"Enviable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eldest was now more than thirty years of age. How was it possible for a father to ask that the existence of his sons, thus established, should be sacrificed to the honor of coming to place themselves en surveillance on the French territory? for that was the enviable lot which was reserved for them. It was a source of melancholy satisfaction to me, that I had not seen M. de Saint-Priest for four months previous to his banishment; had it not been for that, no one would have doubted that it was ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... won an enviable reputation as a writer of short stories for girls. Her books are thoroughly wholesome in every way and her style is full of charm. The titles described below will be splendid additions to every girl's library. Handsomely bound in cloth, full library size. Illustrated by ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... reprinted a neat edition of Earnestness, or Incidents in the Life of an English Bishop, by CHARLES B. TAYLOR, whose rare talent for applying the resources of fiction to the illustration of religious truth has given him an enviable reputation with a large circle of readers. The present work will be found to possess equal interest with the previous ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... that he said nothing about wanting her to come, but maybe it was because he did not wish to force himself upon her a second time. She grew very reluctant. It couldn't be an enviable task to take one of her kind to the Ingmar Farm. Then ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... versatile and capable though she was to cope with the world, her lot was not an enviable one. It was with Godspeed, not the maledictions of one's neighbors, that she had hoped to leave the place which had sheltered her so long. And Padre Antonio—how could ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... of time. You must, therefore, relinquish it, as we think that you would then enter with more interest into your present life. You will understand, my child, that I am now speaking entirely in your interest. You are now fifteen. You are safely launched in an enviable career. A future opens before you, and you can make of yourself ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... perception that was one of her leading gifts. From this artificial atmosphere of constraint, it was inevitable that she should welcome hours of escape into her mother's unpretending domestic circle; and already at ten years old she had pronounced the lot of a scullery-maid enviable, compared to that of an ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the travelers." Its host was William Cook, from whom the character of Ben Pump, in The Pioneers, was drawn, a man of singular humors, great heartiness of character, and perfect integrity. He had been the steward of an English East-Indianman, and enjoyed an enviable reputation in the village for his skill in mixing punch and flip. On holidays, a stranger would have been apt to mistake him for one of the magnates of the land, as he invariably appeared in a drab coat of the style of 1776 with buttons ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Venice, and other Italian cities, there were, in the seventeenth century, many women who made enviable reputations as artists, some of whom were also known for their literary and musical attainments. Anna Maria Ardoina, of Messina, made her studies in Rome. She was gifted as a poet and artist, and so excelled in music that she had the distinguished ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses. She wore on her shoulders - or rather on her back and not her shoulders, which it scarcely passed - a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, be supposed that I gained the enviable situation of Poor Jack until I had been some time on the beach. There are competitors for every place, even the most humble; and there was no want of competitors for this office among the many idle boys who frequented the beach. When I first plied there, I was often pushed ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Billy couldn't leave the booze alone, and so the best that he got was an occasional five spot for appearing in preliminary bouts with third- and fourth-rate heavies and has-beens; but during the three years that he had hung about Hilmore's he had acquired an enviable knowledge of the manly ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there is much conjecture. That has not been determined, as the bear has never been placed on a scale. Good judges estimate it at not far from twelve hundred pounds. The bear's appearance justifies that conclusion. Monarch enjoys the enviable distinction of being the largest captive bear in the world.—N. Y. Tribune, March ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... was now very much the reverse of an enviable one; as, being compelled for safety's sake to run dead before it, we were exactly in the line of fire between the two ships, which continued to bang away at each other from time to time, quite regardless of the possible ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... My life, alas! is what thou seest! O enviable fate! to be Strong, beautiful, and armed like thee With lyre and sword, with song and steel; A hand to smite, a heart to feel! Thy heart, thy hand, thy lyre, thy sword, Thou givest all unto thy Lord, While I, so mean and abject grown, Am ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... track. Do you know the camel's way? He is an unfriendly, graceless beast, but he marches to within an hour of his death. He drops and dies with the load upon his back. It seemed to me, even in those days, the right and enviable way to finish. You can imagine how I must envy them that advantage of theirs ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... not Indians also a common nationhood which, despite all racial and religious differences, could be traced back across centuries of internal strife and foreign domination to a period, remote indeed but none the less enviable, when they had been their own masters? Had not the British themselves removed one of the greatest barriers to India's national unity—the multiplicity of her vernaculars—by giving English to the Western-educated classes as a common language, without which, indeed, Indian Nationalism ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... order to keep up her courage: "Heaven is at the end, but how long the end is in coming!" There was ever the idea that suffering is the test, that it is necessary to suffer upon earth if one would triumph elsewhere, that suffering is indispensable, enviable, and blessed. But is this not blasphemous, O Lord? Hast Thou not created youth and joy? Is it Thy wish that Thy creatures should enjoy neither the sun, nor the smiling Nature which Thou hast created, nor the human affections with which Thou hast ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... dejeuner this morning. He is a Dutchman (Hollandais sounds better) by birth, but he lives in Paris. As he is the greatest authority on art there, the Emperor has made him Count and Director of the Galerie du Louvre. He is very handsome, tall, and commanding, and has, besides other enviable qualities, the reputation of being the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... delights," those "sublime ecstasies," those "divine transports"—all the beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were as yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain such sweet ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for love or the world well lost' is a saying I heartily agree to. La belle Helene is my favorite heroine, and I regard Paris as the most enviable ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... Peterborough Cathedral is to me the most delightful; so quiet it is, so solemnly and nobly cheerful, so verdant, so sweetly shadowed, and so presided over by the stately minster, and surrounded by ancient and comely habitations of Christian men. The most enchanting place, the most enviable as a residence in all this world, seemed to me that of the Bishop's secretary, standing in the rear of the cathedral, and bordering on the churchyard; so that you pass through hallowed precincts in order to come at it, and find it a Paradise, the holier ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bishop might license and the governor recommend, the parish would not present. It was a leisurely, good-natured, careless, but spirited people, indifferent to commerce, content to harvest their fields and rule their slaves, and let the world go by. A more enviable existence than theirs it would be hard to imagine. All their financial transactions were done in tobacco, even to the clergyman's stipend and the judge's fee. No enemy menaced them; politics were rather an amusement than a serious duty; yet in these fertile regions were made ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... came to an end so promptly after the departure of Evatt that restoration of good feeling was only obtained in the parting kiss. For the first time in her life, Janice's head would keep on thinking after it was resting on its pillow, and many a time that enviable repository was called upon to dry her tears and cool her burning cheeks. Never, it seemed to her, had man or woman borne so great a ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... think, regret that being so near we were not among the fortunate ones who saw that little flat shape skim landward out of the blue; surely they have an enviable memory; and then we fell talking and disputing about what that swift arrival may signify. It starts ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... These eyes were more than usually brilliant from his long ride in the keen air, and the yellow locks upon the smooth white brow were several noticeable inches above the heads of those around him. As he walked down the crowded rooms, in enviable proximity to the blushing dress, his handsome face and half careless, half military air drew the attention of more than one bright ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... whom? A stray princess, or a peasant. He vaguely wondered, as he lit a cigar and strolled up and down on the shore, meditating, with a puzzled, almost annoyed expression on his handsome features. He was not accustomed to slights of any kind, however trifling; his position being commanding and enviable enough to attract flattery and friendship from most people. He was the only son of a baronet as renowned for eccentricity as for wealth. He had been the spoilt darling of his mother; and now, both his parents ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... only of late that I found out my real name. I'll tell you all about it some time, and then you'll understand better. As to anybody feeling remorse about my life, that's all nonsense. I consider my life rather an enviable one thus far." ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... peace and neutrality for the whole twentieth century, Sweden has achieved an enviable standard of living under a mixed system of high-tech capitalism and extensive welfare benefits. It has a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was the new Prometheus who planned it; the more aspiring Titan, who would bring down in his New Organum a new and more radiant gift; it was the Benefactor and Foreseer, who would advance the rude kind to new and more enviable approximations to the celestial summits. He knew there would come a time, in the inevitable advancements of that new era of scientific 'prudence' and forethought which it was given to him to initiate, when all this sober ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... it without ample cause that he was restless and disturbed; within the last three days he had by his own instability of purpose, and vacillating tastes and temper brought himself down from as enviable a position as well can be imagined, to one as insecure, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... disguise of Greek warriors or Parthian princesses, there were really described contemporary beauties and courtiers, who fondly believed that they had attained, through the genius of Calprenede and Scuderi, an enviable immortality. Unhappily for them, the characters of heroic romance have found in that endless desert of phraseology at once ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... considered (to use his expression) as "actilly the class-leaders in knowledge among all the Americans," and boasted that they have not only "gone ahead of all others," but had lately arrived at that most enviable NE PLUS ULTRA point, "goin' ahead of themselves." In short, he entertained no doubt that Slickville was the finest place in the greatest nation in the world, and the Slick family the wisest family ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... yet obtain the same results . . . with eggs at the price they are! If some producing genius had not conceived the idea of ending off nearly every musical-comedy song with a dance, and yet another genius of equally enviable parts had not created the beauty chorus, I don't know how many a prima donna of the lighter stage would ever be able to get through her own numbers. For, to dance at the end of her little ditty, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... "Characteristics of Yankee Humour." She always had the rare gift of telling a story capitally, with ease, brevity, and dramatic effect, certain of the point or climax. I cannot think of any other woman of this country who has caused so much hearty laughter by this enviable gift. She can compress a word-picture or character-sketch into a few lines, as when she said of the early Yankee: "No matter how large a man he was, he had a look of shrinking and collapse about him. It looked as ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... tale, dear Hugh, without any association of its incidents with the old respectable chronicles of the Historians is what I should wish you could always do. That is the happy manner with Romance; that is the enviable aptness of the child. But when (by the favour of God) you grow older and more reflective, seeking perhaps for more in these pages than they meant to give, you may wonder that the streets, the lanes, the tenements herein set ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the Church was at once seized by no less a personage than Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, the same who a few months before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable by his attacks on Darwin and the evolutionary theory. His first onslaught was made in a charge to his clergy. This he followed up with an article in the Quarterly Review, very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to Darwin. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... on a railroad train is not an enviable one. There is often a wide difference between the company's regulations, and the passenger's opinion of what articles, and what amount of them, properly come under the denomination of baggage; and this frequently subjects the unlucky official ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... votes. You see my faith in Democrats is based on sound philosophy. In the next Congress, the Democratic party will gain thirty-four new members, hence the Republicans have had their last chance to do justice to woman. It will be no enviable record for the Fortieth Congress that in the darkest days of the republic it placed our free institutions in the care and keeping of every type of manhood, ignoring womanhood, all the elevating and purifying influences of the most virtuous ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... this Old England! "Of all the enviable things England has," he writes, "I envy it most its people.... Why should this little island enjoy in almost every neighborhood more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds, than we can collect in ranging one hundred leagues of our vast forests?" What ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... disappeared a Calpurina, a Lepida; women young, rich, handsome, impure, and as such dangerous to Agrippina's peace of mind. The legality of her crimes was so absolute that the mere ownership of an enviable object was a cause for death. A senator had a villa which pleased her; he was invited to die. Another had a pair of those odorous murrhine vases, which Pompey had found in Armenia, and which on their first appearance set Rome wild; he, too, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the sermon which was preached by a new curate. After the service he went into the vestry, and had a long conversation with the preacher, the result of which was that he told him that a curacy was not a very enviable position, and that he would do much better to go to London, and write for The Times at a salary of L1,000 a year. It is needless to add that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... knowledge. Though he did not enjoy the advantages of a collegiate education, his love of study and a habit of careful thought and close criticism rendered him a man of sound judgment and comprehensive views. He possessed an irreproachable moral character and an enviable reputation, being generally esteemed for integrity, thrift, and benevolence. By dint of energy and application he early acquired a competence, though his habits of study were still maintained. He filled various civil and military offices with credit, and the avenues ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... The Hopper—begins to mistrust himself. For the greater part of his life, when not in durance vile, The Hopper had been in hiding, and the state or condition of being a fugitive, hunted by keen-eyed agents of justice, is not, from all accounts, an enviable one. His latest experience of involuntary servitude had been under the auspices of the State of Oregon, for a trifling indiscretion in the way of safe-blowing. Having served his sentence, he skillfully effaced himself by a year's siesta on a pine-apple plantation in Hawaii. The island climate ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the clicking shears—a flush which was enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been creditable, for its promptness, to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... represented this idea of education at its best, too much credit can not be given. Cravath at Fisk, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, and Packard and Giles at Spelman, are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving. These people had no enviable task. They were ostracized and persecuted, and some of their co-workers even killed. It is true that their idea of education founded on the New England college was not very elastic; but their theory was that the young men and women whom they taught, before they were Negroes, were ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... another man in her eye,—the phrase was Lady Earlscourt's and it served very well to express her meaning,—she had made some careful inquiries on the subject of the girl's male visitors, and she had, of course, found out that no other man occupied that enviable position; no social oculist would be required to remove the element which, in Lady Earlscourt's estimation, caused Phyllis' vision to ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... neither under-nor over-rated them. She had smiled back at her reflection in her mirror, showing two rows of little milk-white teeth, and being well enough satisfied with being a charming young person with a secure complexion and enviable self-poise. She understood herself, and attained perfection in the art of understanding others. Her rather sharp experience had not allowed her to look in the glass in guileless ignorance of what she saw there, and perhaps this made her ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... early bird, with which its path was strewn), with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery; so that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have inherited many objects of importance. There was no enviable bric-a-brac, with its provoking legend of cheapness, in the room in which I had seen her. Such a fact as that suggested bareness, but nonetheless it worked happily into the sentimental interest I had always taken in the early movements of my countrymen as visitors to Europe. When Americans ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the two, reflected, as she had often done before, that Mrs. Phillips's post was not particularly enviable. Daphne treated her in many ways with great generosity, paid her highly, grudged her no luxury, and was always courteous to her in public. But in private Daphne's will was law, and she had an abrupt and dictatorial way of asserting it that brought the red back into Mrs. Phillips's faded ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thus wretched, mine was not enviable; one solitary meal a day was all I allowed myself and those who remained with me; and I must do them the justice to say, that they submitted to these privations without a murmur, being aware that it was only ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable. I know of but one condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries. In the outset, if he has really made a discovery, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... proceeded to an hotel known to him, a mile away, for supplementary provisions, and came back with a cold ham and a dozen of champagne. It was all very Bohemian and dishevelled and delightful, very supposedly droll and enviable to outsiders; and Miriam told anecdotes and gave imitations of the people she would have met if she had gone out, so that no one had a sense of loss—the two occasions were fantastically united. Mrs. Rooth drank champagne for consolation, though the consolation was ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... fashion peculiar to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, synthetical power, that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance, and retains them in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... town every day to his office. He is perfectly contented, absolutely happy. He has made more money than he will ever need or spend, and he will leave his children a considerable fortune. He is kind, respectable, upright; he is considered a thoroughly enviable man, and indeed, if prosperity and contentment are the sign and seal of God's approbation, such a man is the highest work of God, and has every reason to be an optimist. He would think my questionings morbid and my desires ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the seclusion of it, which is to some people very enticing. In the enjoyment of real property, others must partly share. The groom has some enjoyment of the stud, and the gardener of the garden; but the money is, or seems, shut up; it is wholly enviable. No one else can have part in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Leonora: and as she has every possible cause to be so, it is but reasonable and charitable to suppose that she is: but I should never guess it by her manner. She speaks of her friendship sometimes in the most romantic style, but often makes observations upon the enviable coolness and imperturbability of Leonora's disposition, which convinces me that she does not understand it in the least. Those who do not really feel, always pitch their expressions too high or too low, as deaf people bellow, or speak in a whisper. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... do this in the case of Negro Americans has strangely over-reached itself. By so much as the defective eyesight of the white world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them as human beings,—an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than God made them, but they are ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... until he thought he was destined for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of a Golden Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Tulsa, Okla., reports an enviable situation. He says: "My nut trees are growing on a farm where more than 30 years of cultivation have failed to kill the native pecan sprouts. They come up year after year from the top roots. Since acquiring the place in 1936, I have allowed the pecan sprouts and the few native ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... Others, again, were in enviable situations, but did not, as far as I could learn from the officers, do quite so much as they might have done. This defect on our part being met by equal disadvantages, arising from nearly similar causes, on that of the enemy, a clear ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they get their shilling a day of fighting-pay, they are content. I had almost said, they ought to be content. For science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... bracelet, or one poor pitiful brooch, on Miss Edgeworth or Miss Aitkin, Mrs Somerville or Joanna Baillie, or any other of the female illustrations of the age, saving these aerial machines which have achieved such enviable supremacy? Mrs Marcet, who has taught the young idea of our three kingdoms how to shoot; Miss Martineau, who has engrafted new ones on our oldest crab-stocks, might travel from Dan to Beersheba without having a fatted calf or a fatted capon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... keep it from surging over her, from choking her, she ran out into the street to get into her own room and be alone, pulling the door to behind her for fear he should follow and want to explain and comfort, leaving him with his AEschylus in which, happening to glance sighing, he, enviable man, at once became again absorbed, and running blindly, headlong, as he runs who is surrounded and accompanied by a swarm of deadly insects which he vainly tries to out-distance, she ran straight into somebody coming from the opposite ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the reply, "and so, I think, you will admit, if you will give the matter a moment's consideration. It is not your fault or mine that you and I do not occupy the enviable position in life to which you have just referred; it is the fault, if fault there be, of our ancestors. They did not happen to be money-getters, and therefore, if we wish to enjoy the advantages attendant upon the possession of a fortune, large or small, we must get the fortune for ourselves. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... Queen's Speech on proroguing Parliament on September 5th, 1848, which concluded, 'The energy and decision shown by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland deserve my warmest approbation.' Reeve was told by Lady Clarendon that her husband 'regarded these emphatic words as the most enviable distinction of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable. Just before the Revolution the lot of the common laborer was not an enviable one. His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison—usually an indescribably filthy hole awaited him the moment he ran into debt. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... only to Borrow's comfort and security, but also to his happiness. There were no children. The "daughter" whose accomplishments Borrow celebrated in the exordium to "Wild Wales" was his stepdaughter, Henrietta Clarke. He seemed now in an enviable position, with a small but agreeable freehold on the banks of Oulton Broad, able to indulge in "idleness and the pride of literature" to his heart's content. If he had had a "club" or a Boswell about him, he might still have been tolerably happy. But he was not a clubbable ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... had sufficient cause to be excited. What usurious gossip-interest might be collected from such a capitol! Dr. Tromfszky already had an enviable reputation in the county, but what would it become when it became known that he was physician in ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... 'Adirondack Murray,' and here, as in his other books, he fairly revels in stirring incident, lively and faithful conception of character, and the powerful but delightful description of natural scenery which have already given his work an enviable and lasting place in ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... no less forging — sledge-fittings, knives, pickaxes, bars and bolts, patent hooks by the hundred for dogs, chains, and so on to infinity. The clang and sparks of the anvil were going all day long till we were well into the Indian Ocean. And in the westerly belt the blacksmith's lot was not an enviable one; it is not always easy to hit the nail on the head when one's feet rest on so unstable a foundation as the Fram's deck, nor is it altogether pleasant when the forge is filled with water ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... aerial manor, pray, then, who were? Beneath us, lay—home. Should we ever see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or to mount into the zenith ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... issue of the Patriot, the local Whig paper, devoted two columns to the speech of this young Democratic upstart; and for weeks thereafter the editor flayed him on all possible occasions. The result was such an enviable notoriety for the young attorney among Whigs and such fame among Democrats, that he received collection demands to the amount of thousands of dollars from persons whom he had never seen or known. In after years, looking back on these beginnings, he used to wonder whether he ought not to have ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... and myself amongst the number, left Tours in this enviable state of spirits; the sun shone brightly, but a refreshing breeze, and intervals of the road well shaded, softened an heat, which might otherwise have been oppressive. Mr. Younge and myself rode on each side of the carriage, and travelling ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... admiration, the ardor of his ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of mankind profound; but he should have followed up the objects of his high aspirations by a straighter road. His glory would have been truly enviable had he devoted his efforts to the happiness of his subjects, instead of harassing their minds by dissensions, and mowing down their lives by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... pity you can't go," remarked Aunt Jennie placidly. Aunt Jennie was always a placid little soul, with a most enviable knack of taking everything easy. Nothing ever worried her greatly, and when she had decided that a thing was inevitable it did ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to Hudova, and reached aviation headquarters, where I was given a fine welcome in the barracks. The aviators all live in wooden shacks, in a dreary neighborhood. This is not an enviable place to be, especially since they have had nothing to ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... am painfully certain, we can never be strangers henceforth. Some charm in your voice, in the expression of your eyes when as 'Amy Robsart' the loving woman you looked so fondly into your 'Leicester's' face, awoke dim memories that will never sleep again. Happy—enviable indeed—that Leicester who really rules the empire of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to the evening meeting, and after that missed none of these privileges. In due course she was asked to address it, and then her position became enviable from all points of view, for people who did not draw up their chairs and admire her inspirations sat at a distance and admired her clothes. Very soon, at her special request, she was allowed to resign her original ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... a brief time after his arrival in Virginia City that Clemens began the series of hoaxes which would carry his reputation, not always in an enviable fashion, across the Sierras and down the Pacific coast. With one exception these are lost to-day, for so far as known there is not a single file of the Enterprise in existence. Only a few stray copies and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... determine the geographical position of the mouth, and found the latitude 38 deg. 2' 4", and the longitude 122 deg. 4'. After finishing this task, I ascended the highest hillock on the shore, which consisted of strata of slate and quartz, to admire the beauty of the prospect. On the south lay the enviable and important Bay of St. Francisco with its many islands and creeks; to the north flowed the broad beautiful river formed by the junction of the two, sometimes winding between high, steep rocks, sometimes gliding among ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... is a very enviable person; and the match in a worldly point of view, is a most fortunate one for Miss Lavington; and that stupid rascal of a gendarme has broken ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of a district chief commissioner was by no means enviable in Cyprus. The pay was absurdly small, and he was obliged to institute reforms both for sanitary and municipal interests which necessitated an outlay, and increased the local taxation. The population had been led to expect a general diminution of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... throbbing with life! 'Tis a destiny enviable indeed! For is not this, as a delightful poet has said, "to take away with one all one's illusions, to be buried like an Eastern king, with all one's jewels and treasures, with all that makes the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... said Janet enthusiastically, with no suggestion whatever in her tone that Hilda's situation was odd, or of dubious propriety, or aught but enviable. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... and repatriates, thrust into communities to which they came as paupers and crowded into buildings which were never planned for domestic purposes, has been far from enviable. In September, 1917, the American Red Cross handed over the solving of this problem to one of its experts who had organised the aid given to San Francisco after the earthquake, and who had also had charge ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... was a very miserable one to Phelim and the father. The loss of the ten guineas, and the feverish sickness produced from their debauch, rendered their situation not enviable. Some other small matters, too, in which Phelim was especially concerned, independent of the awkward situation in which he felt himself respecting the three calls on the following day, which was Sunday, added greater weight to his anxiety. He knew not how to manage, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... respects, enviable, Surrey," replied Wyat. "Disturbed by no jealous doubts and fears, you can beguile the tedious hours in the cultivation of your poetical tastes, or in study. Still, I must needs reproach myself with being ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... age, before knowledge and reflection had trained men to the critical examination and correction of their instinctive conclusions, all the data which they possessed would naturally lead them to imagine the unknown God in the glorified form and circumstances of the most enviable being their experience had yet revealed to them; and to paint the unknown future state of perfected souls under the purest aspects of the most desirable boons they had known in the present state. It being a necessity ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... accomplice affected clerical attire, and in 1791 'was living in a Westphalian monastery, to which he some years ago retired, in an enviable state of peace and penitence, respected for his talents, and loved for his amiable manners, by which he is distinguished in an eminent degree.' The other ruffian, Lowe by name, was known to his own Bloomsbury Square for a philanthropic and cultured gentleman, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... risen to be worthy of these enviable titles is a story which will doubtless possess some amount of interest ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... mattress and pillow for Mr. H——, really one does not realise how clever one is until our genius is put to the test in an establishment like this. E—— and I drove up to the tent after supper with our handiwork, and had great pleasure in seeing it filled with hay. Our drive was not of the most enviable: we had a waggon with no spring seat, only a board, which was always moving, to sit upon; one horse would tear along, the other not pull an ounce, in spite of applying the whip a good deal, and we were nearly smothered with mosquitoes, I never saw such clouds of them, and on our return home there ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... despite a strong practical strain in her nature, she was an idealist at the core. She could not understand that temper of mind which sets out to buy a gold watch, and declines upon a silver one because the other is not instantly attainable. She would have the best or none: and, with the enviable assurance of youth, she never doubted but that the best would be forthcoming in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... weekly journals, in conjunction with Mr. Cumberland, Sir James Bland Burgess, Mr. Horatio Smith, and others. The principal caterer for these publications was Colonel Greville, on whom Lord Byron has conferred a not very enviable immortality— ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... pleasing to the eye as a basket of fruit. Her beauty was animated. There was an expression in her eyes and on her lips that spoke of laughter always on tiptoe. An enviable inheritance, this, the desire to laugh, to be searching always for a vent to laughter; it is something money cannot buy, something not to be cultivated; a true gift of the gods. This desire to laugh is found invariably in the tender and valorous; and Kitty ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... apology for his lateness to Olga, none of which was the least intelligible to Lucia. She guessed what he was saying, and next moment Olga, who apparently understood him perfectly, and told him with an enviable fluency that he was not late at all, was introducing him to her, and explaining that "la Signora" (Lucia understood this) and her husband talked Italian. She did not need to reply to some torrent of amiable words from him, addressed to her, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... enviable one. Elevated as it was in dignity and influence, it was full of perplexity, toil, and peril. The spirit of revolution was now rampant, and no earthly power could stay it. It was inevitable that those who would not recklessly ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... to atone by a gracious, very sincere modesty, for the enviable position in which chance had suddenly placed her. It was said of her that she accepted a compliment as timidly as a boarding-school miss receives a prize. They forgave her for retaining her rosy cheeks because of her white and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... to Mr. Leypoldt for a delightful book, a truthful record of feeling from the hand of a man noted for purity of life, scholarship, and an enviable reputation in the world of music. The letters are such as we should expect from the character of Mendelssohn's compositions—pure, elegant, fanciful, flowing, serious, and dignified, but without the passionate intensity, the soul-searching pathos and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a few paces from Mr. Wolston's bed, whom the two young girls were tending with anxious solicitude, and whose sickness was almost enviable, so many were the cares lavished ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... the writer attended the district school at Cohoes. The high department did not enjoy a very enviable reputation for being possessed of that respect due from the pupils to teacher. During the year there had been at least four teachers in that department, the last one only remaining one week. The Board of Education had found it difficult ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... we might not frighten her or provoke the tribe. The whole party seemed to have been amusing themselves in the water during the noon-day heat, which was excessive; and the cool shades around the lagoon looked most luxuriant. Our position, on the contrary, was anything but enviable. With jaded horses scarcely able to lift a leg, amongst so many natives, whose language was incomprehensible, even to Yuranigh. I asked him whether we might not come to a parley with them, and see if they could understand him. His answer was brief; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Ryan's testimony, and supposed there was no doubt of Dick's conviction. He would like very well to have been present at the trial; but he had unpleasant associations connected with the court-room at the Tombs, having figured there on several occasions in an important but not very enviable capacity. ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... very partially enviable just then, but the bright north wind seemed to blow his troubles back from him as he faced it, walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet Reanda. It was very unlike the man to return to his lodging without having accomplished anything, but he ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... say, that the apiarian who has followed me attentively, and has added nothing of value to his stock of information, possesses an enviable experience that all should strive ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... playing, and fell in love with him; then in the boudoir of an opera singer; then at a fancy-dress ball in Spain, with crowds of alluring masqueraders about him. The further he seemed to soar away, unapproachable and enviable, the more miserable she felt herself to be, and all at once it seemed utterly inconceivable that she had so lightly surrendered her own hopes of an artistic career and given up her lover, in order to lead a sunless existence, and to be lost in the crowd. A shudder seemed ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... although he had not the initiative or the sturdy pluck to perform the feats that they had. He was, however, a boy of considerable brain and skill and among the boy-aviators of the country held an enviable position. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... "Perfect peace!"—what a blessed attainment! My soul! is it thine? Sure I am it is not, if thou art seeking it in a perishable world, or in the perishable creature, or in thy perishable self. Although thou hast all that the world would call enviable and happy, unless thou hast peace in God, and with God, all else is unworthy of the name;—a spurious thing, which the first breath of adversity will shatter, and the hour of death utterly annihilate! Perfect peace! What is it? It is the peace ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... proprietor, take rank with the very best in the kingdom, both in body, in potting, in design, and in decoration; and there can be no doubt, from what is now actively in progress, that the stand taken by Coalport is one of enviable eminence among the ceramic manufactories ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... all, gentlemen," pursued the young man, with the same composedness of voice and manner, and turning particularly to the officers of the —— Regiment, who were grouped around their Chief; "Who is it, I ask, on whom has devolved the enviable duty of reporting me as capable of violating my faith as a subject, and ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... camp outfit they can be comfortable until the wagons are unloaded. Faye and I are staying with the commanding officer and his wife. Colonel Gardner is lieutenant colonel of the —th Infantry, and has a most enviable reputation as a post commander. As an officer, we have not seen him yet, but we do know that he can be a most charming host. He has already informed Faye that he intends to appoint him adjutant and quartermaster of ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... party at a large country house of Liberal complexion; on the Thames. I have reason to believe it fairly typical. The owner of this estate holds an important position in the Foreign Office, and the hostess has, by her wit and intelligent grasp of affairs, made an enviable place for herself. On her right, at luncheon on Sunday, was a labour leader, the head of one of the most powerful unions in Britain, and next him sat a member of one of the oldest of England's titled families. The two were on terms of Christian names. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... intellect known to the religious history of this country, who confirmed Calvinism as the creed of New England Puritans. The young Burr, on the death of his father and grandfather, inherited what was then considered as a fortune, and was graduated at Princeton in 1772, with no enviable reputation, being noted for his idleness and habits bordering on dissipation. He was a handsome and sprightly young man of sixteen, a favorite with women of all ages. He made choice of the profession of law, and commenced the study under Tappan Reeve of Elizabethtown. After the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... would run back jealously to the sister (whom Miluda despised) to pour out floods of description. She herself had heard much of Lella Saida, and supposed that unfortunate woman had as eagerly collected information about her; but it was especially piquant that further details of enviable magnificence should be carried back by the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ambitious spirits, an obeisance is expected; this is not performed at a distance, after the Persian fashion—you go right up, and make a profound bow, testifying with the angle of your body to the self-abasement of your soul; you then kiss his hand or breast—and happy and enviable is he who may do so much! And there stands the great man, protracting the illusion as long as may be. (I heartily acquiesce, by the way, in the churlish sentence which excludes us from a nearer acquaintance with ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... chapter to the last, though for what particular fault Drake could not discover, unless it were for that of being a husband at all; so that the interloper in robbing him of his wife was related to have secured not merely the succes d'estime which accompanies such enviable feats, but the unqualified gratitude of all married ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... personally and mentally gifted. He had rather an indiarubber-like elasticity and jauntiness than stateliness, or dignity, or grace. His irregular-featured face was comical, but he bore the bell in exhaustless spirits, which won him, late in life, the reputation of perennial juvenility, and the enviable if not altogether respectful sobriquet of "the evergreen Palm." Lord John Russell, with his large head and little body, of which Punch made stock, with his friendship for Moore and his literary turn, as well as his ambition to serve his country like a true Russell, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... vainer of any verses than of my part in the following Ballad. Dr. Watts, amongst evangelical nurses, has an enviable renown; and Campbell's Ballads enjoy a snug, genteel popularity. Sally Brown has been favored perhaps with as wide a patronage as the Moral Songs, though its circle may not have been of so select a class ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... happened to meet. Their names were Susan and Mary Heathfield. They were older than the Tristrams and the Cardews, and had, in fact, just left school. Their last year of school-life had been spent in Paris; they were highly educated, and had an enviable proficiency in the ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... Christianity was introduced in the fifth century, St. Patrick being the chief apostle of the new faith. In the sixth century Ireland sent forth missionaries from her monasteries to convert Great Britain and the nations of Northern Europe. From the eighth to the twelfth century Irish scholars held an enviable reputation. In fact, Ireland was the center of learning at one time. The arts, too, were cultivated by her people; and the round towers, still pointed out to travelers, are believed to be the remains ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... this forenoon. Shall I tell you where?"—He glanced again at the papers, and then said: "You bought this dagger in a gun store on the Kohlmarkt, and paid four ducats for it. You have now got this dagger with you; truly, it occupies an enviable hiding-place, and I might be jealous of it. Why do you not draw it forth and carry out your purpose? Do you really believe what so many fools have said about me, viz, that I was in the habit of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the hotel, or even in her own luxurious boudoir in her Sicilian home. The attempt was fairly successful, and the result was a passing taste of that self-satisfied beatitude which is the peculiar and enviable lot of very lazy people after dinner. She cared for nothing and she cared for nobody. San Miniato and Beatrice might sit over there by the water's edge, in the moonlight, and talk in low tones as long as they pleased. There were no tiresome people from ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... prayers and breakfast I suffer my customary persecution at the hands of the cook. That is to say, I am obliged, being the housekeeper, to order what we have to eat. Oh, how I hate inventing dinners! and how I admire the enviable slowness of mind and laziness of body which have saved Eunice from undertaking the worries of housekeeping in her turn! She can go and work in her garden, while I am racking my invention to discover variety in dishes without overstepping the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... passed a vote to honor him for all future time with festive matches, in music and chariot-races, and such gymnastics as were practiced at the Grecian games. A magnificent monument was erected to his memory. "The mournful letters written by Plato after the death of Dion contrasts strikingly with the enviable end of Timoleon, and with the grateful inscription of the Syracusans ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... them to Saint Mary's Church, which stands in the quaint village of Warwick. Its old tower holds ten bells, and these play every four hours. There is a different tune for each day, which is always changed at midnight. The Warwick towns-people, living near their church, must have an enviable musical education, for they have continually dinned in their ears all sorts of tunes, from the "Easter Hymn" to "The ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... the fact that he was being so closely shadowed, Richford had been driven out Wandsworth way. He did not look in the least like a modern millionaire of good health and enviable prospects as he drove along. His moody face was pale, his lips trembled, his eyes were red and bloodshot with the brandy that he had been drinking. The hand that controlled the market so frequently ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... no mere suburb of Petworth but in a stately little village with its own character and history going back to Roman times and a church with a Saxon body and a Norman chancel. And that in the ideal churchyard of this enviable church with ancient yews and 18th century tomb-stones, and old, old benches in the sunshine for the grandfathers and loafers of the village to sit on and smoke of a Sabbath morning, a place shall be found for the bones of Bertie Adams; reverently ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Petrarch's letter that the kingdom of Naples was now under a miserable subjection to the Hungarian faction, aid that the young Queen's situation was anything but enviable. Few characters in modern history have been drawn in such contrasted colours as that of Giovanna, Queen of Naples. She has been charged with every vice, and extolled for every virtue. Petrarch represents her as a ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... who was indisputably his leader in the courts, and for whose forensic abilities it is known, that he entertains, and has often expressed, the highest admiration. The position of the two men was singular, and to the ex-attorney not very enviable. Scarlett was in high practice before Brougham was even called to the bar. He kept a head of him in their profession throughout; and twice he had filled the first places at the bar, when the respective attainments of these eminent persons were such, that if Brougham had been placed before ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various |
