"Felicitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... art of eloquence, and fond of criticising in private the methods of other speakers. He had a poor opinion of much studied oratory, and used to declare that no one had ever convinced him by merely felicitous diction. Perhaps he did not sufficiently realise that his own strength of purpose offered rather a granitic surface to persuasion. But no doubt he was right in saying that, coming as he did from the florid East, he found English eloquence more plain and businesslike than he left it. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... is an admirable book. Nothing could be more felicitous and fairer than the way in which he takes us through Carlyle's ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... recitation in all his serious reading. After finishing a chapter he would close the book and see how much of what he had read he could recall. One consequence is the development of a quite marvelous memory, the results of which are seen in frequent and felicitous references in his public speaking to literature both ancient ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... for the number and variety of his illustrations, chiefly drawn from natural and familiar objects. The volume before us strikes us as being remarkably felicitous."—Clerical Journal. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr. Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that which his wife had evolved from the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... have done, Daniel?" she said, calling him by his baptismal name for the first time. She spoke with a felicitous mixture of submissiveness and boldness that touched and at the same time enchanted him. "What should I have done? They come and talk to you, and spin their nets about you; and at home it is so dreary and lonely, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... single point of view. "Earth's Holocaust," though superficially different, is a variant of the same theme, presenting the product of life in masses; its inclusion of the indestructibility of the good is noticeable as a philosophical idea such as he rarely introduced in an explicit way. The felicitous allegory of "The Celestial Railroad" satirizes human nature without bitterness; but, while the universality of Bunyan's emblems is strikingly shown by the ease with which they are adapted to the new age of steam, the tale is, as it were, music transposed; the ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... it yesterday, and concluded it to-day. It is a new style of novel, and, like all that is very clever, will lead to many copyists. The writer possesses a felicitous fluency of language, profound and just thoughts, and a knowledge of the world rarely acquired at his age, for I am told he is a ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... unaffecting, his fancy to work in curious and desolate ways, his message to sound abstruse and strange; and these effects too are deepened by the qualities and the merits of his style. It is peculiarly his own, but it is not always felicitous. There are times when it has the true epic touch—or at least as much of it as is possible in an age of detail and elaboration; there are times when it has a touch of the pathetic—when in homeliness ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... (possibly the author had Barton in his mind while writing it) who fears he may become a second Fauntleroy. The piece contains one or two delightful passages, and is, in fact, full of happy touches and felicitous bits of description. Very charming (to me, at least) is the account of the plucking of the last peach, and very touching is the allusion to the babe Fauntleroy. But good wine (or a good peach) needs no bush; and therefore, without further comment or commendation, I present "The Last Peach" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... yet in the shell has learnt to drink by swallowing a part of the white of the egg for its food; but not having experienced how to take up and swallow solid seeds, or grains, is either taught by the felicitous industry of its mother; or by many repeated attempts is enabled at length to distinguish and to swallow this kind ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... unmentionable word on the breeze toward the cabin and Frank, then put mind and muscle to the sore task of remaining with Spot. Jones was born on a saddle, and had been taking his meals in a saddle for about sixty-three years, and the bay horse could run. Run is not a felicitous word—he flew. And I was rendered mentally deranged for the moment to see that hundred paces between the bay and Spot materially lessen at every jump. Spot lengthened out, seemed to go down near the ground, and cut the air like a ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... and consonant values,—all these things receive perfect expression in it, or, at least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the last four are a little inferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect upon the careful art or the felicitous accident of such a ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of these battles, and a halt which I made, as now, for no other purpose than to enjoy my felicitous circumstances, the sun was sinking in a mist of gold behind Mauna Loa long before I reached the end of my day's journey. It was extremely lovely. A heavy dew was falling, odours of Eden rose from the earth, colours glowed ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... of Blunders" (after Swinburne's "Ballad of Burdens"), and then a story in prose, "The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts: A tale of Modern Art and Fashion." All the poetry is in the ballad strain, and by its monotony the reader is put into the right condition to receive a shock from some felicitous twist at the end of a line. Thus it is almost impossible to quote from them. The humour rests in each case with the whole of the skit; and in the case of one of the best of the whole series, "A Love-Agony," a poem for a picture by Maudle, given, there ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom we ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... xxiii. xxx. In connection with 1Samuel xxxi. 3 I have conjectured that the verb of which Torah is the abstract means originally to throw the lot-arrows. The Thummim have been compared in the most felicitous way by Freytag, and by Lagarde independently of him (Proph. Chald. p. xlvii.) with the Arabian Tamaim, which not only signifies children's amulets but any means of "averruncatio". Urim is probably connected with )RR "to curse" (cf. Iliad i. 11 and Numbers xxiii. 23): the two ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... of Fairy dances the music is always spoken of as most entrancing, and Shakespeare in felicitous terms gives ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... there is in the power of a single felicitous word in poetry, toward making a perfect picture to the mind of the reader! It often invests an inanimate object with almost actual life, and makes the landscape a sentient thing. Here are a few lines that live in our memory—from PROCTOR, BARRY ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... changes, are very diverse, the outlook, the artistic methods of the Homeric poetry are very different from the emotional and intellectual modernity of Euripides. The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is very different from that of the Stoics and Neoplatonists. In that picturesque but perhaps not very felicitous phrase which Mr. Murray has borrowed from Mr. Cornford, there was a 'failure of nerve' which separates the earlier from the later stages of the moral and intellectual culture of the ancient world. However this may be, and we shall have more to say about this ...
— Progress and History • Various
... her mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B.F. or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance with the French language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which is awkward, as B.F. devoted himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... book is felicitous, and it is worked out with an acute and sympathetic appreciation of methods for enlisting the attention and impressing intelligently the memory of children. The illustrations are distinctly ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the patronage of the dutchess of Gordon, who was a lady not only distinguished for her taste; but cultivated a correspondence with some of the most eminent poets then living. The dutchess was so zealous in Mr. Boyse's affairs, and so felicitous to raise him above necessity, that she employed her interest in procuring the promise of a place for him. She gave him a letter, which he was next day to deliver to one of the commissioners of the customs at Edinburgh. It happened that he was then some miles distant from the city, and the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... of Cooleen Bawn was applied to her by the populace, whose talent for finding out and bestowing epithets indicative either of personal beauty or deformity, or of the qualities of the mind or character, be they good or evil, is, in Ireland, singularly felicitous. In the higher ranks, however, she was known as "The Lily of the Plains of Boyne," and as such she was toasted by all parties, not only in her own native county, but throughout Ireland, and at the viceregal entertainments in the Castle of Dublin. At the time of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... charged with being opportunists. They are at each moment thoroughly convinced of their integrity, and are ever on the side which commends itself to their judgment; if it happens to be the side on which the sun is shining, that is a felicitous accident. There are other natures, narrower possibly and more intractable, whose chief quality is a thoroughgoing and masterful devotion, perhaps to a person, perhaps to a cause. Once this devotion is given, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... AND FELLOW-MEMBERS:—I am sure that you have greatly enjoyed the brilliant and witty speech to which you have just listened—a speech which shows that our distinguished guest is as felicitous at the dinner-table as he is signally successful in other fields of oratory. But if you have deluded yourself with the idea that because of this change in the programme you are to escape the infliction of the usual address by the President ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the British troops in France and Flanders, there were faults on both sides. The wording of some of the telegraphic messages passing between Lord K. and Sir J. French did not strike one as altogether felicitous, and, if messages from G.H.Q. were provocative, the replies were not always calculated to pour oil on troubled waters. The truth is, that when a pair of people both of whom require "handling" become associated under conditions of anxiety and stress that are ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... correspondent-besides the deep, quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author-appears to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, having been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Reformer of Creeds, Teacher of Truth and Justice, Achiever and Preserver of Liberty—the First of Men—Founder and Savior of his Country, Father of his People—this is he, solitary and unapproachable in his grandeur. Oh! felicitous Providence that gave to ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... in their list is allotted to Principal Toshley Potts's volume of essays, which bear the attractive title of The Hill of Havering. Principal Potts was recently hailed by Sir NICHOLSON ROBERTS as "the Scots A. C. Benson," and this felicitous analogy will, we feel sure, be triumphantly vindicated by the contents of this epoch-making work, which by the way is dedicated to Dr. Emery Cawker, of the University ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... language of joy is always more or less superficial. The tragedies of life have to be told in stronger language, since they go deeper. Happiness is negative, pain positive. The comedies of Shakespeare, in which the note is usually buoyant and felicitous, do not stir ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... facts. Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing." But only rarely are his facts significant, or capable of an ideal interpretation. Felicitous strokes like that in which he says, "No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... And afterwards as the months flew by the Golden Belt Wheat Company paid the interest on the forged note, and the bank paid the Golden Belt Wheat Company interest on a daily ledger balance of nine thousand, and all went happily. The Larger Good accepted the sacrifices of truth, and went on its felicitous way. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... much constructive and descriptive power. He is most felicitous in his word pictures of scenery, and imparts a fascinating dash ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... in which strange land his fortune had been cast, began to steal into his blood. Mirth ruled the East side, working in each soul according to his limitations. It was a wink, a smile, a drink, a passing gossoon, a sly girl, a light trick, among the unspoken things; or a biting epigram, the phrase felicitous, a story gilt with humor, a witticism swift and fatal as lightning; in addition varied activity, a dance informal, a ceremonious ball, a party, a wake, a political meeting, the visit of the district leader; ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... of all, I beg to compliment him on the motto in his title-page; it is felicitous. A motto should contain, as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot be a better ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Doctors BELLOWS and BETHUNE, who, though pole-wide apart in the sphere of theology, spanning the distance between Arius and Calvin, find common grounds of sympathy in their love for, and appreciation of Art. Mr. DURAND, the President, in a very felicitous speech, narrated his experience as an artist and as one of the founders of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... bathing his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow heaps before him, is not the prosaic being we are in the habit of thinking him. He is a dreamer, almost a poet. You and I read a novel or a poem to help our imaginations to build up palaces, and transport us into the emotional states and the felicitous conditions of the ideal characters pictured in the book we are reading. But think of him and the significance of the symbols he is handling as compared with the empty syllables and words we are using to build our aerial edifices with! In this hand he holds ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Phillips, M. de Narbonne, and Captain Burney, who was father to his sister, as Mr. Locke was to M. d'A. ; and on the 1st of August the ceremony was re-performed in the Sardinian chapel, according to the rites of the Romish Church; and never, never was union more blessed and felicitous; though after the first eight years of unmingled happiness, it was assailed by many calamities, chiefly of separation or illness, yet still mentally unbroken. F. D'ARBLAY. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Union. Negro-worshipers from Massachusetts and slave-drivers from South Carolina entered the vast hall arm in arm. The great meeting rose to its feet, and walls and roof shook with applause. General John A. Dix of New York called the Convention to order, and, in an eloquent and felicitous speech, stated the objects of the assembly—to renew fraternal feeling between the sections, heal the wounds of war, obliterate bitter memories, and restore the Union of the fathers. Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin was chosen permanent president, and patriotic ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... of such an intercourse, no man could have been more aptly chosen than John Adams. While his high-toned manners opened the way to favor, his nervous logic followed up the advantage so gracefully won, and drove home his purpose to its end. Franklin was equally felicitous in attaching to himself the good-will of the court of Versailles. Their successors well sustained the respect which they had inspired; and it was a matter of surprise among the best educated Europeans that such cultivated and capable men should proceed from a country which they had thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... struggling lawyer's life. He sought escape in graduate work in history and politics at Johns Hopkins, where, in 1886, he received his Ph.D. for a thesis entitled Congressional Government, a study remarkable for clear thinking and felicitous expression. These qualities characterized his work as a professor at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan and paved his path to an appointment on the Princeton faculty in 1890, as Professor of ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... A felicitous illustration of the manner in which this canon of reputability works out its results is seen in the practice of dram-drinking, "treating," and smoking in public places, which is customary among the laborers and handicraftsmen of the towns, and among the lower middle class ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Jos's friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the centre. Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt terraces in front, so early as 1827)—who does not know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the Black Hole, in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lost its charm, he gave himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinking over all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of the dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitous replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he was going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangely ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... chaussee—and a bright blue sky above the green trees—all these things irresistibly rivet the attention and extort the admiration of a stranger. You may have your boots cleaned, and your breakfast prepared, upon these same boulevards. Felicitous ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... The merry rhymes and grotesque illustrations make each other doubly effective. No better book since "Mother Goose" than this for reading to children, who will cry, "Again, again," and will never tire of its felicitous jingles. It is dedicated to "My mother, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... have exercised so wide and mighty an influence. The profound, many-sided and intimate knowledge of human nature which it evinces, its vast variety of incident, its wealth of tears and laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt for every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured periods, its sustained energy and animation ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the 'Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,' and shall continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer,—four of them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous choice of situation! 'Roxana.' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and the BLACK PRINCE, severally at Westminster and Canterbury. Ishall refer to these fine shields again, and to other admirable examples with them, hereafter (Chapter IX.). The conventionalism in all these examples, however felicitous the manner in which it is treated in them, is very decidedly exaggerated. These examples, and others such as these, are not the less valuable to us because their teaching includes an illustration of the excesses that we must always be careful to avoid. Imay ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... acquirements with the most brilliant wit and genius, well and accurately informed on all subjects, both in science and art; endowed with a memory that retained whatever it received, with quick and clear perceptions, the choicest, most felicitous, and forcible language in which to clothe his thoughts, no one could doubt his meaning or withhold the tribute of wonder at ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Sauermann had not translated, is taken over from the Prayer-Booklet. The part On Confession was newly translated from the German edition of the Catechism of 1531. The textual changes which were made in Sauermann's translation for the Concordia of 1584 "show that he was careful and usually felicitous, and are partly to be explained as combinations of the first and second Latin ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... accidentally made the acquaintance of the performer at the house of a mutual acquaintance, the couple quickly became enamored of each other. A brief engagement of less than a month was followed by marriage, and so Moscheles entered into a relation singularly felicitous in all the elements which make domestic life most blessed. After a brief tour in the Rhenish cities, and a visit to Paris, Moscheles proceeded to London, where he had determined to make his home, for in no country had such genuine and unaffected cordiality boon shown him, and nowhere were the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... and if he is not altogether a fool he will be content with his ten thousand dollars, and Nos. 13-15 Barowsky Chambers will be again without a tenant. Otherwise—and it is generally otherwise with these meddlers—there will have to be a new adjustment of averages—what a felicitous phrase!—and this, as usual, I will take upon myself. One way or the other, and, personally, I don't care a straw which ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... in his life—the negotiations had to be conducted with a certain formality. Todd had therefore, on his arrival, unpinned from the inside of his jacket a portentous document signed with his owner's name and sealed with a red wafer, which after such felicitous phrases as—"I have the distinguished honor," etc.—gave the boy's age (21), weight (140 pounds), and height (5 feet 10 inches)—all valuable data for identification in case the chattel conceived a notion of moving further north (an ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this play are generally less interesting in themselves than some we meet with elsewhere in the Poet's works, the defect is pretty well made up by the felicitous grouping of them. Their very diversities of temper and purpose are made to act as so many mutual affinities; and this too in a manner so spontaneous that we see not how they could possibly act otherwise. For broad comic effect, the cluster of which Sir Toby is the centre—all of them drawn in ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and moralists, reposed. The departing Emperor stands no longer in a transparency robed in shining garments. His transfiguration is at an end. Every action, almost every moment of his retirement, accurately chronicled by those who shared his solitude, have been placed before our eyes, in the most felicitous manner, by able and brilliant writers. The Emperor, shorn of the philosophical robe in which he had been conventionally arrayed for three centuries, shivers now in the cold air ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was of plebeian birth, with nothing in the world to depend on but his own talents, which he had abused, and the before-named patrimony, which was already nearly exhausted. It will at once be seen that there could hardly be a more felicitous conjunction of circumstances to make everybody miserable by one easy, natural step; and the step was duly taken. Of course, the young people fell in love immediately,—Everett, the Dreamer, looking on with a sort of reverent interest that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... rests mainly on the fact that the simple wants of man, as well as the most striking features of nature, are expressed in the Polynesian; while the secondary class of ideas is derived from the Sanscrit, or some other language, and usually grafted in a felicitous manner on the original stem. By an original language, I must be understood, however, to mean only a language which can not be derived from any other known tongue. I seek not to trace the language of Noah, or to raise a theory ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... break such pretty bubbles; but Mr. Cabell, himself a master of cynical touches and shrewdly anticipant of them, protects his invention with the competent armor of irony, and now and then—particularly in the felicitous tenson spoken by Perion and Demetrios concerning the charms of Melicent—brings mirth and beauty to an amalgam which bids fair to prove classic metal. A much larger share of this mirth appears in Jurgen, which narrates with phallic ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... himself to the soul of Art, to pure expression, was, for this very reason, thought by his brother artists to be cold and unattractive. There is one sphere, however, where this exclusiveness of style and partition of labor are productive of the most felicitous results: namely, the minor drama. In England and America the same theatre exhibits opera, melodrama, tragedy, comedy, rope-dancing, and legerdemain; but in Paris, each branch and element of histrionic art has its separate temple, its special corps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the springs of his conduct, of his relation to his fellow-men singly or in groups, and the felicitous regulation of human intercourse in the interest of harmony and fairness, have made no such advance. Aristotle's treatises on astronomy and physics, and his notions of "generation and decay" and of chemical processes, have long gone by the board, but his politics and ethics are still revered. ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys. First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it up again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America. A little way beyond was another great hole, which they had emptied and not yet filled up. This held water, and all summer it stood there, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Alexander Hamilton died of exactly such a wound in seven hours; and yet in three days Captain Holmes was able to write to his father. The Doctor started at once for the seat of war, and met with quite a series of small adventures which he afterwards described in a felicitous article in the Atlantic, called "My Hunt after the Captain." His friend, Dr. Henry P. Bowditch, lost his son in the same battle, and when they met at the railway depot Holmes said: "I would give my house to have ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... to the predominating influence of any other aristocracy, on those faculties that have been benumbed by its operation. His opinion changed, which is more than can be said of his countenance, for, with the readiness of invention which is so often practised in the felicitous institutions we have named, and by which the reasoning instead of regulating is adapted to the practice, he exclaimed with uplifted hands and eyes that bespoke the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the felicitous term given by Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott to the period of nearly three centuries following the campaign against the inhabitants of Canaan, when the Israelites took possession of their land. The Book of, Judges is a record of those "colonial days;" and they are described ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... brilliancy of his letters. There are few instances of English style more charming in themselves than the epistles, whether published or still in manuscript, written by that versatile and wonderful person, Daniel Webster. (Nunquam tetigit quod non ornavit.) How copious is their expression! How facile and felicitous their illustrations! What grace! What beauty of diction! What simplicity, elevated by a matchless elegance! Nothing more clearly proves the various talents of both the Roman and the American statesman than that they should no more have excelled ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lamentations to his empty purse. He was evidently a friend of most of the prominent men of letters of his time, and he entered freely into the debauchery of the period. Thus his verse gives a representation of the debased manners of the day in gay society. His style was remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their subjects range from a touching outburst of genuine grief for a brother's death to a fugitive epigram of the most voluptuous ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... a work on Snobs, demonstrated from History, and proved by felicitous illustrations:—I am the individual destined to write that work—My vocation is announced in terms of great eloquence—I show that the world has been gradually preparing itself for the WORK and the MAN—Snobs are to be studied like other objects ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... always had the gift of coining extremely felicitous nicknames. I refrain from quoting those bestowed on two recent Viceroys, for they are mordant and uncomplimentary, though possibly not wholly undeserved. My father was at once christened "Old Splendid," ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... read in MS. by Elizabeth Barrett, and pronounced upon with the frank yet critical delight of her nature. In the abstruse symbolic title, too,—implying, as Browning expected his readers to discover, "sound and sense" or "music and discoursing,"—her wit had divined a more felicitous ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... exciting gloomy feelings in Mr. Carleton's mind, mamma, by your felicitous suggestions. Mr. Carleton, did your ears receive a faint announcement of ham and eggs which went quite through and through mine ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... looked at him estimatingly, at the same time wadding up a newspaper clipping from the desk in front of him. This he cast at the slumberer with felicitous accuracy. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... is not easy to understand why the radiant youth, "the world's fresh ornament," "only herald to the gaudy spring," etc., should need such an amount of persuasion to marry. Seventeen sonnets of great poetical beauty and felicitous language are devoted to this object. It is an exquisite treat to read them as works of art, but taken literally they are unspeakably absurd. No sane man would draw out such lengths of linked sweetness for the purpose named; nor would ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Count de Rayneval, the latest and least felicitous apologist of the Papacy, made in 1856 the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... as I have already considered the "novel of incident"). And, again, an author may deal well or ill with the sensations of sex; those sensations can provide material for fine art. It is a matter of treatment. Upon feelings of this sort Maupassant based some of his most felicitous stories. But Maupassant did not use sexual incidents for the sake of sex feeling; for him such incidents were various symbols, flickering images, of life, incarnations of the brooding spirit of cynicism and scorn. We have already seen that to Fielding, for whom they were ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... easy to draw upon this fragment for further examples of felicitous translation. It is scarcely necessary, however. What has been given is sufficient to show the rare skill of the translator. He is so fortunate as to possess in a high degree what Bayard Taylor calls "secondary inspiration," without which the work of a translator becomes a soulless mass and frequently ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... his judgment arrives at its full maturity, we have reason to expect that the strain of his competition will be more confident and masterly; but his imagination, cramped by the rules which have been formerly laid down, will be still desirous of breaking the old fetters, rather than felicitous of inventing new ones. Though therefore it must be acknowledged that the same Faculty which is able to invent characters, and to colour sentiment may likewise discover the rules and principles ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... fame, were present. They were in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with appropriate and felicitous songs. Lucretia Mott did not confine herself to a single speech, but, in Quaker style, whenever the spirit moved made many happy points. When she first arose to speak, a call came from the audience for her to ascend the pulpit in order that she might be seen. As she complied with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... for speed, and compliments were set aside by Garnache, who, at his best, was not felicitous with them. Valerie felt herself caught by the wrist, a trifle roughly she remembered afterwards, and hurried across the cobbles to the tethered horses, with which Rabecque was already busy. She saw Garnache raise his foot to the stirrup and hoist ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... school at Patty's felicitous suggestion, that, by way of reward, they elected her chairman of the Christmas Carnival Committee. The Christmas Carnival was a charitable institution contemporaneous with the founding of the school. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... and pithy point of this passage stamps it as one of Bunyan's most felicitous descriptions. We who live in a later age may, indeed, suspect that he has somewhat antedated the death of Pagan, and the impotence of Pope; but his picture of their cave and its memorials, his delineation of the survivor of this fearful pair, rank among those master-touches which have won such lasting ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Hofland's Comforts of Conceitedness; Virginia Water, by the editor, could hardly be written by his fireside—it has too much local inspiration in every line; Auguste de Valcour, by the author of Gilbert Earle, is in his usual felicitous vein of philosophic melancholy; Miss Roberts has a glittering Tale of Normandy; the Orphans, by the editor, is simple ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... but more so as the master and mistress of the family are excessively clean and obliging; two things so material to my repose, that I absolutely could not dispense patiently with either.—This it was which made me felicitous about taking a house; I am now so happily situated, I wish not to have one in town whilst I remain a batchelor. Heaven knows how long that will be!—Your nonpareil has given me a dislike to all ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... a most felicitous question. The lady described material, took her measurements out of her purse, and discussed ruffles and tucks and described location and size of windows, during which talk the young girl was able to throw off the spell ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... her to identify many of the places she passed, but once or twice she felt, a little ruefully the difference between this, her actual first glimpse of New York and the same first glimpse as she and John had planned it before the benign, but hardly felicitous, interference of Uncle Richard. This feeling of loneliness was strongly in the ascendent when the cab stopped under an ornate portico and two large male creatures, in powdered wigs and white silk stockings, emerged before her astonished eyes. Open flew ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Independence Hall to the church, already crowded with an expectant audience, to whom they gave a full report of the morning's proceedings. The Hutchinsons of worldwide fame were present in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with appropriate songs and felicitous remarks. For five long hours on that hot midsummer day a crowded audience, many standing, listened with profound interest and reluctantly dispersed at last, all agreeing that it was one of the most impressive and enthusiastic meetings they had ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... people will rise into the air, like so many larks, to meet the Lord and conduct him to earth—with flying banners and a brass-band, I suppose— where he will reign a thousand years. At the conclusion of this felicitous period Satan is to be loosed for a little season, and after he has pawed up the gravel with his long toe-nails and given us a preliminary touch of Purgatory, we are to have the genuine pyrotechnics. Some of the divines did not agree with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his father, and the firmness of Kaung-shee; but it is probable he will have a more difficult task in governing the empire than either of his predecessors. In proportion as the Tartar power has increased, they have become less felicitous to conciliate the Chinese. All the heads of departments are now Tartars. The ministers are all Tartars; and most of the offices of high trust and power are filled by Tartars. And although the ancient language ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Anthony, the poet, sang in his time of the domestic and social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know. His poems read like sentimental novels told in verse of a really superior ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... his impatient and uncurbed mind feels? Why cannot my form accompany the bold flights of my mind and satisfy the craving I feel to resolve the vexed question that ever rises to my lips—"Is he alive?" O soul of mine, be patient, thou hast a felicitous tranquillity, which other men might envy thee! Sufficient for the hour is the consciousness thou hast that thy mission is a holy one! ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... nature and art—must it not have been planned and calculated beforehand, to bewilder and mislead?—It may well be doubted. No preconceived and elaborated programme can come up to the inspiration of the moment, which is genius. Such felicitous wording of subject-matter so objectionable: such an unassailable presentation of so indefensible a principle—could hardly have been the fruit of premeditation. Cornelia was allowing things to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... introductory to the best of Mr. Howells' novels and essays in the high school; for Mr. Howells, it need scarcely be said, is one of our few masters of style: his style is as individual and distinguished as it is felicitous and delicate. More important still, from the educational point of view, he is one of our most modern writers: the spiritual issues and social problems of our age, which our older high-school pupils are anxious to deal with, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... but Sartor's is exceedingly fierce, dwelling among the tombs—Wordsworth's a mild eremite, loving the rocks and the woods. Sartor's experience has been frightfully peculiar, and Wordsworth's peculiarly felicitous. Both have passed through the valley of the shadow of death; but the one has found it as Christian found it, dark and noisy—the other has passed it with Faithful, by daylight. Sartor is more of a representative man than Wordsworth, for many have had part at least of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... again in the evening to speak with Mr. Vincy, who, just returned from Stone Court, was feeling sure that it would not be long before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's demise. The felicitous word "demise," which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits even above their usual evening pitch. The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action. Considered ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... social sympathies of a peaceful time are as daily food. Hence, where matters of domestic experience, and the natural touches which make people real, can be introduced without anachronisms too striking, she is occasionally felicitous; and upon the whole we feel justified in saying that the book will bear looking into for the sake of those portions which have nothing whatever to do ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Ravenna, no sense of her duty to herself could prevail to make her do anything but run away from him at the first warning of his approach. Nevertheless, from him, even, she had learned something. She had become acquainted with the fact, whispered in his own exquisitely felicitous manner, and with the tact and judicious appreciation of opportunity peculiar to him, that Ludovico di Castelmare was, to the great sorrow of his friends and family, enslaved by a certain Venetian artist, then resident ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... (partial though they may be everywhere) ought, at least, to be everywhere indifferently diffused throughout the race. Its manifestation may be sporadic, but it will be in one race as in another; it will not be suspiciously confined to one race with a peculiarly felicitous "religious organization," or to "two books" exclusively originating ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Places, and Things, but now Humorous Stories, is a masterpiece of fun, invention, and observation. In 1874, he became "Reader" to Messrs. Smith and Elder, and in that capacity had the happiness of discovering Vice Versa, and the less felicitous experience of ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... imagination in that, and in many another passage that I might quote; but as a general thing I should characterise the more metaphysical of our author's short stories as graceful and felicitous conceits. They seem to me to be qualified in this manner by the very fact that they belong to the province of allegory. Hawthorne, in his metaphysical moods, is nothing if not allegorical, and allegory, to my sense, is quite one of the lighter exercises of the imagination. Many excellent ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... could as dexterously provoke as parry, could find the right clue and conduct a luminous train of reasoning to a triumphant close. His most elaborate arguments, though not comparable in essence with those of his chief opponent, Lord Campbell— which, in comprehensive outline, exact logic, felicitous illustration, and harmonious structure, excelled all others I have heard— were delivered in tones so nicely adapted to the minds and ears of the judges, with an earnestness so winning, and a confidence so contagious, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... more intelligible to the aborigines. In the New Testament Christ is termed the "Lamb of God," but since, in the Arctic home of the Innuit, shepherds and sheep are alike unknown, the translators, by a most felicitous turn of language, rendered the phrase by "little seal of God," a figure that appealed at once to every Eskimo, young and old, men and women; for what sheep were to the dwellers on the Palestinian hillsides, seals are to this northernmost of human races. Rink tells us that ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... outset is evenly distributed and remarkably well sustained throughout the book. Mr. Cowley's work is valuable, as supplying a place not filled by any of the larger and more pretentious histories of the late war. Full of vivid description, spicy detail, felicitous citation, and sparkling anecdote, Leaves from a Lawyer's Life is sure to prove a genuine source of pleasure to a wide circle ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... home, and now he was rudely flung adrift. It was true that the man was largely responsible for the troubles that had fallen upon him, but this was no reason for refusing him pity, and Cyril had his strong points. He had staunchly declined to profit by a felicitous change of fortune out of consideration for the relatives who had once disowned and the woman who had deserted him. Jernyngham had been a careless fool, and Prescott suspected that he was not likely to alter much in this respect, but he did not expect others to pay for his recklessness ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... flow in omne volubilis aevum. Among many instances of the strength which accompanied this absence of strain one already alluded to may be mentioned again. Scott is one of the most literary of all writers. He was saturated with reading; nothing could happen but it brought some felicitous quotation, some quaint parallel to his mind from the great wits, or the small, of old. Yet no writer is less bookish than he; none insults his readers less with any parade, with any apparent consciousness of erudition; and he wears his learning so lightly that pedants have even accused ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... University, Lexington, Virginia, has recently written a paper on "The Creole Patois of Louisiana,"[i21] which is full of interest to those interested in the study of dialects. In the course of his paper, Professor Harrison says: "Many philologists have noted the felicitous [Greek: aithiopizein] of Uncle Remus in the negro dialect of the South. The Creole lends itself no less felicitously to the recit and to the conte, as we may say on good authority. The fables of La Fontaine and Perrin, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... astonished at this long and felicitous compliment, for as a rule he did not find it easy to express himself coherently. He expected, too, that his beautiful partner would show ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... sympathetic observation, his felicitous skill in characterization, and his power to present the life of a community in all its multiple aspects are here combined in the most mature and absorbing novel of ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... predictions with the facts, and to ask themselves if these calamitous prognostications have been verified by events? Have we peace, or war, with foreign nations? Certainly, we have peace with all the world! peace with all its benign, and felicitous, and beneficent influences! Are we respected, or despised abroad? Certainly the American name never was more honored throughout the four quarters of the globe than in this very moment. Do we hear of indignity or ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... the "Tanglewood Tales" gave him pleasant employment, and all his letters, during the period he was writing them, overflow with evidences of his felicitous mood. He requests that Billings should pay especial attention to the drawings, and is anxious that the porch of Tanglewood should be "well supplied with shrubbery." He seemed greatly pleased that Mary Russell Mitford had fallen in with his books and had written to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... up closer together, voices were lowered, and the discussion became general, each one offering his or her advice. Nothing was said to shock the proprieties. The ladies, in particular, were most expert in felicitous turns of phrase, charming subtleties of speech for expressing the most ticklish things. A foreigner would have understood nothing, the language was so carefully veiled. But as the slight coating of modesty with which every woman of the world is enveloped ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery- stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the bed, unlocked it and plunged his hand into a large dirty linen bag, full of coins. The instinct of generosity which was upon him made him count out forty-eight of them. He bore them to the "greener" in over-brimming palms and the foreigner, unconscious how much he owed to the felicitous coincidence of his visit with Fanny's betrothal, saw fortune visibly within his grasp. He went out, his heart bursting with gratitude, his pocket with four dozen farthings. They took him in and gave him hot soup at a Poor ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... at the outset, are all the chief elements of organic influence. It is itself the very acme of completeness, and it tends to all symmetry and finish. It is at once conservative and progressive, balancing perfectly the impelling and restraining forces; by a felicitous adjustment of the centripetal and centrifugal, ensuring to human nature its proper orbit. It is the golden girdle wherewith every institution like this should bind her garments of strength and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... way, during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we fought another battle. It has not got into history, but it had a real objective existence although by a felicitous afterthought called by us who were defeated a "reconnaissance in force." Its short and simple annals are hat we marched a long way and lay down before a fortified camp of the enemy at the farther edge of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... seem to be without character; such men are therefore called, distinctively, 'characters'; and it is a matter of common experience that, whether through the unconscious prescience of parents or through that felicitous sense of propriety which often guides the hazards of destiny, they usually bear names to match their qualities. Meshach Myatt! Meshach Myatt! What piquant curious syllables to roll glibly off the tongue, and to repeat for the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... increasing,—the greatest master of satire in English literature, and one of the truest painters of social life that any age has produced; not so much admired by women as by men; accurate in his delineation of character, though sometimes bitter and fierce; felicitous in plot, teaching lessons in morality, unveiling shams and hypocrisy, contemptuous of all fools and quacks, yet sad in his reflections ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... same debt to writers of prose that these, for their part, owe to poets, it is the poets who must be accounted chief protectors, in the last resort, of our common inheritance. Every page of the works of that great exemplar of diction, Milton, is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible word. Sometimes he accepts the secondary and more usual meaning of a word only to enrich it by the interweaving of the primary and etymological meaning. Thus the seraph Abdiel, in the passage that narrates his offer of combat to Satan, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... great deal of it is very fine, very noble, and at times very beautiful, and it discloses the distinctly poetic faculty of which rhythmic and figurative is native expression. It is impressionable rather than imaginative in the large sense; it is felicitous in detail rather than in design; and of a general rather than individual, a representative rather than original, inspiration. There is a field of poetry, assuredly not the highest, but ample and admirable—in which these qualities, more or less unsatisfactory in prose, are legitimately and fruitfully ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... to befriend Bunsey was due to a felicitous chain of circumstances. When the late Mrs. Stanhope passed to her reward, she considerately left behind a document making me the recipient of her entire and not inconsiderable fortune. This proved a most unexpected blow to the church, which had enjoyed the honor and pleasure of Mrs. Stanhope's ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... Tales—of the Council of Nice, in the fourth century, Mr. Smith indulges his usual felicitous vein of humour, in a burlesque which he puts into the mouth of a slave of the Bishop of Ethiopia,—"a little, corpulent, bald-headed, merry-eyed man of fifty, whose name was Mark; whose duty it was to take ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... accordance with, in harmony with, in keeping with, in unison with, &c. n.; at one with, of one mind, of a piece[Fr]; consistent, compatible, proportionate; commensurate; on all fours. apt, apposite, pertinent, pat; to the point, to the purpose; happy, felicitous, germane, ad rem[Lat], in point, on point, directly on point, bearing upon, applicable, relevant, admissible. fit adapted, in loco, a propos[Fr], appropriate, seasonable, sortable, suitable, idoneous[obs3], deft; meet &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... established; for there were many causes that would render ALMORAN inflexible, and HAMET yielding: ALMORAN was naturally confident and assuming, HAMET diffident and modest; ALMORAN was impatient of contradiction, HAMET was attentive to argument, and felicitous only for the discovery of truth. ALMORAN also conceived, that by the will of his father, he had suffered wrong; HAMET, that he had received a favour: ALMORAN, therefore, was disposed to resent the first appearance of opposition; and HAMET, on the contrary, to acquiesce, ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... duet; and before the plate-glass window of a furniture emporium they must stop and regard the monthly-payment display, designed to represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting room, parlor and dining room of the home felicitous—a golden-oak room, with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart from the mantelpiece; and, last, two figures ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... souls in Purgatory, is much better. His Purgatory has no punishments nor any griefs save the awaiting, the long and painful awaiting, of eternal happiness. There is a processional in which the fugue and melody alternate in the most felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... absence from the classical literature was a marvel and exception, a phenomenon of the clearest-minded and most active of races, who thought, but did not contemplate,—whose ideal world consisted only of simple, but stately legends of bright-limbed gods and heroes. A felicitous production of high art, also, is among the rarest of exceptions, and will be till the Millennium. Myriads of comparative failures follow in the suite of a masterpiece. We have, therefore, judged the novel by an impracticable standard, by a comparison with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... obtains him the opportunity of lecturing. It is not uncharitable to suppose that he chooses a subject in which accurate knowledge and close argument will be less requisite than fluency, fancy, bold statement, and extraordinarily felicitous illustration. The five years spent in Edinburgh can now be turned to profitable account. Dugald Stewards lectures can be exhumed, decorated, and reproduced. The whole book reeks of Scotland. The lecturer sets out by declaring that ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... his love of the country is sincere; his perception of natural phenomena exquisite; his shepherds and shepherdesses real swains and lasses; he has happily varied the conventional form of the pastoral by a felicitous lyrical treatment. Paradoxical as it may appear, Drayton was partly enabled to approach Theocritus so nearly by knowing him so imperfectly. Had he been acquainted with him otherwise than through Virgil, he would probably have been unable to refrain from direct imitation; but as matters ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... Pacific shore. Two roads penetrated this waste: one to Lone Mountain—the cemetery; the other to the Cliff House—happily described as "an eight-mile drive with a cocktail at the end of it." Nor was the humor entirely confined to this felicitous description. The Cliff House itself, half restaurant, half drinking saloon, fronting the ocean and the Seal Rock, where disporting seals were the chief object of interest, had its own peculiar symbol. The decanters, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... views, and its suburban resorts, makes a capital background, and gives the group free play to meet with all sorts of picturesque opportunities. The story is told without any straining after climaxes, but with many felicitous touches that enhance the effect of every picture and incident. In scene, characters, and plot, "At the Red Glove" offers a brilliant opportunity to the dramatist, and one is tempted to think that the story must have been originally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are quaint and clear. The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his statements seem equally felicitous to the rude and the scholarly ear. His Peter Plymley letters are remarkable examples of the way in which one yeoman speaks to another. His literary bequest, however, is neither so valuable nor so charming as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... have made EASE a philosophy and a system; no man ever did so with more felicitous grace: nor, in following pleasure, have you parted company with conscience and shame. A fine gentleman ever, in honour as in elegance. Well, are you satisfied with your choice of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exquisite representation of those characters. The actor or actress brings to the illustration of the great efforts of dramatic genius, qualities of a different sort, in addition to those which at first pervaded the mind of the author, but not less essential to the felicitous realization of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of voice, look, and manner, the play of countenance, the step of grace, the witchery of love, the accents of despair, combine with the power of language to add a tenfold attraction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded in advance, and which celebrate some of the most inspiring moments in the life of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... lieutenant. Her emphasis assured me that the inspiration I had obeyed was a felicitous touch. She pressed still closer to me, mindful of my dignity, and prompted me further, in an artistic mutter, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... sincerity that I could be worthy of such a felicitous compliment as that. But I am a woman, and so I am gratified for it just as it is, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such a felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men would be rendered nervous by the flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for returning it, at least partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without emulgence of the poetry; or they would be pitiful, and quite spoil the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lecturer was then introduced as Mrs. F.E.W. Harper, from Maryland. Without a moment's hesitation she started off in the flow of her discourse, which rolled smoothly and uninterruptedly on for nearly two hours. It was very apparent that it was not a cut and dried speech, for she was as fluent and as felicitous in her allusions to circumstances immediately around her as she was when she rose to a more exalted pitch of laudation of the "Union," or of execration of the old slavery system. Her voice was remarkable—as sweet as any woman's voice we ever heard, and so clear and distinct as to pass every syllable ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... The spirit of caste is found as keenly at work among the humblest as among the highest ranks. At Birmingham, there was a club of workmen with tails to their coats, and another without tails: the one looked down upon the other. Cobbett, so felicitous in his nicknames, called his political opponent, Mr. Sadler, "a linendraper." But the linendraper also has plenty of people beneath him. The linendraper looks down on the huckster, the huckster on the mechanic, and the mechanic on the day labourer. The flunkey who exhibits his calves ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... for we find him having no fewer than five bastard sons, named respectively, Tormod Uigeach, Murdoch, Neil, Donald, and Rory Og, all of whom arrived at maturity. In these circumstances it can hardly be supposed that his lady's domestic happiness was of the most felicitous and unmixed description. ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... Reader; and if so, how infinitely happy are we by the Use of our Sacred Writings, which clear up the Cloud of Ignorance and Error, and give a Sanction to our Religion, besides the Satisfaction we of the Church of England have in this felicitous Contemplation, that our Religion, since the Reformation, strictly observ'd, is the nearest that of our Saviour and his Apostles of any ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... A more felicitous embodiment of modern feeling was achieved by Donatello in "S. George" and "David." The former is a marble statue placed upon the north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... both these performances are excellent; and in a literary point of view, they are also highly creditable to their authors. Mr. Lincoln supports the necessity and dignity of labor with unanswerable argument and felicitous illustrations. Much, says he, in a few segregated sentences, 'has been written, with truth and eloquence, by great minds, upon the dignity of labor; but it is the dignity of the laborer which is the vital point that demands attention. Labor or industry needs no apology, no advocates; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... obliged to confine himself, therefore, to the explanation of the Regenerator, and the process by which the heat is continually returned to the cylinder, and re-employed in the production of force. To this part of the invention he rendered ample justice, and explained it in that felicitous style to which he is indebted for the reputation he deservedly enjoys, as the most agreeable and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Carrier (HEINEMANN) was, as Mr. ZANGWILL lets us know in a felicitous epistle-dedicatory to an evidently charming lady, designed as a "bland" and leisurely book, free from any trace of war's horrors or modern perplexities, the sort you could read comfortably with a sore throat on you. I think if I had not been in such rude health I might have managed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... and forward movement for home and native land. Mrs. Lane of Michigan gave Mrs. Williams genial help in presiding. Mrs. Palmer of Massachusetts led in prayer. Mrs. Burke Leavitt, President of the Illinois Union, gave to the ladies a felicitous welcome to the city and to the sympathy of the workers of the great state of Illinois. Mrs. E.W. Blatchford greeted the women in behalf of the New England Church and of their co-workers in the W.B.M.I. If only all good women saw and felt, as ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... felicitous chatter, of showing off Christmas cards, of exchanging of news, of building of schemes, the most prominent being that Valetta should be in the constant companionship of Mysie and Fly until her own schoolroom should be re-established. This had been proposed by Lord Rotherwood, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... humor never struck me as felicitous. "Thus, a friend meeting him one ten-degrees-below-zero morning in the winter, said: 'How cold it is, Mr. Choate.' 'Well, it is not absolutely tropical,' he replied, with a ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... have been in search of Aladdin's wonderful lamp to enlighten me how to effect this felicitous transformation. Like Aladdin's quest of old the search has been long and wearisome and has led me a tedious road through many vexatious disappointments, but at last I have found the lamp! I have in my power the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... felicitous, the names of Baer express the same ideas as those of Cuvier. By the Peripheric he signified those in which all the parts converge from the periphery or circumference of the animal to its centre. Cuvier only reverses this definition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... among modern cities for its genius and industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... disinterested parties, and will find out some annoyance that has escaped his notice. It was thus with Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite. He had made up his mind that he wanted for nothing, when it was suddenly found out by his friends that he was in a state of felicitous destitution. It was discovered simultaneously, by five mamas and eighteen daughters, that Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite must want a wife; and that his sixteen thousand and odd pounds must be a source of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... contemporaries. But it is quite good enough for us. That 'grand manner' which Matthew Arnold claimed for Milton, that sustained pitch of kingly elaboration and fullness, is not wholly an affair of high moral tone; it results in part from the humbler ministrations of words happily chosen—from a felicitous alloy of Mediterranean grace and Saxon mettle. For, whether consciously or not, we cannot but be influenced by the colour-effects of mere words, that arouse in us definite but indefinable moods of mind. To complain of the foreign ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... striking combination, and goes far to account for the transcendent success which Plunket attained at the Bar and in the House, and alike in the Irish and the English Parliament. Lord Brougham said of him that his eloquence was a continuous flow of "clear statement, close reasoning, felicitous illustration, all confined strictly to the subject in hand; every portion, without any exception, furthering the process of conviction;" and I do not know a more impressive passage of sombre passion than the peroration of his first speech against the Act of Union: ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... articles which give the volume substance, and it represents mare finally and fully than the others my sense of the literary importance of the men whose like we shall not look upon again. Longfellow was easily the greatest poet of the three, Holmes often the most brilliant and felicitous, but Lowell, in spite of his forays in politics, was the finest scholar and the most profoundly literary, as he was above the others most deeply and thoroughly New ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... moderate his surprise at the defects of the world-dictators in Paris. One English-speaking statesman, dealing with the Italian government[61] and casting around for some effective way of helping the Italian people out of their pitiable economic plight, fancied he hit upon a felicitous expedient, which he unfolded as follows. "I venture," he said, "to promise that if you will largely increase your cultivation of bananas the people of my country will take them all. No matter how great the quantities, our ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon |
