day at the fort a very satisfactory one, and an augury of that fortune ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... particularly in those of the ultra-Republican press. In La France, a moderate and well-conducted journal, I find the following remarks:—"Paris is the capital of France and of the world. Paris besieged is a beautiful, a surprising spectacle. The sky is blue, the atmosphere is pure, this is a happy augury, fifteen days of patience on the part of the Parisians, fifteen days to arm in the provinces, and the German army will be irreparably compromised. It will then be unable to cut its way out of the circle of fire which will surround it." When journals of ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... serious doubts had arisen in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... nature the sign of the gods. In its lesser as in its more marvelous manifestations—thunder, lightning, tempest, the "red rain," the rainbow, enveloping mist, cloud shapes, sweet odors of plants, so rare in Hawaii, at least, or the notes of birds—he reads an augury of divine indwelling. The romances glow with delight in the startling effect of personal beauty upon the beholder—a beauty seldom described in detail save occasionally by similes from nature. In ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... departure they arrived. It was a beautiful, rosy May morning, when the steamer cast anchor in the immense river of the Plata, near the shore along which stretches the vast city of Buenos Ayres, the capital of the Argentine Republic. This splendid weather seemed to him to be a good augury. He was beside himself with joy and impatience. His mother was only a few miles from him! In a few hours more he would have seen her! He was in America, in the new world, and he had had the daring to come alone! The whole of that extremely long voyage now seemed to him to have ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... augury was the examination of the marks on the carapax of a tortoise; thus the Martial King in 146 consulted, and found unfavourable, such marks—this was before attacking the last Shang emperor; and it was only at the earnest instigation of his chief henchman (afterwards ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... slave, that still an end turns me to shame! Sebastian, I have entertained thee, Partly that I have need of such a youth, 60 That can with some discretion do my business, For 'tis no trusting to yond foolish lout; But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour, Which, if my augury deceive me not, Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth: 65 Therefore know thou, for this I entertain thee. Go presently, and take this ring with thee, Deliver it to Madam Silvia: She loved me well deliver'd it ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... shallowest rapids. Weather conditions were phenomenal—and perfect. All up and down the river the work went with that vim and dash that is in itself an assurance of success. The Heinzman affair, which under auspices of evil augury might have become a serious menace to the success of the young undertaking, now served merely to add a spice of humour to the situation. Among the men gained currency a half-affectionate belief ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... passed the stage of love at first sight, hopeless love, worshiping love from afar, patient love, love requited and love rewarded; I am now so happy, so unspeakably optimistic, that I accept without question the happy augury of enchanted moonlight, as being truly prophetic. Besides, having a wife so noble, so good and so wise, to make it possible; how could our honeymoon be other than the most delightful ever known to the history of love? You ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... this, said to me: "You have already spent much time in searching for your friend, and may spend much more in the same manner to no purpose, if you have no clue to guide you. Now I am skilled in augury and the language of birds; it is probable that I may obtain some indications for you; wait, therefore, patiently for the present. Meanwhile, my house is always ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... there a second time, while no nation can imagine its just pride will be lessened by following the example now presented. This triumph of the principle of international arbitration is a subject of warm congratulation and offers a happy augury for the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... wickedness. The matter fell out in this wise. Seeing that the brothers were twins, and that neither could claim to have the preference to the other in respect of his age, it was agreed between them that the gods that were the guardians of that country should make known by means of augury which of the two they chose to give his name to the new city. Then Romulus stood on the Palatine hill, and when there had been marked out for him a certain region of the sky, watched therein for a sign; and Remus watched in like manner, standing ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... head of him who brought "trial by water" to our land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is an invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... own demolished dreams realized in the triumphs of their children. When little Nathan creeps to the piano and quite without the help of his elders picks out the song he has heard his mother sing,—all the neighbors in Odessa know it the next day. "A wonder child perhaps!" Oh happy augury of fame and fortune! Little Nathan shall have the best of instruction. His mother will teach him at first, of course. She will shape his little fingers to the keyboard. She will sing sweet folk melodies in his ear,—songs ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... written, which he always kept about him so as to be prepared for any event, in the folds of the soft cambric, and gave it back to the Princess, who quickly put it into her pocket. That also seemed to him to be a good augury, and, in fact, in the course of a few hours he received a note in disguised handwriting, by the post, in which his bold wooing was graciously entertained, and an appointment was made for the same night in the pavilion ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... island. It grew blanker the more I turned the prospect over. At last in the desperation of my position, my mind turned to the animal men I had encountered. I tried to find some hope in what I remembered of them. In turn I recalled each one I had seen, and tried to draw some augury of assistance from ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... hath over his subjects. The same St. Basil, in his Homily de St. Mamme Martyre has, concerning David, who was taken from following the ewes great with young ones to feed Israel. The Romans, the worthiest and greatest nation in the world, sprang from shepherds. The augury of the twelve vultures plac't a scepter in Romulus's hand, which held a crook before; and ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... of the Cummins. I have myself felt his misplaced wrath; and who now is more favored by Edward than Ralph de Monthermer? My case will be yours. Good night, Bruce. May propitious dreams repeat the augury of your true friends!" Percy shook hands with the young earl, and the two English lords ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... star seem silver streak'd with gold. And on the summit of the M. I saw Descending other lights, that rested there, Singing, methinks, their bliss and primal good. Then, as at shaking of a lighted brand, Sparkles innumerable on all sides Rise scatter'd, source of augury to th' unwise; Thus more than thousand twinkling lustres hence Seem'd reascending, and a higher pitch Some mounting, and some less; e'en as the sun, Which kindleth them, decreed. And when each one Had settled in his place, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... easily recognised among a few other paltry outhouses. His horse, refreshed with rest, and perhaps not unmindful of his services the evening before, neighed as his master entered the stable; and Peveril accepted the sound as an omen of a prosperous journey. He paid the augury with a sieveful of corn; and, while his palfrey profited by his attention, walked into the fresh air to cool his heated blood, and consider what course he should pursue in order to reach the Castle of Martindale before sunset. His acquaintance ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... he cries, 'for us no more delay! I follow; and wherever ye may lead, Gods of my country, I will go! Guard ye My family, my little grandson guard. This augury is yours; and yours the power That watches Troy. And now, my son, I yield, Nor will refuse to go along with thee.' And now through all the city we can hear The roaring flames, which nearer roll their heat. 'Come then, dear father! On my shoulders I Will bear thee, nor will think the task severe. ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... be a painter you must go to France—France is the only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... from the barony of Retz or Rais, south of the Loire, on the marches of Brittany. As a youth he did nothing to justify an evil augury of his future, for he served with zeal and gallantry in the wars of Charles VI against the English and fought under Jeanne Darc at the siege of Orleans. In virtue of these services, and because of his shrewdness ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence



Words linked to "Augury" :   omen, presage, prodigy, prognostication, war cloud, sign, preindication



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