"Heaven-sent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a heaven-sent method of avoiding the difficulty, and he had just got the envelope which had held Barbara's letter out of his pocket, intending to follow Jolland's example, when the Doctor's voice made him start guiltily and replace the envelope ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and made them feel that their friend was not lost but gone on into a higher class of the great school whose Master is eternal love and wisdom. So the tears soon dried, and the young faces looked up like flowers after rain. But the heaven-sent shower sank into the earth, and they were the stronger, sweeter for it, more eager to make life brave and beautiful, because death had gently shown them what it ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... him—when this event occurred, Madame Carthame's kindly feelings toward her second-floor lodger were resolved into an abiding faith and high esteem. It was upon this auspicious day that the conviction took firm root in her mind that the Count Siccatif de Courtray was the heaven-sent husband for ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven-sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by pistol-shot, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... funded-properties, temporary (very temporary) landed properties of the world, at one swoop, it would avail you nothing. Henceforth for you no harvests in the Seedfield of this Universe, which reserves its salutary bounties, and noble heaven-sent gifts, for quite other than you; and I would not give a pin's value for all YOU will ever reap there. Mere imaginary harvests, sacks of nuggets and the like; empty as the east-wind;—with all the Demons laughing at you! Do you consider that Nature too ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... archipelago especially lacks are rivers and rios. However, as abundant rains fall frequently, this drawback is got over by the inhabitants, who treasure up the heaven-sent water for household and agricultural purposes. This has necessitated the construction of vast cisterns which the downfalls keep filled. These works of engineering skill justly merit the admiration they receive and do honor ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... King, but of France we had expected everything. Everybody knew that in various towns patriot priests had been marching in procession urging the people to sacrifice money, property, everything, and buy the freedom of their heaven-sent deliverer. That the money would be raised we had not ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... the Heaven-sent gulls, they were able to celebrate with a feast their first "Harvest Home." In the centre of the big stockade a bowery was built, and under its shade tables were spread and richly laden with the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... on Troy, late now has it blest this heaven-sent exile, and our Master's house is freed. On a lover of the war of guile has Revenge ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... forever keep them separate. If so, poorly as her family could afford to suffer their part of the loss of the avails of the fall's work, she would cheerfully bear it, and even look upon the event in the light of a Heaven-sent mercy. But even of this poor comfort she was destined soon to be deprived. After the trial, Mark Elwood—who, however bravely he bore himself at first, on that occasion, was finally seen to quail under the terrible glances ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... guide impatiently. He loathed the sight of Bower standing there, smiling and courteous, in the presence of one whom he regarded as a Heaven-sent friend and protectress. Spencer attributed his surliness to its true cause. It supplied another bit of the mosaic he was slowly piecing together. Greatly as he preferred Helen's company, he was willing to sacrifice ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... toward a religious body which does not even profess to come to us in the name of the Lord, or to be a pillar and ground of the truth; but what shall we say when more than one society, or school, or party, lay claim to be the heaven-sent teacher, and are rivals one to the other, as are the Churches of England and Rome at this day? How shall we discriminate between them? Which are we to follow? Are tests given us for that purpose? Now if tests are given us, we ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... with every movement having for its object the improvement of previous conditions, and so far-reaching and wholesome had been their influence generally, that the inhabitants of the city had insensibly grown to regard them as heaven-sent reformers, permanently settled among them for their benefit and advantage by the especial favour of Kuhlacan, and the news that the pair were about to leave them fell upon the Uluans with something of the effect of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... He had been on the point of saying, "I never will admit it;" but the words would not come out. He must not interrupt. This was Heaven-sent advocacy. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... sobbing and moaning, and at such times the common folks believed that the whole district would be visited by a hailstorm. Sometimes she roamed about for weeks, nobody knew where, nobody knew why, and during all that time the hosts of grasshoppers, wood-lice, spiders, caterpillars, and other Heaven-sent plagues, multiplied terribly throughout the land; but the moment the old woman returned they all disappeared again in a day without leaving a ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... has its complement in the approval with which unblemished reputations are regarded by those who have them not. Also, there was an unspoken tradition among her husband's people, as in many families, that while born Kildares, male or female, might exercise their Heaven-sent prerogative of behaving as they chose, it was for their mates to maintain the balance of discretion. Poor Kate had maintained ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of such a conclusion, it does not necessarily follow that Jesus was not heaven-sent, or that he was in any way unworthy the love and veneration of the world. The proposition of the eloquent Father Brannan that Jesus was either in very truth the only begotten Son of the Father, or an impious ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the calamity in her own fierce way, seems to have scorned the poor island that had not enough of God’s grace to keep the “heaven-sent” Minister alive. I can hardly tell why it should be, but there is a longing for the East very commonly felt by proud-hearted people when goaded by sorrow. Lady Hester Stanhope obeyed this impulse. For some time, I believe, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the mouth of Bear River had been enormous. When at Salt Lake City in 1888 I made an effort to arouse the sportsmen whom I met to the necessity of a reform, but my exhortations fell on deaf ears. Naturally, the sweeping away of the remaining ducks by disease would suggest a heaven-sent judgment upon the slaughterers were it not for the fact that the last state of the unfortunate ducks is if anything worse than ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... supernatural, and united, by their common indifference to the world, in one mystic brotherhood. As men learned these lessons, or were inwardly ready to learn them, they recognised more and more clearly in Jesus their heaven-sent redeemer, and in following their own conscience and desperate idealism into the desert or the cloister, in ignoring all civic virtues and allowing the wealth, art, and knowledge of the pagan world to decay, they began what they felt to be an imitation ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Ay, ay, we should have been in Albany ere this. In these wild times, Annie, every chance-blown straw that points at evil, is likely to prove a faithful index; and if it serve to nerve the heart for it, we may call it heaven-sent indeed. Annie,—hear me calmly, my child,—the enemy, so at least goes the rumor, are nearer than we counted on this morning, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... of friends and lovers, lost or dead, could bring their forms and voices before the eye and ear of flesh, there would be a world of hallucinations around us. "But it wants heaven-sent moments for this skill," and few bridal nights send a vision and a voice to the bed of a wakeful lover ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... intention of announcing to him in a body their decisions;—such business they transacted in his absence, in order to have the appearance of doing it not under compulsion but voluntarily. And either by some Heaven-sent fatuity or through excess of joy he received them sitting, an act which aroused so great indignation among them all, not only senators but all the rest, that it afforded his slayers one of their chief excuses for their plot against him. Some who subsequently tried to defend ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... generous permission Mehetabel rushed back up the steep attic stairs to her room, and in a joyful agitation began preparations for the work of her life. It was even better than she hoped. By some heaven-sent inspiration she had invented a pattern beyond which no patchwork quilt ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... replied, "looked upon Pickie's birth as much in the light of a miracle as if no other child had ever before been born. He was Heaven-sent to her, and she sacrificed herself completely for the better development of Pickie's individuality, or, to use the language of the reformers of those days, in 'illustrating the independence of the child's self-hood.' ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond. And this chance of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"—and, of course, he might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for them; for he would "cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad. He was now giving them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors unfortunately earned no fees! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of excitement as heaven-sent aids, to help you more easily over, it may be, a wearying and dreary path. They are most probably sent in answer to prayer—in answer to the prayers of your own heart, or to ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... such a heaven-sent relief to be able to leave something to somebody else, and be sure it will be carried out! With all due respect to the age and experience of the staff I found here, they are not very open to new ideas. As the John Grier Home was planned by its noble founder ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... All-Father now and then punish, out of sheer malevolence, or in an attempt to get even with man for the results of instincts He had put into him at first creation? Was that first creation final in its wisdom; or had it been a partial blunder, needing the interference of a heaven-sent, earth-born Intercessor to set the matter right? Could the All-Wise make a blunder? If not, then why the Atoning Son? In short, aside from some mysterious force which had set certain laws to rolling like mammoth, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... think twice about it, but accepted the idea as a heaven-sent inspiration which it was her duty to follow. She put on a shawl as if she were only going to take a walk in the moonlight and descended into the park accompanied by the gardener's daughter whom she had bribed to help her ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... mind that here was a Heaven-sent opportunity to reach the cabin without facing that hundred miles in the company of chance-hired strangers. But she did not broach the subject at once. Instead, she asked eagerly of Bill. Lauer told her that Bill had tarried a few days at the cabin, and then struck ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... more crushing blow. His eyes became inflamed and painful—the sight of one of them failed, the other soon went; he became totally blind. But this, being a heaven-sent infliction, he could bear with resignation, though it must have been keenly painful to a solitary man of his activity. "Alas!" says he, in one of his letters, "your dear friend and servant is totally blind. Henceforth this heaven, this ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... her ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to a comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her timidity increased; ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... found him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was his ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... thirsting corn, and clothes the nakedness of nature. It is the ghost of unshed showers—atomized dew, precipitated in life-bestowing avalanches upon a dewless and parched shore; it is the good angel that stands between a careless people and contagion; it is heaven-sent nourishment. It makes strong the weak; makes wise the foolish—you don't go out a second time in midsummer without your wraps—and it is altogether the freshest, purest, sweetest, most picturesque, and most precious element in the physical geography of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... now lies by the side of one who had no equal on the ocean, in the heart of her metropolis. Within the walls of her finest cathedral, what more appropriate mausoleum could be found for Britain's two most valiant defenders, Heaven-sent surely in the time of her greatest need to defend her from the hosts of her ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... that she added this, for there was a shade of wavering in Ruth Thrale's heart as to whether the interview was welcome. A trace of that jealousy about Dave just hung in Maisie's manner. And she rather stood committed, by not having accepted the mutton-broth. That corollary may have been Heaven-sent, to keep the mother and daughter in touch, in the dark—just for a chance ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... not hope for pardon, he said, but he should never cease to love. He wished to die. What would be fame unless shared with the idol of his soul? Existence was for him henceforth a dreary waste; and yet his only fault had been that in the ecstasy of heaven-sent passion he had over-leaped the bounds imposed ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... happiness has only one key, and that its name is 'Love,' that, amidst all the mutabilities and disillusions of our life, the pure love of a man and woman alone stands firm and beautiful, alone defies change and disappointment; that it is the heaven-sent salve for all our troubles, the remedy for our mistakes, the magic glass reflecting only what is true and good. But in the end her facts overcame his theories, and he might have spared himself the trouble of telling. And, for all his star-gazing, this hero had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... part of the economic law than nigger-drivers: he knew that small owners could and did prosper. He was not so much the philosopher as the man of the world: he reminded us that Europe was a society while Ruskin was treating it as a picture gallery. He was a sort of Heaven-sent courier. His frontal attack on the vulgar and sullen optimism of Victorian utility may be summoned up in the admirable sentence, in which he asked the English what was the use of a train taking them quickly from Islington to Camberwell, if it only took them "from ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... groweth, if only this be an oak. Oak-groves, indeed, they choose for their own sake, neither do they celebrate any sacred rite without oak-leaves, so that they appear to be called Druids from the Greek word for this tree. Whatsoever mistletoe, then, groweth on such a tree they hold it for a heaven-sent sign, and count that tree as chosen by their God himself. Yet but very rarely is it so found, and, when found, is sought with no small observance; above all on the sixth day of the moon (which to this folk is the beginning of months and years alike),[59] and after the thirtieth year ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Managing Director of Schemes Limited, and Miss Marguerite Whitland, his heaven-sent secretary, were strained to the point of breaking that afternoon. She went away that night without saying good-bye, and Bones, in a condition of abject despair, walked home to Devonshire Street, and was within a dozen ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... good many of the men, who want to get through," smiled Dave, "Saturday evening is a heaven-sent chance to do a little more studying against a blue next week. As for Danny boy, I imagine he must have carried his grin up to Wilson's room. Or, maybe, to Jetson's. Danny has plenty of harbors where he's welcome to ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... any man who's been party to this betrayal is going to be found big enough to run a war? I tell you that's another thing. Do you suppose a chap who's been a miserable vote-snatcher all his life is going to turn round suddenly and be a heaven-sent administrator in a war? You can take your oath Heaven doesn't send out geniuses on that ticket. What you've lived and done in fat times—that's what you're going to live and do in lean. Heaven's ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in "Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his Cathedral, new-crowned, to give "urbis ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... brim with rich and fragrant oil, Or torches dry this heaven-sent fire we feed; Or make us rushlights from the flowering reed And wax, whereon the bees have spent ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... conversation upon subjects into which he knew he had no right to enter, for Patricia possessed the faculty of keeping herself well informed as to family matters. It was through this that he secured the first clew upon which to start a real investigation, so he considered the information Heaven-sent, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... think to hear this from you, Mr. Waife. Teach her,—you! make her an impostor, and of the wickedest kind, inventing lies between earth and them as dwell in the seven spheres! Fie! No, if she hasn't the gift natural, let her alone: what here is not heaven-sent is devil-taught." ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on shore was occupied in visiting persons suffering from ague, and in prescribing for them. What a blessing, indeed, can a clever medical man prove in such regions! He is like a heaven-sent messenger carrying relief to the sick ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... insignificance. She would not have complained if Quisante had followed Morewood's example and taken no notice of it. He stopped, turned to her with exaggerated deference, and greeted her obvious little carrying out of the metaphor as though it were a heaven-sent light. Somehow in doing this he seemed to fall all in an instant from lofty heights to depths almost beyond eyesight. While he complimented her elaborately, Morewood turned away in open impatience. Another topic was started, the conversation was killed; or, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... that the gipsy-crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desired The workings of men's brains, And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. "And I," he said, "the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; But it needs heaven-sent ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the claims of conversation on one who is deep in politics or the next play of his antagonist; so my getting to business and coming back are in the nature of purgatory. I therefore hailed the automobile as a Heaven-sent means of swift motion with an agreeable companion, and with no danger of encountering either newspapers or cards. I have seen neither reading nor card-playing going ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... removed about one foot in one bound in one-fortieth of a second, and he let rip one squeal in the process that sent away every other rat into the nearest available hole as if it had been fired there from a spring. Then the lady hedgehog took the Heaven-sent opportunity to complete her rolling-up completely, and Prickles took his own created opportunity to roll up almost more completely, and—well, they were rolled up into two balls, you see, and there is nothing more to be said about them. The rats did that, but it was ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... in his peril assistance from God; the most valiant men of war were moved by the confident outbursts of her patriotic courage; and the people everywhere welcomed her with faith and enthusiasm. Joan had as yet only just appeared, and already she was the heaven-sent interpretress of the nation's feeling, the hope of the people ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that Heaven-sent bit of wood, he kept his face above the water while his spent strength ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... belong to them, so certain writers believe that, according to some direct Providential arrangement—a second choosing of a special people —not a Canaan alone, but every inch of Mother Earth, is the heaven-sent ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... conventional and deeply shocked. Of her own proud, half-disdainful consent to make possible the hackneyed compromising situation by marrying the rascal, and then—of his disappearance from the train. It was so terrible to her, such a Heaven-sent relief to me, in spite of my rage against Sullivan, that I laughed aloud. At which she looked ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "dear child, you are as full of surprises as this glorious day and the Hills. You've brought me a new sensation, a heaven-sent inspiration. What a partner ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... of cord. Ah! how the blood came rushing through the veins that crossed over and through his heart, when life and liberty came to him in this bit of rusty steel! With his manacled hands he loosened the heaven-sent weapon; a few cuts were rapidly made in the cunning network of cord that enveloped his limbs, and in a few seconds he was free!—cramped and faint with hunger, but free!—free to move, to use the limbs that God had given him for his preservation,—free to fight,—to die ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the very instant of that heaven-sent reversal Hat Tyler cried in trumpet tones, "Travel yourself, and see ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to be turned into ships; a colliery was to be opened—and, in short, a second Bristol was to arise in Dorsetshire. Sir John was to supply the funds, and Stephen's energy and ability marked him out as the heaven-sent manager. Stephen accepted the proposals, gave up his London business, and set to work with energy. Coal was found, it is said, 'though of too sulphureous a kind for use;' but deeper diggings would, no doubt, lay bare a superior seam. After a year or two, however, affairs began to look black; ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... looked around for some means of flattening it, there flashed in upon him another idea—a perfectly heaven-sent idea, grisly under ordinary circumstances, as it might be. The bracelet was large and massive, and for it a new use suggested itself. Critically examining the skeletons, he selected two with the largest ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... With a love that would love thee alone for thy sake In bonds which adversity never could break. Should'st thou find such a treasure—then unlock thy heart, And place the bright gem in its innermost part; Watch over it tenderly—love it with pride; And gratefully crown it thy heaven-sent bride. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... emotions? Were not all the hopes, dreams, and doubts, which then awoke, new-born within you, reechoed and fondly shared? Did he not bear away, for days and nights, the brightness of your smile, the bend of your angelic head, and the trip of the tiny boots? And when the Heaven-sent moment came for the tongue to tell what the heart had so long cherished in silence, was there not a partner before you who dealt out words which filled your soul with rapture, and helped you to win the dearest prize that earth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... into the wild, inaccessible fastnesses of the Eagle Hills, where they would have to catch him who could. He had sense enough to know that the British must catch him in the long run, but he would have a high old time till then. Civilisation was a very tame affair, and a rebellion was a heaven-sent opportunity for resuscitating a picturesque past with lots of loot and scalps thrown in. His meditated revenge on the prisoners would keep—there was nothing like having a ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Mann believed in his mind that Frank did not care tuppence whether the agent accepted the terms or not, but that he had taken this as a Heaven-sent opportunity for ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... His pretext, heaven-sent, unmistakable, stared him in the face. He could not write paragraphs for the papers (they wouldn't take his paragraphs), but he could talk to Mr. Gunning. It was not so difficult as he would have at first ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... and all of them one by one to the churchyard sleep, while the father and mother sat at home, trying to supply by gin that very vital energy which fresh air and pure water, and the balmy breath of woods and heaths, were made by God to give; and how the little geranium did its best, like a heaven-sent angel, to right the wrong which man's ignorance had begotten, and drank in, day by day, the poisoned atmosphere, and formed it into fair green leaves, and breathed into the children's faces from every pore, whenever they bent over it, the life-giving oxygen for which their dulled blood ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... know not, but it is seen from examples both ancient and recent, that no grave calamity has ever befallen any city or country which has not been foretold by vision, by augury, by portent, or by some other Heaven-sent sign. And not to travel too far afield for evidence of this, every one knows that long before the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. of France, his coming was foretold by the friar Girolamo Savonarola; and how, throughout the whole of Tuscany, the rumour ran that over Arezzo ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... inquired. Whereat he answer'd that the Gipsy crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desired The workings of men's brains; And they can bind them to what thoughts they will: 'And I,' he said, 'the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart: But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill!' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Egyptian force was annihilated. Some of the local irregulars escaped, but of the regular troops and their commanders not one. This decisive victory not merely confirmed the reputation of the Mahdi, and made most people in the Soudan believe that he was really a heaven-sent champion, but it also exposed the inferiority of the Government troops ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... come on the scene, the spiritual heads, Moses and Aaron, take the place of the popular leader Moses, and the jealousy of the secular grandees is now directed against the class of hereditary priests, instead of against the extraordinary influence on the community of a heaven-sent hero. All these changes are the natural outcome of the importation of the hierocracy into Mosaic times. From the second version we can go further and understand the origin of the third. In the earlier version the princes of the tribe of Reuben were forced to give way to a prince ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... me." Adrian pantomimed the supposed deference of the butler. Then, loftily, "But, 'Shoo' says I. 'An optical delusion, my excellent Wick. A Christian man would be incapable of such a villainy. The billiard-room, that darksome cavern, on a heaven-sent day like this? Shucks,' says I. Yet"—his attitude became exhortative—"see how mighty is truth, see how she prevails, see how the scoffer is confounded. To the billiard-room I transport myself, sceptically, on the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... rising has been brewing for some time. The tribesmen need a lesson, so does the Government. It is just a bubble—this. It will explode to-night. To be honest for once"—Carlyon smiled a little over his bandaging—"I did not expect this attack so soon. A Heaven-sent messenger has been among the tribesmen. They revere him almost as much as the great prophet himself. He has ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Sometimes in heaven-sent dreams I do behold A city with its turrets high in air, Its gates that gleam with jewels strange and rare, And streets that glow with burning of red gold; And happy souls, through blessedness grown bold, Thrill with their praises all the radiant ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... for all that unpaid multiplicity of affairs—magisterial, municipal, social or charitable—which make the country gentleman's sphere Hugh Flaxman's appetite was insatiable. He was a born chairman of a county council, and a heaven-sent treasurer of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... know what you mean by this," he said, tendering the weapon as per instructions; "I'm doggoned if I do.... You'll allow a certain latitude in consideration of my relief; I can't say we were anticipating this—ah—Heaven-sent visitation." ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... you've run up against dangers before, but let me tell you that your most perilous jungle is safe as a church compared to the jungle an ordinary grass plot will present to us, if, as we plan, we get reduced to a quarter of an inch. I'm going in this with a mission. To me it's a heaven-sent opportunity—one I'm sure any entomologist would grab at. But you, frankly, are just ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... present to be a heaven-sent opportunity to enlighten her concerning Joe's character, since the Pikes appeared to have been derelict in the performance of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... my young days, I pretend to be filled with a heaven-sent energy. It is by no means all pretense, and pictures rise in my ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... away and looked out upon the stock-selling pandemonium with unseeing eyes. The chance—the heaven-sent hour that strikes only once in a life-time for the builders of empire—had come: and he was only waiting for the arrival of the president to find himself rudely thrust aside from the helm ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of her own, and plenty of courage, but no man with even a prospective interest in a pretty woman, likes to think of the object of his admiration as thoroughly well able to look after herself. She must needs have a protector, and the heaven-sent one ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... queen, And mothers held their babies up to see When I came riding out of Camelot. The women smiled, and all the world smiled too. And now, what woman's eyes would smile on me? I still am beautiful, and yet what child Would think of me as some high, heaven-sent thing, An angel, clad in gold and miniver? The world would run from me, and yet am I No different from the queen they used to love. If water, flowing silver over stones, Is forded, and beneath the horses' feet Grows turbid suddenly, it clears again, And men will drink ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... that time," said Bertram. "He will have a sort of a niche in history, no doubt; as has Mr. Perceval, who did so much to assist us in the war; and Lord Castlereagh, who carried the Union. They also were heaven-sent ministers, whom Acheron has not as yet ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... beyond were more pools, more drinking animals. Everything was drinking. I saw their outlined forms, the gleam shining on wet skins as though they were cut out in silver against the darkness, each beast steaming like a volcano as the Heaven-sent rain smoked from his fevered hide, all drinking for their lives, heedless of aught else—and then ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... rough-ridden by every species of delirium, except happily the murderous for most part, was a weltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine, at the Hotel-de-Ville; a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman, whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest and heaven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to be properly "the first stump-orator in the world, standing too on the highest stump,—for the time." A sorrowful spectacle to men of reflection, during the time he lasted, that poor M. de Lamartine; ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... repeated echo of its laughter and its complaint. Others have written, and not written badly, with the stolid professional regularity of the clerk at his desk; you, like the Scholar Gipsy, might have said that "it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill." There are, it will not surprise you, some honourable women and a few men who call you a cynic; who speak of "the withered world of Thackerayan satire;" who think your eyes were ever turned to the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... is it so? Are we indeed So like unto the shaken reed? Of such poor clay? Such puny strength? That e'en throughout the breadth and length Of purer vision's stern domain We bend to serve and serve in vain? To some, indeed, strange power is lent To stand content. Love, heaven-sent, (For things or high or pure or rare) Shows likest God, makes Life less bare. And, ever and anon there stray In faint far-reaching virelay The songs of angels, Heav'nward-found, Of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... heaven-sent opportunity of breaking her own happiness to her radiant mother, foolishly forgetting that the Count Kayserling would be the last man in the world to endure a Jew and a demagogue as a brother-in-law. Terrible scenes had followed—the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... often there are among kings, rivalry must have ceased with the loss of their navies and armies, and they showed no bitterness against those that had turned them out, one speaking of the error of his Prime Minister by which he had lost his throne as "poor old Friedrich's Heaven-sent gift ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... change the divinely established order whereby the territorial lord took tithes from his peasantry and pastured his game on their crops. The hierarchy which rested on the bowed back of the toiling serf and culminated in the figure of the heaven-sent King seemed to him as immutable as the everlasting hills. The men of his generation had not learned that it was built on a human foundation and that a sudden movement of the underlying mass might shake the structure to its pinnacle. The Marquess, who, like ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Christ For battle grow keen. Heaven-sent winds Haunt alley and lane. Singing of life In town-meadows green After the toil ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a chain of hills seemed a series of heaven-sent earthworks. Every point in a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing upon these ramparts to-day, identical in general configuration in spite of the intervening centuries, one may imagine one's self a Caesarian ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... offices of her former admirer Metternich. When the Congress of Vienna met, the French Minister, Talleyrand, at once began to press for the removal of Murat. A trifling treaty was not considered an obstacle to the Heaven-sent deliverers of Europe, and Murat, believing his fate sealed, hearing of Napoleon's landing, and urged on by a misleading letter from Joseph Bonaparte, at once marched to attack the Austrians. He was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... chambers wandered at her will, And on the many marvels gazed her fill, Where'er she passed still noting everything, Then in the gardens heard the new birds sing And watched the red fish in the fountains play, And at the very faintest time of day Upon the grass lay sleeping for a while Midst heaven-sent dreams of bliss that made her smile; And when she woke the shades were lengthening, So to the place where she had heard them sing She came again, and through a little door Entered a chamber with a marble floor, Open a-top unto the outer air, Beneath which lay a bath ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... for ages to the steps of the heavenly throne, they are now, without much modifying their attitude, trying with touching ingenuity to steal one by one the thunderbolts of their Jupiter. They have removed war from the list of Heaven-sent visitations that could only be prayed against; they have erased its name from the supplication against the wrath of war, pestilence, and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the Roman Catholic Church; they have dragged the scourge down from the skies and ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... said Johnny. "They'll get the dolly back, but you kin have eated the cake first." They looked at each other, and their eyes danced together over this heaven-sent inspiration. Then Johnny took off her shoes and stockings, rubbed her cold feet with his dirty handkerchief, and said: "Now you trot ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... partner in your schemes. You flattered us, nay, you even fawned upon us in order to secure your ends, and, now that our forces have been joined with yours, ruin menaces my country and my race. You, forsooth, allow yourself to be held up as a great prophet of Islam and a Heaven-sent protector of its faith; but we who see our nation crumbling into dust owing to your selfish ambition may be pardoned if at last we look to ourselves and attempt to save what still remains to us. To work, as they say, for the King of PRUSSIA has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... shape.[36] So fiercely beautiful in form and eye, Like war's wild planet in a summer sky; That youth to-day,—a proselyte, worth hordes Of cooler spirits and less practised swords,— Is come to join, all bravery and belief, The creed and standard of the heaven-sent Chief. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I clung to that heaven-sent bit of wreckage, exhausted and weary, until the light began to break in the east. I was numbed and shivering with cold—but I was alive and safe. That square yard of good and solid wood was as much to me as if it had ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... been borne in upon me, Jervis," said he, "that you are the most companionable fellow in the world. You have the heaven-sent gift of silence." ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... "heaven-sent, life-sustaining sea-breeze;" and now the broad and well-marked Wady Makn, with its rosy-pink sands, narrowed to a gut, flanked and choked on both sides, north and south, by rocks of the strangest tricolour, green-black, yellow-white, and rusty-red. The gloomy peak, which had long appeared capping ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... true; and a very good thing for some of us. For without that Heaven-sent capacity the world could not ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... with flowers and verdure crown'd, Where, in fond musings, or with music sweet, To earth a heaven-sent spirit takes her seat! She who from all the world has honour found. Forsaking me, to her my fond heart bound —Divorce for aye were welcome as discreet— Notes where the turf is mark'd by her fair feet, Or from these eyes for her in ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... and makes a slip, a clerical error, now and again sufficient to expose his flank. And then the humble fighting-man can draw his drop of blood if he is quick about it. To this same long-suffering Jimmy was vouchsafed the heaven-sent opportunity, and he leapt at it. He got a chit from H.Q., dated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... creatures whose blood he suspects of being something deeper than red, who really look as if they were made from the earth and were going back to it, and who have nothing of that translucent pallor suggestive of heaven-sent and heaven-destined attributes. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici |
