"Felicitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his verses, whether anything much better than his father's 'Cottage in the Wood' would have resulted from his following the advice of James Montgomery. Fluent ease, often on the verge of twaddle, with here and there a bright, felicitous touch, with here and there a smack of the conventional hymn-book and pulpit twang—such weak and characterless effusions are all that is left of the passion-ridden pseudo-genius of Haworth. Real genius is perhaps seldom ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... as a friend; and assure you he is a Prince who has talent, but who will be the slave of his passions (SE FERA DOMINER PAR SES PASSIONS,"—not a felicitous prophecy, Herr General); "and will like nobody but such as encourage him therein. For me, I think all Princes are cast in the same mould; there is only a more and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... less full of noble and lovely ideas. These fragments, melodies, choruses, dances are each of them real inventions, wonderful pieces caught up in nets, the rarest sort of beauties. A deep, rich glow plays over these melodies. Their simplicity is the simplicity of perfectly felicitous inventions, of things sprung from the earth without effort. They are so much like folk-tunes that one wonders whether they were not produced hundreds of years ago and handed down by generations of Russians. One of them even, the great chorus in the first scene, might stand as a sort of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... for the hour you were with her (the impression passed somehow when she was out of sight) occupied you so completely. I can best describe the attention she provoked by saying that she struck you above all things as a felicitous FINAL product—after the fashion of some plant or some fruit, some waxen orchid or some perfect peach. She was clearly the result of a process of calculation, a process patiently educative, a pressure ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... Volunteers, to whose energetic demonstrations that healing measure was mainly attributable, were thoroughly satisfied, and, instead of displaying their nationality in angry and defiant resolutions, they adopted the language of congratulation and enthusiastic allegiance to the Government. This felicitous state of things was suddenly interrupted by one of those incidents which no foresight could have anticipated, and which, absolutely trivial in itself, was magnified at once, by the jealous spirit of patriotism, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... perhaps the most noted and broadly honored divine ever known on the Pacific Coast, visited Lake Tahoe, and on his return to San Francisco preached a sermon, entitled: "Living Water from Lake Tahoe." Its descriptions are so felicitous that I am gratified to be able to quote them from Dr. King's volume of Sermons Christianity and Humanity, with the kind permission of the publishers, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... drew up closer together, voices were lowered, and the discussion became general, each one offering his or her advice. Nothing was said to shock the proprieties. The ladies, in particular, were most expert in felicitous turns of phrase, charming subtleties of speech for expressing the most ticklish things. A foreigner would have understood nothing, the language was so carefully veiled. But as the slight coating of modesty with which every woman of the world is enveloped is hardly more than skin ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... hospitable board, I have always listened with the greatest satisfaction until the present day arrived, when I am bound to say that that satisfaction is extremely qualified by the arrangement less felicitous, I think, than any which preceded it that refers to me the duty of returning thanks for Literature. [Cheers and laughter.] However, obedience is the principle upon which we must proceed, and I have at least the qualification ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... present day are particularly felicitous in keeping it firmly closed. It is only by dodging the schoolmaster and the coach that youthful talent stands a chance of being brought to maturity. The greatest achievements are not the work of senior wranglers and Balliol scholars: they have been accomplished by class-room dunces, like Clive and ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... has thee for the pain, for the Patience; but pity of the rest of them! Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the Comfortless unconfessed of them— No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence Finger of a tender of, O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest; does tempest carry the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... delicacy, avaunt! give me a glorious laugh, and "throw (affectation) to the dogs; I'll have none of it." Now the farce begins: up starts the immortal hero himself, and makes his bow; a simultaneous display of "broad grins" welcomes his felicitous entree; and for a few seconds the scene resembles the appearance of a popular election candidate, Sir Francis Burdett, or his colleague, little Cam Hobhouse, on the hustings in Covent Garden; nothing is heard but one deafening shout of clamorous ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... an old friend like Sir William White he uses a free mixture of French and English with other ingredients for seasoning. But in general the literary style is admirable. He has a rare command of language, a most inventive use of metaphor, a felicitous touch in sketching a character or an incident. Towards those working under him he was exacting, setting up a high standard of industry, but he was generous in his praise and very ready to take up the cudgels for them when they needed support. In commending one of them, he selects for ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... out after each drawing,' he still urges them to 'put a new piece of goods in the window' every morning. In fact, he is quite severe on Mr. Ruskin for not recognising that 'a picture should denote the frailty of man,' and remarks with pleasing courtesy and felicitous grace that 'many phases of feeling . . . are as much a dead letter to this great art teacher, as Sanskrit to an Islington cabman.' Nor is Mr. Quilter one of those who fails to practice what he preaches. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... were an oration and a poem. The latter was prepared at very short notice, and had particular reference to the visit of the illustrious hero and philanthropist, Lafayette. It purported to be the vision of the Genius of Liberty. It was a felicitous effort of the poetic muse. The gradual but certain dissolution of ancient despotic systems was predicted, as by the spirit of inspiration; and the blessings and joys of well regulated freedom were described ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... for the number and variety of his illustrations, chiefly drawn from natural and familiar objects. The volume before us strikes us as being remarkably felicitous."—Clerical Journal. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... Macmillan's Magazine, entitled 'In Capri,' and signed 'W. Wordsworth,' are from the pen of a grandson of the famous author of 'The Excursion.' They are gracefully written, in an agreeable rhythm, and with much command of felicitous expression. If, therefore, the writer has indeed the relationship to the great Wordsworth which rumour assigns him, the fact is interesting, and suggests some considerations as to the transmission of the poetic faculty from ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... manners, the novel of Tom Jones is indeed exquisite: as a work of construction quite a wonder: the by-play of wisdom; the power of observation; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts; the varied character of the great Comic Epic keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity.(156) But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contrast ordinary persons seem to be without character; such men are therefore called, distinctively, 'characters'; and it is a matter of common experience that, whether through the unconscious prescience of parents or through that felicitous sense of propriety which often guides the hazards of destiny, they usually bear names to match their qualities. Meshach Myatt! Meshach Myatt! What piquant curious syllables to roll glibly off the tongue, and to repeat for the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Moscheles, and, when she accidentally made the acquaintance of the performer at the house of a mutual acquaintance, the couple quickly became enamored of each other. A brief engagement of less than a month was followed by marriage, and so Moscheles entered into a relation singularly felicitous in all the elements which make domestic life most blessed. After a brief tour in the Rhenish cities, and a visit to Paris, Moscheles proceeded to London, where he had determined to make his home, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... possessed,—namely, the hypocrisy of frankness. Dissimulation is often humble, often polished, often grave, sleek, smooth, decorous; but it is rarely gay and jovial, a hearty laughter, a merry, cordial, boon companion. Such, however, was the felicitous craft of Edward IV.; and, indeed, his spirits were naturally so high, his good humour so flowing, that this joyous hypocrisy cost him no effort. Elated at the dispersion of his foes, at the prospect of his return to his ordinary life ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The felicitous studiousness and the studious felicity of the all-powerful eunuch, of whom we are told in the Acts, who had been so mightily kindled by the love of the prophetic writings that he ceased not from his reading by reason of his journey, had banished all thought of the populous palace ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... Philadelphia gentlemen, who came over on visits, upon the first cannon went off in a violent hurry. Your noisy Sons of Liberty are, I find, the quietest in the field.' Thus again Washington, with felicitous expression, points a paragraph at ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... college, of always subjecting himself to a recitation in all his serious reading. After finishing a chapter he would close the book and see how much of what he had read he could recall. One consequence is the development of a quite marvelous memory, the results of which are seen in frequent and felicitous references in his public speaking to ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... Tales—of the Council of Nice, in the fourth century, Mr. Smith indulges his usual felicitous vein of humour, in a burlesque which he puts into the mouth of a slave of the Bishop of Ethiopia,—"a little, corpulent, bald-headed, merry-eyed man of fifty, whose name was Mark; whose duty it was to take charge of the oil, trim ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... that I remember few episodes of Italian travel more sympathetic, as they have it here, than that perfect autumn afternoon; the half-hour's station on the little battered terrace of the villa; the climb to the singularly felicitous old castle that hangs above Lerici; the meditative lounge, in the fading light, on the vine-decked platform that looked out toward the sunset and the darkening mountains and, far below, upon the quiet sea, beyond which the pale-faced ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Vaguely damped by his environment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gave himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinking over all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of the dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitous replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he was going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangely alike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that felicitous simplicity and eloquence of diction which characterize all Mr. Woodworth's efforts for ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... bank-officer (possibly the author had Barton in his mind while writing it) who fears he may become a second Fauntleroy. The piece contains one or two delightful passages, and is, in fact, full of happy touches and felicitous bits of description. Very charming (to me, at least) is the account of the plucking of the last peach, and very touching is the allusion to the babe Fauntleroy. But good wine (or a good peach) needs no bush; and therefore, without further comment or commendation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... all sincerity that I could be worthy of such a felicitous compliment as that. But I am a woman, and so I am gratified for it just as it is, and would not have ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... (after Swinburne's "Ballad of Burdens"), and then a story in prose, "The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts: A tale of Modern Art and Fashion." All the poetry is in the ballad strain, and by its monotony the reader is put into the right condition to receive a shock from some felicitous twist at the end of a line. Thus it is almost impossible to quote from them. The humour rests in each case with the whole of the skit; and in the case of one of the best of the whole series, "A Love-Agony," a poem for a picture by Maudle, given, there must ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... dump there stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys. First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it up again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America. A little way beyond was another great hole, which they had emptied and not yet filled up. This held water, and all summer it stood there, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... been a rhetorician. He has no power at all as a writer, if writing be considered an accomplishment which can be separated from earnest thinking. Words are, with him, the mere instruments for the expression of things; and he hits on felicitous words only under that impatient stress of thought which demands exact expression for definite ideas. All his words, simple as they are, are therefore fairly earned, and he gives to them a force and significance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... William and La-u-na, were seated under the spreading elm-tree, engaged in some felicitous conference, that produced a most pleasing animation ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... ecstasy; spanked him merrily, while a heavenly peace glorified his paternal soul; spanked him, caring not how many times the little body wriggled, and the little voice howled, and the dirty little fingers foiled his big, bony hand as it fell. At the end of the felicitous occasion, the father ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... anxiety to the true poet, who, if he be worthy of his vocation, is bound not only to proclaim it to the world CLEARLY, but also clad in such a perfection of wording that it shall chime on men's ears with a musical sound as of purest golden bells. There are very few faultless examples of this felicitous utterance in English or in any literature, so few, indeed, that they could almost all be included in one newspaper column of ordinary print. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the arrival in London of Mr. Longfellow, who became his guest, and (for both of us I am privileged to add) our attached friend. Longfellow's name was not then the pleasant and familiar word it has since been in England; but he had already written several of his most felicitous pieces, and he possessed all the qualities of delightful companionship, the culture and the charm, which have no higher type or example than the accomplished and genial American. He reminded me, when lately again in England, of two experiences out of many ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Massachusetts and slave-drivers from South Carolina entered the vast hall arm in arm. The great meeting rose to its feet, and walls and roof shook with applause. General John A. Dix of New York called the Convention to order, and, in an eloquent and felicitous speech, stated the objects of the assembly—to renew fraternal feeling between the sections, heal the wounds of war, obliterate bitter memories, and restore the Union of the fathers. Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin was chosen permanent president, and patriotic resolutions ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... a box. He was in no position to say how she might have struck him the night before, but what he saw during these charmed hours filled him with admiration and gratitude. She WAS in it, this time; she had pulled herself together, she had taken possession, she was felicitous at every turn. Fresh from his revelation of Nona he was in a position to judge, and as he judged he exulted. He was thrilled and carried away, and he was moreover intensely curious to know what had happened to her, by what unfathomable art she had managed in ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... sense of tedious-ness. There may be recognized here and there, among the wearisome successions of phrases, with their rugged proper names, episodes which seem something like a Chaldaean "Genesis" or "Veda;" now and then a bold flight of fancy, a sudden exaltation of thought, or a felicitous expression, arrests the attention and holds it captive for a time. In the narrative of the adventures of Grilgames, for instance, there is a certain nobility of character, and the sequence of events, in their natural and marvellous development, are handled with gravity ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... felicitous reply, he achieved only an eloquent silence. He put her and her luggage aboard a taxicab, and then she gave him her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... and few have exercised so wide and mighty an influence. The profound, many-sided and intimate knowledge of human nature which it evinces, its vast variety of incident, its wealth of tears and laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt for every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured periods, its sustained energy and animation of style must ever ensure for this human comedy unchallenged rank among the literary masterpieces ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of these things, and as they are visible additions and parasitical portions of the structure, more caution is required in their use than in any other features of ornament, and the architect and spectator must both be in felicitous humor before they can be well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally most admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most power; and I think there is almost always a certain spirit of playfulness in them, adverse to the grandest architectural effects, or at least ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Belt Wheat Company paid the interest on the forged note, and the bank paid the Golden Belt Wheat Company interest on a daily ledger balance of nine thousand, and all went happily. The Larger Good accepted the sacrifices of truth, and went on its felicitous way. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... signatory powers to the Quintuple Treaty of 1839 guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. Shorn from their context as they were, these sentences are by no means illuminating, and it cannot be said that their citation in this form by Sir Edward Grey was a very felicitous one. During the paper polemics of the past months these detached words of Gladstone have been freely used by Germany's defenders and apologists to maintain that Great Britain of 1870 would not have deemed the events of 1914 a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Mr. W. W. Jacobs's most entertaining tales of barges and coasters; but the inspired talent of Mr. Jacobs for poking endless fun at poor, innocent sailors in a prose which, however extravagant in its felicitous invention, is always artistically adjusted to observed truth, was not yet. Perhaps Mr. Jacobs himself was not yet. I fancy that, at most, if he had made his nurse laugh it was about all he had achieved ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... already crowded with an expectant audience, to whom they gave a full report of the morning's proceedings. The Hutchinsons of worldwide fame were present in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with appropriate songs and felicitous remarks. For five long hours on that hot midsummer day a crowded audience, many standing, listened with profound interest and reluctantly dispersed at last, all agreeing that it was one of the most impressive and enthusiastic meetings they had ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the ill-regulated fancies of metaphysical theorists. It was a reform strictly in accordance with some of the most important principles of the constitution, as they have been gradually developed by the practical experience of successive generations. It combined with felicitous skill representative with local government; it secured uniformity in working, and that peculiarly English principle of publicity, without which the best-devised system cannot ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... on the Weather," being a fair specimen of the very agreeable manner of the digressions in the above work, which is, perhaps, less practical than it might have been; but this defect is more than atoned for in the author's felicitous mode of intermingling with the main subject, some of the most curious facts and phenomena in natural history and philosophy so as to familiarize the angler with many causes and effects which altogether belong to a higher class of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... correspondent-besides the deep, quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author-appears to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, having been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... increasing,—the greatest master of satire in English literature, and one of the truest painters of social life that any age has produced; not so much admired by women as by men; accurate in his delineation of character, though sometimes bitter and fierce; felicitous in plot, teaching lessons in morality, unveiling shams and hypocrisy, contemptuous of all fools and quacks, yet sad in his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... considering its size, structure, habits of growth and all, it seems more closely allied to the two larger ferns than to the little rock species. We shall group the three together as the large spleenworts, or for the sake of being more definite adopt Clute's felicitous phrase. ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... the green trees—all these things irresistibly rivet the attention and extort the admiration of a stranger. You may have your boots cleaned, and your breakfast prepared, upon these same boulevards. Felicitous junction ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... witness to the spirit of the mystic and poetic painter. King Ludwig, himself at least a poetaster, hit upon a felicitous comparison, oft since reiterated, when he designated Overbeck the St. John and Cornelius the St. Paul in pictorial art. The two artists, like the two apostles, had a common faith, though a diverse calling, and their ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... Priest could only compound, from simples a symbolical imitation. Then came the various Sun-Gods, Adityas or Solar Attributes, Surya the Heavenly, Savitri the Progenitor, Pashan the Nourisher, Bagha the Felicitous, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of the book is felicitous, and it is worked out with an acute and sympathetic appreciation of methods for enlisting the attention and impressing intelligently the memory of children. The illustrations are distinctly helpful."—Troy ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... the auxiliary part, and assistance of foreign princes and states, than by invasion of any; till common policy advised it, for a safer way, to strike first abroad, than at home to expect the war, in all which she was ever felicitous ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and in his sleeve he smiles benevolently to think how happy mankind will be as soon as he vouchsafes his epic or his story. It is delightful to us to think of all the joys with which, for twenty years, that Expositor filled the dear mind of Dr. Doddridge; how one felicitous rendering was suggested after another; how a bright solution of a textual difficulty would rouse him an hour before his usual, and set the study fire a blazing at four o'clock of a winter's morning; and then how beautiful the first quarto looked as it arrived with its laid sheets and snowy ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... something beside facts. Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing." But only rarely are his facts significant, or capable of an ideal interpretation. Felicitous strokes like that in which he says, "No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... not easy to discover anything noble or even felicitous in this Dedication. Works, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the table and she brought me the cake, and I had my first felicitous meeting with Lady Baltimore. Oh, my goodness! Did you ever taste it? It's all soft, and it's in layers, and it has nuts—but I can't write any more about it; my mouth ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... rival the Atlantic in Boston and Blackwood in Edinburgh. The name was easily had, and for a sign manual on the cover some one drew a grizzly bear, that formidable exemplar of Californian wildness. But the design did not quite satisfy, until Bret Harte, with a felicitous stroke, drew two parallel lines just before the feet of the halting brute. Now it was the grizzly of the wilderness drawing back before the railway of civilization, and the picture was complete as ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, Urania, is perhaps the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and humorous; but there are passages of great ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... air, extended their vocabulary, and created new and startling forms of objurgation. It is recorded that one bibulous stage-driver exhausted description and condensed its virtues in a single phrase: "Gin and ginger." This felicitous epithet, flung out in a generous comparison with his favorite drink, "rum and gum," ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of the cistern was the solitary occupant of a house built round a small court from which a flight of stone steps admitted to the darkened water. He had a felicitous turn for mechanics, and undertook the building of a raft with commodious rooms on it. Demedes went with him to select a place of anchorage, and afterward planned the structure to fit between four of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... "It is a felicitous affair," said the Count, "which has the fortune to introduce me to this charming company," and the Count bowed first to Bulldog and then to the school with such a marked indication in one direction that Speug almost blushed. "My sorrow is to be so stupid ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... industry and acquirements with the most brilliant wit and genius, well and accurately informed on all subjects, both in science and art; endowed with a memory that retained whatever it received, with quick and clear perceptions, the choicest, most felicitous, and forcible language in which to clothe his thoughts, no one could doubt his meaning or withhold the tribute of wonder at ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Two years later a monument, with a medallion portrait by Nollekens, and a Latin inscription by Johnson, was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of the Literary Club. But although the inscription contains more than one phrase of felicitous discrimination, notably the oft-quoted 'affectuum potens, at lenis dominator', it may be doubted whether the simpler words used by his rugged old friend in a letter to Langton are not a fitter farewell to Oliver Goldsmith,—'Let not his frailties ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... warm-hearted, he was endowed with a strong sense of humour, and a gift of felicitous expression, which made him at once an admirable talker and an excellent letter-writer, and enabled him to hold his own among the noted wits and brilliant men of letters whom he gathered under his roof. A man of ideas ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... only reduces the Divinity into an An like himself." During the later ages, therefore, all theological speculations, though not forbidden, have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly into disuse. The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of a future state, more felicitous and more perfect than the present. If they have very vague notions of the doctrine of rewards and punishments, it is perhaps because they have no systems of rewards and punishments among themselves, for there are no crimes to punish, and their moral standard is so even that no An ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the performance the Lord Bishop, who was present in person and watched every item of the programme with obvious enjoyment, proposed a vote of thanks in his usual felicitous terms, thanking Lord Raa for this further proof of his great liberality of mind in helping a Catholic charity, and particularly mentioning the beautiful and accomplished Madame Lier, who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts by her serpentine dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... in all respects a felicitous one. Lady Mary was imbued with patrician ideas, and bore herself towards her husband's family with considerable hauteur. She was very particular in exacting certain observances in which she considered herself entitled. There were doubtless faults on both sides. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... superstitiously nice! The fantastic coinage of affectation or caprice will cease to circulate from its own alloy; but shall we reject the ore of fine workmanship and solid weight? There is no government mint of words, and it is no statutable offence to invent a felicitous or daring expression unauthorised by Mr. Todd! When a man of genius, in the heat of his pursuits or his feelings, has thrown out a peculiar word, it probably conveyed more precision or energy than any other established word, otherwise he is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of composition has been the habit of all great orators. This, combined with the habit of reading and re-reading the best prose writers and poets, accounts in large measure for the felicitous style of such men as Burke, Erskine, Macaulay, Bolingbroke, Phillips, Everett ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... years, would behold, as if by magic, a paradise burst from her wilds, see cultivation smile upon her jungles, and hail a vast and increasing population, blessing the hand that awoke them to life, to happiness, and to prosperity. That so felicitous a change is not the mere reverie of a glowing imagination, or the sheer effusion of benevolence alone, is ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... romantic as to render the story not ill adapted for an epic poem. Lord Byron, indeed, has partially treated the subject; but by blending two incongruous stories, and leaving both of them imperfect, and by mixing up fact with fiction, has been less felicitous than usual; for, beautiful as many passages in his Island are, in a region where every tree, and flower, and fountain breathe poetry, yet as a whole the poem is feeble and ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... coupling their names together; and also his early dreams of love and passion and a marriage that would be one long honeymoon. And he saw how absurd had been those early dreams. He saw that the best chance of a felicitous marriage lay in a union of mature and serious persons, animated by grave interests and lofty ideals. Yes, she was older than he. But not much, not much! Not more than—how many years? And he remembered surprising her rapt glance that very evening ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... character, and by no means a felicitous one; I am no admirer either of Werther or his author. But I should say that, if there was a Werther in Germany, he did not smoke. Werther, as you very justly observe, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "novel of incident"). And, again, an author may deal well or ill with the sensations of sex; those sensations can provide material for fine art. It is a matter of treatment. Upon feelings of this sort Maupassant based some of his most felicitous stories. But Maupassant did not use sexual incidents for the sake of sex feeling; for him such incidents were various symbols, flickering images, of life, incarnations of the brooding spirit of cynicism and scorn. We have already seen that to Fielding, for whom ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... through his authority and recklessness and his habit of saying right out without reflection anything at all that occurred to him, and not being ashamed to air his thoughts, he often stumbled upon some felicitous expression. [But the same Antoninus made many mistakes through his headstrong opinions. It was not enough for him to know everything: he wanted to be the only one who knew anything. It was not enough for him to have all power: he would be the only one with any power. Hence it was ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... Dante's poem has given to the Middle-Age history of Italy an interest of which it is not undeserving in itself, full as it is of curious exhibitions of character and contrivance, but to which politically it cannot lay claim, amid the social phenomena, so far grander in scale and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of other western nations. It is remarkable for keeping up an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Cambridge) in the correspondence of Spenser and Harvey, and the sensible fashion in which Nash laughed at it, are among the best known things in the gossiping history of English Letters. But the coxcombry of Harvey and the felicitous impertinence of Nash have sometimes diverted attention from the actual state of the case. William Webbe (a very sober-minded person with taste enough to admire the "new poet," as he calls Spenser) ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her engagement ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... animal, the jackass!" and have at length flung his book into a corner. There is nothing to prevent the worst author, as he sits alone in his library, and reads himself over and over again, from congratulating himself on being the originator of a host of rare and felicitous ideas.[38] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... swift, dashing, and decisive. Nor does it want deep and subtle touches. His pictures of Shaftesbury and Buckingham are as delicately finished, as they are powerfully conceived. He flies best at the highest game; but even in dealing with Settles and Shadwells, he can be as felicitous as he is fierce. No satire in the world contains lines more exquisitely inverted, more ingeniously burlesqued, more artfully turned out of their apparently proper course, like rays at once refracted and cooled, than those which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... still portentously noble and perfect. He does not interest us much; but we greatly admire the heroine, Martha Deane, whom he loves and marries. In the study of her character and that of her father, Mr. Taylor is perfectly at home, and extremely felicitous. There is no one else who treats Quaker life so well as the author of the beautiful story of "Friend Eli's Daughter"; and in the opposite characters of Doctor Deane and Martha we have the best portraiture of the contrasts which Quakerism produces ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Pegasus is not a felicitous illustration of the way in which the boundaries of the constellations should be defined. There can be no more naturally associated group than the four stars of this square, and they ought surely to be included in the same constellation. Three of the stars—marked ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... be introductory to the best of Mr. Howells' novels and essays in the high school; for Mr. Howells, it need scarcely be said, is one of our few masters of style: his style is as individual and distinguished as it is felicitous and delicate. More important still, from the educational point of view, he is one of our most modern writers: the spiritual issues and social problems of our age, which our older high-school pupils ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... I will make upon Lord Wellesley's verses—Greek as well as Latin. The Latin lines upon Chantrey's success at Holkham in killing two woodcocks at the first shot, which subsequently he sculptured in marble and presented to Lord Leicester, are perhaps the most felicitous amongst the whole. Masquerading, in Lord Wellesley's verses, as Praxiteles, who could not well be represented with a Manon having a percussion lock, Chantrey is armed with a ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... national conventions was the State reports, which contained not only valuable specific information, but often felicitous little arguments quite equal to those of the more formal addresses. Such reports were received in 1886 from thirty different States. A large number of interesting letters also were read, among them one from George W. Childs, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... care to couple with their "remarks" an apologetic laugh, which was intended to convey that the joke, though carried far, was just a joke. The wags—the species was not yet extinct—were especially felicitous. They treated the subject as a very original piece of humour indeed. Their treatment of it gained them an occasional cuff in the ear, and they had to be discriminative in their choice of victims. Everybody was not to be wished "returns of ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Buckhurst, contributed to the collection called the Mirror of Magistrates,[46:3] are marked with a pathetic majesty, a genuine sympathy for the precariousness of greatness, which seem a prelude to the Elizabethan drama. But these fragments were mostly felicitous efforts, which soon passed on into the ungainly, the uncouth, the obscure or the grotesque. But in the Shepherd's Calendar we have for the first time in the century, the swing, the command, the varied resources of the real poet, who is not driven ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Admiration remains, however—admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronising kind. The Maison Carree does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seem to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Vanderwater. "I grant that as authorities to quote they are most excellent—the two foremost literary critics in the United States. Every school teacher in the land looks up to Vanderwater as the Dean of American criticism. Yet I read his stuff, and it seems to me the perfection of the felicitous expression of the inane. Why, he is no more than a ponderous bromide, thanks to Gelett Burgess. And Praps is no better. His 'Hemlock Mosses,' for instance is beautifully written. Not a comma is out of place; ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... he is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded in advance, and which celebrate some of the most inspiring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... that it will flow in omne volubilis aevum. Among many instances of the strength which accompanied this absence of strain one already alluded to may be mentioned again. Scott is one of the most literary of all writers. He was saturated with reading; nothing could happen but it brought some felicitous quotation, some quaint parallel to his mind from the great wits, or the small, of old. Yet no writer is less bookish than he; none insults his readers less with any parade, with any apparent consciousness of erudition; and he wears his learning ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the general character of this attempt at popularizing science. To do this without misleading and confounding the general reader is a task which claims the largest and most exact knowledge, and the greatest perspicuity of statement, no less than a flowing style and felicitous illustration. It is a task in which true success, though apparently frequent, is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... though, for whatever reason, its merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. It is unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. In one of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to Horace's not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps I should have done wisely to follow it more than I have done: but the matter is one where a line must be drawn, and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... accordance with, in harmony with, in keeping with, in unison with, &c. n.; at one with, of one mind, of a piece[Fr]; consistent, compatible, proportionate; commensurate; on all fours. apt, apposite, pertinent, pat; to the point, to the purpose; happy, felicitous, germane, ad rem[Lat], in point, on point, directly on point, bearing upon, applicable, relevant, admissible. fit adapted, in loco, a propos[Fr], appropriate, seasonable, sortable, suitable, idoneous[obs3], deft; meet ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... succeeded in this difficult department better than any other orator, ancient or modern. Whether he praises his country, its religion, its laws, its citizens, its senate, or its individual magistrates, he does it with enthusiasm, a splendour, a geniality, and an inconceivable richness of felicitous expression which make us love the man as much as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... musicians and composers, men whose names are known, were before me in thinking—that he had already done great things, that the songs he had already published were achievements. They seemed to us original in conception, accomplished and felicitous in treatment; they were full of melody and movement, full of harmonic surprises; they had style and they had 'go.' One would have imagined they must please at once the cultivated and the general ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... arrangements. There are 300 tickets given out.[479] I fear it will be uncomfortable; and whatever the stoics may say, a bad dinner throws cold water on the charity. I have agreed to preside, a situation in which I have been rather felicitous, not by much superiority of wit or wisdom, far less of eloquence; but by two or three simple rules which I put down here ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... could no longer reply for himself that I may be forgiven for quoting an authority which will command general respect. Mr. Andrew Lang is as scrupulously accurate in statement as he is brilliantly felicitous in style. He has studied the history of the sixteenth century, especially in Scotland, and he disagrees with Froude on many, if not on most, of the points in dispute. Yet this is Mr. Lang's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... old, old man, the Ancient of Days, in a flowing robe, seated scowling upon a throne, aloft on a rolling cloud, with an awful mist of darkness all roundabout. But Judith, as I knew, visualized in a more felicitous way. The God to whom she appealed was a rotund, florid old gentleman, with the briefest, most wiry of sandy whiskers upon his chops, a jolly double chin, a sunburned nose, kindly blue eyes forever opened ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... might almost seem) of its discovery of itself to us, as the appropriate attitude on our part, the dialectical spirit, which to the last will have its diffidence and reserve, its scruples and second thoughts. Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the "philosophic temper," in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... he had heard with creditable disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was the school at Patty's felicitous suggestion, that, by way of reward, they elected her chairman of the Christmas Carnival Committee. The Christmas Carnival was a charitable institution contemporaneous with the founding of the school. St. Ursula's scheme of education was broad; it involved growth in a wide variety of womanly virtues, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... their popular poetry, it must be spoken of henceforth in words as lofty and refined as those in which the most educated and the most gifted speak of it. Hence, in the transition between the old animalism and the new spiritualism, a jumble of the two elements, not always felicitous; attempts at ambitious description, after Burns's worst manner; at subjective sentiment, after the worst manner of the world in general; and yet, all the while, a consciousness that there was something worth keeping in the simple ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... for speed, and compliments were set aside by Garnache, who, at his best, was not felicitous with them. Valerie felt herself caught by the wrist, a trifle roughly she remembered afterwards, and hurried across the cobbles to the tethered horses, with which Rabecque was already busy. She saw Garnache raise his foot to the stirrup and hoist ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Likely. "One is apt to be mistaken." Apt means facile, felicitous, ready, and the like; but even the dictionary-makers cannot persuade a person of discriminating taste to accept it as ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... for even the prose has in the highest and lowest dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so severally appropriate, as to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... however, so much in the selection of single incidents of this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the whole subject, that the mind of a great composer is known. A single incident may be suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading of a chapter. But the great composers so arrange all their designs that one incident illustrates another, just as one color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham," of the Yorkshire series, which, as to its locality, may be considered ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Pope imitates many passages, and adopts the general design. Though he does not equal the vigour of some of Dryden's lines, and wages war in a more ungenerous spirit, the Dunciad has a wider scope than its original, and shows Pope's command of his weapons in occasional felicitous phrases, in the vigour of the versification, and in the general sense of form and clear presentation of the scene imagined. For a successor to the great empire of dulness he chose (in the original form of the poem) the unlucky Theobald, a writer to ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... observance of the Sabbath; required it of his children, and he expected it of the stranger within his gates. The family altar probably never failed from the day he first entered with his newly married wife, into their pioneer home, amid the forests, till his death. He was solemn, earnest and felicitous in prayer. The atmosphere of his home was eminently that of a christian household. Two of his four sons became officers in their churches, and also both his sons-in-law. Four of his grandsons entered the Christian ministry, and a granddaughter is the wife of a clergyman. Those who regard the Puritans ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman |
