"Augury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stage showed us a wholly dissimilar condition, yet not without its ideal side. We were brought face to face with that transitional phase of society and pacific revolution, of happiest augury for the future. From the peasant ranks are now recruited contingents that will make civil wars impossible, men who carry into politics learning and the arts, those solid qualities that have made rural ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... note of the days on which people are born. If one observe the movements and cries of birds or of any animals, or the sneezing of men, or the sudden movements of limbs, this belongs in general to "augury," which is so called from the chattering of birds (avium garritu), just as "auspice" is derived from watching birds (avium inspectione). These are chiefly wont to be observed in birds, the former by the ear, the latter by the eye. If, however, these observations have for their object men's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... augury from the circumstance that Mrs. Denham did not come down to greet them. It dawned upon him then for the first time with any distinctness that Ruth might be fatally ill. Mr. Denham, accompanied by Dr. Pendegrast, hastened to his wife's apartments, and Lynde ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... augury, to those concerned with aviation, that public interest in flying should not only be keen, but should be growing. In the early days, even when aeroplanes were so great a novelty, it was difficult to induce people in any numbers to witness a flying ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... his hump lightly for luck in passing, as every Italian woman will to this day if she finds herself close to a hunchback in the street, and this act is rarely resented. Pina thought it a piece of unexampled good-fortune and of the best possible augury that the door should have been opened by a 'bringer-of-fortune,' and the deformed servant smiled gently at her touch, quite understanding. As he led the way in, after shutting the outer door, Pina saw that ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Moltke, chief of the General Staff, was the practical director of military operations. General von Moltke was a nephew of the great strategist of 1870, and his name possibly appealed as of happy augury for repeating ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... how a knot should be tied in this world,) lost all patience with the contemptible artist, told him she was ashamed of him, took the rope out of his hand, and tied the knot irreproachably herself. The crowd saluted her with a festal roll, long and loud, of vivas; and this word viva of good augury—but stop; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... strong, and filled the colony with joy. A new spirit pervaded Settlement Cliffs. The vital fact of new life born there, an augury of strength and increase and world-dominance once more, cemented all ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... pleasure the attention paid to him by the down-at-heels servant—it was good augury for the success of the interview. He lowered his voice to a deep bass whilst asking for Miss Feverel, and he fixed his eyeglass at a more strikingly impressive angle. He looked at women from four points of view, and he had, as it were, a sliding scale of manners ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... carried on by his mother, the Empress Tefei, another of the capable women of Chinese history. Her early death left Chetsong to rule as he listed, and his first acts of independent authority were not of happy augury for the future. He had not been on the throne many months before he divorced his principal wife without any apparent justification, and when remonstrated with he merely replied that he was imitating several of his predecessors. The censor's ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... above all, he was tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness; for he enjoyed not more than three hours of nocturnal repose; nor these even in pure untroubled rest, but agitated by phantasmata of portentous augury; as, for example, upon one occasion he fancied that he saw the sea, under some definite impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence it was, and from this incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he had fallen into habits of ranging all the night long through ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... or physical worlds. Thus a pair of scales would denote Divine Justice in the spiritual sense, judgment in the intellectual sense, and obligation in the material sense. If the scales were evenly balanced the augury would be good. But if weighed down on one side it is Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, "Thou art weighed and found wanting"; it shows a corrupt judgment, a wrong conclusion, an unbalanced mind, failure in one's obligations, injustice, etc. And if a sword should lie across the scales or be seen overhead, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... of the guard be trusted. Two, indeed, are sworn to us; but the third cannot be come at. He must be cut down afterwards; and, indeed, when so many men must fall, what matters a eunuch more or less? Thus it shall be, then. To-morrow night, at three hours before midnight thou dost cast the final augury of the issue of the war. And then thou wilt, as is agreed, descend alone with me, having the signet, to the outer chamber of the Queen's apartment. For the vessel bearing orders to the Legions sails from ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... country they had come, and whither they were going. In reply AEneas gave a brief account of his wanderings since the fall of Troy. Then the goddess directed him to go into the city and present himself before the queen, and she pointed to an augury in the sky—twelve swans flying above their heads—which, she said, was a sign that the ships they had supposed to be lost were at that moment sailing into ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... departure, came Bellows to fill his place. I gave him the right hand of fellowship at his ordination; and I remember saying in it, that I would not have believed it possible for me to welcome anybody to the place of his predecessor with the pleasure with which I welcomed him. The augury of that hour has been fulfilled in most delightful intercourse with one of the noblest and most generous men I ever knew. With a singularly clear insight and penetration [88] into the deepest things of our spiritual nature, with an earnestness and fearlessness breaking through all technical rules ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Jewish horsemen who conducted us; he was a person of great courage, of a strong body, and by all allowed to be the most skillful archer that was either among the Greeks or barbarians. Now this man, as people were in great numbers passing along the road, and a certain augur was observing an augury by a bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they staid for. Hereupon the augur showed him the bird from whence he took his augury, and told him that if the bird staid where he was, they ought all to ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... in the luxury wrung from the toiling millions. The Republican papers spoke solemnly of the new era of prosperity upon which the country was entering, referred to the stimulating effect of the higher prices upon capitalised industry, and distorted the situation to an augury of a sweeping Republican victory in the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... these obstacles, the bridge was finished at last. On the 25th February, (1585) the day sacred to Saint Matthew, and of fortunate augury to the Emperor Charles, father of Philip and grandfather of Alexander, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... morning appeared to all as an augury of success; so it was with light hearts that ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... of it," said Ravenswood, "and should be more so, were I confident that Bucklaw would change his company and habits with his fortunes. This appearance of Craigengelt, acting in the capacity of his friend, is a most vile augury for ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the second. Goblinism and demonism have great effect on the mores, probably because demonism is so original and universal in all religions, and so popular in its hold on the minds of all. Demonism furnishes devices of magic, sorcery, sortilege, divination, augury, oracles, etc., by which it is believed that men can get from the superior powers (spirits, demons, etc.) what they want, and can learn what is to be in the future. It therefore has the greatest apparatus by which to satisfy human needs, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of this most excellent City of Venice, of us the Prince, and of the Senate, you are to be Commander and Captain General of all our forces and armaments on terra firma. Take from our hands this truncheon, with good augury and fortune, as sign and warrant of your power. Be it your care and effort, with dignity and splendour to maintain and to defend the Majesty, the Loyalty, and the Principles of this Empire. Neither provoking, not yet provoked, unless ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... your society on a basis so different from that which characterizes the units of the society is an evidence of how you have become permeated and tinctured with Yankee influences. I am glad to hear of your financial prosperity. It is a good augury, a hopeful sign of the success which awaits ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the young, Junius a Junioribus, was to be preferred. The Romans, however, held other seasons and days unpropitious to matrimony, as the days in February when the Parentalia were celebrated, &c. June was the favourite month; but no marriage was celebrated without an augury being first consulted and its auspices proved favourable (Val. Max. lib. ii. c. 1.). It would be well if some such superstitions observance among us could serve as a check to ill-advised and ill-timed marriages; and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... disposition, careless of personal safety, gave a charm the more to the magnificent young King, handsome, noble, brave, and full of universal friendliness and sympathy, who comes forth smiling in the face of fate, ready to turn back every gloomy augury and bring in another golden age. Pitscottie's description is full of warmth ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... errand went That huge ferocious armament, An awful cloud, in dust and gloom, With threatening thunders from its womb Poured in sad augury a flood Of rushing water mixt with blood. The monarch's steeds, though strong and fleet, Stumbled and fell: and yet their feet Passed o'er the bed of flowers that lay Fresh gathered on the royal way. No gleam of sunlight struggled through The sombre pall of midnight ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... six years; having passed the stage of love at first sight, hopeless love, worshiping love from afar, patient love, love requited and love rewarded; I am now so happy, so unspeakably optimistic, that I accept without question the happy augury of enchanted moonlight, as being truly prophetic. Besides, having a wife so noble, so good and so wise, to make it possible; how could our honeymoon be other than the most delightful ever known to the history of love? You may trust me, dear ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... go clean ashore, or blow eout to sea afore long, sure as death!" responded the skipper; and before he had fairly concluded his augury, sure enough, the halser parted, the schooner slew round and made a bee-line for Cowes and a market! This rather brought Hezekiah to his oats—he riz, tottering and feeble, on his shaky pins, and crawled forward to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... began to feel the weight of that treatment with which his slighted guest had, not indecorously, retaliated upon him, now supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain Delano's hand, stood tremulous; too much agitated to speak. But the good augury hence drawn was suddenly dashed, by his resuming all his previous reserve, with augmented gloom, as, with half-averted eyes, he silently reseated himself on his cushions. With a corresponding return of his own chilled feelings, Captain Delano bowed ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... days of killing time, our orders came through to leave for the front, two of us to go by motor and the rest by train. Our experience with the British officer at the base had certainly been pleasant and proved to be a happy augury of our future relationships with them. The British officer in France is quite a different man from the same officer in England, and does not impress you with the fact that the war is being carried on by his ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... me in Russia was a Frenchman, who had formerly been a clerk in my father's bureaux; he talked to me of him with tears in his eyes, and that name thus pronounced appeared to me of happy augury. In fact, in that Russian empire, so falsely termed barbarous, I have experienced none but noble and delightful impressions: may my gratitude draw down additional blessings on this people and their sovereign! I entered Russia at the moment when the French ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... idea of this. She thought only that nights were long in December. She did not think of looking at the calendar. The heavy step of workmen walking in squads, the noise of wagons of milkmen and marketmen, came to her ear like sounds of good augury. She shuddered at this first ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Seymour's the School House. Templar's were rather stronger than the School House, and Donaldson's had beaten them by a rather larger score than that which Seymour's had run up in their match. But neither Trevor nor Clowes was inclined to draw any augury from this. Seymour's had taken things easily after half-time; Donaldson's had kept ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Captain Pickersgill all rose and went to the window, to ascertain Corbett's fortune by this new species of augury. The blue pigeon flapped his wings, and then he sidled up to the white one; at last, the white pigeon flew off the wall and settled on the roof of the adjacent house. 'Bravo, white pigeon!' said Corbett; ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... remembered the murder of my brother and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support. The magistrate observed me with a keen eye and of course drew an unfavourable augury from my manner. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... too, that they scintillated a great deal. He did not think it was a sign of rain, as the peasants believe. He had observed, on the contrary, that nine times in ten the scintillation of stars was an augury of fine weather. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... to be told, there was nothing unusual about this sunrise, no rare tints of divine augury; the luminary came up in every-day fashion. Franklin had done much reading; he had taken pains to cultivate a good style in writing English; he had practiced himself in dispute; he had adopted some odd notions, for example vegetarianism in diet; he had at ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... vol. iii. p. 845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention, however, seems to have been to shew us, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... circumstance, Sir, of happy augury for the motion before the House, that almost all those who have opposed it have declared themselves hostile on principle to Parliamentary Reform. Two Members, I think, have confessed that, though they disapprove ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to entrap His life out of a slavish fear to combat Youth, strength, or cunning; but for that I durst not Engage the goodness of a cause on fortune By which his name might have outfaced my vengeance. Oh, Tecnicus, inspired with Phoebus' fire! I call to mind thy augury, 'twas perfect; Revenge proves its own executioner. When feeble man is lending to his mother The dust he was first ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... little pause, no one responding. There was no pleasant jest, no bright augury for Elinor. The girl's heart rose against this gloom that surrounded her. "I think," she said, with an angry laugh, "that I had better run after Mr. Sharp and bring him back, for he had at least a little sympathy ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... take place amongst capitalists, that the nucleus of a "public opinion" has been formed within an element which, by the use and wont of business and habits of thought might be regarded as least subject to the influence of social ideas, is a most hopeful augury. This nascent opinion has begun to operate by shaming unscrupulous and recalcitrant employers into better practices. It would indeed fare ill with democracy if, in such an era, men of large business proved to be lacking in democratic initiative, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... before. Suddenly, as if by a stroke of the magician's wand, the clouds parted, and the bright sun shone forth in a clear space of blue. The men on deck cheered as they saw it. To them it seemed an augury of safety. A satisfactory observation was taken, the exact longitude was obtained, at noon they would find the true latitude, and then, should Virginia Island have been laid down correctly, they might steer with confidence ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was, felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy lout pitch-forked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known it,—and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing still more fatal damage than in the first instance. No words were spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them than most of her sex, for ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as I swung over the side of the boat into the water, when I found myself knee-deep. Olivia looked from me to Tardif with a flushed face—an augury that made my pulses leap. Why should her face never change when he carried her in his arms? Why should ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... up to his armpits in the bog of Civil Service Reform, described as "Spinney's Walk-Over" (a happy blending, as Nick called it, of serious principle and humorous suggestion), I appeared on the door-steps and delivered a few halting sentences of gratitude and augury for success, which were received with loud plaudits and the rattle of the drum corps. Thereupon I invited the battalion to enter and partake of a little simple hospitality, which they hastened to do to the number ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... appearing there will find it far easier to appear there a second time, while no nation can imagine its just pride will be lessened by following the example now presented. This triumph of the principle of international arbitration is a subject of warm congratulation and offers a happy augury for the peace of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... from the one to the other, regarding them alternately with a frown on his brow, the augury of which was confuted by the good-humoured laugh on the lower part of his countenance. He then strove to propitiate them, by mentioning the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... good augury, that a violent storm had raged for three days before. In the morning, notwithstanding this much magnified triumph on the part of his enemies, neither Rob Roy nor his followers were in the least daunted, but went about "proclaiming the Pretender," and carrying off plunder. "Yesternight,[116] ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... "An augury of the catastrophe which was later to cost this unfortunate man his life," replied the unknown sadly. "Have you ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... I know not, but it is seen from examples both ancient and recent, that no grave calamity has ever befallen any city or country which has not been foretold by vision, by augury, by portent, or by some other Heaven-sent sign. And not to travel too far afield for evidence of this, every one knows that long before the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. of France, his coming was foretold by the friar Girolamo Savonarola; and how, throughout the whole of Tuscany, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... are regarded as of evil omen, the more so the more nearly the betrothed parties are concerned in them. The cries of birds and deer are important; those heard about the house are likely to be bad omens, and it is sought to compensate for these by sending a man skilled in augury to seek good omens in the jungle, such as the whistle of the Trogan and of the spider-hunter, and the flight of the hawk from right to left high up in the sky. If the omens are persistently and predominantly bad, the marriage is put off for a year, and after ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... this augury of further victory, the republicans prepared for the decisive blow. Wuermser, though checked on August 3rd, had been so far reinforced from Mantua as still to indulge hopes of driving the French from Castiglione and cutting his way through to rescue Quosdanovich. He ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... was no augury of permanent quiet. Brackenridge, who was a keen observer of men, says of the temper of the western population at this period: "I had seen the spirit which prevailed at the Stamp Act, and at the commencement of the revolution from the government of Great ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... with great splashes of water, and the soaked parts clung tightly to his breast. At the neck it was already open, and they both thought they could see at this moment a quick contraction of the throat. An additional augury was found in the fact that Alf simultaneously had succeeded in dribbling some of the brandy between Pa's teeth, and although some of it ran out at the corners of his mouth and out on to his cheeks, some also was retained and would help to revive him. Alf gave ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... melted from the rocks of the coast. The caverns all disappeared within the first week of the thaw, the attitudes into which the cakes had been thrown greatly favouring the melting process, by exposing so much surface to the joint action of wind, rain, and sun. What was viewed as a favourable augury, the seals began to reappear. There was a remote portion of the coast, from which the ice had been driven by the winds around the north-west cape, that was already alive with them. Alas! these animals no longer awakened cupidity in the breasts of the sealers. The last no longer thought ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... matter;"—thus the noble Dane, About his heart more ill than one could tell; Sad augury, that like a funeral bell Against his soul struck ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... founded, and that the church be called Nombre de Jesus ['Name of Jesus']. It gave great happiness and inspiration to all to see such an auspicious beginning, for of a truth it seemed a work of God to have preserved so completely this image among infidels for such a long time; and an auspicious augury in the part where the settlement was to be made." On May 8, the fort was commenced, Legazpi breaking the first ground, and "dedicating it to the most blessed name of Jesus." [60] The sites for the Spanish quarters and the church were chosen, and the town was called San Miguel, because founded on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... water reached their belts. They climbed aboard their boats, and raised the sails. And soon a line of great white wings was vanishing into the mist, madly rushing seaward through the white caps, under a sky already lowering with tempest and black with the scowl of fateful augury. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... went in twos. So did girls. The one gave the other courage. Yet Sally was done with May. May was soppy. She did not, in thinking this, do anything but envy May; but all the same she knew that Toby's solitariness matched her own. It was an augury. She lay awake until he came home, listening to her mother breathing; and then, in a few minutes, heard ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... god of the violent wind-storms, which destroy the houses and crops, and as one, who, in his own history, was driven from his kingdom and lost his all, was not considered a deity of invariably good augury. His day and sign, ce acatl, One Reed, was of bad omen. A person born on it would not succeed in life.[1] His plans and possessions would be lost, blown away, as it were, by the wind, and dissipated ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... Fiorenza,' which name they gave to the place where they were encamped, partly from their captain's name of Fiorino, and partly from the abundance of flowers which grew there; wherefore Caesar, thinking it a beautiful name, and considering flowers to be of good augury, and also wishing to honor his captain, whom he had raised from an humble station, and to whom he was greatly attached, gave it to the city which he founded on ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... philosophers despise. 180 Though he in all the people's eyes seem'd great, Yet greater he appear'd in his retreat; When feasting with his private friends at home, Such counsel, such discourse from him did come, Such science in his art of augury, No Roman ever was more learn'd than he; Knowledge of all things present and to come, Rememb'ring all the wars of ancient Rome, Nor only there, but all the world's beside; Dying in extreme age, I prophesied 190 ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... full of promise, and excited much interest. His attainments and accomplishments, which were really remarkable, won lively admiration. His warm regard for a man like Baron Bunsen seemed to afford the best augury for the liberality of his sentiments. As yet the danger of impracticability, discouragement, confusion, and paralysis of all that had been hoped for, was but faintly indicated in the dreaminess and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... after the Philips Norton affair of which such grossly exaggerated reports had reached London, and which, in point of fact, had been little better than a drawn battle—had been looked upon with dread by some, with disfavour by others, and with dismay by not a few who viewed in this an augury ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... (Livelong, or Orpine), called also Roseroot and Midsummer Men, is the largest British species of Stone-crop. Being a plant of augury its leaves are laid out in pairs on St. John's Eve, these being named after courting couples. When the leaves are freshly assorted those which keep together promise well for their namesakes, and those ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the frequent gaiety which he attributed to improving health and revived hopes. Everything he undertook was easy to him, and by a pleasant self-deception he made the passing of a school task his augury of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... come to the session of 1883, inoperative as far as actual legislation was concerned, but rich in its augury for the future. Already in April the improved temper of the House on questions in which women were concerned, had been shown by the brilliant majority that voted with the Rt. Hon. Mr. Stansfeld for the suppression of the Contagious Diseases acts which have so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... never be known—for you can not summon the dead as witnesses; then a brief hesitation, and a dozen sentences exchanged between the first and second in command; and then—every trooper in the Brigade understood what he had to do. Many drew true and evil augury from the cloud lowering on the stern ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... were twins, and that neither could claim to have the preference to the other in respect of his age, it was agreed between them that the gods that were the guardians of that country should make known by means of augury which of the two they chose to give his name to the new city. Then Romulus stood on the Palatine hill, and when there had been marked out for him a certain region of the sky, watched therein for a sign; and Remus watched in like ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... and republicanism an unstable system. It was but a very short time before the fall of Richmond that I heard an Englishman, so far from anticipating the catastrophe of the South, repeat the threadbare augury of the Times and other journals, that the remaining Federal States would yet split up into a Western and an Eastern aggregation. The Cerberus of Democracy was to start his three heads off on three different roads, by that process ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... the ankle joints and the arch had gone out of his neck, while faithful Bill, who never murmured or complained, had a glassy stare in his eyes, the lingering effects of poisoning. The wind rose in the afternoon, bringing to us a sound of moaning tree-tops, and somehow it seemed to be an augury of better things—seemed to prophesy a fairer and dryer country to the north of us. The singing of the leaves went to my heart with a hint of home, and I remembered with a start how absolutely windless the sullen forest of the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the twentieth of February, dawned brightly—so brightly indeed that I began to draw from the smiling appearance of the heavens a good augury for the luck of Henri Derblay. It was about eight when I set out. The conscription was to begin at nine, but already the one straggling, narrow street which bisects the old bathing-town was filled with country-people hastening in groups or singly toward the market-place, where the town-hall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... I would be held responsible for the miscarriage of the prodigy I hastily made my escape from the villa, nor did I, until long thereafter, meet with any of the parties concerned in this adventure. The augury in which I had assisted seemed false for the marriage of Margaret to Duke Alessandro took place, as had been planned, on the arrival of the Emperor at Naples. Though Charles was greeted with acclamations as ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... her shoulder or in her open hand. And here again forest worship early became associated with the worship of the dove; for, sixteen hundred years before Christ, we find the dove nurtured in the oak grove at Dodona where its presence was an augury and its ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' His conduct is a noble augury of the success of his future career. May the unextinguished spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... best remedy in the world for shyness; and Hilary led the way to the drawing-room with recovered equanimity. She had only had time for a quick hand-shake with the other visitor, but the glance which had been exchanged between them was delightful in its memory of past meetings—its augury of good times ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... learned how to translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's education received this final polish. All through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the Deity's plans by exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fire right and left, and the hissing of the shot overhead was a fearful augury of what was to take place; so sudden was the accident, that they had not had time to draw the round shot. The other transports were equally fortunate with ourselves, in weathering the shoal, and presently we were all ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... exhibition which you gave of your pupils engaged in their industrial vocations was not only artistic but thoroughly impressive. The tribute paid by the President and his Cabinet to your work was none too high, and forms a most encouraging augury, I think, for the future prosperity of your institution. I cannot close without assuring you that the modesty shown by yourself in the exercises was most favourably commented upon by all the members of ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... from the number of coins which he took up in his hand out of his pocket by chance, from the physiognomies of the passers-by, and from the colour of different horses; and when the augury was unfavourable, he forced himself to disbelieve in it. In his sudden outbursts of rage against Madame Arnoux, he abused her in muttering tones. Then came fits of weakness that nearly made him swoon, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... from these three men, evidently sincere and in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur of bad augury for the prisoner,—a murmur which increased and lasted longer each time that a fresh declaration was added to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Jim and Lucille noticed that Parrish was already speaking of Atlantis as if it was in the past. They drew a hopeful augury from that. And then there was nothing to do but resign themselves to that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... force or cleaving a passage; so drawing his sword he began to demolish and cut away the brambles at the mouth of the cave, at the noise of which a vast multitude of crows and choughs flew out of it so thick and so fast that they knocked Don Quixote down; and if he had been as much of a believer in augury as he was a Catholic Christian he would have taken it as a bad omen and declined to bury himself in such a place. He got up, however, and as there came no more crows, or night-birds like the bats that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he divided the regions of the vine to find his sow?[112] I should despise it, if I were not aware that King Hostilius had carried on most important wars in deference to his auguries; but by the negligence of our nobility the discipline of the augury is now omitted, the truth of the auspices despised, and only a mere form observed; so that the most important affairs of the commonwealth, even the wars, on which the public safety depends, are conducted without any auspices; the Peremnia[113] are discussed; no part of the Acumina[114] performed; ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... The Polynesian sees in nature the sign of the gods. In its lesser as in its more marvelous manifestations—thunder, lightning, tempest, the "red rain," the rainbow, enveloping mist, cloud shapes, sweet odors of plants, so rare in Hawaii, at least, or the notes of birds—he reads an augury of divine indwelling. The romances glow with delight in the startling effect of personal beauty upon the beholder—a beauty seldom described in detail save occasionally by similes from nature. In the Laieikawai the sight of the heroine's ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... any other interest was the merest illusion. Nothing in the world pleased them half so well as the sight of their own words in print. The arrival of a set of proof-sheets on the 1st of January was to them the best possible augury for the new year; the sight of their names on the placards outside the theatres and the booksellers' shops enraptured them; and Edmond, then well on in years, confesses that he thrice stole downstairs, half-clad, in the March ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... not altogether successful, however. He had looked forward to the day for many months as one of rejoicing as well as of emancipation, and he had been grievously disappointed. There was something of ill augury, he thought, in the appalling dulness of the guests, for they had congratulated him upon his entry into a life exactly similar to their own. Indeed, the more precisely similar it proved to be, the more he would be respected ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... maintained only by the sword and a valour not less death-defiant, a self-renunciation not less heroic. Such manifestations of heroism and of a zealous ardour, unexampled in its extent and its intensity, offer assuredly, I repeat, some augury, some earnest of that which is to come, some pledge to the new century rising like a planet tremulous ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... yours which is in itself a thing of no moment; yet, because it is of good augury, take it ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... moments he felt as if he must return at once, and refuse to leave the castle for any reason. But he could not see that it was the will of God he should do so. A presentiment is not a command. A prophecy may fail of the least indication of duty. Hamlet defying augury is the consistent religious man Shakspere takes pains to show him. A presentiment may be true, may be from God himself, yet involve no reason why a man should change his way, should turn a step aside from the path before him. St. Paul received warning after ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... one of the proud Claudius family was in command at Trepanum, in Sicily, when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before a battle the Romans always consulted the sacred fowls that were carried with the army. Claudius was told that their augury was against a battle—they would not eat. "Then let them drink," he cried, and threw them into the sea. His impiety, as all felt it, was punished by an utter defeat, and he killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war went on by land and sea all over and around Sicily, till at the end of twenty-four ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Sellers had ridden with spirits rapidly sinking since they had drawn near to that territory which lay adjacent to Wolf-Pen Gap. The failure to reach Halloway by 'phone at Viper was a bad augury, since it left them in the position of an army whose ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... now,' he cries, 'for us no more delay! I follow; and wherever ye may lead, Gods of my country, I will go! Guard ye My family, my little grandson guard. This augury is yours; and yours the power That watches Troy. And now, my son, I yield, Nor will refuse to go along with thee.' And now through all the city we can hear The roaring flames, which nearer roll their heat. 'Come then, dear father! On my shoulders I Will bear ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... this, he did reverence and thought it a great matter that his offence had turned out for his profit and moreover that he had been invited to dinner with happy augury; 127 and so he went to his house. And having entered it straightway, he sent forth his son, for he had one only son of about thirteen years old, bidding him go to the palace of Astyages and do whatsoever the king should command; and he himself being overjoyed told his ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... me do you hear anything. That's the sound of bees swarming at the window. That's a good augury ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... bear to see a fire," said I, in reply to the English nobleman, "for some dreadful accident always results therefrom. Yet, on the whole, they are of good augury, and I am sure, my lord, that your health or your affairs ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of comparative quiet in Ireland. Her policy towards the Catholics was held to be of good augury for Ireland. The English garrison was reduced with impunity to 500 foot and a few horse: but another and darker day came with Elizabeth. Her coming to the throne, together with her fanatic devotion to the Reformation ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... by Balak, the king, to come and devote the Israelites to destruction, God put blessings into his mouth instead of curses;[124] and this bad prophet, amongst the blessings which he bestows on Israel, says there is among them neither augury, nor ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... awful and solitary headland the elements of two hemispheres meet and contend. As Dias saw it, so he named it, 'The Cape of Storms'. But his master, John II, seeing in the discovery a promise that India, the goal of the national ambition, would be reached, named it with happier augury 'The Cape of Good Hope'. No fitter name could have been given to that turning-point in the history of mankind. Europe, in truth, was on the brink of achievements destined to breach barriers, which had enclosed and diversified the nations since the making of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... mothers, the love-affairs of the daughters. And on this occasion he assiduously deciphered the features and the figure of this woman as an interesting prophecy. He discovered nothing either of bad or good augury. Madame Nanteuil, plump, fresh-complexioned, cool-skinned, was not unattractive with the sensuous fullness of her contours. But her daughter did not in the least ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... is transferred, we hope not improperly from Roman to British Superstition. The Latin alludes to Augury, and very justly ridicules the Folly of Divination by the Flight ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... for injustice stubbornly upheld they had given you hatred. The analogy with Ireland is complete so far as the cards have been played. The same human elements are there, the same pride, the same anger, the same willingness to forget anger. Why should the augury fail? ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... Church had been subjected to, did not weary the patience and damp the zeal of all but the most resolved members of its Communion? Had we been present at one of the diets of the Assembly, held in March of this 'fatall' year, we should have witnessed a scene which might have been taken as an augury of good to the Church, rather than of evil. It was a day set apart for humiliation and the renewal of the Covenant, and no day had been seen like it, since the Reformation, in the spiritual fervour which ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... principal title from the barony of Retz or Rais, south of the Loire, on the marches of Brittany. As a youth he did nothing to justify an evil augury of his future, for he served with zeal and gallantry in the wars of Charles VI against the English and fought under Jeanne Darc at the siege of Orleans. In virtue of these services, and because of his shrewdness and skill in affairs, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... knelt, never moving. And the beam crept on. "If it touches her, then he will love me, if only for an hour; if it fades out too soon—" And the beam crept on. That shadowy path of light, with its dancing dust-motes, was it indeed charged with Fate—indeed the augury of Love or Darkness? And, slowly moving, it mounted, the sun sinking; it rose above that bent head, hovered in a golden mist, passed—and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Kenton's augury was fulfilled. The whole family were subdued enough by their surroundings to comport themselves quite well enough to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stove burns out all the vital part of the air, so that healthy plants in a few days wither and begin to drop their leaves, it is a sign that the air must be looked to and reformed. It is a fatal augury for a room that plants cannot be made to thrive in it. Plants should not turn pale, be long-jointed, long-leaved, and spindling; and where they grow in this way, we may be certain that there is a want of vitality for human beings. But where plants appear as they do in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Signs of doubtful augury for the most part, but Rossi was in no mood to think of that. He let down the carriage window that he might drink in the air of his own country. In spite of his opinions he could not help doing that. The mystic call that comes to a man's heart ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... subjects. The same St. Basil, in his Homily de St. Mamme Martyre has, concerning David, who was taken from following the ewes great with young ones to feed Israel. The Romans, the worthiest and greatest nation in the world, sprang from shepherds. The augury of the twelve vultures plac't a scepter in Romulus's hand, which held a crook before; ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... is superior to the boy, quicker, more intelligent, gifted with a better memory. Precocity, however, is a quality of dubious virtue. It is frequently found, indeed, in men of the highest genius; but, on the other hand, it is found among animals and among savages, and is here of no good augury. Many observers of the lower races have noted how the child is highly intelligent and well disposed, but seems to degenerate as he grows older; In the comparison of girls and boys, both as regards physical and mental qualities, it is constantly ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... heard. The walls of these caverns were covered with pictured distortions, half man, half animal, which yielded to the priests, or butios, interpretations according to the light and shadow. Some of these vaults are lighted through a natural fissure in the roof, and the worship or augury commenced at the moment the sun struck through it. There were movable idols, called Zemes, which represented inferior deities. The Catholic writers call them messengers and mediators, having their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... after the death of the body; as to its particular state there was a diversity of belief. As among other people, also, the offices of religion were not only directed to the present benefit of individuals, but also to the discovery of future events by various processes of divination and augury practised among the priests. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... prevalence of matriarchy or mother-kinship, notes the absence of polyandry, except in so far as its place was taken by facile divorce, describes the religion as a worship of gods of valleys and hills, draws attention to the system of augury used to ascertain the will of the gods, and gives an account of the remarkable megalithic monuments which everywhere stud the higher plateaus. He also recognizes the fact that the Khasis as a race ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... afraid of leaving life betimes? Why should he dread an early death, of which he cannot tell whether it is an exclusion of happiness, or an interception of calamity. I despise the superstition of augury and omens, which has no ground in reason or piety; my comfort is, that I cannot fall but by ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Karduchians assembling on the hills in their rear, so that their situation, during this day and night, appeared nearly desperate. In the night Xenophon had a dream—the first which he has told us since his dream on the terrific night after the seizure of the generals—but on this occasion, of augury[62] more unequivocally good. He dreamt that he was bound in chains, but that his chains on a sudden dropt off spontaneously; on the faith of which, he told Cheirisophus at daybreak that he had good hopes of preservation; and when the generals offered sacrifice, the victims were at once favorable. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... the joyous Book of Spring Lies open, writ in blossoms; not a bird Of evil augury is seen or heard! Come now, like Pan's old crew we'll dance and sing, Or Oberon's, for hill and valley ring To March's bugle ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... father's fortune waited on the unhappiness of his sovereign, so your own may participate of the better fate which attends his son. The relation which you have by alliance to the noble family of your lady, serves to confirm to you both this happy augury. For what can deserve a greater place in the English chronicle, than the loyalty and courage, the actions and death, of the general of an army, fighting for his prince and country? The honour and gallantry of the Earl of Lindsey is so illustrious a subject, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... said, "An augury is a solemn affair, and no disrespect must be allowed to nature's oracle, which in this case is a chestnut burr;" and he speedily ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... are not without certain dark presages and ominous suggestions. This crimson flood may be, as you say, the natural effect of purely natural causes,—yet, notwithstanding this, it seems to me a singular phenomenon—nay, even a weird and almost fatal augury?" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fully at work," and it requires, says the same author, but a comparison of the present with the past, "to remove all doubts of the present, and to justify the happiest augury." "The lotos ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... I—and Bilkins, whom I had begged of my father at the eleventh hour—stepped off the train at Miami, stretched our arms and breathed deep breaths of balmy air. Gates, his ruddy face an augury of good cheer, was there to meet us, and as he started off well laden with a portion of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... could not fall while I was on my feet, I remember hearing from many visitors from Asia, in which country you then were, that you were emphatic as to my glorious and rapid restoration. If that system, so to speak, of Tuscan augury which you had inherited from your noble and excellent father did not deceive you, neither will our power of divination deceive me; which I have acquired from the writings and maxims of the greatest savants, and, as you know, by a very diligent study of their teaching, as well ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... give a clew to the different characters of the two boys, who, after less than a day's acquaintance, have become roommates. Henry Martin was about Sam's age, but much more thoughtful and sedate. He had begun to think of the future, and to provide for it. This is always an encouraging sign, and an augury of success. Sam had not got so far yet. He had been in the habit of living from day to day without much thought of the morrow. Whether he would be favorably affected by Henry's example remains to ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... is that long centuries before the Greek science was heard of, there were scientists in Babylonia. During the Sumerian period "the forms and relations of geometry", says Professor Goodspeed, "were employed for purposes of augury. The heavens were mapped out, and the courses of the heavenly bodies traced to determine the bearing of their movements upon ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... had an opportunity of hearing any expression of the public mind. Crowds at any public gathering have always given cheers for Canada. The great gathering of to-day is a renewed symptom of the same favourable augury, for a good augury I hold it to be, that men in the old country are ready to call "Hurrah for Canada!" On the other side of the ocean they are as ready to call "Hurrah for the old country!" and these cries are no mere words of the lips, but come from the heart of ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... credible persons claimed at different times to have met the Monk, and since by some unhappy chance these victims of an optical delusion were all subsequently visited by misfortune in greater or less degree, it soon began to be whispered about that to encounter the specter was a sure augury of impending calamity. A local poet, long since forgotten, was inevitably inspired to preserve the legend in his rustic doggerel. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... destiny is to chance. The black star Erlik rushed through interstellar darkness unseen; those born under its violent augury squalled in their cradles, or, thumb in mouth, slumbered the dreamless slumber of the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Castle of Nottingham, in the midst of a great storm of wind and rain, which before many hours had passed blew the royal standard to the ground—an omen which those superstitiously inclined deemed of evil augury indeed. The young noblemen and gentlemen, however, who had gathered at Northampton, were not of a kind to be daunted by omens and auguries, and finding that Essex did not advance and hearing news from all parts of the country that the loyal gentlemen ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... she went a trail of superstitious terror, such as had never been known in the annals of the city. For a week the papers were full of the mysterious appearance of the armed woman, which was taken as a presumptive augury of war. Many affirmed that she had stopped them on the street and commanded them in tones of thunder to take up arms to save the country from destruction, and promising to lead them to victory when the time for battle came. Many of the foreigners ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... course has excited considerable alarm. Timid men consider it as a proof of the weakness of our government, and that it is to be rent in pieces by demagogues and to end in anarchy. I survey the scene with a different eye, and draw a different augury from it. In a House of Representatives of a great mass of good sense, Mr. Randolph's popular eloquence gave him such advantages as to place him unrivalled as the leader of the House; and, although not conciliatory to those ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... will be the more urgent to obliterate by kindness this injustice when he understands the aims of the Cummins. I have myself felt his misplaced wrath; and who now is more favored by Edward than Ralph de Monthermer? My case will be yours. Good night, Bruce. May propitious dreams repeat the augury of your true friends!" Percy shook hands with the young earl, and the two ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... your ships are driv'n- Have courage: to the gods permit the rest, And to the queen expose your just request. Now take this earnest of success, for more: Your scatter'd fleet is join'd upon the shore; The winds are chang'd, your friends from danger free; Or I renounce my skill in augury. Twelve swans behold in beauteous order move, And stoop with closing pinions from above; Whom late the bird of Jove had driv'n along, And thro' the clouds pursued the scatt'ring throng: Now, all united in a goodly team, They skim the ground, and seek the quiet stream. As they, with joy returning, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... led the Mysians, but his skill in augury availed not to save him from destruction, for he fell by the hand of the fleet descendant of Aeacus in the river, where he slew others ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... after whose death there was a great feare that some troubles might have arisen about the crown." As this did not happen, Heywood, who was a sly rogue in a small way, gets out of the scrape by saying, "Yet proved this augury true, though not according to the former expectation; for, after the peaceful inauguration of King James, there was great mortality, not in London only, but through the whole kingdom, and from which the nation was not quite clean in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... most sincerely for your very delightful book, as well as for its great kindness towards me; and I wish you joy from the bottom of my heart of the splendid success which has not merely attended but awaited its career—a happy and I trust certain augury of your literary good fortune in every line which you may pursue. I assure you that my political prejudices are by no means shocked at your dislike of Republicanism. I was always a very aristocratic Whig, and since these reforming days am ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... circumstances to understand the stormy thoughts, the gathering frenzy, that shook me as I went, and which, perhaps, were increased by my walk. I gloated in an infernal fashion which I cannot describe over the absolute completeness of my wretchedness. I would have drawn from it an augury of my future, but there is no limit to the possibilities of misfortune. The door of my lodging-house stood ajar. A light streamed from the heart-shaped opening cut in the shutters. Pauline and her mother were sitting up for me and talking. I heard my ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... private office hastily secreting a forged paper as the hero in the guise of a clerk entered; the companion picture was the banker in convict stripes staring out from behind the barred doors of a cell. There seemed a ghastly augury in the coincidence. Why should a thing like that be thrust upon him to shake his nerve when he needed nerve now more than he had ever needed ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... you, Lady Mary, on so favourable an augury," said Pansey Cottrell, as he leisurely consumed ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... trumpets and set forth once more. "I shall not budge from here, till Paris is taken," she said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur of Montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy in order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt this important and welcome addition to their ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... more was heard of the gentleman with a deceased wife's sister, of the butcher in trouble about slaughter-houses, of Japhet Williams' conscience or Tom Sinnett's affair. The result was taken as an augury of triumph for the party all over the country, where these things had never been heard of and the voices of Henstead did not reach. Unhappily however, as events proved, the victory of Henstead had in the end to ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth." What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis of all the world? what was it but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary of criminals? it was justly named by the augury of no less than twelve vultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the blood ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... searched for him, and Philip stole round and round the tree, the latter, happening to look across the paling, saw the dim outline of a man's figure in the lane, who appeared watching them. A thrill shot across his breast. These Beauforts, associated in his thoughts with every evil omen and augury, had they set a spy upon his movements? He remained erect and gazing at the form, when Sidney discovered, and ran up to him, with his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little Nathan creeps to the piano and quite without the help of his elders picks out the song he has heard his mother sing,—all the neighbors in Odessa know it the next day. "A wonder child perhaps!" Oh happy augury of fame and fortune! Little Nathan shall have the best of instruction. His mother will teach him at first, of course. She will shape his little fingers to the keyboard. She will sing sweet folk melodies in his ear,—songs of labor, struggle, exile. She will count laboriously ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... housekeeper's pretty and love-sick niece, holding a long conference with one of these old sibyls behind a large tree in the avenue, and often looking round to see that she was not observed. I make no doubt that she was endeavouring to get some favourable augury about the result of her love quarrel with young Ready-Money, as oracles have always been more consulted on love affairs than upon anything else. I fear, however, that in this instance the response was ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... shall earn the flaying! The punishment shall be no more savage than the deed that invites it! But enough of that. If I go to Tanis and find her the spoil of the fan-bearer, thine augury will hold, I return not to Memphis. . . . If she was ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... before the hour, the hour whose voice, Pealing into the arch of night, might strike These palaces with ominous tottering, And rock their marbles to the corner-stone, Waking the sleepers from some hideous dream Of indistinct but awful augury Of that which will befall them. Yes, proud city! Thou must be cleansed of the black blood which makes thee A lazar-house of tyranny: the task Is forced upon me, I have sought it not; 10 And therefore was I punished, seeing this Patrician pestilence spread on and on, Until at length it smote ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... our best to put faith in such felicitous augury. Punctually at eight o'clock, accompanied by the entire household of the little Hotel St. Jean, we descended to the landing-place, two minutes' ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... intimate his intention of recommending himself to her, and the view with which he had placed himself at Avonmouth; nor was he in the slightest degree disconcerted by her vehemence, but rather entertained by it, accepting her faithfulness to her first husband's memory as the best augury of her affection for a second. He did not even own ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a more than human sagacity. He held it in awe and in reverence as a deity, as the Greeks of old held their streams. It would have drowned the child, he thought, if she had been an evil creature or of evil augury. But he did not say so, for he did not care to provoke Don Silverio's fine ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... well. It may be taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We began this review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt as the typical figure. It is a happy augury that it closes with Henry Ford in the foreground. Vanderbilt, valuable as were many of his achievements, represented that spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part of the fifty years following the war. He was always seeking his own advantage, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... owl referring to death, it is interesting to note that among the Nahuas the owl is considered of unlucky augury and is usually found in the "House of Death" and "of Drought", as contrasted with the turkey, considered as a bird of good fortune, and found ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... well-nigh vanished at the prospect of an afternoon spent in the shady woodland paradise. Mrs. Churton, with a prayer in her heart, watched them going away together—two lovely girls; it made her anxious when her eyes rested on the portly green volume her daughter carried, but it struck her as a good augury when she noticed that the younger girl in her white dress had The Pleasures of ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... called Midsummer May; grows in Otterbourne Park, and a large bunch on the Romsey Road. An old woman described having tried the augury, having laid the plants in pairs on Midsummer Eve, naming them after pairs of sweethearts. Those that twisted away from each ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... toward Herhor, "I and my people, as piety enjoins, rendered homage to the golden symbols of the sun, and halted. That augury is of such import that no man of us would make a step ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... knew how important it is that a child should be nourished by the milk of its own mother, and not by that of the hired nurse, so he determined when his son Raphael (to whom he gave that name at his baptism, as being one of good augury) was born to him, that the mother[34] of the child, he having no other—as, indeed, he never had more—should herself be the nurse of the child. Giovanni further desired that in his tender years the boy should rather be brought up to the habits ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various |
