"Felicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was soon in a reverie, and, as before reverted to the lovely daughter of Mynheer Poots indulging in various castle-buildings, all ending, as usual, when we choose for ourselves, in competence and felicity. In this pleasing occupation he remained for more than two hours, when his thoughts again reverted to his poor mother and her ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... another in the middle distance, all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar, at the stern; then there is a Church of the Salute, and a Ducal Palace,—in which I beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of modern cheap engraving; finally, over the Ducal Palace there is something, I know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter T. Opposite ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... to the people around them; and when at last they did so, it was still with lingering glances of self-recognition and enjoyment. They divined rightly that one of the main conditions of their present felicity was the fact that they had seen so much of time and of the world, that they had no longer any desire to take beholding eyes, or to make any sort of impressive figure, and they understood that their prosperous love accounted as much as years and travel for this result. If they had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... north, have settled that. They have left Palestine in a corner, off the main-travelled roads. The best that she can hope for is a restoration to quiet fruitfulness, to placid and humble industry, to olive-crowned and vine-girdled felicity, never again ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the leading reviews and most respectable publications of the day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenpenced, &c.? The formation of a participle passive from a noun is a licence that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can excuse. If mere convenience is to justify such attempts upon the idiom, you cannot stop till the language becomes, in the proper sense of the word, corrupt. Most of these pieces of slang ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... speaker of the evening, Miss Maude Royden, the noted English preacher. He accompanied Miss Royden to the center of the platform with all the courtliness of a true gentleman, and with that deference due a gentlewoman and an eminent personage. His introduction was an instance of his singular felicity of expression and his ability to state in choice language the sentiments prompted by the event of the moment. Such was Mr. Nelson's gift for being master of every occasion. Sitting in the back row ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... triumph over death and sin, And having harrowed hell, didst bring away Captivity thence captive, us to win: This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin; And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die, Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin, May live for ever in felicity! And that thy love we weighing worthily, May likewise love thee for the same again; And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy, With love may one another entertain. So let us love, dear love, like as we ought: Love is the lesson which the Lord ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... probability of Lord Chesterfield's participating in domestic felicity, when neither his heart nor his fancy were engaged in the union which he had formed. The lady to whom he was really attached, and by whom he had a son, resided in the Netherlands: she passed by the name of Madame du Bouchet, and survived ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a while in her busy life, Mrs. Lenox found time to drop in as the bearer of a cheerful word and a friendly look to the ugly little apartment where Mrs. Quincy lived in the third story height of domestic felicity. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... appearance could have been in a court of justice, pursuing a doubtful event, under the disadvantages I have mentioned. And if, my dear and good Sir, you are now, on considering every thing, of this opinion, and I could know it, I should consider it as a particular felicity; being as solicitous as ever to be justified in what I ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... be counterfeited; they are like fire and flame that cannot be painted." But the sage who invented the Franklin stove had no disdain of small utilities; and in general the last word of his philosophy is well expressed in a passage of his Autobiography: "Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune, that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day; thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr. Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity. My aunt had obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing the first pitcher she planted on the stairs out of window, and protecting in person, up and down the staircase, a supernumerary whom she engaged from the outer world. These vigorous ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... you may depend on it, they are playing fair—in their slow way. They always think of India and of Egypt—never of Cuba. Lord! Lord! the fun I've had, the holy joy I am having (I never expected to have such exalted and invigorating felicity) in delivering elementary courses of instruction in democracy to the British Government. Deep down at the bottom, they don't know what Democracy means. Their Empire is in the way. Their centuries of land-stealing are in the way. Their unsleeping watchfulness of British commerce is in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit—haughty and reserved among the rich and ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we were never to part with it. Men's souls cleave to outward accommodations; therefore the Lord useth to part us and our idol, that we may take hold of him the faster. It is union with himself that is our felicity, and it is that which God most endeavoureth. When he removeth beloved jewels, it is because they were a stumbling-block, and divorced the soul from God: when he seemeth to withdraw himself his going proclaimeth so ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... free, and happy; if all enjoy in safety, under the protection of laws emanating only from the general will, the fruits of their own labor, we ought to fortify and cling to those institutions which have been the source of such real felicity and resist with unabating perseverance the progress of those dangerous innovations which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Adams • John Adams
... two souls, which take possession of my bodily frame by turns, the one being all unconscious of what the other performs; for as sure as I have at this moment a spirit within me, fashioned and destined to eternal felicity, as sure am I utterly ignorant of the crimes you now lay ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... intellect and the senses to the imagination and the soul. Nothing with us very deeply impresses the mind if it does not arouse the emotions. Naturally, thus, we are predisposed insensibly to infer from French articulateness the absence of substance, to assume from the triumphant facility and felicity of French expression a certain insignificance of what is expressed. Inferences and assumptions based on temperament, however, almost invariably have the vice of superficiality, and it takes no very prolonged study of French ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Toombs and Yancey were intensely Southern and, whenever a crisis might come, neither meant to hesitate an instant over striking hard for the South. Toombs, however, wanted to prevent such a situation, while Yancey was anxious to force one. The former conceived felicity as the joy of playing politics on the biggest stage, and he therefore bent all his strength to preserving the so-called national parties; the latter, scornful of all such union, was for a ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... construction of the later poem. Like Dryden, Keats now makes frequent use of the Alexandrine, or 6-foot line, and of the triplet. He has also restrained the exuberance of his language and gained force, whilst in imaginative power and felicity of diction he surpasses anything of which Dryden was capable. The flaws in his style are mainly due to carelessness in the rimes and some questionable coining of words. He also occasionally lapses into the vulgarity and triviality which ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... one was more clearly aware than Coombe himself, and the finished facility—even felicity—of his evasion of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination was felt ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... father, in the midst of felicity almost more than mortal, the thought has come that this letter is my first step towards leaving the paternal roof under which I have been so happy all my life, thanks to you. I should indeed be unworthy of all your goodness if this thought caused ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... bright and ready wit. There is a pretty little story told by Mrs. Ellis in her book about Mrs. Barbauld, how one day, when Dr. Aikin and a friend 'were conversing on the passions,' the Doctor observes that joy cannot have place in a state of perfect felicity, since it supposes an accession ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... brain grows rusty, my mind is dusty, The time I'm dwelling with the likes of ye, While my spirit ranges through all the changes Could turn the world to felicity! When Aristotle..." ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... providence to the having or wanting of bodily provision, which no part of God's Scriptures teach us, but rather the express contrary. As it is written, 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proeeedeth out of the mouth of God,' that is, the very life and felicity of man consists not in the abundance of bodily things, or the possession and having of them makes no man blest or happy; neither shall the lack of them be the cause of his final misery; but the very life of man consists in God, and in His promises pronounced by ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... scene of General Fraser's life has been graphically described by Madame Riedesel, wife of the German general. It has been oft quoted, and need not be here repeated. General Burgoyne has described the burial scene with his usual felicity ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... you that I loved you. No, I am quite convinced that you would not laugh. And if you loved me, Jeanne, we should not go into society. That would just suit me. I should protect you, yet not hide you. We should have felicity at home instead of running after it to balls and crushes, where it is never to be found. You could not help being aware of the fascination you exert; but you would not squander it on a mob of dancers, and bring home only the last remnants ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... true that I did not procure that felicity at once. There were many difficulties to be got over before the noble spaniel would think of allowing his daughter to become the wife of plain Mr. Job. His son, also, of whom I have spoken previously, could not bear, at ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... merely marvelled at your eccentricity, Feeling convinced amid my blank amaze That, though you might "absent you from felicity Awhile," 'twas but a temporary phase; Convinced the mood impelling you to stifle The aspirations that I'd dared outline Was simply due to some extraneous trifle, Not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... under the light of conscience. Every poet and novelist who addresses them on this weak side is sure of getting a favorable hearing. Byron's popularity, as distinguished from his fame, was mainly owing to the felicity with which he supplied the current demand for romantic wickedness. The authoress of Jane Eyre is not a Byron, but a talented woman, who, in her own sphere of thought and observation, is eminently trustworthy and true, but out of it hardly rises above the conceptions ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases, almost without his awarity—awarity, in this sense being the sense of being aware, though disputed by some authorities—turning out marvel upon marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched out of them continuous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... George and at Quebec I followed the struggle between the English and the French for the possession of this great continent. At Boston and Concord I followed the progress of the War of Independence. At Mount Vernon I enjoyed the felicity of companionship with Washington and his associates. I pause at this great name, and carry my recollections no further. But you will understand how long and fruitful an experience has thus been added to my life, during the few weeks in which ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... gave nothing but pleasure to Leontes. He recommended the friend of his youth to the queen's particular attention, and seemed in the presence of his dear friend and old companion to have his felicity quite completed. They talked over old times; their schooldays and their youthful pranks were remembered, and recounted to Hermione, who always took a cheerful part in ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tired in body and depressed in spirit. Why was I so sorry to leave Huxter's Cross? What subtle instinct of the brain or heart made me aware that the desert region amongst the hills held earth's highest felicity for me? ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... this confession from the mouth of an Indian: "That they believed God was universally beneficent; that his dwelling was in heaven above, and the influence of his goodness reached to the earth beneath; that he was incomprehensible in his excellence, and enjoyed all possible felicity; that his duration was eternal, his perfection boundless, and that he possessed everlasting happiness." So far the savage talked as rationally of the existence of a God as a Christian divine or philosopher ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... portly sexton who transmitted invitations for the elect, protested to one of his patronesses that he really could not undertake to 'run society' beyond Fiftieth Street. To be married or buried within Grace Church's walls was considered the height of felicity. It was Brown who passed on worthiness in life or death. He arranged the parties, engineered the bridals, conducted the funerals. The Lenten season is a horribly dull season, but we manage to make our funerals as entertaining as possible"—Brown said, according to the quoted ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... she Present, O saintly friend, to thee. Thine be my elephant, so famed, My uncle's present, Victor named; And let a thousand coins of gold, Great Brahman, with the gift be told." Thus Rama spoke: nor he declined The noble gifts for him designed. On Rama, Lakshman, Sita he Invoked all high felicity. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... declares "blessed are the meek," every heart which considers what meekness is, feels the truth of that blessedness. It may smooth the way, and prevent impediments, which a different temper raises to temporal felicity: it certainly assures that Heaven which is within: and is a pledge and anticipation ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsels. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiment ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... East by a mighty sea, here to recommence that experiment which hath partially failed elsewhere, and imparted sufficient measure of His spirit to chosen instruments to work out the problem of human happiness, and to conduct mankind to heights of felicity, beginning here and never ending?—the bare contemplation whereof causes my ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... done, the God of heaven, who fed them by his bounty, and offered them a full and free salvation in the gospel of his Son. No enjoyments nor possessions, however ample and acceptable, can crown the soul with peace and true felicity, unless accompanied with the fear and favor of Him who can speak pardon to the transgressor, and shed abroad his love in the hearts of his children; thus giving an earnest of spiritual and eternal blessedness ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... for every pint of honey a gallon of gall; for every dram of pleasure a pound of pain; for every inch of mirth an ell of moan; and as the ivy twines around the oak, so does misery and misfortune encompass the happy man. Felicity, pure and unalloyed felicity, is not a plant of earthly growth; ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Camp-Meetings. Why not go out into the woods, beneath the spreading branches of the trees, or even under the uncurtained canopy of Heaven, and enjoy a grand unbending of the spirit? With the shackles thrown off that have so long fettered the soul, what a Heaven of felicity there is in its conscious freedom. The eagle, long confined in a cage, after stretching his wings to satisfy himself that he is really free, gambols in the air with an indescribable ecstasy. So there are thousands of Christians ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... being, in gods, in men, in animals, in the very plants and stones. But these souls pass from one body into another; this is the transmigration of souls. When a man dies, his soul is tested; if it is good, it passes into the heaven of Indra there to enjoy felicity; if it is bad, it falls into one of the twenty-eight hells, where it is devoured by ravens, compelled to swallow burning cakes, and is tormented by demons. But souls do not remain forever in heaven or in the hells; they part from ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... doubt not but Dudley Carleton hath acquainted you with all their Christmas-games at Court, for he was a spectator of all the sports and shows. The King went to Royston two days after Twelfth-tide, where and thereabout he hath continued ever since, and finds such felicity in that hunting life, that he hath written to the Councill that it is the only means to maintain his health, which being the health and welfare of us all, he desires them to take the charge and burden of affairs, and foresee that he be not interrupted or troubled ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... bitter snows, were susceptible to volcanoes; they courted them as a counterbalance. Perhaps he had spoken roughly, but his temper had not been under control. One thing he recalled with grim satisfaction. He had sent a barbed arrow up the tube to disturb the felicity of the dove-cote. The duke would be rather curious to know what was meant in referring to the night she had come to his, Courtlandt's, room. He laughed. It would be a fitting climax indeed if ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... value as an instrument of discovery in chemical inquiries, can hardly be said to have been applied to the practical purposes of life, until the same powerful genius which detected the principle, applied it, by a singular felicity of reasoning, to arrest the corrosion of the copper-sheathing of vessels. That admirably connected chain of reasoning, the truth of which is confirmed by its very failure as a remedy, will probably at some future day ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... listen than to speak, his conversation, when he did talk, had no trace of anything the least like insanity about it. He had evidently read, not generally only, but deeply as well, and could apply his reading with singular felicity to the illustration of almost any subject under discussion, neither obtruding his knowledge absurdly, nor concealing it affectedly. His manner was in itself a standing protest against such a nickname as "Mad Monkton." He was so shy, so ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... did not spare John Jay. Cousin and brother-in-law had the "love frenzy for France," which finally culminated in celebrating the ninth anniversary of the treaty of alliance between France and America, at which Brockholst became proudly eloquent, and the Chancellor most happy in the felicity of an historic toast: "May the present coolness between France and America produce, like the quarrels of lovers, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... unconcerned temper had one felicity indeed in it, that it made me daring and ready for doing any mischief, and kept off the sorrow which otherwise ought to have attended me when I fell into any mischief; that this stupidity was instead of a happiness to ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... hours or minutes—a day of uninterrupted felicity. The whole house greeted him warmly, a bright fire burned in the salon, flowers bloomed at the windows, and Cecile and the doctor made him feel how dear he was to them both. After they had dined, M. Rivals examined the work of the week, corrected everything, and explained all that ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of valuable men is the happiest end I know of this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and scoundrels; which I cannot but own to you was one part of my design in falling upon these authors, whose incapacity is not greater than their insincerity, and of whom I have always found (if I ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and exquisite felicity of phrasing, ASQUITH excelled himself. The first time the House of Commons caught a glimpse of profound depths of a nature habitually masked by impassive manner and curt speech was when he talked to it in broken voice about CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... of his death, which happened at an advanced age, the calumet of peace was everywhere smoked among the northern tribes, and their numbers had greatly increased. Wampum-hair was universally honored, and regarded as the cause of this felicity. But no wife ever cooked the venison in his lodge. With the dream of his youth vanished all predilection for the softer sex. He had loved and been disappointed. Where he expected to meet gentleness he had found pride. He looked for the yielding ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... luxury of laziness which invariably carries with it sensuality. Wherever they found themselves in the ascendancy, they intrigued to impose the Roman faith on the population, and if that method did not succeed with felicity, whenever the agents of their governing classes, including their king, met with opposition from prominent men or women, their opponents were put to the rack, burnt, or their heads sent flying. In this country no leading Protestant's life or property ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... high during the night; listening to it roaring through the coppice in which the Abbey was built, Mark lay awake for a long time in mute prayer that Brother Anselm might find peace and felicity in his new state. And while he prayed for Brother Anselm he prayed for Esther in Shoreditch. In the morning when Mark went from cell to cell, rousing the brethren from sleep with his hammer and salutation, the sun was climbing ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... we must not expect to realize any of our poetical ideas of the primitive residence of the first human family. Here are no Arcadian scenes of peace and rural felicity. On all sides we behold an undying competition for light and life, among both plants and animals. We are reminded here of life in a crowded city, where the excessive abundance of supplies for human wants imported ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Moon told me. "I have seen the cadet who had just been made an officer put on his handsome uniform for the first time; I have seen the young bride in her wedding dress, and the princess girl-wife happy in her gorgeous robes; but never have I seen a felicity equal to that of a little girl of four years old, whom I watched this evening. She had received a new blue dress, and a new pink hat, the splendid attire had just been put on, and all were calling for a candle, for my rays, shining in through the windows ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... of matrimony, as it is appointed by God, the true felicity that rebounds thereby to either sex; and to what end ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... a sailor's daughter yourself, you know Jack's account of his wife's domestic creed! 'A good fire, a clean hearth, the children abed, and the husband at sea,' is supposed to be the climax of felicity." ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... confessed before the Father and the holy angels. Wondrous admission into the heavenly realm! Presented to the Father and the innumerable hosts of heaven by the Lord, himself, there, amid sacred environments, to enjoy the transcendent felicity of eternal blessedness! ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... than most of the sketches in Professor Tyler's well-known 'History,' these monographs have much of the brevity of their original purpose; and they are marked by the same picturesqueness of treatment, the same vivacity of expression, and the same felicity of statement, that characterize the author's ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... love;" and reciprocal love constitutes "the bond of perfectness" between God and rational creatures. Communion with God is the supreme felicity and highest honor of which angels and men are capable. The first emanation of divine love revealed to us was displayed in the covenant of works; although not called a covenant, the narrative contains all the elements essential ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... gardening—tenacious of his seignorial rights, but indulgent to the last degree to his tenantry, by whom he was adored. Never was exemplified in a more remarkable manner the soothing influence of the recollections of a well-spent life on the felicity of its later years, or the fountains of happiness which may be opened in the breast itself from the calm serenity of conscious power and great achievement. He conversed much, with the farmers and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... to regret the past? Will a life of torment be the price of a single ray of happiness enlightening the highest pinnacle of human felicity? If the wish which I dare not express should ever be accomplished, I will surely be equal to my position; but I will also know how to bear the shipwreck of my dearest hopes.... Great God, how can I write, how dare ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and extensive descriptive language for botany has been executed with a degree of skill and felicity, which, before it was attained, could hardly have been dreamed of as attainable. Every part of a plant has been named; and the form of every part, even the most minute, has had a large assemblage of descriptive terms appropriated to it, by ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... was a singular beginning of connubial felicity; but there is no doubt that Johnson, tho he thus showed a manly firmness, proved a most affectionate and indulgent husband to the last moment of Mrs. Johnson's life: and in his "Prayers and Meditations," we find very remarkable evidence that his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... overlooked in previous years. It gives them substance of thought that will be of much service in the pursuit of other sciences. It has been found that it is not without rather notable service to young students as the basis of efforts in the art of literary presentation, a felicity to which teachers of this important art frequently give emphatic testimony. The secret seems to lie in the fact that physiography gives varied and vivid material susceptible of literary presentation, while the fixed qualities of the subject matter control the choice of terms ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... happiness is founded, like that of nations, upon ignorance. It is a felicity full of ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... married, she accompanied me to my house. But there was no good luck.—The fortune which my sister possessed placed her in a condition to follow her own heart's bias, and she gave her hand to a poor but amiable young man, a Lieutenant Wolf, and lived with him some months of the highest earthly felicity. But brief was the happiness to be. Wolf perished on a sea-voyage, and his inconsolable wife sunk under her sorrow. She died some hours after she had given birth to a son, and after she had laid her tender babe in my arms, and prayed me ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... with a meaning in Soames' mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the craftsmanship, 'rouged with rust' seemed to me a fine stroke, and 'nor not' instead of 'and' had a curious felicity. I wondered who the Young Woman was, and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect that Soames could not have made more of it than she. Yet, even now, if one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for the sound, there ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... replied, 'It is because of the loving-kindness of this our dynasty.' I ask what and whence is this loving-kindness of which he speaks? He answers me, 'It is the beneficent rule of their Majesties the Empresses- Dowager; it is the unspeakable felicity vouchsafed by Heaven to the Emperor; it is the loyalty and virtue of those in high places, of Tseng Kuo-fan, of Li Hung-chang, of Tso Tsung-t'ang.' These, however, are all provincial officials. Within the palace we have ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... high spirits, and smoothed the nap of his cocked hat with his sleeve—the said sleeve being of Mecklenburg silk—in a way which indicated the summit of felicity. ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... both recorded their opinions of it, but no one has characterized it more happily than his friend, Sir Tobie Matthews, "A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, of allusions, as perhaps the world hath not seen since it was a world."—"Address to the Reader" prefixed to Collection ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... distressed consort, Adam leads her into the garden to prune over-luxuriant branches and to train vines from tree to tree. While they are thus occupied, the Almighty summons Raphael, and, after informing him Satan has escaped from hell and has found his way to Paradise to disturb the felicity of man, bids the archangel hasten down to earth, and, conversing "as friend with friend" with Adam, warn him that he had the power to retain or forfeit his happy state, and caution him against the wiles of the fiend, lest, after wilfully transgressing, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of the public prosperity and felicity. Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained, and since the preservation ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... the women's hands, it was their interest to oppose it, not only as depriving them of those superfluous trifles, in which through want of better knowledge and experience, they placed their chief felicity, but also because they knew their riches were the main support of their ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... some men have felicity in replying to a question, others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question. In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when a pert skeptic asked Martin ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Bob's career as a dramatic critic, a career in which he gained authority and in which his literary faculties, his felicity of expression and soundness of judgment ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... entitled to be ranked in that class, styled, "BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE." The author is one of the most popular writers of the day. "Knowledge is Power" treats of those things Which "come home to the business and bosoms" of every man. It is remarkable for its fullness and variety of information, and for the felicity and force with which the author applies his facts to his reasoning. The facts and illustrations are drawn from almost every branch of skilful industry. It is a work which the mechanic and artizan of every description will be sure to read ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... in serving the purpose of a gateway to the Acropolis, should also contribute to adorn, as well as fortify the citadel. This work, the greatest achievement of civil architecture in Athens, which rivalled the Parthenon in felicity of execution, and surpassed it in boldness and originality of design, consisted of a grand central colonnade closed by projecting wings. This incomparable edifice, built of Pentelic marble, received the name of Propylaea from its forming the vestibule to the five-fold ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... with wisdom and judgment; Accomplisher of the important transactions of mankind with intelligence and good sense; Consolidator of the edifice of Empire and of Glory; endowed by the Most High with abundant gifts; and 'Monshir,' at this time, of my Gate of Felicity; my Vizir Mehmed Pasha, may God be pleased to preserve him long ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one. Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to the narrative class of composition, would have the most both to learn and unlearn. Accordingly, it was to the development of the plot and the arrangement of the incidents that I directed my chief attention;—and I sought to throw whatever belongs to poetry less into the diction and the "felicity of words" than into the construction of the story, the creation of the characters, and the spirit of ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... time of life, if food is plenty where you live,—for that, you know, regulates matrimony,—you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather some fine morning; a kind of domestic felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as among the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... civil rights, property, and free expression in art, literature, and even speech, being forcibly and systematically repressed: while in the mountains of Savoy, the streets of Turin, and the harbor of Genoa, the stir and zest, the productiveness, and the felicity of national life greet the senses and gladden the soul. Statistics evidence what observation hints; Cavour wins the respect of Europe; D'Azeglio illustrates the inspiration which liberty yields to genius; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... acquired the copyright and organised the staff. Then it was that Mr. Mark Lemon was appointed sole editor, a new office having been created for Mr. Henry Mayhew—that of Suggestor-in-Chief; Mr. Mayhew's contributions, and his felicity in inventing pictorial and in 'putting' verbal witticisms, having already set a deep mark upon Punch's success. The second volume started merrily. Mr. John Oxenford contributed his first jeu d'esprit in its ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the other things of nature and the universe were gods, also—lesser ones obeying the supreme force and somehow fused with Him in a whole, being part of a scheme which He had invented to complete the felicity of the world He had created—not beings to be prayed to or solicited for favors, but just gentle, glorious, sympathetic, invisible friends. She was very much interested in Christ; He was certainly a part of God, too—but she could not understand about His dying to save ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... to work. They were a careless, untidy family. Yet when once they set about to get the house in order, the thing went with felicity and quickness. By evening ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... said, in his quiet tone and looking on the ground in the gloomy shed full of shadows, "that I was on the point of just attaining a great and wonderful felicity. Another drink, I felt, would do it. The others were holding out well ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly in reading Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their attitude toward life have many points in common. The charm of style, the delicacy of touch, and felicity of phrase, are in both cases preeminent. Daudet has, however, the advantage (or, as he himself asserts, the disadvantage) of working in a flexible and highly finished language, which bears the impress of the labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has to produce his effects ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... all about those little obstructions to matrimonial felicity," he answered. "Still I can't give up the idea, in case the chance should offer, of your running away with the young lady. It seems such a natural thing to do. There's a fine fellow, be prepared, that's all—and only just let me ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... rebukingly. The contact with her hand had been inexpressibly thrilling. Not since his prep school days had he held a girl's hand, and the brook and the stars sang together in ineffable chorus. It was bewildering to find that so trifling an act could afford sensations so charged with all the felicity of forbidden delight. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... much of, and petted and patted and admired and wondered at, make up the sum of human bliss, Barty came in for as full a share of felicity during that festive week as should last an ordinary mortal for a twelvemonth. Figaro qua, Figaro la, from morning till night in three departments ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... metaphysician? To see the Countess, hear the soft tones of her voice, render her little attentions, carry the delicacy of sentiment beyond the range of mortal vision, feel edified at her discourses on virtue, are not these supreme felicity for you? Leave for earthy souls the gross sentiments which are beginning to develop in you. To look at you to-day, it might be said that I was not so far out of the way when I declared love to be ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... O wood divine! A wife of such wood were felicity. O! who can give an oath? Where is a book? That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack, If that she learn not of her eye to look. No face is fair that is not full ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... epistles which about this time he began to dash off to some of his friends; and it is with these epistles that the uninterrupted stream of poetry of this season may be said properly to begin. Perhaps it was in the use of this stanza that Burns first discovered his command of rhymes and his felicity of phrasing. Certain it is, that after his first epistle to Lapraik, we have epistles, poems, songs, satires flowing from his pen, uninterrupted for a period, and apparently with marvellous ease. It has to be remembered, too, that he ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... to this day, And live without the great felicity Which, as TOM used of old to say, Can't fail to wait ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... marriage feast for Mary; nor would the higgler permit of the least delay in its preparation. He was ardent to taste the felicity that had been so long postponed, and refused to listen to any appeals that might be addressed to his sense of propriety, the respect due to the departed, and so forth. Dale, inclined to say he would not put ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... bookkeeper for one of our business concerns, courted and married a lovely young girl from a neighboring town, and settled down to a life of domestic felicity, esteemed by all, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Sou-Tsoung, the illustrious and brilliant emperor, erected at Ling-on and other towns, five in all, luminous temples. The primitive good was thus strengthened, and felicity flourished. Joyous solemnities were inaugurated, and the Empire entered on a wide ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... of these, as he sat in the door of the tent one evening after supper, watching the rich glow of sunshine that flooded a wide stretch of beautiful country in front of him, "this would be perfect felicity if only we had freedom to move about at our own pleasure and hunt up the treasures in botany, entomology, etcetera, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... again and again to those passages where the beauty of nature is depicted in stanzas of wonderful felicity. No such gift of observation had yet ministered to their delight. Readers of Mrs. Gaskell will be reminded of the old farmer in Cranford revelling in the new knowledge which he has gained of the colour of ash-buds ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... but which I have named "omnifruct," as it combines the flavour of apples, pears, peaches, pine-apples, gooseberries, strawberries, rasps—in fact, it is hard to tell what it does not resemble. But after all, this is rather light food, and although very Eden-like living—minus the felicity—it does not quite satisfy people who have been used most part of their ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne |
