"Inauspicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grim ancestors for a thousand generations, in some dark cave of the hills was he whelped, but in a narrow iron cage littered with straw. Two brothers and a sister made at the same time a like inauspicious entrance upon an alien and fettered existence. And because their silent, untamable mother loved too savagely the hereditary freedom of her race to endure the thought of bearing her young into a life of bondage, she would have killed them mercifully, even while their blind baby ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Hamilton quickly enough, and he had sent Bones post-haste to await the advent of any unfortunate youngster who was tactless enough to put in an appearance at such an inauspicious moment as would fulfil the prediction ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... its peculiar kind of influence on events. The Moon, the planets, and the constellations in their conjunctions and configurations, were believed to reveal to those who could understand the significance of their aspects, the destiny of individuals and the occurrence of future events. The inauspicious influences of the heavenly bodies are described by Milton as contributing to the general disarrangement of the happy condition of things ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... his love and his pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display. Anne, too, a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably greedy of this kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very consciousness of the dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances attending their union, might secretly augment the anxiety of the royal pair to dazzle and impose by the magnificence of their public appearance. Only once before, since the Norman ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... agreed to augment the military establishment to a legionary corps of two thousand and forty men, and had detached the secretary of war, General Knox, to that state, with directions to concert measures with its government for the safety of the arsenal at Springfield. So inauspicious was the aspect of affairs, as to inspire serious fears that the torch of civil discord, about to be lighted up in Massachusetts, would communicate its flame to all New England, and perhaps to the union. Colonel Lee, a member of congress, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... between the Sabbath of the Hebrews and the 'evil day' of the Babylonians, that the precautions prescribed in the Pentateuchal codes—against kindling fires, against leaving one's home, against any productive labor—point to the Hebrew Sabbath as having been at its origin an 'inauspicious day,' on which it was dangerous to show oneself or to call the deity's attention to one's existence. Despite the attempts made to change this day to one of 'joy,' as Isaiah would have it,[617] the Hebrew Sabbath continued ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... only of an inferior character, when measured by the standard of grace and dignity, but the troubles of the times militated in a high degree against that encouragement so necessary to the perfection of the art. In spite of these inauspicious circumstances, the genius of Rembrandt has produced works fraught with the highest principles of colour and pictorial effect, and to his want of encouragement in the department of mere common portraiture, we are indebted for many of the ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... son, Yudhishthira, (seeing) and reflecting on dreadful ill omens, became alarmed. Terrified by the blaze of the points of the horizon, jackals stationing themselves on the right of that hermitage, set up frightful and inauspicious yells. And ugly Vartikas as of dreadful sight, having one wing, one eye, and one leg, were seen to vomit blood, facing the sun. And the wind began to blow dryly, and violently, attracting grits. And to the right all the beasts and birds began to cry. And in the rear the black crows cried, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... dereliction of the reins. The constitution would never have been adopted, but from a knowledge that you had once sanctioned it, and an expectation that you would execute it. It is in a state of probation. The most inauspicious struggles are past, but the public deliberations need stability. You alone can give them stability. You suffered yourself to yield when the voice of your country summoned you to the administration. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Bastille," grenadiers of the Parisian guard, preceded by military music, came to present to the young Dauphin, as a New Year's gift, a box of dominoes, made of some of the stone and marble of which that state prison was built. The Queen gave me this inauspicious curiosity, desiring me to preserve it, as it would be a curious illustration of the history of the Revolution. Upon the lid were engraved some bad verses, the purport of which was as follows: "Stones from those walls, which enclosed the innocent victims of arbitrary power, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... actually driven off. They wore, and again began with their long guns; but, these producing no visible effect, both of the British ships hauled out of the fight at 4.30. "Having lost the use of main-sail, jib, and main-stay, appearances looked a little inauspicious," writes Captain Hilyar. But the damages were soon repaired, and his two ships stood back for the crippled foe. Both stationed themselves on her port-quarter, the Phoebe at anchor, with a spring, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to allow of the revival of Belgium as a neutral state and country. An independent or neutral Belgium, or a Belgium whose status would be fixed by treaties of another kind, will be, as before the war, under the inauspicious influence of England and France, as well as the prey of America, who is seeking to utilize Belgian securities. There is only one way to prevent this, viz.: by the policy of force, and it is force that should achieve the result that the population, ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... unjust, then spoke unjust things, when at the tripod of Themis he commanded the unhallowed, inauspicious ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... faculty was developed. I have known him string together a number of graceful verses, every one of which was fine in composition and admirable in point, at a moment's notice, on a subject the most inauspicious, and apparently impossible either to wit or rhyme,—yet with an effect that delighted a party, and might have borne the test of criticism the most severe. These verses he usually sang in a sort of recitative to some tune with which all were familiar,—and if a piano were at hand, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... These were the inauspicious beginnings of the pursuit; and the middle part and the ending varied only in degree. All the way up to midnight, at which hour a station of a bigness to supply a standard brass was reached, the tinkered journal-bearing gave trouble and killed speed. Set ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... piercing eye This crisis caught of destiny - The British host had stood That morn 'gainst charge of sword and lance As their own ocean-rocks hold stance, But when thy voice had said, "Advance!" They were their ocean's flood. - O Thou, whose inauspicious aim Hath wrought thy host this hour of shame, Think'st thou thy broken bands will bide The terrors of yon rushing tide? Or will thy chosen brook to feel The British shock of levelled steel, Or dost thou turn thine ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... of the assemblage of evil spirits at Boolabong which had seemed so important to Jacko, he by no means did regard the news as unessential. Of Nokes's villany he was convinced. Of Boscobel he had imprudently made a second enemy at a most inauspicious time. Georgie Brownbie had long been his bitter foe. He had prosecuted and, perhaps, persecuted Georgie for various offenses; but as Georgie was supposed to be as much at war with his own brethren as with the rest of the world at large, Heathcote had not thought ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors, whose crimes were their claims, that they must keep an awful distance,—that they must silence their inauspicious tongues,—that they must hold off their profane, unhallowed paws from this holy work; they would have proclaimed, with a voice that should make itself heard, that on every country the first creditor is the plough,—that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... called at an inauspicious moment, for Lat seemed rather annoyed at being disturbed from his "siesta," and, to judge from his looks, had been having a high time of it during the feast. Shaking hands with him, an operation which he performed half unconsciously, we took ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... was a member of the first committee for framing a constitution. They laboured assiduously from September to February 1793, when the project was laid upon the table, prefaced by an elaborate dissertation of Condorcet's composition.[37] The time was inauspicious. The animosities between the Girondins and the Mountain were becoming every day more furious and deadly. In the midst of this appalling storm of rage and hate and terror, Condorcet—at one moment wounding the Girondins by reproaches against ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... times when Nora did not have to remind herself of her new resolution and he, for his part, exercise all his forbearance. But in the main, things went more smoothly than either had dared to hope from their inauspicious beginning. ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question would be,—"Young man, what sort of dreams have you?" I have so much faith in my old friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein returning upon me, I presently subside into my proper element of prose, remembering those eluding nereids, and that inauspicious ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... to report that these adventurous partisans of science, nothing discouraged by the catastrophe which has occurred have resolved to renew the experiment under, as may he hoped, less inauspicious circumstances; and we trust that on the next occasion they will not disdain to avail themselves of the co-operation and presence of some one of those persons, who having hitherto practiced aerial navigation for the mere purposes of amusement, will, doubtless, be too happy to invest one at least of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... inauspicious moment, colonel," said Mr. Croker, jingling his watch-seals with dignity. "The country has at last reached a point from which ruin is apparent in no very distant perspective, and when the hearts of the most resolute, in view of the depressing influences of the situation, are well nigh tempted ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... solemn days fully elapsed, on the 7th of April they assembled for the conclave. At that instant (inauspicious omen!) a terrible flash of lightning, followed by a stunning peal of thunder, struck through the hall, burning and splitting some of the furniture. The hall of conclave was crowded by a fierce rabble, who refused ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... government; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues, would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty; in this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... office barren heights, which command, indeed, a vast and extensive prospect, but attract so many clouds and vapors, that most often all prospect is precluded. Still, however, Mr. Pitt's situation, however inauspicious for his real being, was favorable to his fame. He heaped period on period; persuaded himself and the nation, that extemporaneous arrangement of sentences was eloquence; and that eloquence implied wisdom. His father's struggles for freedom, and his own attempts, gave him ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... reference to the thanksgiving of the Christians for the safety of the Emperor after the fire, had been one of the most esteemed friends of Titianus and Julia. The prefect discussed with the Patriarch the inauspicious effects that the death of the young fellow might be expected to have on the Emperor, and as a result, on the government, although the favorite had had no qualities ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Mr. Grenville on his departure from England was inauspicious and discouraging. The weather was unusually severe. On the night of Christmas Eve, the thermometer was 14 deg. below freezing point; and for many weeks afterwards the snow lay so thickly on the ground that the service of the ordinary coaches was arrested, and the mails were forwarded on horseback. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... what was contrary to both in his refusal; and that, too, while professing to be imbued with the very faith out of which the homage in question sprang. Thus, it is no wonder that Adrian should view such an inconsistency as most inauspicious for the liberties of the church,—with which those of society were then so closely bound up,—and should, therefore, feel it imperative to pursue a line of conduct, which at first glance may appear so arrogantly exacting; but which, found, on closer examination, to have involved ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... of the matter, was up first on that inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading article. 'No one that we are aware of,' ran the article, 'had consulted Mr. Naseby on the subject, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the gods; to this source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. The gods, because neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous Italy. Already has Monaeses, and the band of Pacorus, twice repelled our inauspicious attacks, and exults in having added the Roman spoils to their trivial collars. The Dacian and Ethiopian have almost demolished the city engaged in civil broils, the one formidable for his fleet, the other more expert for missile arrows. The times, fertile in wickedness, have in the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... tin case of a precious unguent, which, she told me, would cure all fractures, and internal complaints. She further directed me to leave the house with my face towards the door, by way of propitiating a happy return from a journey undertaken under such inauspicious circumstances. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... politics is so inauspicious, that if I tapped it, I should not finish my letter for the post, and my reflections would not contribute to your amusement; which I should be sorry to interrupt, and -which I beg you to pursue as long as it is agreeable to you. It is satisfaction enough to me to know you are ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... delighted, with the exception of the Astrologer, and a few old women and wise men, who drew long faces, and said that children born in such a night had undoubtedly come into the world under inauspicious signs. In the ducal palace itself the joy was not unclouded, and it was precisely the most faithful and devoted of the servants who seemed most depressed, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... want now?" shouted the engineer, a huge and sudden anger seizing him. Already super-excited by the labors of the day and by the nervous strain of having recovered the sunken biplane, all this talk of Kamrou, all this persistent opposition just at the most inauspicious moment worked powerfully ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the real? who can penetrate under this lying mask, to say, this smile conceals a black despair? no one, happily, no one! Stay, yes, love could never be mistaken; no, its instinct would enlighten it. But I hear my wife—my wife! Come to your post, inauspicious buffoon." ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... skipped as he went like a child. And you would be astonished if I were to tell you all the grave and learned heads who have confessed to me that, when on walking tours, they sang—and sang very ill—and had a pair of red ears when, as described above, the inauspicious peasant plumped into their arms from round a corner. And here, lest you should think I am exaggerating, is Hazlitt's own confession, from his essay "On Going a Journey," which is so good that there should be a tax levied on all who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... De Vlierbeck appeared to encourage the young man's love, it was not alone in consequence of his sympathy with his feelings. No: the denouement of his painful trial was to be developed within a defined period; and, if it proved inauspicious, there was nothing but dishonor and moral death for himself and child! Destiny was about to decide forever whether he was to come out victorious from this ten years' conflict with poverty, or whether he was to fall into the abyss of public ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... of its inauspicious beginning, we spent an enjoyable afternoon. By common consent New College was ruled out of our itinerary, but Oxford cannot be viewed in a day, and we found much to delight our senses south of the High Street. Finally, a languorous journey by punt from the Barges to Magdalen ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... human reason under foot; the one, to erect an empire of absurdity, and the other, to erect an empire of darkness upon its ruins. It should be the great object of all our labours to effect a reunion and harmony between revelation and reason, whose "inauspicious repudiations and divorces" have so long "disturbed everything in ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... its various lore; And, with religion's pole-star for his guide, Serenely voyaged life's tempestuous tide. Yet in Ernestus' mind his skilful sense Observ'd no dawn of future excellence; He found no early graces to adorn Of springing life the inauspicious morn; No prompt benevolence, no sacred flow Of purest feeling taught his heart to glow; But virtue's native influence was in him, A wintry sun-beam, not extinct, but dim. Yet Harfagar with kind attention tried To rouse the warmth her hidden beams supplied; And, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... visitations, that do often use, Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, And what dark 'gan, dark ended, in ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... high in air the golden treasure burns, And Love and Glory guide the prow by turns. But, when Thessalia's inauspicious plain Received the matron-heroine from the main; 145 While horns of triumph sound, and altars burn, And shouting nations hail their Chief's return: Aghaft, She saw new-deck'd the nuptial bed, And proud CREUSA to the temple led; Saw her in JASON'S mercenary arms 150 Deride ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... seem an inauspicious hour to begin a search which might lead him on in poverty for years and end nowhere. But, having seen the need for perfect rubber, the thought had come to him, with the force of a religious conviction, that "an object so desirable ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... People office was sacked by the police. Never again did the prospects of Fenianism, whatever they might then have been, look equally bright; and when the brotherhood at length sprang to action, they fought with a sword already broken to the hilt, and under circumstances the most ominous and inauspicious. ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... change from the inauspicious word Avernus, which stands in the text, is immaterial. The two lakes, Avernus and Lucrinus, communicated with each other, and were fashioned by the stupendous moles of Agrippa into the Julian port, which opened, through a narrow entrance, into the Gulf ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Englishmen of the lower orders, had attached a great degree of importance to it; many circumstances which had hitherto been unexplained to me now flashed upon my mind; poor Mr. Smith had been very ill at the time Mr. Walker had related this inauspicious dream, and at that period an extraordinary degree of despondency had crept over him, so much so that some of the men imagined he had become deranged. When also we were working our way down the eastern coast of Shark Bay in the boats others of the party had got into a very desponding state, one ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... my faithful harp, no longer mourn Thy drooping master's inauspicious hand: Now brighter skies and fresher gales return, Now fairer maids thy melody demand. Daughters of Albion, listen to my lyre! O Phoebus, guardian of the Aonian choir, Why sounds not mine harmonious as thy own, When all the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... come at an inauspicious moment, and the first words of Sir Philip, though kind and friendly, were not at all harmonious with the feeling of love ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the wooden door of the clock, and, turning, took a generous bite from the side of a mellow August sweeting that lay on the table. At this rather inauspicious moment her eye caught Pitt's. The sight of her old lover drove all prudence and reserve from her mind, and she came to the door with such an intoxicating smile and such welcoming hands that he would have kissed her ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with them. There appeared to be of a loving disposition, and lay huddled together, fast asleep, like so many pigs; but even pigs would have been ashamed of their dirt, and of the foul smell which came from them. Each herd was watched by the patient but inauspicious eyes of the turkey-buzzard. This disgusting bird, with its bald scarlet head, formed to wallow in putridity, is very common on the west coast, and their attendance on the seals shows on what they rely for their food. We found the water (probably only that of the surface) ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... assurance of fidelity to my purpose, I would start off on a new term of endurance. I seemed to myself to have borne the penance for hours, to have made myself a shining example of what a resolute will can do under circumstances the most inauspicious. At length, when certain that the time must have much more than expired, and with no little elation over the happy result of the experiment, I looked up to the clock and found it to be just three minutes past one! Little as the mind had really accomplished, the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... he had sprained it. He knew enough about such things to understand that if he walked upon this injured joint, he would not only make the pain worse, but the consequences might be serious. He was very much annoyed, not only that this thing had happened to him, but that it had happened at such an inauspicious moment. Of course, he could not now go on to the woods, and he must get somebody to help him to the house. Looking about, he saw, at a distance, Uncle Isham, and he called loudly to him. As soon as Lawrence was ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the events preceding the inauspicious occurrence the fruits of which proved so disastrous to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... passes between the house of Silius on the Caelian Hill and that of Marcius on the Aventine, the wedding takes place in due course. It will not be in May nor in early March or June, nor on certain other dates which, for reasons mostly long forgotten, were regarded as inauspicious. It is a social ceremony, and neither state nor priest will have anything to do with sanctioning or blessing it. The pillars at the sides of the vestibules of both houses are wreathed with leaves and boughs, and the friends and clients of both ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... path through the constellations[1] of heaven, and art mounted on thy golden-joined seats, thou sun, whirling thy flame with[2] thy swift steeds, how inauspicious didst thou dart thy ray on that day when Cadmus came to this land having left the sea-washed coast of Phoenicia; who in former time having married Harmonia, daughter of Venus, begat Polydorus; from him they say sprung Labdacus, and from him Laius. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... of thus weakening the Austrian force on the Rhine were, for the moment, on that scene of the contest, inauspicious. The French, in two separate bodies, forced the passage of the Rhine—under Jourdan and Moreau; before whom the imperial generals, Wartensleben and the Archduke Charles, were compelled to retire. But the skill of the Archduke ere long enabled him to effect a junction with the columns of Wartensleben; ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... silent, slumbering city the multitudinous tread of the iron-shod horses awoke strange echoes, while the splashing rain-drops and lowering clouds did not serve to raise the spirits. It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed. The points of interest,—the public buildings, the white house, the massive Greek ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... these events occurred, the South Carolina commissioners, R.W. Barnwell, J.H. Adams, and James L. Orr, arrived in Washington to treat for the surrender of the forts and other public property. It proved to be a very inauspicious ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... part of Galicia,[88] later on from Lodz, from the Masurian Lakes and Bukovina.[89] Gradually Roumania saw herself bereft of what would have been her right wing and cover, and her military men, the most influential of whom had been against intervention from the first, now declared the moment inauspicious on strategical grounds. Thereupon the oratorical representatives of the Roumanian people consoled themselves with the formula that Roumanian blood would be shed only for Roumanian interests, and that when a fresh ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... operations of her husband, though her tender nature forbade further efforts in a cause that seemed hopeless. Resigning herself to the powers of fear, and the other disquieting influences of the solemn hour of midnight, she lay quiet, and submitted to the current of inauspicious thoughts that flowed through her mind. A disturbed slumber fell over her, sufficient only to make a slight division between the world of dreams and that of reality, and to allow her waking thoughts to pass in new and changing forms before the eye of the dreaming fancy, which again, in its ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... I had that which could have procured him freedom. 135 No! Since 'twas proved so inauspicious to me To serve the Emperor at the empire's cost, I have been taught far other trains of thinking Of the empire, and the diet of the empire. From the Emperor, doubtless, I received this staff, 140 But now I hold it as the empire's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ceased to be any peril of so inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation. But as an individual, the American is often conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind pathetic tendency to wander back again, which makes itself evident in such wild dreams ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as this!' In pontifical pride he walked at the head of the procession, with flowers and wheat-ears in his hand, to the sound of chants and symphonies and choruses of maidens. On the first of the great basins in the gardens, David, the artist, had devised an allegorical structure for which an inauspicious doom was prepared. Atheism, a statue of life size, was throned in the midst of an amiable group of human Vices, with Madness by her side, and Wisdom menacing them with lofty wrath. Great are the perils of symbolism. Robespierre applied a torch to Atheism, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... fretfully not to be impatient, and hinted that she and he might be acting the part of dupes, and was for pursuing his inauspicious cross-examination in spite of his blundering, and the 'Where am I now?' which pulled him up. My father, either talking to my aunt Dorothy, to Janet, or to me, on ephemeral topics, scarcely noticed him, except when he was questioned, and looked secure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of a month. Nearly three had passed away, and no tidings whatever had been heard of him. Allcraft, as it has been seen, grew anxious—less perhaps for his partner's safety, than for the good name and credit of the firm. He had heard of his precious doings, and reports of his inauspicious marriage were already abroad. No wonder that the cautious and apprehensive Michael trembled somewhat in his state of uncertainty. As for Mr Augustus Brammel himself, the object of his fears, he, in conformity with general custom, and especially ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... auspicious comes from a similar source. We speak of an "inauspicious" undertaking, meaning one which seems destined to be unlucky. But really what the word inauspicious says is that the "auspices are against" the undertaking. And this takes us back to Roman times, when no important thing was done ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... the presageful or premonitory anguish of a man on his unconscious way to a sudden and a secret death of unimaginable horror. Had Deloney done more such work as this, and abjured the ineffectual service of an inauspicious Muse, his name would now be famous among the founders and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... entitled The Georgian Aera, in 4 vols., London, 1832; where he will find, in vol. ii. p 475., a short military memoir of Lieut.-General Whitelocke, which is dispassionately and candidly written, and which accounts very reasonably for the inauspicious result of his military operations. There is one slight error in the account of The Georgian Aera, viz. in the date of the {622} first appointment of Mr. Whitelocke to a commission in the army, which appears in the London Gazette, No. 11938. of December 26, 1778, and runs thus: '14th ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... Such was the inauspicious commencement of our acquaintance with the natives of Otaheite. Their determined hostility and perseverance in an unequal combat could only have arisen from one of two motives—either from an opinion that a ship of ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... attaches much importance to the discrepancy of titles, which appears to me a minor detail. The change of names is easily explained. Amongst the Arabs, as amongst the wild Irish, there is divinity (the proverb says luck) in odd numbers and consequently the others are inauspicious. Hence as Sir Wm. Ouseley says (Travels ii. 21), the number Thousand and One is a favourite in the East (Olivier, Voyages vi. 385, Paris 1807), and quotes the Cistern of the "Thousand and One Columns" at Constantinople. Kaempfer (Amoen, Exot. p. 38) notes of the Takiyahs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... In spite of this inauspicious commencement, Pius declared the Council a General Council, and further decreed that it should be recognized as a continuation of that Council which had begun at Trent in 1545. This rendered co-operation of the Protestants impossible, since they would have been compelled to accept the earlier dogmatic ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... of that just and pathetic transition from the havoc of Hyder Ali to the healing duties of a virtuous government, to the consolatory celebration of the mysteries of justice and humanity, to the warning to the unlawful creditors to silence their inauspicious tongues in presence of the holy work of restoration, to the generous proclamation against them that in every country the first creditor is the plough. The emotions which make the hidden force of such pictures come ...
— Burke • John Morley
... frequently inconsistent with his circumstances; often his boyishness would obtrude itself quite unexpectedly at board meetings or on the parish council, while at other times the mantle of the seer or prophet descended upon him on the most inauspicious occasions. Had Mrs. Wrottesley spoken her mind, which she never did, she might have thrown light upon the subject, but she was not a convincing woman at the best of times. All her life she had kept inviolate the woman's secret whether or not her husband was a disappointment to her. No one ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... bride's ladies, and in my opinion they are right: for the husband and wife at the beginning of their intercourse to be separated, and for the bride alone to be feasted like an ordinary guest, appears to be an inauspicious opening. I have thus pointed out two ill-omened customs which are to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Twenty-four hours later, during the height of the excitement occasioned by that event, intelligence arrived from England that Parliament had approved Lord North's Resolution on Conciliation. For extending the olive branch, the time was inauspicious; and when the second Continental Congress assembled, two weeks later, on the 10th of May, men were everywhere wrathfully declaring that the blood shed at Lexington made allegiance to ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... young Italian doctor, Scott the captain of the vessel, and eight servants, including Fletcher, besides the crew. They had on board two guns, with other arms and ammunition, five horses, an ample supply of medicines, with 50,000 Spanish dollars in coin and bills. The start was inauspicious. A violent squall drove them back to port, and in the course of a last ride with Gamba to Albaro, Byron asked, "Where shall we be in a year?" On the same day of the same month of 1824 he was carried to the tomb of his ancestors. They again set sail on the following evening, and in five days reached ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... it breathes the fears and precautions of a creditor, striving to make the most of a failing debtor, and therefore I considered this letter as inauspicious. I returned a verbal answer, that an examination of these accounts must precede a settlement of them, and that as to a speedy payment of the balance due to him, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... the mansion seemed all a-blaze, and of an appalling and suspicious brightness. Sounds, moreover, of mirth and revelry approached his ear. He would instantly have proceeded to ascertain the cause of this inauspicious merry-making had not Kate's injunction kept him aloof. The noise of minstrelsy was now heard—symptoms of the marriage-feast and the banquet. More than once he suspected some witchery, some delusion of the enemy to beguile him by enchantments. However, he resolved to be quiet; and, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Milroy herself, though conscious, of looking her best in her bright muslin dress and her gayly feathered new hat, was at this inauspicious moment Miss Milroy under a cloud. Although Allan's note had assured her, in Allan's strongest language, that the one great object of reconciling the governess's arrival with the celebration of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... though when told they may appear trifling, produced a very striking and unpleasant effect when seen and observed. Vanderhausen at length relieved the painter of Leyden of his inauspicious presence; and with no small gratification the little party heard the street-door close ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... dreadful apprehension of being too late for the imminent battle. 'I do not profess,' he writes to Mary Gibson, 'to like fighting for its own sake, but if there has been an action with the combined fleets I shall ever consider the day on which I sailed from the squadron as the most inauspicious one of my life.' Six days later (on October 27) he had to add: 'Alas! my dearest Mary, all my fears are but too fully justified. The fleets have met, and, after a very severe contest, a most decisive victory has been gained by the English. . . . To lose all ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... late proceedings of Congress manifesting a disposition hostile to Great Britain, and the remaining soreness of wounded pride experienced by England in the loss of her colonies, combined with the stirring events then occurring in Europe, made the moment apparently inauspicious for a mission like that of Mr. Jay. It required, on the part of the minister, the exercise of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... with a clean cloth, in the doorway, and set upon it bread and cheese for Yule. It is common also to have a table covered in the house from morning till night with bread and drink upon it, that every one who calls may take a portion, and it is considered particularly inauspicious if any one comes into a house and leaves it without doing so. However many be the callers during the day, all must partake of ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... they find him in less than his usual health they will get their dinners for themselves in the larder and dine and afterwards sleep. But after that; master, after that, should anything inauspicious have befallen mine host, they will seek out and ask many questions concerning all travellers, ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... of such rites, the slightest mistake of a word or syllable was deemed highly inauspicious; to prevent which, the regular form of words was pronounced by a priest, and repeated after him by the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... responsibility of heroes and lovers on himself; the mantle of genius and nature falls on his shoulders; we 'pile millions' of associations on him, under which he should be 'buried quick,' and not perk out an inauspicious face upon us, with a plain-cut coat, to say, 'What fools you all were!—I am ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... fanaticism, he placed the question of unity, which for him meant national existence, above the question of the republic. He did not believe that the House of Savoy would unite Italy, but if unity could only be had under what he looked upon as the inauspicious form of monarchy, he would not reject it. He was like the real mother in the judgment of Solomon, who, because she loved her child, was ready to give it up sooner than see ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... authoritative in Shag's manner, and, being a business man, Harry Bartlett knew better than to make an inauspicious approach. It would be as bad as slicing his golf ball ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... such would have been an inauspicious moment for Parson Dale's theological scruples. To have stopped that marriage—chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village—seen himself surrounded again by long, sulky visages,—I verily believe, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... At this inauspicious moment Philip, yielding to a tickling in the throat which he couldn't overcome, coughed. It was not a loud cough, ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... which draw it are, in reality, ordinary persons cunningly concealed within masks of cardboard. In this thoughtful manner the actual labours of the sublime Emperor are greatly lessened, while no chance is afforded for an inauspicious omen to be created by the rebellious behaviour of a maliciously-inclined ox, or by any other event of an unforeseen nature. All the other persons, however, are required to make themselves proficient in the art of ploughing, before ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... the gate, placed there a burning brazier, and, as soon as Crassus arrived, he threw incense and poured libations upon it, and, at the same time, he denounced against Crassus curses, in themselves dreadful and terrific, and, in addition thereto, he uttered the names of certain awful and inauspicious deities. The Romans say that these mysterious and ancient curses have great efficacy, that no man can escape upon whom they are laid, and that he who utters them also has an unlucky end, and, accordingly, they are not denounced either on ordinary occasions, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... 28th of October, 1844, we left Bath determined to examine the once far-famed Abbey of Fonthill, and to see if its scenery was really as fine as report had represented. The morning was cold and inauspicious, but when we reached Warminster the sun burst out through the mists that had obscured him, and the remainder of the day was as genial and mild as if had been May. We procured the aid of a clownish bumpkin to carry our carpet bag, and left Warminster on foot. About four miles from that town ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... itself stood in a walled enclosure, which had, perhaps, from the date of the erection itself, been devoted to shrubs and flowers. Some of the former had grown there almost to the dignity of trees; and two dark little yews stood at each side of the porch, like swart and inauspicious dwarfs, guarding the entrance of an enchanted castle. Not that my domicile in any respect deserved the comparison: it had no reputation as a haunted house; if it ever had any ghosts, nobody remembered them. Its history ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... new nest to pieces as often as it is put together. Thus, either the memory of aged individual rooks or an authenticated tradition in their society has preserved the idea that the old grove is forbidden and inauspicious to them. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and wellbalanced government for a free people. It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer. This intelligent people perceived and regretted these defects. Still continuing no less attached to union than enamored ...
— The Federalist Papers
... people were talking it over a few weeks later, as Mrs. Archer said, "it seemed different." Soldier folk sometimes have superstitions as surely as the sailor man is never without his, and a start on a voyage of love life, clearing port of a Friday evening, had its inauspicious side. But for the mishap that suddenly enveloped the happy man in flames at a moment when he was sprawled on his back with his whole right side, as it were, in a sling, Mr. Harold Willett might indeed have returned to duty and department headquarters with no other encumbrance than a mortgaged ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... following inauspicious answer was returned from King George: "That on this, and other occasions, he would do what he thought most consistent with the dignity of his Crown, and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... world is a wilderness in which I feel alone, and have no one in whom I can confide. You have taken from me more than my soul; you are the only thought of my life. When I feel weary with the burden of affairs, when I dread some inauspicious result, when men oppose me, when I am ready to curse life itself, I place my hand upon my heart, your image beats there; I gaze on it, and love is for me absolute bliss, and everything smiles except when I am away ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach |
