"Fortune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flourished in the 4th century B.C.; assisted in the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants, and distributed among the citizens his large fortune which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... head of Christ is God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord." That was inspiration. This was written by a poor, despised heathen: "In whatever house the husband is contented with the wife and the wife with the husband, in that house will fortune dwell. In the house where the woman is not honored, let the curse be pronounced. Where the wife is honored, there God is truly worshiped." I wish Jehovah had said something like that from Sinai. Is there anything as beautiful as this in the new testament: "Shall I tell you where nature is ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ain't my way to blow my own trumpet, but I can say that the crowd that 'ere picture did draw was bigger than any that 'ad assembled about the bits o' bacon and ship-a-fire of all the other coves. 'Ad I been let alone, I should 'ave made my fortune, but the crowd was so big and the curiosity so great that it took the perlice all their time to keep the pavement from being blocked. It wasn't that the public didn't like it enough, it was that the public liked it too much, that was the reason ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... approach'd when Fortune should decide The important enterprise, and give the bride; For now, the rivals round the world had sought, And each his number, well appointed, brought. The nations, far and near, contend in choice, And ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... noted the name and address of the rental agent on the card in the window, cut her visit with Sadie short, so afraid was she that she would be tempted to tell her friend of the good fortune that was going to overtake her. For the girl from Sunset Ranch knew just what she ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... them, and the right of calling them to account. This concession, apparently so slender, was the beginning of a mighty change. It introduced the idea that a man ought to have a voice in selecting those to whose rectitude and wisdom he is compelled to trust his fortune, his family, and his life. And this idea completely inverted the notion of human authority, for it inaugurated the reign of moral influence where all political power had depended on moral force. Government by consent superseded government by ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... had not been less averse to this union than the aristocratic house of Monfort, and, had she not been the mistress of her own acts and fortune, would, no doubt, have absolutely prevented it. As it was, a wild wail went up from the synagogue at the loss of one of its brightest ornaments, and the name of "Miriam Harz" was consigned to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... whom Rene had been a prisoner, held in pledge for his ransom.... Rene was a prince of very moderate parts, endowed with a love of the fine arts, which he carried to extremity, and with a degree of good humour, which never permitted him to repine at fortune, but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair. This insouciant, light-tempered, gay and thoughtless disposition conducted Rene, free from all the passions which embitter life, to a hale and mirthful old age. Even ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... must make compensation for the injury done to the tombs of the kings, and further must cede Mesopotamia to the Parthians. It was impossible for a Roman Emperor to consent to such demands without first trying the fortune of war, and Macrinus accordingly made up his mind to fight a battle. The Parthian prince had by this time advanced as far as Nisibis, and it was in the neighborhood of that city that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... of our provisions we concluded not to try the tedious and uncertain trip up Cataract Creek. With care and good fortune we would have enough provisions to last us to ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... endure her presence after seeing her show a placid satisfaction at Dartrey's nod to the request for him to sleep in the house that night. It was not at all a gleam of pleasure, hardly an expression; it was a manner of saying, One drop more in my cup of good fortune! an absurd and an offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... house on Spruce Street, set in the midst of a considerable garden, while not a few respectable business men lived over their stores and offices. Polly Morris really grudged her sister-in-law the good fortune, for Hester had been left much worse off than she, but Hester had no ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... gone from Independence several days, but had the good fortune to find all the men just in time to save them from starvation and exhaustion. Two were discovered a hundred miles from Independence, and the remainder scattered along the Trail fifty miles further in their rear. Not more than two of the unfortunate party were together. The humane ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... to me quite improper to describe this hypothetical structure as "Neodarwinism." Darwin was just as convinced as Lamarck of the transmission of acquired characters and its great importance in the scheme of evolution. I had the good fortune to visit Darwin at Down three times and discuss with him the main principles of his system, and on each occasion we were fully agreed as to the incalculable importance of what I may call transformative inheritance. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... produce a knife, Mr. Gibney backed prudently away. "You're mighty quick to let bygones be bygones when you see me with a fortune in sight with you wantin' to horn in on the deal, ain't you?" the owner jeered. "You must ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... translate some chapters of Buffon. In 1773 She Stoops to Conquer made a great hit; but Noll was still writing at hack-work, and was deeper in debt than ever. In 1774, when Goldsmith was still grinding on at his hopeless drudge-work, as far from the goal of fortune as ever, and even resolving to abandon London life, with all its temptations, Mr. Forster relates that Johnson, dining with the poet, Reynolds, and some one else, silently reproved the extravagance of so expensive a dinner by sending away ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... stay of four years here, has amassed a considerable fortune. He possesses several ships which trade up and down the river. At any time one can obtain, for the merest trifle, gold, ivory, wax, and slaves. Poultry, sheep, eggs, butter, milk, honey, and fish are extremely abundant, and for ten pounds sterling a large ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Fortune has been kind in preserving us this play. The great difference between the art of Sophocles and that of Aeschylus is here apparent. Only one man has ventured to paint for us Aeschylus' Clytemnestra; Leighton has revealed her, stern as Nature herself, remorseless, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... complain. Here are the ten "Attributes of a Wife," as grouped by one of the world's famous writers: note what he allots to education: "Four to good temper, two to good sense, one to wit, one to beauty; the remaining two to be divided among other qualities, as fortune, connection, education or accomplishments, family, and so on. Divide these two parts as you please, these minor proportions must all be expressed by fractions. Not one among them is entitled to the dignity of ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... line to face the forces which we in this island and in this empire can undoubtedly create. That will turn the scale. That will certainly decide the issue. Of course, if victory comes sooner so much the better. [Cheers.] But let us not count on fortune and good luck. [Cheers.] Let us assume at every point that things will go much less well than we hope and wish. Let us make arrangements which will override that. [Cheers.] We have it in our power to make such arrangements, and it is only common prudence, aye, and common humanity, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Kazan to come to his assistance. Pugasceff again attacked him with embittered fury, and as he could not dislodge him he withdrew the remainder of his troops from Kazan and encamped on the plain. The third day of the battle, fortune turned to the side of Pugasceff. They fought for four hours, and Michelson was already surrounded, when the hero put himself at the head of his small army and made a desperate ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... and the road also shortened at least a mile, by taking a more easterly direction up a valley which led almost entirely through fine open forest land to our old route. I completed this alteration about an hour before sunset. Water was the next desideratum, and I had the good fortune to find also enough of it in a rocky gully where there was also greener pasturage than any that I had seen during the journey, distant only a quarter of a mile to the northward of my newly marked line. This was the only link wanted to complete the route which the carts were to follow; and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... out, in a voice expressive of the temperament which kept him content with his modest fortune and his village circumstance, when he might have made so much more and spent so much more in the world outside, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... convinced me that there is a very rapid accession to their numbers daily taking place; and yet we have the extraordinary fact exhibited to the world, that about two hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders—a large proportion of whom, bankrupt in fortune and reputation, have involved many of the North in their disgrace and ruin—hold in mental bondage the whole population of this great republic, who permit themselves to be involved in the common disgrace of presenting a spectacle of national ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... in many a village church traces of their skill in artistic decoration. The murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury now became a favourite subject, also the lives of St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Nicholas, St. Margaret, St. Edmund, the Seven Acts of Mercy, and the wheel of fortune. In the fourteenth century the Doom was the usual decoration of the space over the chancel arch, and scenes from the New Testament, legends of saints, "moralities," etc., were depicted on the walls. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the artists paid little respect ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... if you please," the prince said; "but I fear that, sooner or later, the fortune of war will deprive me of you, and I should miss you much. Moreover, almost every sailor in port is already in one or other of Boisot's ships; and I fear that, with your weak crew, you would ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... of our pleasure-seeking has it been our good fortune to enjoy an hour of such exquisite pleasure as we were blessed with on the occasion of our attending a concert given here, a short time since, by the ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... it, instantly sees for it a future. That touch of heightened nap has done it. The manufacturer has his wits about him, and what a week before was a mistake is now a new and valuable design which, in a couple of years, makes him what some of us would regard as a substantial fortune. We are usually told that to admit the operation of this questionable factor in human affairs, called chance or luck, is inconsistent with a belief in the moral government of God, or, as we may prefer to call it, the reign of law. If this is so, how are we to read those old words that "chance happeneth ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... to itself; all the happy successes that happen Best part of a captain to know how to make use of occasions Burnt and roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others Commit themselves to the common fortune Crafty humility that springs from presumption Did not approve all sorts of means to obtain a victory Disease had arrived at its period or an effect of chance? Dissentient and tumultuary drugs Do not much blame them for making their advantage of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... have wanted to say since we have known each other. Some peasant rhymer, an Irishman, is singing his love's praises, and sinks his voice from the height of his passionate superlatives to call her his "share of the world." Peasant and Irishman, he knew that his fortune did not embrace the universe: but for him his love was just ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... fortune, wandered into the garden of Belles Demoiselles some summer afternoon as the sky was reddening towards evening, it was lovely to see the family gathered out upon the tiled pavement at the foot of the broad front steps, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... careless words of the woman in the carriage had let a flood of light into his mind, and by it he saw many things which he had never seen before. Now he remembered a little motto that he had often heard, but the full force of which he did not appreciate until to-day. "Friends follow fortune," was the wording of this motto. He remembered also another saying that had frequently been read to him in church and elsewhere, and the origin of which precluded all doubt as ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... of price," he said, "and the sea has brought it to me for the heritage of my unborn child. What good is a ring to a dead man? But for my baby it will be a fortune." ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... did not exist at the period of which we are writing. It is our good fortune to be an intimate acquaintance of the distinguished citizen who has bestowed this great gift on his own country—one that will transmit his name to posterity, side by side with that of Fulton. In his case, as in that ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... neighbors heard of his good fortune. One of them lost his ax. He appeared to feel very sad over his loss. He sat down by the roadside and bowed his head, looking out of the corners of ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... in the vortex that followed in the wake of this lady. Once indeed he paused for a moment, as he was hurrying on some errand of the good lady's, to let me know that this was Lady Lillycraft, a sister of the squire's, of large fortune, which the captain would inherit, and that her estate lay in one of the best ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... face to face. And there he stood, with as ill-omened a visage as ever brought blight upon a party of pleasure. He watched the panting horses out of sight—opened his gate, and walked the other way. He, like the old man, had his plans, and an itching for a share in Michael Allcraft's fortune. How he, so wealthy and respected, could need a part of it, remains a mystery at present. The squire knew his business. He went straightway to the banking-house, and made enquiry respecting Allcraft's destination. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... is why they patiently bear the extremes of hunger, and why, if fortune smiles, they gorge like Eskimos, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... thirsty and he often thought how much he would like to open his melon. However, he remembered his father's advice to open it only where there was water nearby. So he travelled on and on hoping to find a spring of water on the hillside. He did not have the good fortune to pass near a spring either going up the hill or coming down on the opposite side. At the foot of the hill there was a town and in the centre of the town there was a fountain. The young man hurried straight to the fountain and took a long refreshing drink. Then he opened ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... some there were, proud hours that marched in mail, And took the morning on auspicious crest, Crying to fortune "Back, for I prevail!"— Yet now they ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... real world to-night. Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the vicissitudes of fortune; stranger the links in the chain of life. CLAUDE and ALICE ASKEW, who wrote popular serial novels in the daily papers, lived in a rambling old home at Wivelsfield Green, in Sussex, known as "Botches." This they enlarged and modernised; they developed the gardens and filled the grass with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... if I had, and so might become a man. "If ye have faith like a grain of mustard seed." That is so true! Just now I have faith as big as a cigar-case; I will not say die, and do not fear man nor fortune. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... published so long ago, that the young readers of this generation certainly will only know it if it has had the good fortune to have been preserved by their mothers. It was only my second book, and in looking back at it so as to preserve consistency, I have been astonished ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the site of a very ancient—probably British—stronghold, the first building was erected in early Norman times. For many years it was the principal fortress of the Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, and under them experienced many vicissitudes of fortune at the hands of both Flemings and French. The last event of importance connected with it was the hanging of Kett in 1549. The keep is in dimensions 96 x 92 feet, its height being 72 feet ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... numerous other posts, it may be said that all the fat sinecures have always been the portion of Manchus. For instance, the office of Hoppo, or superintendent of customs at Canton (abolished 1904), was a position which was allowed to generate into a mere opportunity for piling a large fortune in the shortest possible time, no particular ability being required from the holder of the post, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... papers closely, seeking there the seeds of adventure. In one of them, a pathetic story appeared, telling of a once famous soldier of fortune starving in a tenement on Rivington Street, a man who in his day—so the papers said—had made rulers and unmade them, had helped to alter the map of more than one continent. Green investigated personally. The tale turned out to be nine-tenths ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... speculate on what the effect of this genial open-handedness might have been, had it lasted, on the genius of the poet. But fortune had harsher views of what befitted the training of so acrid a nature. When Ibsen was eight years of age, his father's business was found to be in such disorder that everything had to be sold to meet his creditors. The only piece of property left when this process had been gone through was ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... carefully-prepared entrenchments. Lord Roberts had at last under his hand a force whose strength and mobility permitted of the execution of a great turning movement, and warranted the confident hope that the tide of fortune would turn in favour of the British flag. It was his desire that the troops, about to engage in this fresh enterprise, should reap to the full the benefit of the practical experiences of the earlier actions of the war, both as regards the special conditions ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... cens'rers! sometimes, see ye not, In greatest perils some men pleasant be, Where fame by death is only to be got, They resolute! So stands the case with me. Where other men in depth of passion cry, I laugh at fortune, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... fireside and her motherly arms brimming over with zeal and kindness for the whole human race, does not matter. It is sufficient that they found her and found with her a sense of comparative peace and security which compensated for the one big slice of trouble Fortune had treated them to before their departure from England. For them did the wall flowers bloom and the mignonette at the window, for them did the oleander blossom and the old clock strike, for them did the jessamine climb and the one hawthorn tree yield its annual soft white ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... innocent plays were fixed upon to cheat children into reading, that, as he says, should look as little like a task as possible, it must needs be of use for that purpose. But let every gentleman, who has a fortune to lose, and who, if he games, is on a foot with the vilest company, who generally have nothing at all to risque, tremble at the thoughts of teaching his son, though for the most laudable purposes, the early ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... and distant until won over by the kindness of good friends, shows unmistakably that something very different from poverty and loneliness has been familiar to her, which fact is also very evident from the character and breeding of her children. In the end comes a glad reunion, and good fortune for crippled Jack, and Winifred's kind little heart has indirectly caused great happiness to many others. This is the strongest story Miss Rhoades has yet given us, excellent ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... especially for those who came last. All, however, succeeded in joining their comrades by the ditch, and just at this moment the picked troop of three hundred, who carried torches, came upon them. But fortune still favoured the Plataeans; crouching in the deep shadow thrown by the high banks of the ditch, they plied the enemy, who with their blazing torches afforded an easy mark, with darts and arrows. And thus, fighting and retreating at the same time, they made their way gradually ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... next door neighbour, a hatter, gained a prize in the lottery of ten thousand pounds—he became intoxicated with his wealth, moved to the fashionable end of London, went into a large way of business, dissipated his fortune, and died in a workhouse! Christian, if you have unexpected enjoyments, be watchful; it is to fit ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as she was plainly about to do, from the seclusion in which she had been living since her father's death, she would inevitably win her way among her neighbours. She would become the local topic. Fortune-hunters would learn of her existence and draw near in shoals. What chance would ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... with the enemy, I fear that the account I am about to give may be less full and satisfactory than under other circumstances it might have been made. I particularly fear that the conduct of the gallant men it was my good fortune to lead, will not be noticed in a way due to their fame and the ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... whether God will have to record of us what is recorded of these two wretched kings, or whether He will recognise that the main drift of our poor lives was to serve Him and do His will. He was a great scholar; he made a huge fortune; he rose to be a peer; she was a noted beauty, a leader of fashion, a queen of society—what will all such epitaphs be worth, if God's finger carves silently below them, 'He did that which was evil in the sight ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... peaches that were worth the powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that swim around in a pint of slippery elm juice in a tin can, has got a fortune. And they have got to canning pumpkin, and charging ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... are," I said feelingly. "I'd hardly notice them. If I could notice things as you do—fame and fortune for me!" I thought the matter over for a minute. "That lodger on the top floor, Steve Skeels," I debated. "A poor bet. Yet—after all, he might have been a member of the gang, though somehow I ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... it's not a case of hundreds or of ne'er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune. "And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... guns (instead of nine) had been taken. The news was exultantly forwarded to Corps H.Q. When the case proved to be nine only, and those nine lost again, the message was allowed to stand, the authorities hoping against hope that the guns would walk back into our possession. And Fortune was very good to them. Those guns, indeed, came not back; but, as darkness fell, two burning barges, as already mentioned, floated down the river. One was exploding, like a magazine on fire. This contained ammunition. The other barge, when pulled to shore, was found to contain ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... autumn will be here. Then I wish to be like unto a fruitful tree which pours rich stores of fruit into our laps! But in the winter of existence, when I shall be gray and sated with life, I desire for myself the good fortune that my repose be as honorable and beneficent as the repose of nature in the ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... brisk recovery began and brought to the fore the first of the great railroad magnates and the shrewdest business genius of the day, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Though he had spent his early life and had laid the basis of his fortune in steamboats, he was the first man to appreciate the fact that these two methods of transportation were about to change places—that water transportation was to decline and that rail transportation was to gain the ascendancy. ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... But fortune, or the demon whom he had served, afforded Robespierre another chance for safety, perhaps even for empire; for moments which a man of self-possession might have employed for escape, one of desperate courage might have used for victory, which, considering the divided and extremely unsettled ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... not to be lost; and the Arabs determined to have a share in whatever good fortune Providence might have thrown in the way of those already upon the ground. If it should prove to be a wreck there might be serious difficulty with those already in possession; it was resolved, therefore, to wait for the morning, when ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... License and the Ring with you.—The fee to a clergyman is according to the rank and fortune of the bridegroom; the clerk if there be one, expects five shillings, and a trifle should be given to the pew opener, and other officials of the church. There is a fixed scale of fees at every church, to which the parties married can ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... were not curious, and that it is indiscreet to question them on things that are not in their own showcases. It is true that Lagrange had made a scientific fortune in studying meteors. This had led him to study comets. But he was wise. For twenty years he had been preoccupied by nothing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his own ambition, and to have scrupled at nothing that could promote his interest. Eloquence, and attention to the humors of the nation, won for him wealth and power that rendered him formidable to the King, and he built up a great name and fortune for himself, but brief and fleeting was the inheritance that he bequeathed to his sons. In fourteen years from his death only one of his brave band of sons survived, and he was a miserable captive, who spent his whole existence ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... dearest thing from New York. A tiny mechanical bird with actual feathers. And it sings! It is a really, truly yellow canary in a beautiful gold cage, and when you press a spring it perks its head, opens its beak, flirts its tail, and utters the most angelic song. It must have cost a fortune. Couldn't you love a man who would think of a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of Mrs. Cathcart's opposition was evident. She was a partizan of Percy; for Adela was a very tolerable fortune, as ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... fool it was who described a bore as a man who talked about himself. As a matter of fact it is the only subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting. There's a man I know; he makes a fortune out of a patent food for infants. He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit upon it quite by accident. When he talks about the humours of company promoting and the tricks of the advertising agent he is amusing. I have sat at his table, when he was a bachelor, and listened to him ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... is inseparable from yours. If fortune should deceive your efforts, disasters, Sire, will not weaken our perseverance, and would redouble our ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... did more for him than the Professor's counsels, Mrs Jo's care, or Mr Laurie's generous help. For her sake he worked, waited, and hoped, finding courage and patience in the dream of that happy future when Daisy should make a little home for him and he fiddle a fortune into her lap. Mrs Jo knew this; and though he was not exactly the man she would have chosen for her niece, she felt that Nat would always need just the wise and loving care Daisy could give him, and that without it there was danger of his being ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... continu'd he, I have lately had the good Fortune to convert many; and besides the Candour of my own Disposition, I must tell you, that I have a peculiar knack at Conversion, which very few, if any, ever could resist. I am going upon the same work into Murcia; but your good Character is fix'd ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... still unpretentiously commanding a corps, and learning by the successes and failures of his superiors. And who shall say that the results accomplished by Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, and Meade, were not largely due to their good fortune in not being too early thrust to the front? "For," as says Swinton, "it was inevitable that the first leaders should be sacrificed to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... day Lawrence Cardiff went to the Age office and had the good fortune to see Mr. Rattray, who was flattered to answer questions regarding Miss Bell's whereabouts, put by any one he knew to be a friend. Mr. Rattray undertook to apologize for their not hearing of the scheme, it had matured so ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the Church has taught that woman was created solely for man, that in tearing asunder a recent will in New York, it was proven that the husband, indebted though he was to his wife for the beginning of his vast fortune, incarcerated her while sane in a lunatic asylum, because she objected to his practical polygamy by his introduction of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... had left him a comfortable fortune, but he had made another on his own account by his dealings in gems, which he collected in remote corners of the world and sold with great advantage to London dealers. He was intimately acquainted with all the known mines and pearl fisheries of the world, but ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... born in the little village of Mechanicsville, on the left bank of the Hudson, on the 23d day of April, 1837. When he was very young, his father, through no fault of his own, lost irretrievably his entire fortune, in the tornado of financial ruin that in those years swept from the sea to the mountains. From this disaster he never recovered. Misfortune seems to have followed him through life, with the insatiable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... of a benignant disposition, sometimes of malice, and sometimes perhaps from an inclination to make themselves sport of the wonder and astonishment of ignorant mortals. Omens and portents told these men of some piece of good or ill fortune speedily to befal them. The flight of birds was watched by them, as foretokening somewhat important. Thunder excited in them a feeling of supernatural terror. Eclipses with fear of change perplexed the nations. The phenomena of the heavens, regular and irregular, were anxiously ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... suffered: he would have seen in like manner that moral evil was the necessary consequence of defective institutions; that it was not to the Divinity, but to the injustice of his fellows he ought to ascribe those wars, that poverty, those famines, those reverses of fortune, those multitudinous calamities, those vices, those crimes, under which he so frequently groans. Thus to rid himself of these evils he would not have uselessly extended his trembling hands towards shadows ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Danish tongue, "Leit loup," let him leap; and from this time the power of the English ceased in Anglesey. In our times, also, when Henry II. was leading an army into North Wales, where he had experienced the ill fortune of war in a narrow, woody pass near Coleshulle, he sent a fleet into Anglesey, and began to plunder the aforesaid church, and other sacred places. But the divine vengeance pursued him, for the inhabitants ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... are considered impassable, though I believe the Indians used sometimes to venture down them in canoes; and it was my good fortune to shoot down them in a little steamer—the Shoshone—the third only, I was told, which had ever ventured this passage. The singular history of this steamboat shows the vast extent of the inland navigation ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... return. He merely told Philip that he had succeeded, and then lay almost without speaking on his bed till the Ambassador made his evening visit, when he showed him the two papers. Sir Francis could hardly believe his good fortune in having obtained this full attestation of the marriage, and promised to send to the English Ambassador in Germany, to obtain the like from Father Meinhard. The document itself he advised Berenger not to expose to the dangers of the French journey, but to leave it with ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... touching than these; and as I stood before the object of my pilgrimage, in the gay French light (though the place was so dull), I recalled the spot where I had first read them, and where I read them again and yet again, wondering whether it would ever be my fortune to visit the church of Brou. The spot in question was an armchair in a window which looked out on some cows in a field; and whenever I glanced at the cows it came over me - I scarcely know why - that I should probably ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... numerous household appointed to attend, or rather to guard, the nephews of Constantine, was not unworthy of the dignity of their birth. But they could not disguise to themselves that they were deprived of fortune, of freedom, and of safety; secluded from the society of all whom they could trust or esteem, and condemned to pass their melancholy hours in the company of slaves devoted to the commands of a tyrant who ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... am I heartily sorry, forester. But when a man seeth fame and fortune slipping from him—aye, and his honour, I had nigh forgot that— fame and fortune and honour, so small a thing as a bite may ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... it. It's not in me to go mad about anything with a masked face and a marble heart. If I loved any woman—which, thank Fortune! at this present time I do not—and she had the bad taste not to return it, I should take my hat, make her a bow, and go directly and love somebody else made of flesh and blood, instead of cast iron! You know ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... for her betrayer; incidents like the making of the shepherd's staff, or that of the young boy laying the first stone of the sheepfold;—all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence, their longing, their wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, like the pleasures of children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence; their yearning towards each other, in their darkened houses, or at their early toil. A sort of biblical depth and solemnity ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... by no means rapid. He worked his way up by dint of hard labor and through much ill fortune. But by and by, after many reverses, the tide turned, and carried him with it from one success to another, without let or stay, to the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... of the Republic, the Consulate, the Empire, and the restored monarchy. Wise in his day and generation, he had long before made ready to withdraw, if necessary, from active life, by the accumulation of an enormous fortune, heaped up by means which scandalized even imperial France. He had been embittered at the close of the Consulate by Napoleon's determination that his ministers should not be his highest dignitaries, his arch-officers. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... be understood by a concrete instance. The historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, Heimskringla, vol. i. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... to win economic success at the expense or in total indifference to the success of others.... The good of one country is bound up with the good of another, and it is only by studying what will be mutually advantageous that we shall find the key to our good fortune.... The whole world is interdependent, and you cannot injure one member of the international body without injuring all ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... when all the neglected affairs of the country have been well attended to, every family in the land made happy and prosperous, the army well-trained and all the necessary bitterness "eaten," the President, when a suitable opportunity presented itself, should have the rare fortune to gain a decisive victory over a foreign foe; then his achievements would be such that the millions of people would compel him to ascend the throne, and so he would hand his sceptre on to his ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... has happened, that, from no inferior merit of execution in the rest, but from superior good fortune in the choice of its subject, some single work shall have been suffered to eclipse and cast into shade the deserts of its less fortunate brethren. This has been done with more or less injustice in the case of the popular allegory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... our preferences? How often have our preferences any reason? Maybe some old scoundrel of an ancestor who made a fortune (all lost since) as a thief on the Spanish main, whispers Panama to me when my mind is tired. Others may make magic with Ostend, Biarritz, or Ancoats; and they are just as lucky as the man who obtains the spell by looking at the Dry Tortugas ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... was a man who tried hard to make a stoic of himself, to convince himself that he was past feeling the stings of evil fortune. He had suffered so deeply that he told himself that nothing could ever hurt him again. A spiritual numbness had come upon him, which he took to be the compensation for the variety of hard knocks he had experienced. He was a genial, pleasant, gentle man, but his face bore that look ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Francisco. My object was only to visit Europe; but on the way to Hong Kong a Parsee merchant, a fellow-passenger, suggested turning aside to India, which I had not contemplated. I shall not go into my brief India travel from Calcutta to Bombay, beyond mentioning the singular good-fortune, as it appeared to me, that I visited the ruined residence at Lucknow, and the remains of the memorable siege of twelve years before, in the company of an officer who had himself been a participant. His wife, still a very young and handsome woman, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, had been ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the proverb says, "Fortune favors the brave," and the valiant carpenter was unexpectedly helped out of his dilemma by the very man who had caused it. Sir James suddenly turned round, and seeing him coming up, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I discovered a door, at one extremity of the passage. Bent on adventure, I pushed and it opened. As there were only moments when anything could be seen, I proceeded in utter darkness, using great caution not to fall through a trap. Had it been my happy fortune to be a foundling, who had got his reading and writing "by nature," I should have expected to return from the adventure a Herzog,[25] at least, if not an Erz-Herzog[26] Perhaps, by some inexplicable miracle of romance, I might have come forth the lawful issue ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not so much the fortune as the affection inspired by my daughter which decided us," the Presidente told Mme. Lebas. "M. Brunner is in such a hurry that he wants the marriage to take place with the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... outset fortune favored Charlemagne as usual. He took the first three of the defensive circles sword in hand, and laid waste the country to the junction of the Raab with the Danube, while his son Pepin had met and routed their army in another quarter. But unhappily a pestilential disease broke out among ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... be said about the flight from home; they were at Epsom for a change of air. But Mrs. Hannaford could not keep silence concerning her good fortune; she had revealed it in a few nervous words, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... story of the earth from that time is a record of the emergence from the waters of larger continents and the formation of lofty chains of mountains. Now this world-old battle of land and sea has been waged with varying fortune from age to age, and it has been one of the most important factors in the development of life. We are just beginning to realise what a wonderful light it throws on the upward advance of animals and plants. No one in ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... :fortune cookie: /n./ [WAITS, via Unix] A random quote, item of trivia, joke, or maxim printed to the user's tty at login time or (less commonly) at logout time. Items from this lexicon have often been used as ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... carpenter packing up his tools, they expressed to me an expectation that the tools would be left with them as a present. We left the natives, and reached the schooner a little before sunset; the captain feeling anxious for the fate of the launch, as nothing yet had been heard of the fortune which had attended her, or the men ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... minute or two after Oliver and Wraysford had left the room, too bewildered to collect his thoughts or realise one-half of his good fortune, for he had come to Oliver in his extremity as a desperate chance, fully expecting an angry rebuff—or, at best, a chilling snub. But to get through the interview like this, and find the money in his hand within three minutes of his entering the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... personal danger. Mr. Lindsay, a writer in the service of the East India Company, established a factory at Silhet, and commenced the lime trade with Calcutta,* [For an account of the early settlement of Silhet, see "Lives of the Lindsays," by Lord Lindsay.] reaping an enormous fortune himself, and laying the foundation of that prosperity amongst the people which has been much advanced by the exertions of the Inglis family, and has steadily progressed under the protecting rule of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... a very odd device for a respectable associate and member of G. F. S. to undertake, but if ever the end might justify the means it was on the present occasion. Fortune favoured them, for Melinda Crachett was alone in the house, ironing out ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his character, with regard to abilities, bear the air of the most extravagant panegyric: his enemies form such a representation of his moral qualities as resembles the most virulent invective. Both of them, it must be confessed, are supported by such striking circumstances in his conduct and fortune, as bestow on their representation a great air of probability. "What can be more extraordinary," it is said,[*] "than that a person of private birth and education, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, nor shining talents ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... fine feller, if ever I get a chance! You're a very great man, and a very proud man, Sir Everard Kingsland, and you own a fine fortune and a haughty, handsome wife, and G. W. Parmalee's no more than the mud under your feet. Very well—we'll see! 'Every dog has his day,' and 'the longest lane has its turning,' and you're near about the end of your tether, and George Parmalee has you and your fine ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... of my grandmother,' said Diggory; 'I was thinking of my Uncle Diggory. He was the third son of a woodcutter, just like I am, and he saw right enough that that's the sort that has to go out and seek its fortune. And I'm getting on, father; I shall be twenty before ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... Crawford, I suppose that you are right. But theory is only theory, you know. Frankly, would not a man be a fool to work when there is no need for it? Would not a man be a fool to eschew the pleasures of life when fortune is ready to spill them into his lap for him? Does not the rich man's son get a great deal more out of the game than the poor devil who spends his life punching cows at thirty dollars a month? Even if I began to take myself seriously ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... minister's study except as transitory visitors. Still, in the course of years, a good many of these had been gathered, and he had, besides, inherited a valuable library, as far as it went, both in theology and in general literature; and once or twice, in the course of his life, it had been his happy fortune to have to thank some good rich man for a gift of books better than gold. So Miss Bethia was right in saying that there were in the country few libraries like the one on which she ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... in company with a lady who is my wife, in America. You have never been forgotten by me. I knew your situation to be little in agreement with your wishes, and one of the benefits which fortune has lately conferred upon me is the power of snatching you from a life of labour and obscurity, whose goods, scanty as they are, were transient and precarious, and affording you the suitable leisure and means of intellectual ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the Rev. Hugh M'Diarmid, minister of the Gaelic church, Glasgow, John M'Diarmid was born in 1790. He received in Edinburgh a respectable elementary education; but, deprived of his father at an early age, he was left unaided to push his fortune in life. For some time he acted as clerk in connexion with a bleachfield at Roslin, and subsequently held a situation in the Commercial Bank in Edinburgh. He now attended some classes in the University, while his other spare time ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various |
